What We Might Become: Stories (Paperback or Softback)

WINNER, Short Story Collection, Storytrade Book Awards (2025)

BRONZE MEDAL, Short Story-Fiction, Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) (2025)

An adolescent struggles with race and sexuality and her father's return from war; a spiteful social pariah finally reveals her rumored, freakish robot anatomy when she attends the senior prom with her geriatric date; an unemployed husband grows enamored with the new immigrant next door as she reveals her tragic past; and a new widower is tormented by the smell of his neighbor's expert baking and feigns that he is part bear. Sara Reish Desmond's characters find themselves at the threshold; on the verge of discovery, navigating the space between childhood and adulthood, between fidelity and scandal, between honesty and deceit. Deft and moving, What We Might Become shares the uncertainty about how we ought to live in transitional moments and, perhaps more desperately, forever.

Sara Reish Desmond's work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Review, and Water Stone Review, among other journals. Her short stories have been finalists for the Rick DeMarinis Short Story Award and the Copper Nickel Award. She teaches and writes just north of Boston, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.