Churn: An Illustrated Novel-in-Stories

by Chloe Chun Seim

Winner of The 2022 George Garrett Fiction Prize, selected by Vi Khi Nao

Siblings Jordan and Chung face a costly existence on their family’s Kansas farm. On a conciliatory trip once again turned violent, Jordan and Chung escape the chaos of their parents’ fighting to the middle of a lake. When something pulls them under, a voice speaks to them. In their long trudge back to the living, they find their chemistries altered. Jordan breathes smoke when angry. Chung flops like a fish out of water when provoked. In the years following, they navigate their parents’ separation, their father’s alcoholism and mother’s growing paranoia. In adulthood, Jordan and Chung grieve, love, and come into their own. From the plains of rural Kansas to hundred-acre towns, the end of the universe to its primordial breath, Churn mines the uncanny to tell a story of rural Kansas like you’ve never seen before.

Genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Literary Fiction

185 pages, Paperback

Published January 24, 2024

About the author

Chloe Chun Seim is the author of the illustrated novel-in-stories, CHURN, which won the 2022 George Garrett Fiction Prize. Her writing has appeared in LitMag, Potomac Review, McNeese Review, Split Lip Magazine, and Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She won the 2021 Anton Chekov Award for Flash Fiction. She earned her BFA in Art History from the University of Kansas and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Chloe lives in Lawrence, KS.

Reviews

[Cody Shrum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Churn is a deftly woven family charter spanning two decades, each story compounding to build this beautiful portrait of two siblings finding themselves in a vividly drawn Kansas landscape. Full of hope and loss, fire and water, beginnings and endings, Churn is a very, very good read by a talented new voice in fiction.

[Ned · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good! Marvelous childhood insight from the kid's pov. Small town life and school scenes shot full of alienation and unrequited everything. Despite the end-it-all despair, in time, the kids turn out alright. Worthwhile.

[Trenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a marvelous, strange, gorgeous. Somewhere in between a novel and a literary magazine, it's an exercise in creativity and emotion, a deep dive into how land and family and experience shape a person. Readers from Kansas will delight in the little knowings, but Siem's visuals are so illustrative they're enjoyable either way. Siem's own visual works open up each chapter—a wonderful, inventive touch. Queer, angry, beautiful, and hopeful, I highly recommend. Fans of the craft will walk away stunned and fulfilled.

[Joshua Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This incredible novel gives an intimate glimpse into a multi-generational family living in beautiful, desolate, and awe inspiring Kansas. So much empathy and detail given to the complexities of sister and brother navigating through harsh realities, described in multiple perspectives and eloquent, steamrolling prose. A must read!!!

[Cathlina Bergman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird but fascinating!