MONARCH: Stories subverts the reader's common perceptions about how love can heal, how loss and suffering can transform, and how every character deserves a second chance. America's city scars, sewers, alleyways, and bars are landscape to their wars, as characters heal and transform under wind turbines and on open roads, in golden cornfields and with the wails of Chicago blues. Heroes in this collection are the marginalized, the sufferers, the down-trodden, the misfits, the wanderers, and the wounded, shaped by grief but not defined by their scars.

MONARCH honors each human being's capacity for change. Characters drive the collection, turning up the dial to raise the volume of voice for unsung heroes who are shades of the sufferers and healers in all. In collection, MONARCH is an exploration of the human condition through a lens of the damaged who learn to love through small acts of kindness, given and received. MONARCH's characters bear traumas with their bodies, and often, they transgress. They break in, break down, and ultimately, break open.

An inclusive invitation, MONARCH aims at an intimate portrayal of scarred characters on American streets beating the drum of current culture against the fierce rhythm of critical social justice issues. With this at its heart, the collection Includes a reading guide written by the author with prompts intended to inspire discourse between readers, writers, and students making the work of special interest to librarians, teachers, book clubs, and beyond.

Foreword by Chris Abani, author of The Secret History of Las Vegas.