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Author Michele Tracy Berger

Join us when author Michele Tracy Berger visits to discuss her short story collection, Doll Seed.

Michele Tracy Berger is the director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. She has a faculty appointment in the Departments of English and Religious Studies. 

Her short fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction has appeared in 100 Word Story, Apex Magazine, Glint Literary Journal, The Wild Word, Blood and Bourbon, FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, Midnight and Indigo, Oracle: Fine Arts Review, Carolina Woman, Ms., and various anthologies. She is the 2019 winner of the Carl Brandon Kindred Award from the Carl Brandon Society for her story "Doll Seed" published in FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. 

Much of her work explores psychological horror, especially through issues of race and gender.

In Doll Seed, Fifteen stories invite you to get comfortable in the dark, to consider freedom and sacrifice, trust and betrayal, otherness, and safety. Marisol, an aspiring jeweler, is haunted by a fast-food icon. Chevella, a self-aware doll, finds herself in 1950s America playing a key role in the Civil Rights Movement. Lindsay, a Black girl in 1970s America “wins” an extraterrestrial in a national contest only to find her family’s life upended. Chelsea and Jessa, two sisters, fight about what a strange child means for their family. A meat grinder appears in a magical forest and chaos ensues. All this and more.

"This is Black Mirror with the emphasis on Black." -Vincent Tirado, author of We Came to Welcome You: A Novel of Suburban Horror  

Books will be available for purchase courtesy of Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry.