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Posts in the Coming Soon category
Q+A with Kathryn Bromwich about At the Edge of the Woods

At the Edge of the Woods, a novel by Kathryn Bromwich (Two Dollar Radio, 2023)
(Author photograph by Alice Zoo.)

On June 6, 2023, we're thrilled to be publishing journalist Kathryn Bromwich's debut novel, At the Edge of the Woods, in a super classy paper-over-board hardcover edition that we've come to adore. At the Edge of the Woods is a rich, gorgeously descriptive and remarkably assured story enthralled with nature, that I've been describing as if Richard Powers wrote a Shirley Jackson story.

Sarah Rose Etter, author of The Book of X, calls it "A rich and bewitching novel. Kathryn Bromwich has spun up a delicate world that interrogates the dark side of love, the wild power of nature, and the strength it takes to break free." Maryse Meijer, author of The Seventh Mansion, calls it "a stunning experience not to be missed."

The story takes place in the first half of the twentieth century, and follows a woman named Laura who lives in a remote cabin in the Italian Alps. She’s left her husband, and appears to be in hiding. Laura spends her days alone, rekindling her sense of self by exploring nature and the countryside around her. The cabin is on the fringes of a quaint, conservative, religious town, and when Laura ventures into the village for supplies, she’s met with curious stares and wariness. Laura begins seeing a bartender, who informs her of the villagers’ suspicions.

One day, someone from Laura’s past appears, alerting her to all that has transpired since her disappearance. Meanwhile, Laura’s behavior becomes more erratic, which causes the villager’s suspicions and mistrust of her to mount, and accusations of her being a “strega,” a witch.

Kathryn Bromwich is a writer and commissioning editor on The Observer newspaper in London. She writes about all aspects of culture, including music, film, TV, books, art and more, and has contributed to publications including Little White Lies, Dazed, Vice, Time Out and The Independent. She has lived in Italy, Austria and the UK and is currently based in east London.

Following is an interview with Kathryn Bromwich about At the Edge of the Woods.


Question: The profound respect for nature in the book is palpable. Secluded in the Italian Alps, Laura goes on rigorous hikes, immersing herself in the natural world, and in so doing grows to better understand herself and the world around her. How did concerns for the environment come to be interwoven with the storyline?

Kathryn Bromwich: I didn’t set out to write a book about the climate emergency. I mainly wanted to write about mountains: I have been suffering from long Covid, and found myself drawn again and again to these landscapes, probably because of their grandeur and stillness. For a long time I felt trapped, both inside the flat and my body, and the mountains offered a powerful sense of freedom and escape. Through writing I could relive my experiences hiking in Italy, France, Austria, Scotland, California, Peru – something I loved doing before falling ill and which I am still not sure whether I’ll ever be able to do again. But while writing, there was no way of escaping the reality of what is happening all over the world: catastrophic floods, deadly wildfires. Saint-Martin-Vésubie, a beautiful village in the French Alps where I went hiking a few years ago, was recently ravaged by a violent storm: several people died, houses were destroyed, landslides wiped away huge swathes of the mountain. Extreme weather is now the norm. Reading the news every day was like that moment at the end of nature documentaries where they tell you that all the incredible things you’ve just seen are dying, and we are to blame. That sense of loss definitely informed the writing: I don’t think anyone could write about nature these days without being acutely aware of the dangers it faces. So while I wouldn’t say the climate crisis is the novel’s primary subject, it is a shadowy presence lurking in the background, biding its time.

Q: As the months pass with Laura living alone in the cabin, and as she becomes increasingly alienated from the traditional mindset of the villagers, she begins to drift further into nature and further into herself, experiencing mystical visions. How do you see the surreal imagery meshing with the fabric of the book?

