Before the Ruins: A Novel

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January Pure Wit by Francesca Peacock [NF] I first learned about the life and work of seventeenth-century writer and philosopher Margaret Cavendish in Regan Penaluna's stellar study of women thinkers, and I've been dying to read a biography of Cavendish ever since. And I'm in luck (all of us are) thanks to biographer Peacock. A proto-feminist, science-fiction pioneer, and divisive public figure, Cavendish is endlessly fascinating, and Peacock's debut gives her the rigorous, in-depth treatment that she deserves. —Sophia M. Stewart Nonfiction by Julie Myerson [F] A blurb from Rachel Cusk is just about all it takes to get me excited about a book, so when I saw that Cusk called Myerson's latest novel "glitteringly painful," "steady and clear," and "the book [Myerson] was intended to write," I was sold. A tale of art, addiction, and the ties that bind mothers and daughters, Nonfiction promises to devastate. —SMS Immediacy by Anna Kornbluh [NF] Did the pandemic kill postmodernism? And what comes after the end of history? University of Illinois–Chicago professor Kornbluh dubs our contemporary style “immediacy,” characterized by same-day delivery, bingeable multimedia, and real-time news updates that spin the economic flywheel ever faster. Kornbluh names this state of emergence and emergency, and suggests potential off-ramps in the direction of calm reflection, measured art-making, and, just maybe, collective wisdom. —Nathalie op de Beeck Slow Down by Kōhei Saitō, tr. Brian Bergstrom [NF] In this internationally-bestselling treatise, Japanese philosopher Saitō argues against "sustainable growth" in favor of degrowth—the slowing of economic activity—which he sees at the only way to address the twinned crises of inequality and climate change. Saitō's proposal is simple, salient, and adapts Marx for the modern day. —SMS Relic by Ed Simon [NF] From Millions alum Simon comes a slim study of the objects we imbue with religious (or quasi-religious) meaning, from the bone of a Catholic martyr to Jimi Hendrix's guitar pick. Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series never misses, and Relic is one of the series' most unconventional—and compelling—entries yet. —SMS Filterworld by Kyle Chayka [NF] The outline of reality has become increasingly blurry as the real world melds with the digital one, becoming what Chayka, staff writer at the New Yorker, calls “Filterworld,” a society built on a foundation of ever-evolving algorithms. In his book of the same name, Chayka calls out the all-powerful algorithm, which he argues is the driving force behind current and accelerating trends in art, consumption, and ethics. —Daniella Fishman Portrait of a Body by Julie Delporte, tr. Helge Dascher and Karen Houle [NF] A gripping narrative of coming to terms with her queer identity, Canadian cartoonist Delporte's latest graphic memoir—praised by Eileen Myles and Fariha Róisín—sees Delporte learning to embrace herself in both physical and metaphysical ways. Dreamy colored pencil illustrations and gently flowing storytelling capture the beauty, trauma, and ultimate tranquility that comes with learning to exist on your own terms. —DF Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino [F] In Bertino’s latest novel, following 2020's Parakeet, the launch of Voyager 1 into space coincides with the birth of Adina Giorno, who, much like the solitary satellite, is in search of something she can't yet see. As a child, she senses that she is not of this world and struggles to make a life for herself amid the drudgery of human existence. Playing on Adina's alienness as both a metaphor and a reality, Bertino asks, “Are we really alone?” —DF The Last Fire Season by Manjula Martin [NF] Martin returns ablaze in her latest memoir, pitched as "H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene." Following an anguishing chronic pain diagnosis, Martin attempts to reconnect with her beloved Northern California wilderness in order to escape not only her deteriorating health but a deteriorating world, which has ignited around her in the worst fire season California has ever seen. Devastating and ambivalent, The Last Fire Season tries to sift through the ashes of climate change. —DF The Furies by Elizabeth Flock [NF] Violence by women—its role, its potential righteousness—is the focus of Flock's latest. Following the real-life cases of a young rape survivor in Alabama, a predator-punishing gang leader in India, and an anti-ISIS militia fighter in Syria, Flock considers how women have used lethal force as a means to power, safety, and freedom amid misogynistic threats and oppression. Is violence ever the answer? Flock looks to three parallel lives for guidance. —SMS Imagining the Method by Justin Owen Rawlins [NF] University of Tulsa professor Rawlins demystifies that most celebrated (and controversial) acting school, challenging our contemporary conceptions of screen performance. I was sold the moment I saw Rawlins received the ultimate stamp of approval from Isaac Butler, author of the definitive account of method acting: "If you care about the evolution of twentieth-century screen performance, you should read this book." —SMS We Are Free to Change the World by Lyndsey Stonebridge [NF] Famed twentieth-century philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote passionately about power, freedom, and inequality against the backdrop of fascism—a project as relevant today as it ever was. Stonebridge, a professor of humanities and human rights, revisits the lessons of Arendt's writings and applies them to the twenty-first century, creating a dialogue between past, present, and future. —DF Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea by C.D. Rose [F] In these 19 short stories, Rose meditates on philosophy, photography, and literature. Blending erudition and entertainment, Rose's fables follow writers, teachers, and artists through various situations—and in a standout story, imagines how St. Augustine would fare on Twitter. —DF Black Women Taught Us by Jenn M. Jackson [NF] Jackson's debut book foregrounds the work of Black feminist writers and leaders—from Ida B. Wells and Harriet Jacobs to Shirley Chisholm and bell hooks—throughout American history, revealing the centuries-long role that Black women have played in imagining and fighting for a more just society. Imani Perry calls Jackson "a beautiful writer and excellent scholar." —SMS The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James [F] Pitched as Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez (yeesh!), The Bullet Swallower is the second novel (after Mona at Sea) from Elizabeth Gonzalez James, who also wrote the weird and wonderful essay/play Five Conversations About Peter Sellers. Infusing the spaghetti western with magical realism, the novel follows a Mexican bandito on a cosmic journey generations in the making. —SMS Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino [F] In Sammartino's debut novel, the owner of a gun store hatches a plan to resurrect his struggling business following his son's near-death experience. George Saunders, Mary Karr, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah have all heaped on praise, and Jenny Offill finds it "hard to believe Last Acts is a first novel." —SMS I Sing to Use the Waiting by Zachary Pace [NF] Pace fuses memoir and criticism (my favorite combination) to explore the emotional and cultural impacts of women singers across time, from Cat Power and Rihanna to Kim Gordon and Whitney Houston. A queer coming-of-age story that centers the power of music and the legacies of women artists. —SMS Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn [F] Blackburn, the author of the stellar story collections Black