Pity Party
Dear weird toes, crooked nose, stressed out, left out, freaked out
Dear missing parts, broken hearts, picked-on, passed up, misunderstood, sitting alone
Dear everyone, you are cordially invited. This party is for you.
Welcome to Pity Party, an uproarious grab bag of short fiction. Like Black Mirror for middle graders, it mines and exaggerates the social anxieties that plague us all and twists them into funny, deeply resonant, and ultimately reassuring psychological thrills.
There's a story about a mood ring that tells the absolute truth. One about social media followers who literally follow you around. And one about a kid whose wish for a new, improved self is answered when a mysterious box arrives in the mail. There's also a sprinkling of micro-fiction: a personality test (to find out if you have a personality), a fortune teller (that 100% accurately predicts the future), a letter from the Department of Insecurity, and an interactive Choose Your Own Catastrophe.
Here is a modern-day middle-grade Twilight Zone targeted squarely at middle schoolers who delight in disdaining their own seemingly miserable lives.
Kathleen Lane lives in Portland, Oregon, where she writes, teaches, cohosts the art and literary event series SHARE, and runs the Create More, Fear Less program (https://createmorefearless.org) that helps young people channel anxiety into art.
AUTH. WEBSITE:
http://kathleenlane.net/