Randall Brown

Seabright, located atop towering sandstone cliffs and bordered by the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor and San Lorenzo Point, overlooks the famous Santa Cruz Boardwalk and a state beach where locals and lifeguards have performed many valiant acts of ocean rescue. Originally a Victorian-era campground, the neighborhood features special amenities, including a natural history museum, thanks to a long tradition of community activism. The creation of the Santa Cruz Harbor in the 1960s completed Seabright s transition from a summer resort to a year-round neighborhood. The beach doubled in size due to the littoral drift of sand blocked by the harbor seawall, protecting the vulnerable cliffs from the assault of winter waves."

First runner-up in the Sonder Press 2018 Chapbook Competition, Randall Brown's This Is How He Learned To Love, is a masterfully crafted collection of 37 brief, yet luminous fictions. Brown's prose is spare, and as delicately rendered as the windows he grants into the worlds of his characters, yet the stories gathered here are deeply, utterly resonant. This Is How He Learned To Love captures the true vastness of the human heart--its susceptibility and perseverance; its resilience; and, above all, its indelible, persistent yearning for connection.