Description:
Winner of the 2026 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction
A debut collection of surreal, skin-piercing stories about the boundless longing of queer Black women.
A runaway seeks shelter from violence with a pack of wild coyotes. A young woman falls into a hypocritical crew of white Christian YouTube influencers. A mother witnesses her daughter's prophecy about the end of the world come true. In Sympathy for Wild Girls, young Black women yearn for intimacy and hunt for belonging in a subtly warped version of our world, where social mores loom like shadows and bigotry shape-shifts.
Skirting the chasms that lurk in our common notions of "girlhood"--and their heightened peril for queer women of color--Demree McGhee's characters track the prints of their desire and pain to the edges of reality, finding refuge in unlikely places. Fighting self-loathing and societal abuse, they explore the bounds of their feral strength and ugliest truths, howling at the moon to be known.
Review Quotes:
Winner of the 2026 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction
Praise for Sympathy for Wild Girls
"Confident and poetic." --Chicago Review of Books
"I loved this book! Demree McGhee writes with dazzling intelligence, tipping gracefully between the surreal and the real in a way that's constantly upping its own ante. These stories build to a powerful crescendo, and they left me in a state of awe." --Jenny Fran Davis, author of Dykette
"McGhee has a unique vision with the chops to bring it to life. . . . A daring debut collection of enigmatic short stories." --Kirkus Reviews
"McGhee writes in between the real and surreal, mixing dreamlike elements with stark realism, striking a balance that infuses each story with inventive and effective storytelling. A promising debut." --Booklist
"Demree McGhee's Sympathy for Wild Girls is an atmospheric short story collection about the restlessness of Black girls and women." --Foreword Reviews