GalleyCat correspondent Amanda ReCupido went to Brooklyn's Book Court last night to see Amy Shearn read from her debut novel, How Far Is the Ocean From Here. "The novel, which follows a young, unmarried surrogate mother in her panicked journey from Chicago to the Southwest mere days before her delivery date, encompasses a theme that appears in much of Shearn's writing: of taking care of others, and sometimes failing," ReCupido writes. "The idea of the surrogate also follows Shearn's propensity for including somewhat unnatural and sci-fi elements of the human body in her work."

At the reading, ReCupido also learned about an informal raffle Shearn is conducting through her website—readers are invited to submit their own stories about bad model trips ("real or imagined"), which might earn them one of twenty handmade chapbooks featuring an all-new story about one of the novel's characters, who Shearn explained she "wanted to spend a little more time with."