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Today marks the publication of Alligator and Other Stories by Dima Alzayat, a debut collection we are tremendously proud of.
May 29, 2020 | 9781937512897 | 206 pages | Gate-fold 

"A stellar debut... Alzayat manages to execute a short but thoughtful meditation on the spectrum of race in America from Jackson’s presidency to present. Here and everywhere, Alligator is a collection about the power and limitations of empathy. An exciting debut collection exploring the local and global valences of trauma."
—Colin Groundwater, GQ
"In the deft and decisive hands of Dima Alzayat, Alligator's stories are nothing if not inextricable from one another, bonded together, better as their nine-story whole than as nine separate parts... each story pushes the reader towards a slow dawning of realization about its moral core and meaning, a wave cresting that breaks just before the end and leaves emotional flotsam in its wake. Prepare to be tossed by Alligator's tide, and beware of what lurks just below the surface."
—Anna Weber, White Whale Bookstore (Pittsburgh, PA)


The award-winning stories in Dima Alzayat’s collection are luminous and tender, whether dealing with a woman performing burial rites for her brother in “Ghusl,” or a great-aunt struggling to explain cultural identity to her niece in “Once We Were Syrians.”

Alzayat’s stories are rich and relatable, chronicling a sense of displacement through everyday scenarios. There is the intern in pre-#MeToo Hollywood of “Only Those Who Struggle Succeed,” the New York City children on the lookout for a place to play on the heels of Etan Patz’s kidnapping in “Disappearance,” and the “dangerous” women of “Daughters of Manāt” who struggle to assert their independence.

The title story, “Alligator,” is a masterpiece of historical reconstruction and intergenerational trauma, told in an epistolary format through social media posts, newspaper clippings, and testimonials, that starts with the true story of the lynching of a Syrian immigrant couple by law officers in small-town Florida. Placed in a wider context of U.S. racial violence, the extrajudicial deaths, and what happens to the couple’s children and their children’s children in the years after, challenges the demands of American assimilation and its limits.

Alligator and Other Stories is haunting, spellbinding, and unforgettable, while marking Dima Alzayat’s arrival as a tremendously gifted new talent.

Read more about the book here. 
Read a DRC at Edelweiss here.
To request an ARC, email Molly: molly@twodollarradio.com
"Each story displays a strong point of view and manages to be uniquely the author's own. The title piece references the true story of a Syrian immigrant lynched with the aid of law enforcement in a Florida town in 1929. Alzayat uses multiple voices from history in the form of diary entries, social media posts, and newspaper clippings, to tell both individual stories and a larger history of racial violence in the U.S. This method is ambitious and successfully creates a feeling greater than plot and character development... definitely signals a writer to watch."
—Kathy Sexton, Booklist
Dima Alzayat was born in Damascus, Syria, grew up in San Jose, California, and now lives in Manchester, U.K. She was the winner of a 2018 Northern Writers’ Award, the 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize and 2015 Bernice Slote Award, runner-up in the 2018 Deborah Rogers Award and the 2018 Zoetrope: All-Story Competition, and was Highly Commended in the 2013 Bridport Prize. Her stories have appeared in EsquirePrairie SchoonerBristol Short Story Award Anthology, Bridport Prize Anthology, and Enizagam.
We're excited to team up with White Whale Bookstore and Deep Vellum Books for an author reading and conversation between Dima Alzayat (Alligator and Other Stories) and Fowzia Karimi (Above Us the Milky Way). The event is Saturday, June 13 @ 1pm EST on Zoom.

RSVP for this event here. 

This event is part of our new project, Two Dollar Radio Radio. You can learn more about TDRR here. 


Our distributor, Publisher's Group West, an Ingram brand, is offering an additional 3% currently through 6/30 using discount code SI20 (for a total of 49% off). You can place the order through Ingram's ipage or direct through your PGW sales rep.
Two Dollar Radio is distributed to the trade by:
Publishers Group West
1700 Fourth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
pgw.com
ph: 612-746-2600
e: info@pgw.com
To order books, call 800-788-3123, or email orderentry@perseusbooks.com.
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