Erica Stern launches "Frontier," in conversation with Shayne Terry

Author Erica Stern will be joined by writer Shayne Terry for a reading, conversation, signing, and reception.

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As she prepared to give birth to her first child, Erica Stern envisioned the idyllic experience promised by prenatal classes and diaper commercials. But when unexpected complications arose during labor, she found herself at the threshold of life and death, a liminal space that connected her to generations of mothers before her.

From the chaos of the delivery room, Frontier opens into a parallel narrative: a Wild West ghost story. There, a mother who didn’t survive the ordeal of childbirth roams her old homestead, tethered to the family she left behind. In this otherworldly hybrid memoir, Stern careens between this haunted past and the present horror of the hospital as she waits for her own son to wake up in the NICU.

Seamlessly blending memoir, fiction, and research into the fraught history of birth—from midwives to Victorian-era sedation through the Natural Childbirth Movement and modern L&D suites—Frontier lays bare visceral truths that are too often glossed over, and offers an incisive look at the momentous and terrifying transformations of motherhood.

Advanced Praise for Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story

"In open-hearted, gorgeous prose, Erica Stern makes meaning out of accident and luck, exploring medical history, religious ritual, and the ghostly multiverse that binds the two together. Vulnerable, wise, and truly a feat." —Julia Fine, author of The Upstairs House

“With a beautifully innovative blend of memoir and fiction, Erica Stern is a steady guide through her own harrowing journey while also capturing the feelings of exile so many of us encounter as we enter new motherhood.” —Teresa Wong, author of Dear Scarlet

“In Frontier, Stern does something as rare as it is remarkable: she expresses the emotional, psychological, and physical aspects of birth that often feel beyond language. I absolutely loved this book, and I could not put it down.” —Rachel Somerstein, author of Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Section

“In shimmering prose, and impeccably researched, while weaving in the edges of violence, disability, birth, and Jewish identity, Frontier guides the reader along a difficult path, to the edge of birth, the NICU, and beyond.” —Emily Maloney, author of Cost of Living

"At every surprising, finely crafted level, Erica Stern invites us to expand our understanding of the profound, dangerous, and ultimately endless transition from person to parent. Frontier is an important and beautiful book that spoke to the unnameable parts of my own soul." —Katie Gutierrez, bestselling author of More Than You'll Ever Know

Erica Stern’s work has been published in The Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She has received support for her writing from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. A New Orleans native, she lives with her family in Evanston, Illinois.

Shayne Terry's work has appeared in CRAFT, Electric Literature, TriQuarterly, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere, and her story The Rock Is Not a Rock was included as a distinguished story of 2024 in Best American Short Stories. She has been selected for workshops and residencies at Bread Loaf, CRIT, Tin House, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her first book, Leave: A Postpartum Account, was published in 2025 by Autofocus Books.

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