At ten years old, Kid is increasingly disturbed by strange spider-infested visions of his next-door neighbour's shed. Pursued by shadowy memories that torment his waking thoughts, Kid falls deeper and deeper into a haunted inner world, retreating from his family and friends. Beneath this overwhelming pressure, the text itself begins to crumble, splintering as the workings of Kid's imagination become animate - and language self-destructs. Emerging from this anguish, Kid surfaces into adulthood as she navigates love, sex, addiction, and self-discovery as a trans woman. But, when a family member falls ill, she is forced to return to her hometown and confront all the old fears she thought she'd left behind.
Yellow Barks Spider is an unforgettable portrait of trauma, isolation, and self-compassion. It is a deeply-felt exhumation of memory, love, and the human spirit, and it announces a bold new voice by a debut author.

Harman Burns is a Saskatchewan-born trans woman, filmmaker, sound artist and writer. Her practice is informed by folklore, nature, the occult and bodily transfiguration. Yellow Barks Spider is her debut novella. She currently resides on the unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver).

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"Yellow Barks Spider hypnotizes me. The hyper close contemplation of seemingly small and ephemeral images is peculiar at first. The prose makes the unremarkable remarkable and unsettling. These images then begin to loop into an intimate trance-like narrative. Harman Burns absolutely vaporizes the going-home-again trope and gives us something urgent and original.
- Amber Dawn -- author of My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems
"The nameless small-town kid in Yellow Barks Spider captured my heart. The poetic snapshots that comprise this novella tell the experiences that comprise a young life, from rural to urban landscapes, each with their own beauty and danger. A dark, compelling and gorgeous book, unafraid to play with form, and to leave a reader wanting more."
- Dina Del Bucchia -- author of Don't Tell Me What to Do and host of Can't Lit podcast
"A visceral and uncompromising work. Yellow Barks Spider delves into addiction and abuse, reinvention and reckoning, while pushing the boundaries of form. Haunting well past the final page, Harman Burns has written a novella that demands dissection, even as its characters yearn to heal."
- Genki Ferguson -- author of Satellite Love