Jesus and Other Superheroes and How to Wrestle a Girl, delivers a debut novel about storytelling and unreality, centering on a successful novelist who gets hold of her dead brother's phone—and starts answering texts as him. Kristen Arnett calls this one "a bonafide knockout" that "rewired my brain." —SMS Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer [N] New Yorker staff writer Blitzer traces the harrowing history of the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, foregrounding the stories of Central American migrants whose lives have been threatened and upended by political tumult. A nuanced, layered, and rigorously reported portrait that Patrick Radden Keefe hails as "extraordinary." —SMS The Survivors of the Clotilda by Hannah Durkin [NF] Durkin, a British historian, explores the lives of 103 Africans who were kidnapped and transported on the last slave ship to dock in the U.S., shortly before the Civil War began in 1861. Many of these captives were children, and thus lived their lives against a dramatic backdrop, from the Civil War all the way up to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. What these people experienced and how they prevailed should intrigue anybody interested in learning more about our nation’s darkest chapter. —Claire Kirch Your Utopia by Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur [F] Following her acclaimed sophomore novel The Cursed Bunny, Chung returns with more tales from the realm of the uncanny. Covering everything from unruly AI to the quest for immortality to the environmental destruction caused by capitalism, Chung’s story collection promises more of the mystifying, horror-filled goodness that has become her calling card. —DF The Rebel's Clinic by Adam Shatz [NF] Frantz Fanon—political philosopher, psychiatrist, and author of the trailblazing Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth—is one of the most important writers and thinkers of the postcolonial era, and his work continues to inform contemporary thinking on race, capitalism, and power. In this sprawling biography, Shatz affirms Fanon's place as a towering intellect and groundbreaking activist. —SMS You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, tr. Natasha Wimmer [F] Enrigue's latest novel, following Sudden Death, reimagines the fateful 1519 invasion of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. With exuberant style, and in a lively translation by Wimmer, Enrigue brings the Aztec capital and the emperor Moctezuma to vibrant life—and rewrites their destinies. —SMS February Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, tr. by Mima Simić [F] Croatian literature may lag behind its Russian, Hungarian, Polish, and Ukrainian counterparts—roughly in that order—as far as stateside recognition goes, but we all make mistakes. Just like couples do in love and under capitalism. “A war between kitchen and bedroom,” as the liner notes read, would have been enough to sell me, but that war’s combatants, “an unemployed Dante scholar” and “a passable actress,” really sealed the deal. —John H. Maher The Unforgivable by Cristina Campo, tr. Alex Andriesse [NF] This new NYRB edition, introduced by Kathryn Davis, brings together all of the essays Campo published in her lifetime, plus a selection of additional essays and autofiction. The result is a robust introduction to a stylish—but largely forgotten—Italian writer whose "creativity was a vocation in the truest sense," per Jhumpa Lahiri. —SMS Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti [NF] Last year, I was enraptured by Heti's limited-run New York Times newsletter in which she alphabetized sentences from 10 years' worth of her diary entries—and this year, we can finally enjoy the sublime results of that experiment in book form. This is my favorite work of Heti's, full stop. —SMS Dinner on Monster Island by Tania De Rozario [NF] Blending film criticism, social commentary, and personal narrative, De Rozario (most recently the author of the Lambda Literary Award–nominated And the Walls Came Crumbling Down) explores her experience growing up queer, brown, and fat in Singapore, from suffering through a "gay-exorcism" to finding solace in horror films like Carrie. —SMS Wrong Norma by Anne Carson [NF] Everyone shut up—Anne Carson is speaking! This glistening new collection of drawings and musings from Carson is her first original work since the 2016 poetry collection Float. In Carson's own words, the collection touches on such disparate topics (she stresses they are "not linked") as Joseph Conrad, Roget's Thesaurus, snow, Guantánamo, and "my Dad." —DF Self-Portraits: Stories by Osamu Dazai, tr. Ralph McCarthy [F] Japanese writer Dazai had quite the moment in 2023, and that moment looks likely to continue into the new year. Self-Portraits is a collection of short autofiction in the signature melancholic cadence which so many Anglophone readers have come to love. Meditating on themes of hypocrisy, irony, nihilism—all with a touch of self-deprecating humor—Dazai’s work will either pull you out of a deep depression or crack your rose-colored glasses; there is no in-between. —DF Imagination by Ruha Benjamin [NF] Visionary imagination is essential for justice and a sustainable future, argues Benjamin, a Princeton professor of African American studies and founder of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. In her treatise, she reminds readers of the human capacity for creativity, and she believes failures of imagination that lead to inequity can be remedied. In place of quasi-utopian gambles that widen wealth gaps and prop up the surveillance state, Benjamin recommends dreaming collective and anti-racist social arrangements into being—a message to galvanize readers of adrienne marie brown and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. —SMS Literary Theory for Robots by Dennis Yi Tenen [NF] Artificial intelligence and machine-generated writing are nothing new, and perhaps nothing to fear, argues Tenen, a Columbia English professor and former software engineer. Traveling through time and across the world, Tenen reveals the labor and collaboration behind AI, complicating the knee-jerk (and, frankly, well-founded!) reactions many of us have to programs like ChatGPT. —SMS A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh [F] Alexander Graham Bell is best known as the inventor of the telephone, but what he considered his life's work was the education of deaf children—specifically, the harmful practice of oralism, or the suppression of sign language. Marsh's wonderful debut novel unearths this little-known history and follows a deaf pupil of Bell's as she questions his teachings and reclaims her voice. —SMS Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker [NF] Journalist Bosker, who took readers behind the scenes with oenophiles in her 2017 Cork Dork, turns to avid artists, collectors, and curators for this sensory deep dive. Bosker relies on experiential reporting, and her quest to understand the human passion for visual art finds her apprenticing with creators, schmoozing with galleristas, and minding canonical pieces as a museum guard. —NodB Columbo by Amelie Hastie [NF] Columbo experienced something of a renaissance during the pandemic, with a new generation falling for the rugged, irresistible charms of Peter Falk. Hastie revisits the series, a staple of 70s-era TV, with refreshing rigor and appreciation, tackling questions of stardom, authorship, and the role of television in the process. —SMS Acts of Forgiveness by Maura Cheeks [F] Cheeks's debut novel sounds amazing and so au courant. A woman is elected U.S. president and promises Black Americans that they will receive reparations if they can prove they are descended from slaves. You’d think people would jump