Welcome to the Bitch Bubble—Lauren Dixon’s debut short story collection—danced, stalked, frolicked, and spirited through my imagination like a burning yeti streaking through a forest.  These sixteen stories gripped me with their kinetic energy and emotional range.  Sheela-na-gig in a convent, a yeti wrestling with luchadors, an NFL running back with a jack-o-lantern helmet, along with strange new twists on traditional monsters and hauntings.  But that partial list of subjects belies the deep and true humanity conveyed in each of these stories.  Each of them contains depth and heart.  They are vivid and authentic lives that evoke heartbreak and triumph, sorrow and re-birth, beauty and love. Dixon creates electricity by breaking down dichotomies and thwarting reader expectations just enough to keep you intrigued.  Macabre tales are told with airy enthusiasm; comedic mythologies address sobering social issues; the mundane becomes magical; abstract concepts become human characters; metaphors become reality.  The publisher’s website describes the collection aptly: “an orgy of vagical surrealism that cuts to the bone and seeds hope in the wounds for the future.”  Dixon exposes the grotesqueries of patriarchy by making them flesh.  Welcome to the Bitch Bubble.