Sandra K. Barnidge

Swim Deep, Bite Hard

In River City, loyalty is everything—and nothing defines it more than warcheck, the elegantly violent game that unites the town. Terra Laclem, daughter of a retired warcheck legend, is raised to honor family, faith, and tradition.

But when her father betrays the ideals he’s always preached, Terra is forced to question the world she thought she knew. As she comes of age, her search for belonging pulls her between inherited loyalties and a deeper truth, one tied to the beloved turtle mascots that symbolize her town’s way of life.

The Diamondbacks is a lyrical, coming-of-age debut about the weight of legacy, the bonds that shape us, and the quiet rebellions that lead us home.

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Bio

Sandra K. Barnidge is a writer based in Gainesville, Florida. Her fiction and essays span topics from native plants and land stewardship to reimagined histories and speculative worlds. Her work has appeared in Reckon Review, Atlas Obscura, Barren, The Fiddlehead, Nimrod, and elsewhere.

Originally from Beloit, Wisconsin, she holds an MA in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama. She has received a 2026 Key West Fellowship Award to work with Aimee Nezhukumatathil on a forthcoming essay collection about battling city hall and real-estate developers to save a local park in central Alabama, where she lived for almost a decade. The Diamondbacks is her debut novel.

She’s also the co-founder of Handcraft Nation, an up-and-coming directory that spotlights artists and makers across the United States, with a focus on sustaining local creative economies. Headshot: Bang Images.