on achieving some social justice in the form of cold cash, right? Not Willie Revel’s family, who’d rather she not delve into the family history. This promises to be a provocative read on how the past really isn’t past, no matter how much you run from it. —CK The Sentence by Matthew Baker [F] I minored in Spanish linguistics in college and, as a result, came to love that most useless and rewarding of syntactic exercises, diagramming sentences. So I'm very excited to read Baker's The Sentence, a graphic novel set in an alternate America and comprising single, 6,732-word sentence, diagrammed in full. Syntax wonks, assemble! —SMS Neighbors by Diane Oliver [F] Before her untimely death in 1966 at the age of 22, Oliver wrote stories of race and racism in Jim Crow America characterized by what Dawnie Walton calls "audacity, wit, and wisdom beyond her years." Only four of the 14 stories in Neighbors were published in Oliver's lifetime, and Jamel Brinkley calls the publication of her posthumous debut collection "an important event in African American and American letters." —SMS The Weird Sister Collection by Marisa Crawford [NF] Essayist, poet, and All Our Pretty Songs podcaster Crawford founded the Weird Sister blog in 2014, covering books and pop culture from contemporary young feminists’ and queer perspectives. The now-defunct blog offered literary reviews, Q&As with indie authors, and think pieces on film and music. For this collection, whose foreword comes from Michelle Tea, Crawford gathers favorite pieces from contributors, plus original work with a Weird Sister edge. —NodB Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh [NF] As research for his Ibis trilogy, Ghosh mapped the opium trade around the world and across centuries. This global and personal history revisits the British Empire’s dependence on Indian opium as a trade good, and how the cultivation of and profits from opium shaped today’s global economy. In his nonfiction The Great Derangement, Ghosh employs personal anecdotes to make sense of larger-scale developments, and Smoke and Ashes promises to connect his own family and identity to today’s corporate, institutional, and environmental realities. —NodB Private Equity by Carrie Sun [NF] In her debut memoir, Sun recounts her time on Wall Street, where she worked as an assistant to a billionaire hedge-fund founder and was forced to rethink everything she thought she knew about work, money, sacrifice, and living a meaningful life. This one sounds like a great read for fans of Anna Wiener's Uncanny Valley (e.g. me). —SMS I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall [F] When Khaki Oliver receives a letter from her estranged former best friend, she isn’t ready for the onslaught of memories that soon cause her to unravel. A Black Bildungsroman about friendship, fandom, and sanity, I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both is an unflinching look at "what it means to be young in a hard, and nonetheless beautiful, world," per Vauhini Vara. —Liv Albright Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit by Aisha Sabatini Sloan [NF] I know from personal experience that anything published by Graywolf Press is going to open my eyes and make me look at the world in a completely different way, so I have high expectations for Sloan’s essays. In this clever collection, a Black creative reflects upon race, art, and pedagogy, and how they relate to one’s life in this crazy country of ours during the time period between the 2016 election and the onset of the pandemic. —CK Language City by Ross Perlin [NF] Perlin travels throughout the most linguistically diverse city on the planet—New York—to chronicle the sounds and speakers of six endangered languages before they die out. A linguist and co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, Perlin argues for the importance of little-known languages and celebrates the panoply of languages that exists in New York City. —SMS Monkey Grip by Helen Garner [F] A tale as old as time and/or patriarchal sociocultural constructs: a debut novel by a woman is published and the critics don't appreciate it—until later, at least. This proto-autofictional 1977 novel is now considered a classic of Australian "grunge lit," but at the time, it divided critics, probably because it had depictions of drug addiction and sex in it. But Lauren Groff liked it enough to write a foreword, so perhaps the second time really is the charm. —JHM Ours by Phillip B. Williams [F] A conjuror wreaks magical havoc across plantations in antebellum Arkansas and sets up a Brigadoon for the enslaved people she frees before finding that even a mystic haven isn't truly safe from the horrors of the world. What a concept! And a flexible one to boot: if this isn't adapted as a TV series, it would work just as well as an RPG. —JHM Violent Faculties by Charlotte Elsby [F] A philosophy professor influenced by the Marquis de Sade designs a series of experiments to prove its relevance as a discipline, specifically with regard to life and death, a.k.a. Philip Zimbardo (Chopped and Screwed Remix): The Novel. If you ever trusted a philosophy professor with your inner self before—and you probably shouldn't have?—you probably won't after reading this. —JHM American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cárdenas [F] Plagued by data harvesting, constant surveillance, mass deportation, and incarceration, the society at the heart of Cárdenas's new novel is less speculative dystopia than realist reflection. Channeling Philp K. Dick and Samuel Delaney, Cárdenas imagines a society where Latin Americans are systematically expunged. Following the lives of two Columbian-American sisters, one who was deported and one who stayed in the U.S., American Abduction tells a new kind of immigrant story, suffused with mysticism and philosophical rigor. —DF Closures: Heterosexuality and the American Sitcom by Grace Lavery [NF] I took Lavery's class on heterosexuality and sitcoms as an undergrad, and I'm thrilled to see the course's teachings collected in book form. Lavery argues that since its inception the sitcom has depicted heterosexuality as constantly on the verge of collapse, only to be reconstituted at the end of each half-hour episode. A fascinating argument about the cultural project of straightness. —SMS Whiskey Tender by Deborah Taffa [NF] Almost a decade in the making, this memoir from Taffa details generations of Southwest Native history and the legacies of assimilationist efforts. Taffa—a citizen of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe, and director of the MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts—was born on the California Yuma reservation and grew up in Navajo territory in New Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s. She reflects on tribal identity and attitudes toward off-reservation education she learned from her parents’ and grandparents’ fraught formative experiences. —NodB Normal Women by Philippa Gregory [NF] This is exciting news for Anglophiles and history nerds like me: Philippa Gregory is moving from historical fiction (my guilty pleasure) about royal women and aristocrats in medieval and early modern England to focus on the lives of common women during that same time period, as gleaned from the scraps of information on them she has unearthed in various archives. I love history “from the bottom up” that puts women at the center, and Gregory is a compelling storyteller, so my expectations are high. —CK Blue Lard by Vladimir Sorokin, tr. Max Lawton [F] Upon its publication in 1999, Sorokin's sci-fi satire Blue Lard sparked protests across Russia. One aspect of it particularly rankled: the torrid, sexual affair it depicts between Stalin and Khruschev. All to say, the novel is bizarre, biting, and utterly