Mermaids and Lazy Activists: A Lake Michigan Tale
by Maud Lavin

Maud Lavin’s debut novella follows a woman of a certain age who loves to swim and meets Evelyn, a mermaid—feral, strapping, rule-breaking—in Lake Michigan. Evelyn is all id. The two become friends, competitors, and reluctant activists in the Great Lakes clean water movement, while also taking over poetry readings and eating many blueberry muffins.

A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Maud Lavin writes creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She has published recently in BULL, Cowboy Jamboree, Reckon Review, JAKE, Icebreakers, BRIDGE, Heimat Review, Harpy Hybrid, and Roi Fainéant, and earlier in the Nation, Harper’s Bazaar, Slate, and other venues. One of her books, Cut with the Kitchen Knife (Yale UP), was named a New York Times Notable Book. Her other books include Clean New World and Push Comes to Shove, both MIT Press, and three anthologies. Her writing has appeared in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Dutch, Finnish, and Spanish as well as English. This fall Cowboy Jamboree Press will publish her chapbook Silences, Ohio. She is a 4-H alumna and a Guggenheim Fellow. A professor emerita, she taught at the School of the Art Institute for 22 years, and before that part-time at UIC, UChicago, NYU, Yale, Hunter, and Queens. She works as a freelance editor and runs the READINGS series in Chicago’s South Loop, now in its 6th year.

Cover art by Iris Bernblum
Release Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9875743-6-2