Every summer the peaches ripen in Port Peter, and the tourists arrive to gorge themselves on fruit and sun. They don't see the bird women, who cavort on the cliffs and live in a meadow beneath the lake. But when summer ends and the visitors go back home, every pregnant Port Peter girl knows what she needs to do: deliver her child to the Birds in a laundry basket on those same lakeside cliffs. But the Birds don't want Georgia Jackson.

Twenty years on, the peaches are ripening again, the tourists have returned, and Georgia is looking for trouble with any ill-tempered man she can find. When that man turns out to be Arlo Bloom — her mother's ex and the new priest in town — she finds herself drawn into a complicated matrix of friendship, grief, faith, sex and love with Arlo, his wife, Felicity and their son, Isaiah. Vivid, uncanny and as likely cursed as touched by grace, their story is a brutal, generous tale as sticky and lush as a Port Peter peach. (From Invisible Publishing)

Sydney Hegele is a writer living in Toronto. Their story The Bottom was shortlisted for The Malahat Review's 2020 Open Season Awards. They have been published in American Chordata, Thorn Literary Magazine and other literary journals. The Pump, their first book, won the 2022 ReLit Award for short fiction.