When the Forest Finds You by Lannie Stabile

Variant Literature, 2024

Lannie Stabile delivers us the director’s cut: deleted scenes and unreleased epilogues, excavated truths about characters and cast, alternate endings that at first promise different—but bring us to the same dizzying end. With precision and sensitivity fine-tuned for the darkroom, Stabile takes control of narrative, showing us how horror stories of lost autonomy have permeated media, yet what comes after, the complexity—and often isolation—of survival remains obscure. When the Forest Finds You is what many protagonists experience off-screen, between scenes, after credits have rolled—in real life. This chapbook is both a portrait of survivors’ solitude and promise from Stabile to her speakers and readers: no matter how old the wound, we navigate the labyrinth of recovery together.