Joni Tevis

The sermons of Joni Tevis’ youth filled her with dread, a sense “that an even worse story—one you hadn’t read yet—could likewise come true.” In this revelatory collection, she reckons with her childhood fears by exploring the uniquely American fascination with apocalypse. From a haunted widow’s wildly expanding mansion, to atomic test sites in the Nevada desert, her settings are often places of destruction and loss.And yet Tevis...

Using such models as Joseph Cornell’s box constructions, crazy quilts, and specimen displays,Joni Tevis places fragments in relationship to each other in order to puzzle out lost histories,particularly those of women. Navigating the peril and excitement of outward journeyscomplicated by an inward longing for home, The Wet Collection follows Tevis through severaladventures that coalesce into a narrative imbued with the light of Tevis’s Southern upbringing.Written with a...