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Stephanie Carpenter

Stephanie Carpenter’s collection of short stories, Missing Persons, won the 2017 Press 53 Award in Short Fiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nelle, Witness, the Missouri Review, Crab Orchard Review, Big Fiction, and other journals. She’s currently finishing a pair of short novels about female artists in nineteenth-century New England, and beginning a collection of stories set in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, where she lives.

Phase Five

She’d never had anxiety before, never had to pause at each stage of dressing to practice deep breathing, assuring herself that once she got past the door, she’d be okay. Usually that held true. But if Doug came to get Jax, if they left her alone in this strange place, would she be able to keep breathing?