KB: It’s an integral part of the book, but I am wary of explaining my reasoning around it too much – I think it’s up to readers to decide what it means for them, as it will be slightly different for everyone. What I will say is that I was meditating a lot when I started writing, and I was reading widely about mysticism, neuroscience and trauma – the Upanishads, Margery Kempe, William Blake, Emanuel Swedenborg, Bessel van der Kolk, Lisa Feldman Barrett. I became fascinated by experiences that could be interpreted as moments of enlightenment, or madness, or somewhere in between. Most definitions of mystical visions share certain specific characteristics: a sense that the person is experiencing something of the utmost importance, more real than the real yet ineffable, an experiential understanding of the deep interconnectedness of all things; often, these experiences can offer a powerful way of working through painful memories. This is a state that can be achieved by letting go of the ego, either through psychedelics or certain forms of meditation or through more mysterious means. I was very attracted to this idea that there could be another layer of reality enmeshed with ours, and the ways it could be accessed. The best description I’ve found of this was in a recent interview with Nick Cave in which he talked about the “imaginal realm”, a term from priest and religious writer Cynthia Bourgeault: Cave calls it “a kind of liminal state of awareness, before dreaming, before imagining, that is connected to the spirit itself. It is an ‘impossible realm’ where glimpses of the preternatural essence of things find their voice.” That state of liminality is at the core of many aspects of the novel, so I wanted to explore what such a realm might look like.

Q: The book addresses expectations of what might be considered traditional femininity, through the expectations the villagers and her husband impose on Laura. Even though the story is set in an earlier time period, do you feel as though these questions are still topical?

KB: Absolutely – we are seeing now, especially in the UK, how trans women are being increasingly excluded from women-only spaces, how their very existence is being questioned. Anyone who is considered to be outside of “the norm” is feared and rejected. This anti-trans (or, as they like to call it, “gender critical”) discourse is narrowing the idea of what a woman is to a purely biological perspective, which not only excludes anyone who is trans or non-binary, but also anyone with medical conditions that fall outside of their parameters. Maybe it’s just me, but defining women based on their reproductive organs doesn’t feel like progress. There is also a strange insistence from certain quarters that unless you are a mother you don’t truly understand feminism, which is a spectacularly backwards step. As we learn more about intersectionality and different lived experiences, feminism should be getting more expansive and inclusive, not less. But even though more and more women are deciding not to have children, the world is very much geared towards nuclear families. When you hit your early-to-mid-30s, a shift starts to happen: people move out of the city, and suddenly nights out are replaced by hen dos and baby showers. Everything becomes a lot more gendered, which can be quite disconcerting if you have an uneasy relationship with femininity. So I’m writing for any women and non-binary people who feel excluded from the term, or who are unconvinced by the traditional gender roles we’ve been raised to believe in.

Q: There are just so many elements of At the Edge of the Woods that I admire, from its discussions of class, infertility, its tonal meandering through the natural world, and also the subtle, ratcheting tension of the story. There were times as the sense of menace and dread was building, where it felt to me like a creepy fable, or a Shirley Jackson tale washed in acid. I know in discussing it with you that so much of the book came from the experience of long Covid, and the effect it had on your mind and body, but how concerned were you with creating a sense of mounting unease and tension as you crafted the story?

KB: The past two and a half years have been like being trapped inside a horror story, both on an international scale and a personal one – apocalyptic dystopia and Cronenbergian body horror. Not only have we lived through a global pandemic, but the virus has attacked every part of my body: my lungs, my heart, my muscles, my nervous system. I am slowly improving but I can only work in short bursts, I can’t exercise, I need constant rest, I have terrible insomnia. It’s still unclear whether I will ever fully recover, and the psychological effect of that has been devastating. A lot of people felt a profound sense of isolation during the pandemic, but this feeling was magnified by illness, and now that things have opened up again it has only intensified. At times it has felt like inhabiting a ghost story: life goes on for other people but I feel frozen in time, existing alongside the rest of society but unable to join. Writing was a way for me to process these feelings, though I should clarify that this is very much not an autobiographical novel – I live in central London rather than a cabin in the woods, and I have not quite lost grip on reality to the extent the protagonist has (I hope). But I did want to capture some of that feeling of dread and mounting frenzy, then dial it further and further up to see where it would go.

