It’s hard being the kid who moves every few years. Combine that with a dysfunctional home, natural disaster, and parentification. It’s up to Sarah to invent out of chaos. She hurls herself into overdue library books, googly-eyed alter egos, rock bands in dusty basements, mountain trails, and most confusingly, love. Echolocation is a collection of stories inspired by true events, following a young girl from Chicagoland who dreams of being a dolphin trainer but becomes a writer who sorts through chicken scratch and cobbled-together collages to form a narrative that is uniquely and emotionally hers. Stories touch on themes like parent-child role reversal, sibling relationships, sexual exploration, creative growth, spiritual re-evaluation, and other forms of identity questioning. It will appeal to creatives carving a space for themselves during hard times but especially to those who lived a 90s childhood full of Mario video games games and pop star music queens and those who joined the workforce post 2008’s economic disaster. The last story ends with the quarantine lockdown of COVID-19. Sarah moves again, this time away from everything she knows – to embark on the dirty journey of age 30. Stories that first appeared in literary publications “Lenny” ( Jersey Devil Press ), “Whoopie Pie” ( Bird’s Thumb ), “Shades of Nude” ( Bayou Magazine ), and “Crap Apples” ( Better Than Starbucks ). I hope Echolocation is a soft, loving place for those looking to learn themselves deeply in a world constantly demanding their attention and production. Enjoy a few laughs, maybe a cry, and a hearty congratulations for making it this far.