Annihilation for Beginners Book Trailer
Gathered in five sections—Coast, Valley, River, Forest, and Sky—these stories depict lives as varied as the Oregon landscapes in which they reside. Meet a couple who finds euphoria in a cemetery, a gender-nonconforming grandparent, a tree-climbing toddler, and a whole town afflicted by a mysterious, unrelenting wind. Earthy and subtle, Annihilation for Beginners observes childhood, adulthood, and selfhood with rare honesty and strange, endearing humor.
Out on March 3rd—order your copy here!
Born and raised in Oregon, Charlie J. Stephens (they/them), has lived and worked all over the U.S. as a bike messenger, wilderness guide, high school English teacher, and seasonal shark diver (for educational purposes only). Charlie’s debut novel, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest, was long-listed for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards. In 2025, it was awarded the Leslie Feinberg Award in Trans and Gender-Variant Literature and the Bronze Foreword Indies Award for LGBTQ+ fiction. A resident of Port Orford on the southern Oregon coast, Charlie is the owner of Sea Wolf Books & Community Writing Center.
charliejstephenswriting.com