Q: Laura comes to be flagged by the villagers as a witch, and At the Edge of the Woods takes place in the late-19th or first half of the twentieth century. You are British and Italian, and your Italian great-grandmother was apparently considered a “witch” — was there any seed of inspiration there for the story?

KB: That was in the back of my mind when I was writing, but the character is not based on my great-grandmother in any way, except perhaps that she comes from the Adriatic coast and descends from fishermen. But she was never persecuted or cast out from society or anything of the sort – it is my understanding that she was a “good witch” who “healed” people from various ailments, and they would come from all over Italy to be cured by her. I don’t know how effective her treatments would have been, but I’m intrigued by the fact that this was something she felt called to, and that people believed in it. I think the reason witches still hold such a powerful hold over people’s imaginations is that it was a catch-all term used to describe women who were in any way different, or whose behaviour went against the grain. Most women alive today would probably have been considered witches at some point in the past.

Q: Do you feel as though your non-fiction writing on culture influenced or shaped your fiction writing in this novel? Having interviewed so many incredible and brilliant artists yourself, was there anything anyone said to you over the years that influenced your approach to this book or to this story?

KB: A lot of the elements that make good non-fiction writing still hold for fiction: clarity, structure, precision. You have to (hopefully) be entertaining. But there are also many aspects of fiction that are in some way the opposite of journalism – making things up, stepping away from the factual, including your own thoughts and feelings. So it was a bit of a struggle to let those things go. I started writing a dystopian sci-fi novel a few years ago which was very “issues”-based and probably quite didactic. With this project I wanted to do something completely different, much more personal – turning inwards rather than outwards. But as I was writing I noticed that themes such as feminism and the climate crisis kept creeping in: it’s impossible to escape the real world even if you’re writing fiction.

One of the best things about my job is that I get to speak to so many interesting people about their art, so there are too many to choose from. I enjoyed talking to Michael Pollan a few years ago about Richard Powers’ The Overstory and the ways trees communicate, which must have sparked something in my mind. Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker was fascinating about illusions versus reality, and I liked what Perfume Genius said about PJ Harvey talking to the devil “and magnifying her darkness” in her art. I was also very struck by something Samanta Schweblin said, about how a novel happens half on the page and half in the reader’s mind, but how what happens there has been well calculated by the writer. So that was something to aim for.


Pre-order At the Edge of the Woods.
If you are a bookseller, librarian, or critic interested in receiving an advance review copy of At the Edge of the Woods, request a copy here.

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Posted by Eric Obenauf on 11 October, 2022 0 comments |
Q+A with Robert Lopez about Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere

Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere, by Robert Lopez (Two Dollar Radio, March 2023)

In March 2023, we are publishing the debut work of non-fiction by acclaimed fiction writer, Robert Lopez, a masterful consideration of memory and cultural preservation called Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere: An American Story of Assimilation and Erasure. The book dives deep into Lopez's Puerto Rican heritage, going back to his grandfather, Sixto, who immigrated to Brooklyn in the 1920s. There isn't much known about Sixto, or what inspired him to move to New York in the first place, and even less passed down in terms of family stories, language, or the Puerto Rican culture to the point where Robert feels — only two generations removed — as though he might be Latin In Name Only.

Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere braids Sixto's journey from Mayaguez to Red Hook, Brooklyn, where he works as a longshoreman and starts a family, with Robert's own upbringing in the predominantly white suburbs of Long Island, grappling with racial slurs and the thought of how much his family's assimilation was intentional, as well as how much he benefited from that assimilation. Having lived most of his adult life in Brooklyn, Lopez reflects on the diversity and rich heritage of his tennis community.

Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere is marvelous, thoughtful, and compassionate, and stands as a testament to Lopez's tremendous dexterity and prodigious talent as a writer.

