She graduated from Davidson College as a recipient of the Patricia Cornwell Scholarship and holds a Master’s degree in Graduate Liberal Studies from UNCW. Her work has most recently appeared in Garden & Gun, Saw Palm, and Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a Rhysling Award and was a semi-finalist for The Big Moose Prize. Terra Incognita received the 2024 Gold Medal in the Florida Book Awards.
Post applied the Page 69 Test to Terra Incognita and reported the following:
Terra Incognita is a classic adventure tale told through a kaleidoscope of medium, forms and voices. I was especially excited, then, that page 69 lands within the bounds of the first “Crossing” piece: Whenever the six main characters are traveling across large distances—the ocean, seas, wilderness—the story is told through a collection of epistolary ephemera. On page 69, we have the first of many journal entries written by Sebastian Dahl, mineralogist and conflicted protégé of the expedition’s leader, Sir Ashmore Bedivere.Visit Steph Post's website.
Among his scientific observations and sketches of ship-life aboard the Undine, Sebastian expresses his anger, frustration and bewilderment at being left out of Ashmore’s secret plan to discover the last lost city, Alatyra.I only wish Ashmore had confided in me from the beginning.Does Sebastian’s first journal entry give the reader an idea of the book as a whole? Absolutely not. But then neither would an excerpt from one of Cristabel’s—Sir Ashmore’s wife—furtive letters or Theo’s telegrams as he impersonates a Zulu prince. The same would go for Ashmore’s internal monologues to his dead partner, Lily’s immediate musings as she grapples with an entirely different life than the one she knew as a thief on the streets of New York City or Felix’s reminiscences of the story itself, framed a year later by his narration.
As he used to.
I wonder how much more Cristabel knew than me. She appears to be in his confidence again, which would explain why I’ve been shut out. I knew I shouldn’t have traveled home to Copenhagen last fall! I could feel the difference when I returned, not only with Ashmore, but with Cristabel as well. It was as if the two of them had grown closer somehow. Closing doors in Lunete House. Heads together, whispering at the top of the stairs.
But that doesn’t make this page any less vital than any other page in the novel. Terra Incognita is rooted in Sir Ashmore’s expedition, but at its heart, too, is the beat of every character Ashmore drags along—and down—with him. As each character becomes entangled with the rest, a web is created that can either snare them or catch them safely from falling. As Felix informs us from the very beginning, “Terra Incognita is not the dark space on the map to be illuminated, but the darkness in our hearts, to be tamed or unleashed.” Each character is on a journey to find that darkness and choose to give in to it or cleave to their new, found family. Therefore, each voice is just as important as the story as a whole.
Coffee with a Canine: Steph Post & Juno.
My Book, The Movie: Lightwood.
The Page 69 Test: Lightwood.
My Book, The Movie: Walk in the Fire.
--Marshal Zeringue