Shelter Is Necessary for Existence (Forthcoming)

"Iijima is both a poet and a theorist of our frightening yet fascinating contemporary condition”
—Elvia Wilk, author of Death by Landscape

Unsettling and charged, Shelter Is Necessary for Existence is equal parts psychological thriller and social satire that explores the disquieting qualities of a privileged family’s mundane cultural assumptions.

Sue, her husband, Luke, and their children, Caroline and Wheatley, present as a picture-perfect family living the American dream of ascendancy and affluence in their Brooklyn neighborhood. They purchase a brownstone at auction on a coveted tree-lined street with the intention of renovating it and moving in. At once avoidant and consumed by the renovation, Sue is torn between her aspirations to have what those around her seem to possess—from her therapist, Diana, to her alluring, insufferable neighbor Chantal—and her urge to escape the grip of their influences. Sue’s obsession and paranoia grow while the neighborhood becomes a hotbed of pulsating antagonisms.

It is only after moving in that Sue becomes aware of the mysterious deaths of the brownstone’s former residents, a mother and daughter whose voices echo in the silence. The house begins manifesting disturbing signs, such as wounds that bleed, just as Caroline and Wheatley exhibit their own troubling symptoms. Sue’s nightmares proliferate and a vacuous stupor overcomes the family as they struggle to settle into the rhythms of life in what should be their dream home. When information arises that threatens to devastate her family, Sue must finally confront the explosive charge of personal and social reality once laid bare.

With exacting psychological detail and a trenchant atmosphere, Shelter Is Necessary for Existence is a darkly comic and piercing social critique that examines the troubling territory of awareness, the lengths some go to avoid it, and what must be confronted for change to occur.

Praise for Brenda Iijima's Presence:
“Here is a completely unique, genre-defying, anti-apocalypse story. It is sprawling in scope, pushing the limits of language and narrative to imagine futures beyond our wildest dreams. Iijima is both a poet and a theorist of our frightening yet fascinating contemporary condition—and she does justice to our capacity to change and discover new ways of being in the world.”
—Elvia Wilk, author of Death by Landscape

“Stories of a devastated multiverse, told across scales and spaces. Presence is a speculative novel soaked in ecological theory and full of the ‘amphibious dayglow mushrooming creatureliness’ that makes it fizz.”
—Daisy Hildyard, author of The Second Body

“A brainy and marvelous meditation on time and trauma, Presence tells the story of an alien invasion in which the others in our midst are not from another planet but from another time. Just as these beings are caught between temporal zones, Brenda Iijima’s vibrant novel also lives within multiple crossings and layers, emerging from the interstices of ecopoetics, performance art, philosophy, geological science, and social justice to boldly make contact with pasts, presents, and futures both familiar and imagined. A breathtakingly epic project.”
—Megan Milks, author of Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body

Brenda Iijima is the author of Presence published by Georgia Review Books in 2024. She is also the author of numerous volumes of poetry. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and runs a small poetry press.

Visit the author page for Brenda Iijima.

Coming soon!

CREDITS:
Cover design: Eric Obenauf.
Cover photo: "Wall Mirror," from The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash; "a red sign on the wall," from Andrey K on Unsplash.
Author photograph: Courtesy of the author.

PUBLICATION INFO:
TERRITORY: U.S. & Canada
FORMAT: Paperback Original (1st printing, gatefold)
LIST PRICE: $18.95
PAGES: 300
PRINT ISBN: 9781953387592
DIGITAL ISBN: 9781953387608
PUB DATE: September 15, 2026
SIZE: 5.5" x 7.5"