Justin Torres, author of We the Animals, calls the book:
"A masterpiece clear and honest and alive to the world and its contradictions. Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere will hit you where you live."

Nick Flynn, author of This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire, The Ticking is the Bomb, and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, says:
"Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere is a deceptively subversive book, full of insights and humor and a level of honest examination (both of racism and of the author himself) that is rare. Lopez writes in distilled bursts, each labelled 'Dispatch from…' (A Better Moment; Something Irretrievable; It’s Now or Never, etc), as if he wasn’t standing right beside us, murmuring these complicated truths in our ears, but beaming them in from some distant, forgotten past. He carries the weight of this past, yet it does not crush him. Or—thankfully, beautifully—us."

Ander Monson, author of The Gnome Stories and I Will Take the Answer, says: "Robert Lopez’s Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere is somewhere between a speculative memoir, a mostly unresolved detective story, and a meditation on learning to play tennis. That it’s none and all of these things—and more—is its particular genius."

Following is an interview with Robert Lopez about Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere: An American Story of Assimilation and Erasure.


Question: At this point you’ve published four novels and two collections of stories. What made you realize that you wanted to branch out into non-fiction, and why with this story in particular?
Robert Lopez: I can’t quite remember the genesis of this particular project. The first essay I wrote started with the line “The first time someone called me a spic was during recess or after school in the playground or in the park across the street from my house.” I think I wanted to talk about the disconnect I feel to my heritage and this was the sentence that presented itself as a way in. Most of what I’ve done with prose seems to concern confusion and uncertainty. I realized I didn’t know anything about my grandfather and starting from that kind of ignorance is right in my wheelhouse.

Q: While your various family members have Italian, Spanish, and Cuban ancestry, why do you think it is that the Puerto Rican line, and your grandfather Sixto Lopez, is the one that you seem to feel the most drawn to and chose to focus on with this book?
RL: I always thought of myself as Puerto Rican first when it comes to the entirety of my ethnic makeup. It’s my name. And Sixto made for an interesting character for all the reasons that are illustrated in the book and what I mentioned in the first answer. I realized I didn’t know anything about him and started to wonder why that was the case. That he was a musician, superstitious, and a prototypical Latino from that mostly/hopefully bygone era when it comes to the male/female dynamic, made for a meaty skeleton to start with, at least.

Q: Tennis is a big part of the book. It’s both an escape for you, as well as a way to explore culture, diversity, and community. In the banter between sets, you and your friends joke with one another, and share your heritage. What has tennis and your tennis community come to mean to you?
RL: Tennis is everything. Tennis is food and water, the sun and moon. Since the pandemic almost the entirety of my social life takes place on the courts. That’s only partially hyperbolic. I’ve forged lasting friendships with members of my tennis community that extend beyond the court. And that these people come from everywhere and are talented and smart and all that jive, it’s made my life richer. I can’t imagine a life without it.

Q: One of the things that is striking to me about your grandfather, Sixto, is how little you actually know about the man. Apart from basic observations from your childhood, there were so few family stories passed down. How did you grapple with that lack of information while putting this book together?
RL: Again, almost everything I’ve ever done comes from a lack of information. This is my home on the page, where I reside. The trick was to activate the imagination and find ways to engage with what I didn’t know and play with any number of alternate or potential or fictitious histories. At the same time I had to take a deep dive into the little I did know and try to examine all of it from as many angles as possible.

Q: You discuss the racist rhetoric from not only the Trump era in the wake of Hurricane Maria, to also the aggressive jingoism in the years after 9/11, and also your experiences with racism as a child growing up on Long Island. How do you think that Puerto Rico exists in relation to the rest of the United States?
RL: Puerto Rico is the redheaded step-child of the U.S. Convenient sometimes, but mostly an afterthought, a non-entity. Easy to ignore, abuse, subjugate. Puerto Rico is hamstrung in that it’s dependent on the US economy. Puerto Rican independence is a romantic idea, but if it ever happened Puerto Rico would become Cuba or the Dominican Republic. It’s pretty close to that now, economically, even with the association to the mainland. And the Republicans will never allow statehood.