irreverent. Translated into English for the first time by Lawton, Sorokin's masterwork is a must-read for anyone with an iconoclastic streak. —SMS Piglet by Lottie Hazell [F] Hazell's debut novel follows the eponymous Piglet, a successful cookbook editor identified only by her unfortunate childhood nickname, as she rethinks questions of ambition and appetite following her fiancé's betrayal. Per Marlowe Granados, Hazell writes the kind of "prose Nora Ephron would be proud of." —SMS Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley [NF] Crosley enlivens the grief memoir genre with the signature sense of humor that helped put her on the literary map. In Grief Is for People, she eulogizes the quirks and complexities of her friendship with Russell Perreault, former publicity director at Vintage Books, who died by suicide in 2019. Dani Shapiro hails Crosley’s memoir—her first full-length book of nonfiction—as “both a provocation and a balm to the soul.” —LA The Freaks Came Out to Write by Tricia Romano [NF] The freaks came out to write, and you better believe the freaks will come out in droves to read! In this history of the legendary alt-weekly the Village Voice, Romano (a former writer for the Voice) interviews some 200 members the paper’s most esteemed staff and subjects. A sweeping chronicle of the most exciting era in New York City journalism promises to galvanize burgeoning writers in the deflating age of digital media. —DF Burn Book by Kara Swisher [NF] Swisher has been reporting on the tech industry for 30 years, tracing its explosive growth from the dawn of the internet to the advent of AI. She's interviewed every tech titan alive and has chronicled their foibles and failures in excruciating detail. Her new book combines memoir and reportage to tell a comprehensive history of a troubled industry and its shortsighted leaders. —SMS Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange [F] Orange returns with a poignant multi-generational tale that follows the Bear Shield-Red Feather family as they struggle to combat racist violence. Picking up where Orange's hit debut novel, There There, left off, Wandering Stars explores memory, inheritance, and identity through the lens of Native American life and history. Per Louise Erdrich, “No one knows how to express tenderness and yearning like Tommy Orange." —LA March The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan [F] Callahan's debut novel follows a young artist as she faces sudden hearing loss, forcing to reevaluate her orientation to her senses, her art, and the world around her. Amina Cain, Moyra Davey, and Kate Zambreno are all fans (also a dream blunt rotation), with the latter recommending this one be "read alongside the novels of W.G. Sebald, Rachel Cusk, and Maria Gainza." —SMS The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft [F] When a group of translators arrive at the home of renowned novelist Irena Rey, they expect to get to work translating her latest book—instead, they get caught up in an all-consuming mystery. Irena vanishes shortly after the translators arrive, and as they search for clues to the author's disappearance, the group is swept up by isolation-fueled psychosis and obsession. A “mischievous and intellectually provocative” debut novel, per Megha Majumdar. —LA Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, tr. Heather Cleary [F] This isn’t your typical meet-cute. When two women—one grieving, the other a vampire, both of them alienated and yearning for more—cross paths in a Buenos Aires cemetery, romance blooms. Channelling Carmen Maria Machado and Anne Rice, Yuszczuk reimagines the vampire novel, with a distinctly Latin American feminist Gothic twist. —LA The Great Divide by Cristina Henríquez [F] I'm a sucker for meticulously researched and well-written historical fiction, and this one—a sweeping story about the interconnected lives of the unsung people who lived and labored at the site of the Panama Canal—fits the bill. I heard Henríquez speak about this novel and her writing processes at a booksellers conference, and, like the 300 booksellers present, was impressed by her presentation and fascinated at the idea of such a sweeping tale set against a backdrop so larger-than-life and dramatic as the construction of the Panama Canal. —CK Bite Your Friends by Fernanda Eberstadt [NF] Melding memoir and history, Eberstadt's Bite Your Friends looks at the lives of saints, philosophers, and artists—including the author and her mother—whose abberant bodies became sites of subversion and rebellion. From Diogenes to Pussy Riot, Eberstadt asks what it means to put our bodies on the line, and how our bodies can liberate us. —SMS Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez [F] When Raquel Toro, an art history student, stumbles on the story of Anita de Monte, a once prominent artist from the '80s whose mysterious death cut short her meteoric rise, her world is turned upside down. Gonzalez's sophomore novel (after her hit debut Olga Dies Dreaming) toggles between the perspectives of Raquel and Anita (who is based on the late Ana Mendieta) to explore questions of power, justice, race, beauty, and art. Robert Jones, Jr. calls this one "rollicking, melodic, tender, and true—and oh so very wise." —LA My Heavenly Favorite by Lucas Rijneveld, tr. Michele Hutchison [F] Rijneveld, author of the International Booker Prize-winning novel The Discomfort of Evening, returns with a new take on the Lolita story, transpiring between a veterinarian and a farmer's daughter on the verge of adolescence. "This book unsettled me even as it made me laugh and gasp," gushes Brandon Taylor. "I'm in awe." Radiant by Brad Gooch [NF] Lauded biographer Gooch propels us through Keith Haring’s early days as an anonymous sidewalk chalk artist to his ascent as a vigilante muralist, pop-art savant, AIDS activist, and pop-culture icon. Fans of Haring's will not want to miss this definitive account of the artist's life, which Pulitzer-winner biographer Stacy Schiff calls "a keen-eyed, beautifully written biography, atmospheric, exuberant, and as radiant as they come." —DF The Riddles of the Sphinx by Anna Shechtman [NF] Sometimes you encounter a book that seems to have been written specifically for you; this was the feeling I had when I first saw the deal announcement for Shechtman's debut book back in January 2022. A feminist history of the crossword puzzle? Are you kidding me? I'm as passionate a cruciverbalist as I am a feminist, so you can imagine how ravenously I read this book. The Riddles of the Sphinx is one of the best books of 2024, hands down, and I can't wait for everyone else—puzzlers and laymen alike—to fall in love with it too. —SMS The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, tr. Boris Drayluk [F] Kurkov is one of Ukraine's most celebrated novelists, and his latest book is a murder mystery set against the backdrop of WWI-era Kyiv. I'll admit what particularly excites me about The Silver Bone, though, is that it is translated by Dralyuk, who's one of the best literary translators working today (not to mention a superb writer, editor, and poet). In Drayluk's hands, Kurkov's signature humor and sparkling style come alive. —SMS Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls [NF] This multigenerational graphic memoir follows Hull, alongside her mother and grandmother, both of whom hail from China, across time and space as the delicate line between nature and nurture is strained by the forces of trauma, duty, and mental illness. Manjula Martin calls Feeding Ghosts “one of the best stories I’ve read about the tension between family, history, and self.” —DF It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken [F] Haunting prose and a pithy crow guide readers through Marcken's novel of life after