Quiet Days

Quiet Days is a collected anthology of short stories about a family of four: the Kairns. The two children, Hunter and Sam, are survivors of a shooting at their local K-12 school in Northeastern Connecticut. But Quiet Days is not about this shooting. The specifics are never discussed. The perpetrator is given a story but never a name. Instead, the collection shifts its lens to the long-term psychological effects of such trauma on a family who escapes seemingly unscathed. Hunter suffers panic attacks years later, and her past seeps into her photo-work. Sam deals with the psychological consequences of becoming a public figure in an unforgiving world. Peter Kairn, their father, has his own demons to come to terms with. Shifting between traditional narrative, familiar essay, and mixed media, Quiet Days shapes its medium to its characters and tries to offer each their own unique story. Accompanying the collection is a short treatise, operating within the conceit of a formal investigation into the nature of the thesis by one of its overlooked characters: Diana Kairn. The treatise hopes to both elaborate and critique on a number of the choices made in the collection, as well as give the author a chance to reflect on the ethics of writing about this particular kind of trauma.