Q: Immigration and family assimilation, whether some may be willing to admit to it or not, is a universally American story. How do you think this idea fares with the political circumstances and rhetoric from the past few years?
RL: We have been circling the drain for decades now, but the gravity and flow is increasing exponentially in recent years. Americans know nothing of history. Which goes hand in hand with their knowledge of other subjects in the Humanities. But they also know nothing of science and math, so more’s the pity. This country is doomed, but maybe something more manageable can replace it. Something less than an empire, something not at all great. Something like six or seven sovereign nations sounds about right. Maybe city-states. Whenever some “American” tells someone else to go back from where they came from… it’s laughable and tragic and sad and ugly.

Q: If there were one thing about your Puerto Rican family’s history that you wish you could find out, what would it be?
RL: I’d like to know how long the Lopezes lived in Puerto Rico, how far back it goes and who was involved and what they all did as people on the planet.


Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere: An American Story of Assimilation and Erasure is out on March 14, 2023.

Pre-order Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere.

Booksellers, critics, and librarians may request an advance reading copy of Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere.

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Posted by Eric Obenauf on 06 July, 2022 0 comments |
Q+A with Kevin Maloney about The Red-Headed Pilgrim

The Red-Headed Pilgrim a novel by Kevin Maloney

I first encountered Kevin Maloney’s writing after picking up his novella The Cult of Loretta at an AWP conference several years ago, probably in Los Angeles. The prose was vibrant and hilarious and pulsed on the page; I remember tearing through the book on my flight home, and immediately recommending it to friends. In 2017, The Cult of Loretta was one of a handful of books that I imagined as a touchstone of what we would stock at our bookstore/café that we were about to open, alongside titles like Renata Adler’s Speedboat, Michael Bible’s Sophia, and Percival Everett’s I Am Not Sidney Poitier — under-appreciated gems and books that I believed were worth discovering.

You can imagine how giddy I was when I had the good fortune to encounter a new novel submission from Kevin. I haven’t laughed as much or as hard while reading a book as I did while reading The Red-Headed Pilgrim. The fact that the protagonist’s journey through marriage, fatherhood, and divorce proceeded to move me to tears is a testament to Kevin’s incredible dexterity in juggling humor and drama.

While riotously funny, The Red-Headed Pilgrim (out January 24, 2023) is an extremely touching story of a young red-head struggling to find his way in the world, and to hold on to the people he considers most dear. What begins as a coming-of-age story emerges as a raw portrait of adulthood, the tribulations of parenting, and the heartbreak of divorce. With a lot of humor and a ton of heart, The Red-Headed Pilgrim highlights Kevin Maloney as a magnificent talent.

You can read some of the truly incredible love the book has already received, from the likes of Jami Attenberg, Chelsea Hodson, Bud Smith, Gene Kwak, Arthur Bradford, and Jon Raymond, on the book's webpage.

Following is an interview conducted by editor Eric Obenauf with author Kevin Maloney about his forthcoming novel, The Red-Headed Pilgrim:


Question: I feel like the opening prologue states how this book came to be, which was in fits and spurts while working in an industrial park in the suburbs, while reflecting on working there with the person you once were. How did you know that the story of The Red-Headed Pilgrim was the story that you wanted to tell?
Kevin Maloney: I’ve always wanted to write about the time in my life when I was a 25-year-old dad, trying to be an artist while changing dirty diapers and only sleeping 2-3 hours every night. The logical thing would be to focus on one or two years of my life and tell that story, but as I was writing, I couldn’t stop thinking about a certain type of book, not really in vogue anymore, about the travels of a naive character on their journey to find the meaning of life. I wanted to write something that belonged to that tradition, but also made fun of it, so that by the time the protagonist becomes a young dad, you really understand how completely unprepared he is to take on the responsibility of raising another human being.

