About this item
Echoing novels like Karen Russell's Swamplandia! and Carol Rifka Brunt's Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Alexandra Teague's lighthearted coming-of-age debut is perfect for anyone who's navigated the strange seas of adolescence, and lived to tell the tale.A.Z. McKinney is on the shores of greatness. Now all she needs is a boat.When the Sea of Santiago appeared overnight in a cow pasture in Arkansas, it seemed, to some, a religious miracle. But to high school sophomore A.Z. McKinney, it's marked her chance to make history--as its first oceanographer. All she needs is to get out on the water.Her plan is easier said than done, considering the Sea's eccentric owner is only interested in its use as a tourist destination for beachgoers and devout pilgrims. Still, A.Z. is determined to uncover the secrets of the Sea--even if it means smuggling saline samples in her bathing suit.Yet when a cute, conceptual artist named Kristoff moves to town, A.Z. realizes she may have found a first mate. Together, they make a plan to build a boat and study the Sea in secret. But from fighting with her best friend to searching for a tourist-terrorizing alligator (that may or may not be a crocodile) , distractions are everywhere. Soon, A.Z.'s dreams are in danger of being dashed upon the shore of Mud Beach.With her self-determined oceanic destiny on the line, A.Z. finds herself at odds with everything she thought she knew about life, love, and the Sea. To get what she wants, she'll have to decide whether to sink or float . . . But which one comes first?
About the Author
Alexandra Teague was born in Fort Worth, Texas, grew up in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and has since lived in Missouri, Montana, Florida (where she earned her MFA at the University of Florida in 1998) , Hawaii, California, and Idaho. Her first book of poetry, Mortal Geography, (Persea 2010) won the 2009 Lexi Rudnitsky Prize and the 2010 California Book Award. Her second book, The Wise and Foolish Builders, was written and researched in part thanks to a 2011 NEA fellowship, and published by Persea in 2015. Her first novel, The Principles Behind Flotation, is newly out from Skyhorse. She is also, with Brian Clements and Dean Rader, an editor of the anthology Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence in the U.S. (Beacon, December 2017) .
Alexandra's poetry has also appeared in anthologies including Best American Poetry 2009 and New California Writing 2012 and 2013, as well as journals including The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, New England Review, Threepenny Review, and The Southern Review.
A 2006-2008 Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, and winner of the 2014 Jeffrey E. Smith Missouri Review Editors' Prize, she is an Associate Professor in University of Idaho's MFA program, faculty advisor for Fugue, and an editor for Broadsided Press. She is also a founding member of the BASK Collective. She lives in Moscow, Idaho, with her husband, the musician and composer Dylan Champagne.
www.alexandrateague.com