death. In a realm between reality and eternity, the undead traverse westward through their end-of-life highlight reel, dissecting memories, feelings, and devotions while slowly coming to terms with what it means to have lived once all that remains is love. Alexandra Kleeman admits that she "was absolute putty in this book's hands." —DF Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi [F] When I visited Prague, a year after the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the Czech capital struck me as a magical place, where anything is possible, and Oyeyemi captures the essence of Prague in Parasol Against the Axe, the story of a woman who attends her estranged friend's bachelorette weekend in the city. A tale in which reality constantly shifts for the characters and there is a thin line between the factual and the imagined in their relationships, this is definitely my kind of a read. —CK Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet [F] Crucet's latest novel centers on a failed Pitbull impersonator who embarks on a quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana—a quest that leads him to cross paths with Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquariam. Winking at both Scarface and Moby-Dick, Say Hello to My Little Friend is "a masterclass in pace and precision," per Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. —SMS But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu [F] Girl, a Malaysian-Australian who leaves home for the U.K. to study Sylvia Plath and write a postcolonial novel, finds herself unable to shake home—or to figure out what a "postcolonial novel" even is. Blurbs are untrustworthy, but anything blurbed by Brandon Taylor is almost certainly worth checking out. —JHM Wrong Is Not My Name by Erica N. Cardwell [NF] Cardwell blends memoir, criticism, and theory to place her own Künstlerroman in conversation with the work of Black visual artists like Lorna Simpson, Lorraine O'Grady, and Kara Walker. In interconnected essays, Cardwell celebrates the brilliant Black women who use art and storytelling to claim their place in the world. —SMS Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham [F] A theater critic at the New Yorker, Cunningham is one of my favorite writers working today, so I was thrilled to learn of his debut novel, which cheekily steals its title from the Dickens classic. Following a young Black man as he works on a historic presidential campaign, Great Expectations tackles questions of politics, race, religion, and family with Cunningham's characteristic poise and insight. —SMS The Future of Songwriting by Kristin Hersh [NF] In this slim volume, Throwing Muses frontwoman and singer-songwriter Hersh considers the future of her craft. Talking to friends and colleagues, visiting museums and acupuncturists, Hersh threads together eclectic perspectives on how songs get made and how the music industry can (and should) change. —SMS You Get What You Pay For by Morgan Parker [NF] Parker, a brilliant poet and author of the stellar There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce, debuts as an essayist with this candid, keen-eyed collection about life as a Black woman in America. Casting her gaze both inward and onto popular culture, Parker sees everything and holds back nothing. —SMS Mother Doll by Katya Apekina [F] Following up her debut novel, The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish, Apekina's Mother Doll follows Zhenia, an expectant mother adrift in Los Angeles whose world is rocked by a strange call from a psychic medium with a message from Zhenia's Russian Revolutionary great-grandmother. Elif Batuman calls this one "a rare achivement." —SMS Solidarity by Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix [NF] What does "solidarity" mean in a stratified society and fractured world? Organizers and activists Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor look at the history of the concept—from its origins in Ancient Rome to its invocation during the Black Live Matter movement—to envision a future in which calls for solidarity can produce tangible political change. —SMS The Manicurist's Daughter by Susan Lieu [NF] After her mother, a refugee of the Vietnam war and the owner of two nail salons, dies from a botched cosmetic surgery, Lieu goes looking for answers about her mother's mysterious life and untimely death. Springing from her hit one-woman show 140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother, Lieu's debut memoir explores immigration, beauty, and the American Dream. —SMS Through the Night Like a Snake ed. Sarah Coolidge [F] There's no horror quite like Latin American horror, as any revering reader of Cristina Rivera Garza—is there any other kind?—could tell you. Two Lines Press consistently puts out some of the best literature in translation that one can come by in the U.S., and this story collection looks like another banger. —JHM Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel [F] Bullwinkel's debut collection, Belly Up, was a canful of the uncanny. Her debut novel, on the other hand, sounds gritty and grounded, following the stories of eight teenage girls boxing in a tournament in Reno. Boxing stories often manage to punch above their weight (sorry) in pretty much any medium, even if you're not versed enough in the sport to know how hackneyed and clichéd that previous clause's idiomatic usage was. —JHM Choose This Now by Nicole Haroutunian [F] Haroutunian's novel-in-stories, part of Noemi Press's Prose Series, follows a pair of inseparable friends over the years as they embark on careers, make art, fall in and out of love, and become mothers. Lydia Kiesling calls this one "a sparkling, intimate look at women's lives" that makes "for a lovely reading experience." —SMS Death by Laughter by Maggie Hennefeld [NF] Hennefeld's scholarly study explores the forgotten history and politics of women's "hysterical laughter," drawing on silent films, affect theory, feminist film theory, and more. Hennefeld, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature, offers a unique take on women's pleasure and repression—and how the advent of cinema allowed women to laugh as never before. —SMS James by Percival Everett [F] In James, the once-secondary character of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn narrates his version of life on the Mississippi. Jim, who escapes enslavement only to end up in adventures with white runaway Huck, gives his account of well-known events from Mark Twain’s 1880s novel (and departs from the record to say what happened next). Everett makes readers hyperaware of code-switching—his 2001 novel Erasure was about a Black novelist whose career skyrockets when he doubles down on cynical stereotypes of Blackness—and Jim, in James, will have readers talking about written vernacular, self-awareness, and autonomy. —NodB A Chance Meeting by Rachel Cohen [NF] Chronicling 36 fateful encounters among 30 writers and artists—from Henry James to Gertrude Stein, Mark Twain to Zora Neal Hurston—Cohen paints a vast and sparkling portrait of a century's worth of American culture. First published in 2004, and reissued by NYRB, A Chance Meeting captures the spark of artistic serendipity, and the revived edition features a new afterword by the author. —SMS Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler [NF] Butler has had an outsized impact on how we think and talk about gender and sexuality ever since the 1990 publication of Gender Trouble, which theorized the way gender is performed and constructed. Butler's latest is a polemic that takes on the advent of "anti-gender ideology movements," arguing that "gender" has become a bogeyman for authoritarian regimes. —SMS Green Frog by Gina Chung [F] Chung, author of the acclaimed debut novel