2019 Spring/Summer Releases + Winter Institute 🌞

There's that joke/gripe wondering how long you can continue wishing people a happy new year after new year's has passed. For us, that time has not yet arrived, so: happy new year!
2018 was a blast and proved to be a stellar year. We are so thankful for the tremendously talented and creative authors we had the privilege of working with, and for your support in ushering their distinctive voices out into the world. We were also grateful to be included in the Los Angeles Times' list of "Seven publishers that had a remarkable 2018."

It would be impossible for us to be any more excited for our 2019 lists. If you find yourself at Winter Institute, we invite you to pick up copies of two forthcoming edgy, feminist novels in the galley giveaway room: The Word for Wilderness Is Woman by Abi Andrews and The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter. Also, be sure to say 'hey' to Eric and Eliza, both of whom will be attending.

Also at Winter Institute, be sure to check out Hanif Abdurraqib, author of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and the forthcoming Go Ahead in the Rain (University of Texas Press), delivering the afternoon keynote on Wednesday, January 23, at 3:25pm. As I'm sure you realize, Hanif's essay collection made a big splash for both us and the author. We realize that this splash was fueled entirely by the enthusiasm and energy of independent booksellers, and we hope that you share our sense of pride in the book's continued success.

If you won't be at Winter Institute, feel free to request an advance copy by clicking on the appropriate link below.

Below are our spring/summer titles of 2019, each of which we hope will blow your hair back.

This is a new kind of nature writing — one that crosses fiction with science writing and puts gender politics at the center of the landscape.
Erin, a 19-year-old girl from middle England, is travelling to Alaska on a journey that takes her through Iceland, Greenland, and across Canada. She is making a documentary about how men are allowed to express this kind of individualism and personal freedom more than women are, based on masculinist ideas of survivalism and the shunning of society: the “Mountain Man.” She plans to culminate her journey with an experiment: living in a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness, a la Thoreau, to explore it from a feminist perspective.

Abi Andrews is a writer from the Midlands, England. She studied Creative Writing at Goldsmiths college in London, and her work has been published in Five Dials, Caught by the River, The Clearing, The Dark Mountain Project, Tender and other journals, along with a pamphlet published with Goldsmiths Shorts. Her debut novel The Word for Woman is Wilderness was originally published by Serpent’s Tail in February 2018 and Hoffmann und Campe in October 2018.

Following is an excerpt of an interview with Andrews about The Word for Wilderness is Woman. You can read the entire interview on the Two Dollar Radio blog, Radio Waves

Masande Ntshanga is the author of the acclaimed novel, The Reactive. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Award (2018), winner of the inaugural PEN International New Voices Award in 2013, and a finalist for the Caine Prize in 2015. His work has appeared in The White Review, Chimurenga, VICE, and n+1.

The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday — school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents — with the surreal — rivers of thighs, men for sale and fields of throats — Cassie’s realities alternate to create a blurred, fantastic world of haunting beauty.

Read more about the book here
Read a DRC at Edelweiss here
Request an ARC here

Sarah Rose Etter is the author of Tongue Party (Caketrain Press). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cut, Electric Literature, VICE, Guernica, Philadelphia Weekly, and more. She is the recipient of writing residencies at the Disquiet International Program in Portugal, and the Gullkistan Creative Program in Iceland. She earned her MFA from Rosemont College. She lives in San Francisco.

Following is an excerpt of an interview with Etter about The Book of X. You can read the entire interview on the Two Dollar Radio blog, Radio Waves

Q: Surrealism and satire are both forms that seem to be proving particularly effective at this moment in time. What draws you to it as a writer, do you feel as though it’s especially potent now, or has it just always been effective?

SRE: As the world grows more absurd, surrealism is certainly finding more and more traction. Satire and surrealism have always been something we’ve turned to during hard times in history — the very birth of it in visual art was a reaction to World War I. It almost feels like a form of saying No! — whether it is Donald Barthelme writing surreal stories to defy critics by not having characters or plot, or Boots Riley exploring the structures of race in capitalist America until it reaches a horrifying climax that becomes a terrible mirror held up to society’s face.

I tend to think of surrealism specifically as a form of escalation to point to a core problem. All three of the books you mention here are masterful at pushing real, existing problems of race, gender, and sexuality to their breaking point through surrealism and satire. Friday Black, in particular, really knocked the wind out of me a few times by reframing and escalating racism to the point where you step back and evaluate the entire world with sharper eyes. Beyond being a form of saying No!, it’s also a form of asking society: Is this really the world you want? Is this really who you are?

For me, personally, surrealism wasn’t really a choice. My ideas come to me in a sort of code — strange words, strange worlds, odd sensations. Surrealism is a way for me to explore subjects that terrify me from a safe distance — the female body, trauma, my spine surgery, relationships, love, death. It’s almost as if I can’t get too close to these things or I’ll break. Surrealism gives me a way to get close to those nerves without touching them.

For readers and viewers, I think, the scrambling and code of surrealism translates into a fresh way to look at existing issues that have been there all along. It removes some of the pressure of real life by creating new rules, but it adds new pressure and escalation to prove the central point and ask the big questions: Reality is too close to this, our world shouldn’t be this way, why is it like this?

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