- – JOAN SILBER, PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of and 2019 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize judge. Amphibians invites further contemplation of female physicality—what it means to reside in a female form. An amphibious aircraft crashes in Maine, a young girl skinny-dips with her elders, a distraught cruise ship dancer boards a water taxi in Grenada, and travelers to Dubai and Abu Dhabi long for familiar oceans; back in New England, small-town artists try to smudge out their tedium with seaside transgressions. Amphibians celebrates home in a cross-cultural way, and the sensation of feeling not quite right in one's own skin, on land and near water, at home and abroad.