In the linked short stories of Highway Thirteen (Macmillan, 2024), Fiona McFarlane (English Department, UC Berkeley) offers a gripping, enigmatic exploration on the reverberations of a serial killer’s crimes in the lives of everyday people.

His twelve victims are long gone, but their deaths are felt, beyond the forest where they were buried, beyond this country, beyond even this time: in the past, where a young woman on a school trip to Rome sees something she shouldn’t have. In the present, where a man confronts an ancient grief on the suburban streets of Texas. In the future, in the hands of journalists and podcast hosts and television actors whose livelihoods hinge on the twin spectacles of loss and violence.

Highway Thirteen won the Story Prize and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction.

McFarlane is joined by Beth Piatote (Comparative Literature and English Departments).