Alex Behr is the author of the short story collection Animal Kingdom, which is forthcoming from 7.13 Books (November, 2026). Alex’s work has also appeared in The Gravity of the Thing’s Fall 2020 issue, Summer 2017 issue, and in our Stranged Writing anthology.
About Animal Kingdom:
In late 2019, award-winning Portland author Alex Behr reunited with Chris Hartman, a lost love, after thirty years. Tragically and suddenly, he was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive prion illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and died just months after the move. Tender, erotic, and damned, the nineteen stories in Animal Kingdom are inspired by Alex Behr’s grief and bolstered by her dark humor. It explores desire and searches for meaning from chaos and loss. With piercing humor, the collection explores a couple bonding over alien visitations, the brutal accommodations in a marriage between musicians, sexuality during menopause, and a teen girl’s bruising path to feminism via her Fender guitar. The stories share the theme that humans can’t escape their primal urges and are intelligent animals in the lawed kingdom we all share.
Advance Praise:
“There are antecedents—PJ Harvey, Molly Shannon, Nan Goldin, Jane Bowles… Behr’s writing, fact or fiction, is sui generis.”
—Mary Rechner
About Alex Behr:
Alex Behr is the author of the story collections Animal Kingdom and Planet Grim, both from 7.13 Books, and the poetry chapbook Grief Stick (Picture Frame Press). Her writing has been published in Tin House, Epiphany, Salon, Oregon Humanities, The Rumpus, Buckman Journal, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, in anthologies, and others. She lives in Portland, Oregon, and plays piano and bass guitar.