The Caged Man: Stories

FINALIST, Short Stories, National Indie Excellence Awards (NIEA) (2026)Unnatural events pivot otherwise unremarkable people into surreal conflicts and resolutions in The Caged Man, Calvin Mills' debut collection. From a young woman secretly preventing pregnancy on a European vacation, to a celebrity corpse in rural Colombia, these tales, like the fiction of Haruki Murakami and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, weave realistic stories with tales, sad realities with the surreal. They glide along in a glass bottom boat through which passengers catch glimpses in the dark water below, glimpses of sexual tourism, moral ambiguity, racism, toxic masculinity, and postcolonial economic disparity. Through his characters' isolation, grief, and longing, Calvin Mills makes us see the fantastic in the mundane. Read more