One local writer’s vision of make-believe living 

The stories in Lauren D. Woods' debut collection, The Great Grown-up Game of Make Believe (Autumn House Press, October 2025), pendulum between the speculative and the real, embodying how many people live their lives: half in imagination, half in the material world. These tales tremble with an unusual sense of stasis and imbalance, like someone who knows they’re susceptible to vertigo, yet keeps glancing over the edge of a high balcony anyway.