Q: You say in the prologue that it was tremendously difficult for you to write. Why do you think that was?
KM: I feel like so many novels and memoirs these days jump around in time as a way to disguise the boring parts. I think a lot of my struggle was having the confidence to tell a mostly linear narrative that covers more than a decade and moves from one scene to the next without jumping around. I wanted the book to feel like Don Quixote or The Odyssey but with the humor of Journey to the End of the Night by Celine. So I was struggling from an artistic perspective, but also I was kind of just reading the news on my phone every day after Trump got elected, asking myself, does art even matter anymore? What the hell am I doing? I guess I had to make peace with the fact that no matter how bad this world is, my role in it, for whatever reason, is writing comic fiction. It’s the one thing I really know how to do.

Q: You really have amazing comic timing with your prose. Were there any polestars for you, so far as humor writing goes?
KM: Thank you. I mean… Denis Johnson is my guy when it comes to comic timing. I have Jesus’ Son on audiobook, and I’ve listened to my favorites – "Emergency,” “Car Crashing While Hitchhiking,” “Dundun,” and “Work” – literally hundreds of times. I listen to those stories the way other people listen to music. The actor Will Patton does the audiobook, and his voice now is kind of the voice I have in my head when I write. Other comic writers I love: Chelsea Martin, Miranda July, Richard Brautigan, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Charles Bukowski, Celine. Also, my wife is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. Her voice moves through all my writing because she constantly makes me laugh.

Q: Music is a big part of the book as well. If you could choose one member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to blurb your book, which would it be?
KM: Oh man, that’s tough. I mean, I’ve been obsessed with John Frusciante since I heard his solo album Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt at a Blockbuster music listening station back in 1994. For me, that album’s on par with all of Van Gogh’s paintings as the greatest art ever made on Planet Earth. But asking Frusciante to blurb my book would be like asking the wind to blurb my book. Like, it just doesn’t even make sense. Flea seems way more approachable and also super nice, so probably Flea. I just want Frusciante to keep being a dark wizard making his impossibly beautiful music without having to bother with things like blurbs.

Q: Parenthood is hard. Making art is hard. Writing about the two is hard. How did you approach writing about two universal topics in a way that made them approachable while also fresh?
KM: I think writing about parenthood is actually pretty easy, only because most people lie about it. Our society is obsessed with babies, but very few people talk about what it’s actually like, which is that you go insane and for a while you hate your baby. Their shit is yellow, and sometimes it shoots up the back of their diaper into their hair, and as you try to clean it, they dip their fingers in it and put it in their mouth. And you’re like, “Oh my god, you’re fucking disgusting,” and then your baby floats up to the ceiling like a balloon and you’re like, “Wait what?” but it’s just because you’re hallucinating because you haven’t slept in three days. That’s parenting. I just tried to tell the truth. But writing about making art is hard because it’s kind of stupid and indulgent. I had to flip the switch in my brain that said it was stupid to OFF and just sort of trust that if I thought this book was good, somebody else would too.

Q: Travel and wanderlust is a big part of the book, and in the coming of age of the protagonist. How do you think travel and place affects our development as individuals?
KM: Some people I went to high school with never left our hometown and they’re totally happy, and that’s wonderful. But most of us had this idea that Beaverton, Oregon, was the spiritual anus of America. So we all moved somewhere else and for a while it was glorious, but eventually we realized it was pretty bad there too. And so we moved again and again and again, always thinking the next place would save us. Maybe it was a Gen X thing, and kids these days put their brains in their phones so they don’t have to move across the country for no reason. I don’t know. But eventually the challenge is to stay in one place and put down roots and just live somewhere. I’ve been in Portland for fifteen years. But here I am, 45, and I kind of have the itch again? So I don’t know. I think we’re all trying to do whatever it takes to push our brains to the place that magic mushrooms and near death experiences take us: awake, looking around at the world as a miracle.