Sea Change, returns with a story collection about daughters and ghosts, divorcees and demons, praying mantises and the titular verdant amphibians. Morgan Talty calls these 15 stories "remarkable." —SMS No Judgment by Lauren Oyler [NF] Oyler is one of our sharpest and most fearless cultural critics, and No Judgement is her first essay collection, following up her debut novel Fake Accounts. Opining on gossip and anxiety, autofiction and vulnerability, and much, much more, Oyler's caustic wit and penetrating voice shine through every essay. —SMS Memory Piece by Lisa Ko [F] Following up her National Book Award–nominated debut novel The Leavers, Ko's latest follows three lifelong friends from the 1990s to the 2040s. A meditation on the meaning of a "meaningful life" and how to adapt to an increasingly inhospitable world, Memory Piece has earned praise from Jacqueline Woodson and C Pam Zhang, who calls the novel "bright with defiance, intelligence, and stubborn love." —SMS On Giving Up by Adam Phillips [NF] Psychoanalyst Phillips—whose previous subjects include getting better, wanting to change, and missing out—takes a swing at what feels like a particularly timely impulse: giving up. Questioning our notions of sacrifice and agency, Phillips asks when giving up might be beneficial to us, and which parts of our lives might actually be worth giving up. —SMS There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib [NF] Abdurraqib returns (how lucky are we!) with a reflection on his lifelong love of basketball and how it's shaped him. While reconsidering his childhood, his relationship with his father, and the meaning of "making it," Abdurraqib delivers what Shea Serrano calls "the sharpest, most insightful, most poignant writing of his career." —SMS The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones [F] The final installment of Jones's trilogy picks up four years after Don't Fear the Reaper. Jade Daniels is back from prison, and upon her release, she encounters serial killer-worshipping cults, the devastating effects of gentrification, and—worst of all—the curse of the Lake Witch. Horror maestro Brian Keene calls Jones's grand finale "an easy contender for Best of the Year." —LA Worry by Alexandra Tanner [F] This deadpan debut novel from Tanner follows two sisters on the cusp of adulthood as they struggle to figure out what the hell to do with their lives. Heads butt, tempers flare, and existential dread creeps in as their paths diverge amid the backdrop of Brooklyn in 2019. Limning the absurdity of our internet-addled, dread-filled moment, Tanner establishes herself as a formidable novelist, with Kiley Reid calling Worry "the best thing I've read in a very long time." —DF [millions_email]

Writers to Watch: Fall 2020

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This season’s notable fiction debuts offer first-generation American perspectives on Chinese folklore and Hindu deities, richly inspired LGBTQ narratives, feminist takes on police brutality against Black women and sexism in the workplace, and more. 1. K-Ming Chang: Tiger Daughter K-Ming Chang began writing Bestiary as a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence, and the novel took shape when she was home in California for the summer, expanding on a memoir assignment she’d written about her grandfather. “I initially wanted to go to school in New York because I had this very romantic notion of fleeing home and establishing this whole new life and identity,” she says. “But I quickly realized I would always kind of return back to my family stories and history. I feel like coming-of-age stories are often told about leaving—like leaving the home, leaving the domestic sphere. But I wanted to write one that was about return.” The novel follows three generations of women who are shaped by the mythology of their Taiwanese heritage. “I didn’t even know my grandfather’s name until he passed away,” Chang says. “He was just this kind of enigma, someone who was completely unknowable, which I think produced a lot of storytelling.” While she was writing, Chang realized the book was actually about the women in the family, and she began to explore the myths of the Chinese zodiac calendar, particularly her own relationship with being born in the year of the tiger. “The idea of the tiger woman or the tiger daughter is really undesirable,” she says. “My mom kind of withheld that information, and I realized she was afraid it was a jinx. But there was this huge sense of release from being able to confront these curses. It was like reclaiming a sense of agency.” After finishing Bestiary, Chang Googled “New York City agents” and sent the book out to a long list. “I was still an undergrad, you know—I didn’t have connections yet,” she says. She got a call from Julia Kardon and remembers Kardon said they could be the “year of the tiger team.” Kardon sold the book to One World along with a poetry collection. “Poetry was kind of my first love, and my way into writing,” Chang says.—David Varno 2. David Diop: In the Trenches French writer David Diop’s novel At Night All Blood Is Black, a deeply literary monologue from an unhinged Senegalese soldier fighting for the French in WWI, was honored with a prize by high school students in France in 2018. “I was thrilled to receive the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens because I’m a teacher,” Diop says. “I believe high schoolers identified with the soldiers, who were about their age when they left for war. At Night All Blood Is Black isn’t just a novel about World War I—it also evokes friendship and first loves.” The slim narrative reminded editor Jeremy Davies of the writing of Thomas Bernhard, if Bernhard had turned his focus to world historical issues. Before Davies saw the book, he says, a scout for Farrar, Straus and Giroux mentioned a “very strange, very literary book that wasn’t very commercial,” that was making the rounds at one of the international festivals. “And so that made my ears prick up.” The book has also resonated with older generations, Diop says. “Many older people came up to me with photographs and documents passed down from their grandparents or great-grandparents, showing a real brotherhood between their ancestors and the Senegalese infantrymen.” Diop got the idea for the book after reading a book of letters by French soldiers during WWI. “These letters were very moving because they showed the fatal intimacy that the very young soldiers had with the war,” he says. “Given my African origins, I wondered if the Senegalese infantrymen had also written such personal letters.” Diop began searching, but those he found were “rather impersonal,” he says. “The solution I found was to burst into the character’s thoughts—no filter, no intermediaries. The inner space of a character in a novel can be a place of freedom for the writer who creates him.” Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night was also an inspiration, Diop says, not only for its WWI setting but the “originality of it’s tone and voice.” He adds that he “wanted to find an original voice to talk about World War I as seen by an African man, a Senegalese man.”