Catherine M Schuster writes flash fiction & short stories & is working on her first novel, The Antidote to Joy.
Catherine Schuster’s kaleidoscopic “Antidote to Joy” reads like a starburst, where each point-of-view is a ray of light that illuminates a narrative structure that is complex as it is clear as day. With dexterity and elegance Schuster threads a family drama through the eye of a modern-day needle, leaving behind a piercing and tightly woven story. Her writing is a study in lamentation and survival, in grit and edge. Her attention to the family saga is a beautiful exercise in how the miniature can unfold into a gigantic panorama. Defiant, unwavering, and expansive, Schuster’s prose sears and pummels given structures (marriage, university, et cetera) to show their lines and cracks. Though her subjects are often blistering, heartbreaking, and torn there are still flickers of tenderness and sweetness and hope, and it’s in these flickers where I imagine her stories will continue to spark and grow.
—Sabrina Orah Mark
Bennington Writing Seminars MFA, 2025
Nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize
publications
- Safe Surrender, Active Muse (winter 2022). Posted on Medium as Safe Surrender Site, august 2022.
- Peter Blind, Flash Fiction Magazine (november 2022).