Earthen

The characters in the short stories of Earthen are all in need of guidance: mothers, widows and wives, grandmas and grandpas, teachers, lovers, and the young. They find messages in the earth and rock beneath their feet, the mountains and atmosphere above, or the creatures surrounding them: birds and animals, plants and trees. The natural world insists on a relationship with both characters and readers of Earthen, in stories ranging from realism to fable to speculative fiction.

Read a sample: You Can Have More 

ADVANCE PRAISE

“Edgily tender, Earthen lets readers in on deep conversations among living beings, some human and some not. Women team up with one another and with females of different species to form clever alliances. A beautiful, provocative read.”
—Rona Altrows, author of At This Juncture and the winner of the 2025 Prairie Grindstone Prize

“In writing as clear as water and fresh as apples—two motifs threaded through these stories—Katherine Koller’s lyrical collection Earthen takes us into the lives of ordinary people—poignant family relationships; longings, loves, betrayals, tragedies. These intimate stories unfold in a world teeming with beauty, death and fear: lush gardens, harvests, ‘sun-green forests’, avalanches, toxic tailings ponds.

Earthen evokes a world under threat—characters redeemed in a folk-tale horror; a future in which personal mementos and belongings are to be destroyed; the amorphous present, in which women’s lives play out against a backdrop of ecological devastation or beauty. Each story brings us close to Koller’s insistence on tenderness, hope, and survival in a fragile world that refuses to be destroyed.” —Lynn Hutchinson Lee, author of Nightshade