Q: A big part of the maturation of the protagonist is a result of making what some might consider to be poor decisions. How do you feel that mistakes and risk-taking affect our development as individuals?
KM: I’m a huge coward, but I’ve always had this vivid understanding that the clock’s ticking and Death’s ready to pluck us any second. So that makes me do stupid things just to feel alive. And stupid things are good for us, as long as they don’t hurt other people. Thoreau has a quote: “If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?” I genuinely believe that. The things that keep me awake at night aren’t my dumb mistakes, it’s when I’ve been too careful or cautious or fearful and played it safe. I regret that constantly.

Q: If present-day father/husband/author Kevin Maloney could give the character of the flailing father/husband/aspiring author Kevin Maloney in The Red-Headed Pilgrim one piece of advice, what would it be?
KM: I don’t think he needs advice. I think he needs a hug. A long hug with lots of tenderness. Because most of us know the absolute truth at all times. We don’t need advice, we just need recognition that what we’re going through is hard and that we’re loved.
Booksellers, critics, and librarians can request a copy of The Red-Headed Pilgrim.
Pre-order a copy of The Red-Headed Pilgrim.
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Posted by Eric Obenauf on 19 May, 2022 0 comments |
Q+A with Tariq Shah about his debut Whiteout Conditions

With a poet’s sensibility, Shah navigates the murky responsibilities of adulthood, grief, toxic masculinity, and the tragedy of revenge in this haunting Midwestern noir.

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Posted by Eric Obenauf on 06 March, 2020 0 comments |
Q+A with Sarah Rose Etter about The Book of X

In July 2019 we will be publishing the first novel by Sarah Rose Etter, titled The Book of X, about a girl named Cassie whose stomach is twisted into the shape of a knot. Blake Butler says of the work, "Move over, Angela Carter, there's a new boss in the Meat Quarry, and she is fearless, relentless, ready to feast." It is a tremendously powerful and creative new work that is certain to blow your hair back.

What follows is an interview with Etter about her work.

The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter (Two Dollar Radio, 2019)

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Posted by Eric Obenauf on 01 January, 2019 0 comments |
Q+A with Abi Andrews about The Word for Woman Is Wilderness

In March, we will publish the debut novel by Abi Andrews called The Word for Woman Is Wilderness, an eco-feminist take on the Mountain Man myth. The story follows a young woman named Erin as she takes off from middle England, across Iceland, Greenland, and Canada, to Alaska, where she hopes to explore the wilderness from a feminist perspective. Her digressive journey touches on the writings of Rachel Carson, Ted Kaczynski, and Thoreau, and topics as varied as evolution, Nuclear War, the Letters of Last Resort, and the moon landings. It is a new kind of nature writing — one that crosses fiction with science writing and puts gender politics at the center of the landscape.

What follows is a Q+A with Abi about her book. Don't forget to mark your calendars for March 19, and if you're a bookseller, librarian, or interested in reviewing the book for a media outlet, you may request a review copy.

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Posted by Eric Obenauf on 10 December, 2018 1 comment |
The Removals—Trailer #2

We are beyond excited to share with you the second trailer for our second feature film production, The Removals!

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Posted by Eric Obenauf on 29 February, 2016 0 comments |
Jana Beňová: "A Revolution Against Normality!"

We are thrilled to announce that we have signed a two-book deal with Slovak writer, Jana Beňová! Despite having her work translated extensively throughout Europe, her two novels with Two Dollar Radio will mark her English-language debut. It will also mark the first time that we will have ever published a work in translation.

Jana Benova, author of Seeing People Off and Honeymoon (Two Dollar Radio)

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Posted by Eric Obenauf on 18 February, 2016 1 comment |

Hi there!

Two Dollar Radio is a family-run outfit founded in 2005 with the mission to reaffirm the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry. We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore. Check out the ABOUT US section to read more...

Radio Waves daily blog by Two Dollar Radio indie book publisher

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