—David Varno 3. Victoria Gosling: Our House Victoria Gosling recalls that when she was a teenager growing up in England’s Wiltshire region, she and a friend went to a party one night at a decrepit manor. The house was well hidden, and they drove down twisty dark roads until they came upon the entrance to a long drive. “We sat on the lawn and drank quite a bit, and then had to stay over,” she says. “The host put me in a bedroom on the third floor, and I woke up in a Queen Anne poster bed.” When she went downstairs in the morning, she was captivated by the house’s shabby grandeur. “I didn’t go back, but the memory stayed with me.” Twenty-five years later that Wiltshire manor became the main setting for Before the Ruins, Gosling’s debut novel. Its plot concerns the relationship between protagonist Andy and her three best friends from childhood in the 1990s. They secretly meet and play “the game” in a rundown house, searching for a diamond necklace that had gone missing there in the 1930s. Lucy Carson, Gosling’s agent, says, “Andy was palpably self-destructive, but those tendencies masked some deeper damage and pain. I’m a massive Tana French fan, and I saw the suspense bones of Before the Ruins, and loved the way they intertwined with such a complicated female narrator.” Gosling says, “I wanted to write about magic and transformation and how they can make up for painful experiences. I’m an emotional dweller.” At one point in the novel, two of the characters, now grown up, are running from a horrific flood in Florence. “I was living in Prague in 2002 when a very similar storm occurred,” Gosling says. “We were on the third floor of an apartment building and never thought the water would rise that high. Finally the police came to rescue us. They didn’t speak any English, but managed to get us out and take us to safety. My apartment building was about to collapse. It was built on sand.” Not so for Gosling’s literary future, which seems sturdy and bright.— Wendy Werris 4. Robert Jones Jr: Love in Shackles Robert Jones Jr.’s interest in writing began while he collected comic books as a child in Brooklyn. Describing the first stories he wrote, he says, “I would read a Wonder Woman comic, and write a story where I’m the only boy allowed on Paradise Island.” He also wrote poetry but for a long time felt writing should only be a hobby. While living in Charlotte, N.C., and working for Bank of America, the words of a guest on an episode of Oprah made Jones feel the dire need to fulfill his purpose. “Writing was all I wanted to do,” he says, “but I had been discouraged.” He moved back in with his mother in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and at age 31 enrolled at Brooklyn College, where he finished his undergraduate work and, in 2006, went straight into the MFA program. Describing the origins of his novel, The Prophets, Jones says, “I wanted to write about a black queer person during antebellum slavery. In everything I’d read, from Toni Morrison to slave narratives, the only mention of anything remotely queer was in the context of sexual assault, but there was never any mention of same sex love. So, following Toni Morrison’s command, which was, ‘If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,’ I knew I had to write this book.” Jones continued working on The Prophets over the next decade while developing a popular Internet community called Son of Baldwin. After he finished the book, his friend Kiese Laymon put him in touch with his agent, PJ Mark. Seven publishers bid for The Prophets. When editor Sally Kim first met Jones, he mentioned his early passion for comic books. She remembers saying, “I knew it!” She recognized the Morrison and Baldwin influences but noted his grasp of the comic book structure—the beats and the heroes and the villains. “I found that mix really fascinating,” she notes. “Even though this is probably the most literary book I’ve ever edited, this is a book I can hand to anyone, because if you just read it for the plot, which you can, it will totally work.”—David Varno 5. Erica Katz: A Legal Matter Erica Katz wrote The Boys’ Club—a tale of a young lawyer bearing witness to sexual harassment and chauvinism—over the course of working at two New York City law firms, taking full advantage of her vacation time. “Instead of going off to some beach and really unwinding, I locked myself in my apartment and I actually plugged away at a novel,” she says. Katz was an English major and says she was “always an avid reader and writer” but chose a secure profession rather than pursuing creative writing, which was how she ended up in law school. “It was the most wonderful education. I learned how to think critically about the world.” Law school also helped Katz become a novelist. “I have this very legal brain when I look at the world,” she says, which means “seeing all angles of a situation for exactly what they are with as much honesty as possible.” Katz’s protagonist, Alex Vogel, a competitive swimmer, relishes the challenge of competing with male colleagues at her firm and credits her background as an only child for her ability to fit in. “It’s a far more interesting conversation to have a protagonist benefit sort of unfairly from her situation.” When it came time to look for an agent, Katz, who admired Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler, tracked down Danler’s agent, who passed her onto colleague Alison Hunter. It turned out Hunter had gone to law school and spent a summer at the same firm as Katz. “We just had all these overlaps and it was sort of kismet,” Katz says. “I am surrounded by a team of great women.” That team includes editor Emily Griffin. “Alison just had a lot of excitement around the book,” Griffin says. By this point, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings had taken place, which inspired Katz and Hunter to come up with the title. It gave the book a new sense of urgency, and the story is now in development at Netflix. Griffin says the book works on multiple levels. “A lot of law novels sort of focus on the drudgery, but Erica’s brain works a mile a minute and she really enjoys the work, and her characters do, too.”—David Varno 6. Raven Leilani: An Unruly Path to Art “I wanted to write a Black woman who is hungry and dogged and who makes mistakes,” Raven Leilani says about Luster. The main character, Edie, works with little job security to cover bills at a New York City apartment where roaches scatter when she turns on the lights. With whatever energy she has left, she paints. Like Edie, Leilani has held a range of gigs on her nonlinear trajectory as an artist. To raise money for her MFA at NYU, she ran deliveries for Postmates in Washington, D.C., and in New York, she worked as an archivist at Macmillan before FSG acquired the novel. Editor Jenna Johnson says, “It was clear from the very first page that there was something original about Luster. The language was immediately vibrant and uncontainable. It’s rare that the very sentences of a book demonstrate its intentions.” Luster opens with Edie navigating a relationship with Eric, a white man twice her age who is in an open marriage. “There’s something extremely seductive about a stark power imbalance,” Leilani says. “And that exists between them.” After Edie loses her job, she ends up living with Eric, his wife, and their adopted Black daughter, Akila. Leilani’s book comes in a year rife with civil unrest amid the racial justice movement against police brutality. “I had two Black parents,” she says, “and I still had to learn some lessons the hard way and on my own. I remember when both my parents gave me the talk—it was shortly after we moved to the suburbs from the Bronx—and I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want that ugliness to be true.” In a heartbreaking scene with Akila and Edie on the front lawn of the house, police throw Akila to the ground after she insists she lives there. “It’s a real human response to ask, ‘What do you mean I don’t belong? I’m here,’” Leilani says, adding that she hopes Akila and all Black women will embrace their rage. “When you are angry, you know that you deserve more.”