Shared Perspectives
a novella by Jake Young
Winner of The Orison Fiction Prize, selected by Kaveh Akbar
Orison Books
paper / $18.00
Print ISBN: 978-1-949039-76-4
E-book ISBN: 978-1-949039-77-1Distributed to the trade by Itasca Books
952-223-8373 / orders@itascabooks.com
Publication Date: October 6, 2026
ABOUT THE BOOK
A scholar editing a volume of journal entries by a poet-slash-amateur philosopher attends a garden party. The simultaneous accuracy and banality of this sentence does nothing, however, to prepare the reader for what awaits them in Jake Young's brilliant, uncategorizable novella. Combining elements of metafiction, magical realism, and fable, Shared Perspectives challenges the boundaries of time and consciousness we often perceive as defining our world.
PRAISE
"Shared Perspectives is a brilliant vortical rush of mind and action channeling Pascal and Borges and Sebald but also Sarah Manguso and Benjamin Labatut, rendering elliptically what linear narrative would cudgel into meaningless bromide. Such a delightfully bizarre, lyric, dazzling achievement."
—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
"Jake Young's trippy mythic imagination, generous heart, and synthetic intelligence has resulted in a one-of-a-kind novella, like something Albert Einstein and Lewis Carroll might've dreamed up late into the evening over a luscious bottle of wine."
—Aris Janigian, author of Waiting for Sophia at Shutters on the Beach
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jake Young is the author of the poetry collections American Oak, What They Will Say, and All I Wanted as well as the essay collection True Terroir. With Rebecca Pelky, he is the co-translator of Desnuda / Naked, poems by Matilde Ladrón de Guevara. He received his MFA from North Carolina State University, his PhD from the University of Missouri, and his MPH from the University of Chicago, where he was a Fellow at The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Young serves as Poetry Editor for Chicago Quarterly Review.