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.
Releasing March 3rd—pre-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.
