SECRETS AND OTHER HOBBIES is an achingly vulnerable debut collection primarily exploring pivotal moments in women's—and some men’s—lives: A mysterious late-night drowning occurs at a high school graduation party. A retired mother harvests insight from her daughter's life to break old habits. An elderly woman compulsively attends all of the funerals in her town. Tucked out of sight at her mother's bridge club, a child spies an intimate kiss between two women. In her attempt to honor a friend’s deepest wishes, a young girl contributes to terrible loss.

Presented with an artful balance of dark humor and poignancy, each story arrives as a scintillating aggregation of intricately woven layers–nobility, hidden yearning, purposeful deception–that together depict an indelible and realistic American Midwest, where characters must stumble as much before they rise as before their fall.

Mary Hannah Terzino is the author of SECRETS AND OTHER HOBBIES (October 20, 2026; Cornerstone Press). A graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison with a lifelong interest in the Midwest, her a fiction and nonfiction have also been published in The Forge Literary Magazine, Pithead Chapel, MacQueen's Quarterly, Hypertext Review, and elsewhere. Her story "Blank Slate" won first prize in Fiction Factory's 2021 flash fiction contest, and "Saving the Turtles" was nominated for the Best Small Fictions 2024 anthology. Raised in La Porte, Indiana, she lives on the Kalamazoo River in Saugatuck, Michigan.

Doug Erickson spent most of his professional life as a newspaper reporter, including 18 years at the Wisconsin State Journal. His beats there included K-12 education and general features, and for several years he penned the religion column, "In the Spirit." For the last nine years of his career, he worked on the communications team at UW-Madison, retiring in 2025 as an assistant director for media relations. He is an avid reader and enjoys supporting bookstores and fellow writers.

Mary Hannah Terzino in Conversation with Doug Erickson