During the strange and unsettling second year of COVID-19, Margaret Randall suddenly found herself writing short stories. The author of over 150 books of poetry, essays, biography, nonfiction, and translations, Lupe’s Dream and Other Stories is her first collection of fiction. These stories are as unsettling as the times. In one way or another, each references life in a near-future where scarcities have become dramatic, space strangely unfamiliar, and time moves in unexpected directions. After several intense months of writing, the stories stopped as mysteriously as they’d begun.