I don’t typically lounge around in a Lycra tail—though I could get used to it. This photo was taken at Weeki Wachee, Florida, where women have been performing as mermaids in an underwater theater since the 1940s. I attended the Legendary Siren Camp for novel research, and yes—I learned to dance in a tail! Dive into the Lit Hub article about the experience and check out the novel at the link below!

Lara Ehrlich is the author of the novel Bind Me Tighter Still (Red Hen Press, 2025) and the story collection Animal Wife, which won Red Hen Press’s Fiction Award judged by Ann Hood and was published by the press in 2020. Her short fiction has appeared in Hunger Mountain, StoryQuarterly, SmokeLong Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, F(r)iction, and elsewhere. She is the host of Writer Mother Monster, a podcast devoted to dismantling the myth of “having it all,” the founder and director of the creative writing center Thought Fox Writers Den, and a co-founder of Raging Women, a literary collective centered on women’s rage, power, and reclamation. Lara has taught workshops and participated in panels at Bread Loaf Writers Workshop, the Yale Writers Workshop, AWP, and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, among others, and is a member of the core faculty at StoryStudio Chicago. She has taught at the University of Connecticut and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Writer in Residence at Connecticut College. She lives in Connecticut with her family.