The winner of our 7th Annual Chapbook Contest, Dana Diehl’s TV Girls is at once a celebration and interrogation of reality television and its conventions, going beyond the pristine décor of The Fantasy Suite and into the mess of reality at its realest. In high-definition prose, Diehl takes a genre often known for exploitative nature and makes it the locus of an exercise in radical empathy. Chen Chen, the judge of this year’s contest, writes of TV Girls: “Story after story, Diehl discovers fraught vulnerabilities and startling truths in the lives of girls and women confronting the expectations of TV, lovers, family, and one another.”
Dorothy Chan ✳ 2017
Chinatown sonnets
5″ x 7″
52 pages