Habitat

Habitat invites us to witness a near-future dystopia filled with cloned animals, a sponsorship-based education system, and a subculture obsessed with body transplants as performance art—concluding 100 years in the future with a girl's post-apocalyptic quest to find her father.

In this novel told through linked narratives, a father embraces a grisly family tradition to help secure a better education for his daughter after a neighborhood barbecue. A young man crashes his family’s meticulously planned annual gala to unveil his latest surgical transplant. Parents try to find a way to give their daughter the year's most sought-after Christmas gift—a clone of the canine star of a sci-fi television show.

Combining body horror, science fiction, and poignant family drama, Habitat is a genre-bending and wholly original first novel.

Case Q. Kerns is the author of Habitat (Black Lawrence Press, 2025), a novel of interconnected narratives beginning in a near future New England and ending a century later. Originally from Buffalo, NY, he received a BS in Cinema & Photography from Ithaca College and an MFA from Emerson College where he served as fiction editor for the literary journal Redivider. His work has appeared in The Literary Review, The Harvard Review, and West Branch. He lives in Medford, Massachusetts with his family.

Part I. The Man Who Knew the Collage Potluck Barbecue Our Day Will Come The Lodging of Tigers The Book Preacher Protected Land Armstrong The Salt Box Part II. Spare Parts