Last year Epistemic Literary printed an excerpt from my new novel The Taste of Your Name. You can read my story titled Food is Love online. It will give you a taste of what my book is about. (Insert groan at bad pun here.)
I’m honored my work was chosen to appear in Epistemic Literary. It’s free, and I encourage you to subscribe and support the work of Kristin Houlihan & Melissa Rotert.
Click here to go Epistemic Literary and read Food is Love. Enjoy.
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).
The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
I’m excited to announce that my fifth book is now available!
The Taste of Your Name is the story of an erotic triangle, reclaimed memories, the fates of refugees, and the importance of bread. The story also delves into the history of qurt, koliva, witch cakes, and sin foods. Once you finish reading, nothing will ever taste the same again.
Mustafa is a Syrian refugee who runs a bakery in Stuttgart with an American woman named Neela. Her German stepsister Jo provides trauma massage for a war refugee who refuses to talk about what happened. Neela and Jo both have a relationship with Brian, who is trying to retrieve their grandmother’s memories.
How do we resolve memories, the ones we can’t remember or desperately want to forget? How do food traditions unite us? What happens when reality, bad or good, overtakes your life? Read this book and get ready to forget the outside world for a while!
The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award. Available at Amazon or Barnes and Noble, as eBook and Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. Follow these links for Amazon.com or Amazon.de.
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My previous books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).
The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
