Liz Allan's fiction has won the Rachel Funari Prize and been shortlisted for the Alan Marshall Short Story Award, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize, and the Overland Writers Residency, and longlisted for the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize. She is the author of the novel In Bloom and her short stories have appeared in Overland, Verge, Yen magazine, Aesthetica, and Best Summer Stories 2018. She teaches at an all-girls school in the United Kingdom.

"A smart look at teen culture, the inner workings of status, and the importance of true friendship. If ever there was a book to which one could consider head banging, this might be it."
--Town & Country Magazine

"Written in an eerie first person plural - 'We practice our songs on the skate home, singing in harmony, over and over' - that narrates short, propulsive chapters, In Bloom is deeply evocative of 1990s suburbia, passionate teenage friendships? and the looming shadow of patriarchal violence."
--The Observer

"Part Virgin Suicides, part Veronica Mars."
--LOUISE HEGARTY, author of Fair Play

"I loved this book: as raw, grungy and frenetic as Nirvana's Nevermind, In Bloom smells like disillusioned teen spirit."
--ALICE SLATER, author of Let the Bad Times Roll

"In Bloom is effervescently paced and outrageously funny, but as deep as the hope and angst that drives its protagonists. A perfectly detailed encapsulation of an era we've collectively not quite gotten over. It's also a jaw-dropping exercise in perspective with one of the most brilliantly conceived denouements I've encountered."
--LUKE KENNARD, author of The Transition

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pub date: 2026-01-27

Length: 256 pages