About
The Los Angeles Review of Books called Christian’s 2022 memoir, We Are Not Okay, ‘ineffably important...relentless and courageous and entertaining and upsetting,’ and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz called it ‘a moving meditation on American precarity.’ Christian is a Pushcart Prize-nominated literary writer whose new novel, The Execution of Tertius Lafontaine, and debut novel, The Very Special Dead, were published by Meat for Tea Press. She is also the author of a short story collection, Girl, Lost and Found (Alien Buddha Press, 2021), and her stories and essays have appeared in anthologies and literary journals including Longreads, Santa Fe Writers Project, Salt Hill Journal, Meat for Tea and The Texas Review. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews with an academic focus on medieval English literature and has taught creative writing at Newcastle University and medieval literature at the University of St Andrews.
Featured Work
The Execution of Tertius Lafontaine
An epic story of a family's downfall and a community's complicity, The Execution of Tertius Lafontaine tells the story of a murder in a small Georgia town and explores the damage that can be done by family and community and how, as Faulkner wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
Neighbors call Tertius Lafontaine "slow." In reality he's just a shy, misunderstood man – failed at every turn by his family, his community, and his only friend. On a cold November night, Tertius comes home to a nightmare. His wife, Winnie, lies dead on the kitchen floor, her pretty yellow dress hiked up around her hips. Tertius is taken in for questioning, coerced into giving a false confession and put on trial. This town has ghosts, and they have a lot to say about the community's worst acts – one person's in particular.
The Execution of Tertius Lafontaine is a wise and moving story of the evil men do – both great and small – and how, though they may seem to escape punishment, it always finds them. Or someone they love.
Other Works
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The Very Special Dead
2023
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We Are Not Okay – Elegy for a Broken America
2022
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Girl, Lost and Found
2021
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When the Dead Rise – Narratives of the Revenant from the Middle Ages to the Present Day
2020