—Essence London 7. Micah Nemerever: For the Sake of Danger Micah Nemerever’s Hitchcockian novel of obsession, These Violent Delights, grew out of a period of unemployment after he graduated from college during the recession in 2008. “I was immersing myself in queer cinema to keep myself sane,” he says, “and I got into the morally hairy varieties.” Nemerever’s novel takes place in 1970s Pittsburgh and chronicles a dangerous bond between two college students, Paul and Julian, an artist and a psychology major. “When I was studying art history at UConn, the MA program and the MFA program were very tight,” he says. “I’m fascinated by artistic personalities and obsessives in general.” In the prologue, Paul and Julian abduct a young man whose car broke down, and as the narrative unfolds, the reasons for their crime emerge. Nemerever chose the 1970s setting in order to dive into his Jewish family history. “My grandfather was a refugee, and so there’s a lot of generational trauma around the Holocaust,” he says. “At the same time, there was a sort of evolution of Jewish ethnicity, where in some situations you’re provisionally white, and in others you aren’t.” Paul, the artist, identifies as ethnically Jewish and becomes inseparable from Julian, who comes from a family that passes in order to fit into WASP culture, in the wake of Paul’s father’s suicide. Meanwhile, Paul’s mother would rather see him chasing “shiksas” than give the impression that he’s gay. When Nemerever wrote the first draft—“deep in the hangover of the Bush administration,” he says—LGBTQ stories were rare. As more appeared, he began to feel less alone with his ideas. After submitting to his agent, Caroline Eisenmann, she said, “How did you reach into my head and find this book?” Erin Wicks, editor at Harper, says she saw an opportunity to add more diversity to the types of stories “within queer narratives” and saw a great deal of potential in Nemerever. “I’m always looking for authors to publish, not books, where I see immense talent and immense promise.”—David Varno 8. Shruti Swamy: Body Movin’ Shruti Swamy confesses she’d been nervous about coming up with a good pithy line to describe her collection, A House Is a Body. Then she participated in demonstrations against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis. She says she experienced immense joy in the presence of others after months of quarantining. She’s now able to boil down the book: “It’s about being alive,” she says. Over the 10 years Swamy wrote these stories, she picked up two O. Henry awards. “I’d already been publishing stories for several years and emailing with agents,” she says. “But when I won those two awards, I think people really started taking my work more seriously.” The collection’s opener, “Blindness,” is Swamy’s earliest work, and it features a startling description of a newly married woman who travels alone from Delhi to the mountains of Rishikesh. Despite seeing the piece as a “relic of a younger writer,” she felt it set the tone for the collection, operating “like a door” for the reader. “I really fought for it, because it’s a very weird story.” Swamy’s determination reflects what she values in the art of the story, as she described in reference to Gina Berriault’s Women in their Beds. “It’s almost like the writer is training you how to see the world,” she says. The collection’s centerpiece, “Earthly Pleasures,” offers a fresh, intoxicating view of a contemporary Krishna. Swamy’s agent, Samantha Shea, helped her achieve her vision. “I always felt like she had my back as an artist,” Swamy says. “Samantha represents a lot of short story writers and also many women of color. It’s funny, I know way more about agents and stuff now, but I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”—David Varno 9. Natalie Zina Walschots: Binders of Henchmen The cynical millennial narrator of Natalie Zina Walschots’s darkly comic debut, Hench, earns a living temping as a henchwoman for supervillains. Walschots, who is 37 and lives in Toronto, describes this career path as “semiautobiographical,” having herself held an eclectic collection of temp jobs, including a memorable stint writing copy for porn films. “At the end of the day,” she says, “there’s not much difference between working for an oil company, which I also did, and working for a supervillain.” Walschots has long been fascinated by the henchpeople in superhero stories: the characters she describes as “usually nameless—but often with really excellent outfits—who get lobbed at heroes as cannon fodder.” This fascination led to a startling theory. “I had a feeling that the damage being done by heroes was in fact worse than the villainy they were trying to prevent.” Being a self-described “lifelong gigantic nerd,” Walschots tested this theory by assembling a spreadsheet, weighing the harm done by superheroes against the harm done by supervillains across DC’s Year One comics. Anna, Hench’s narrator, assembles a similar spreadsheet, outlining the aggressions of real heroes in the world of the novel. The collected data enables her to, in her words, “fuck with” superheroes’ lives, leading Anna to rise as a supervillain in her own right—one who wields data science as a super power. Walschots’s experience as a target of online harassment is what first piqued her interest in the idea of exploiting information to ruin someone’s life. She had just begun a PhD in feminist critiques of video games when male gamers began using the #GamerGate hashtag to harass progressive women in their field, and strangers flooded her dean’s inbox with claims that her work was unethical. “The school has to go through an inquiry every time,” Walschots says. “So when that process is abused it’s somewhere between annoying and nightmarish.” She describes the experience as “harrowing,” but she came out of it eager to explore the potential of what she terms a “horrifying and fascinating machine” through fiction, posing the question, “What if you used those powers for awesome?” The answer delightfully explores a moral gray area, melding humor and body horror into a playful and powerful subversion of superhero tropes.—Phoebe Cramer 10. David Heska Wanbli Weiden: Justice Is My Business Rosebud Sioux Tribe member David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s crime thriller Winter Counts explores a little-known system of vigilante justice on the Rosebud reservation. “These guys do exist,” he says. “It’s kind of something that’s done in the shadows. If you’re the one getting beat up, you’re not happy about them, but if you’re the family of somebody and the federal government has abandoned you after your little child has been harmed, I think you’d feel that these guys were maybe righting some wrongs.” In the book, Virgil Wounded Horse, half Lakota and half white, serves as an enforcer at Rosebud. After his nephew, Nathan, overdoses on heroin, Virgil vows to rid the reservation of the drug and the dealers responsible for bringing it there. Weiden grew up impoverished in what he calls “the roughest neighborhood in all of Denver.” There was no library, but every Friday a bookmobile would come around, and he would load up on genre books, from science fiction to crime and noir. “I Just loved that stuff,” he says. “I grew up just loving a well-crafted tale.” During Weiden’s MFA, which he began at the Vermont College of Fine Arts before transferring to the Institute of American Indian Arts, he dove deep into crime classics he’d overlooked, by Raymond Chandler and Jim Thomspon, and says he was “blown away.” In 2018, Weiden’s last year at IAIA, he met agent Michelle Browe at the AWP conference in Tampa, Fla. She signed with him on the spot after reading the first five pages of Winter Counts. Editor Helen Atsma says she was struck by the amount of heart in the story, rare for a crime novel. “You see Virgil’s love for the community and his family,” Atsma says, “and his desire to protect the people he loves shines through on every page.”—David Varno [millions_email] This piece was produced in partnership with Publishers Weekly.