Review
———
Review: No Two People Are Not on Fire
Author: Chanel Earl
Publisher: The Mormon Lit Lab
Year Published: 2026
Pages: 51
Format: Paperback
Genre: Short fiction
ISBN: 9788234207319
Price: $15
Reviewed by Theric Jepson for the Association for Mormon Letters
The striking cover image for Chanel Earl‘s new chapbook was created by Keri Dockter for the title story’s original appearance in Wayfare. This is a moving and mysterious (and very short) tale of how everyone is on fire. Perhaps their feet are eternally aflame or their tongues. Perhaps their flame is deep within their eyes. The narrator’s heart is aflame. Their heart pumps the flame through their body. The pain for all is neverceasing. But oh, with a heart always alight—!
All the stories in No Two People Are Not on Fire are like this. Very short. Deeply metaphorical. Beautiful. Painful. Reaching for empathy.
All thirteen stories have been previously published and it’s not difficult to understand why editors would be eager to share them. Although short (the longest, at six tiny* pages, covers three generations of women), each creates a strange and meaningful world. A dream of being sister wives. A consideration of why Adam’s rib? Decades of marriage revealing the great mystery of another person. A comparison of sacred scars. The bang-per-minute rate is extraordinary.
The book itself is cute. Which may seem a strange thing to say given that cover image, but it’s only (*) 4″x6″, barely fifty pages, almost weightless and a delight to hold in the hand.
Earl has been sharing her fiction with us now for over twenty years. These fictions have been tightly constructed and piercing. But I don’t want to leave you with the sense that they will leave you in pain. No. In a post announcing this chapbook, she reminisced about a “time [when] (…this is probably still true), I didn’t like reading sad books.”
She then describes No Two People Are Not on Fire as “stories about faith, motherhood, and nature. They are narrated often by women, but sometimes by men, often by adults, but sometimes by youth—but always by someone with a fire of some kind, a worry, problem, or idea that has swept through their life.”
I’m currently reading Ecclesiastes and I’m struck again (as usual) by its call to recognize beauty in those moments where there is beauty. Because, even when we are on fire, even when everyone is on fire, yes, “the pain is still real,” but we can share it together, along with all the beautiful things that, today, are not pain. “In the day of prosperity be joyful,” sayeth the preacher. Well, here are 51 pages of prosperity. Be joyful.