"Above the steering wheel, a shadow ducks away and then emerges again. Long hair, slender, young like I used to be. He has a dance to him, or maybe he just waltzes through me, and then it washes over me, the weird electricity of seeing someone who used to be my heart. A ghost, but he blurs and I realize the book spine I have my finger running down is you. He’s a vision of you and — what if you had disappeared?"
— Excerpt from A Big Life (2022, Autofocus)
"1,569 was the number of bike rides Joey Button would estimate he took to find the Big Thing. He always tried to replicate the same circumstances. He’d ride til his legs started to feel rubbery and then he’d go to the spot where the bike path crossed the park and he’d look in every direction to see if he might see any gray, or purple, or purplish gray. Sometimes, his friend Clay would come with him. He never knew if Clay believed him, but if nothing else, Clay was a good sport, and he played along just fine. "
— Excerpt from Joey Button (2020, New Reader Magazine, 2021, Short Édition)
"A light fog dances over the road. Later today, everyone will declare winter over, spring sprung. In light of the occasion, we are all — all of us, every Vermonter — wearing the new dress we just bought, the one with short sleeves and airy fabric. The people who’ll live in the house won’t know this: the weather, the dress, or that somewhere between the school and the next town, the house travels alongside a brook teeming with melted snow barreling itself toward a bigger place."
— Excerpt from House on Wheels (2023, Cutleaf)
"The ghost whispered, 'When was the last time you were alive?' Not living — of course I was living. But when was the last time I saw colors burst out of themselves? When was the last time a song made me cry? When was the last time I stared at my reflection and my breath fogged the mirror because I couldn't get close enough to her?"
— Excerpt from Short Hair (2020, Salt Hill)
"In the passenger seat of Andy’s convertible, Stacy rubbed her left palm on her skirt to rid it of sweat. She rested her forearm on her thigh and let her hand hover awkwardly, so it was wedged between the end of her and the start of the gear shift. In the driver’s seat, Andy’s eyes were on the movie. His right hand was in a bucket of popcorn. Stacy watched it — the hand, not the movie. What would it feel like? To have those fingers laced through hers? She thought, no, she knew, it would be the thing that completed her."
— Excerpt from Star Crossed (2025, Waffle Fried)
"[This is] where I need to pause, to really scoop out the infected part of the cavity that is my entire feverish journey with this topic. When I met The Harvey Girls, something squirmed in my stomach. I thought, look at this upsetting way these women were spoken about, the way they were told to navigate the world, the way they were put in showy servitude. I thought, I am so grateful I’ve never lived a life like that, and never will. I thought, I live a century and a thousand miles away from where these women stand.
Do I?"
— Excerpt from The Harvey Girls and Me (2022, INTO More)
To read more of Lauren Harkawik's writing, contact Lauren for clips.