The Black River Chapbook Competition Winner

Price range: $7.99 through $10.95

ISBN: 9781625572141
Catalog: Black Lawrence Press
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Reviews & Media

Woman, Wolf, Carbon Capture

Noelle Catharine Allen

Publication Date: September 29, 2026

Description

Winner of the Fall 2024 Black River Chapbook Competition

It’s a beautiful September day in Seattle, but Tiny isn’t happy. Lung damage recently ended her dream career as a wildlands firefighter, and she’s grieving the person she loved most, her grandmother. Add to that Tiny’s festering anger over climate change, and the pushy neighbor who’s filed a complaint about the wind turbine on Tiny’s roof, and it’s no wonder she sometimes wants to punch something.

Things take a turn when a city employee arrives at Tiny’s doorstep with an unexpected proposal: become a beta-tester for a program designed to pull carbon from the atmosphere, counteracting global warming. Despite her skepticism, Tiny agrees. What ensues is stranger and more wondrous than she could have imagined—but when the city decides to abruptly end the program, Tiny must decide if she will follow orders, or if she will resist and follow her heart. Woman, Wolf, Carbon Capture is an exuberant, funny, and smart tale about human shortcomings and hopes around climate change.

Praise

Woman, Wolf, Carbon Capture is the perfect union of climate fiction and fabulism. In this fantastic story, science goes hand in hand with magic. Neighborhood drama collides with creatures of mythic proportion. This story reminds you what it’s like to look at the world with true curiosity and wonder.
—Dana Diehl, author of The Earth Room

I’ve loved Noelle Catharine Allen’s writing ever since one of her stories hit my inbox at a now long-defunct little magazine fifteen years ago. Allen’s fabulism grapples with the troubles of our contemporary world—international monetary policy, the #metoo movement, McMansions, and always, always sustainability and the pain of watching the climate disaster unfold in real time. Its responses are grounded in wild imagination, magic, and joy. Her writing is a Carbon Capture Device for the soul, and I love thinking about the new readers who will discover her work.
—Dawn Corrigan, author of Atlantic City

About the Author

Noelle Catharine Allen

Noelle Catharine Allen has worked as a freelance journalist in Buenos Aires and Mexico City, and now lives in Seattle, where she primarily writes fiction. Her short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Otis Nebula, Phoebe, and Hunger Mountain. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Hunger Mountain, and won the Editor’s Choice award in the publication Best New Writing. She is currently working on a series of novels. Her chapbook, Woman, Wolf, Carbon Capture, was selected as the winner of the Fall 2024 Black River Chapbook Competition and is forthcoming from BLP in Fall 2026.

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