The Longest Way to Eat a Melon

A cheeky debut of short fictions exploring the pitfalls and minor triumphs of the creative process.

Equal parts melody and malaise, The Longest Way to Eat a Melon charts the activities of a cast of speakers who all grapple in their own ways with what it takes to conjure a self in the midst of discordance. A brain argues with a non-brain about how to remain productive from a place of exhaustion; two supernaturally inclined twins named Han are separated at birth; and an emerging artist paralyzed by possibility considers how best to transform a melon into a breakthrough work of art. Incorporating elements of fable, surrealism, satire, and art and cultural criticism, these stories have a playful peculiarity to them, an interweaving of self-deprecation and curiosity, of woe and hope, of absurdity and humanity. Reader, you will want to savor every bite.

Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross is a writer and editor based in Vancouver, the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ nations. Her fiction, poetry, essays, and art criticism have appeared in BOMB, C Mag, The Ex-Puritan, Fence, Mousse, and elsewhere. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from Simon Fraser University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. The Longest Way to Eat a Melon is her first book.