"In the emotive, deeply loving, and sometimes erotic pages of Tara Isabel Zambrano's collection Ruined a Little when We Are Born, we meet a talking orgasm with star dust in her edges, a girl who grows extra hands when her mother dies, a skinny boy who makes love to the Devil, thirsty ghosts. In these stories, whole lives, marriages, births, deaths, and afterlifes unfold in the words and blank spaces of just a few pages. The stories build on one another - sensory, sensual, pulsing with life and color -- leaving the reader breathless and starstruck by the wildly inventive twists of Zambrano's vibrant prose." –Alex DiFrancesco, author of Transmutation

“BEFORE THE MANGO RIPENS is one of those rare novels that seems to capture the whole world between its covers. Afabwaje Kurian choreographs and cross-cuts among so many elements of language and beliefs, cultures and histories, and she does so on so many scales—from the individual to the familial, the communal to the national, and to the marvelously cosmic as well—and she does all that with such clear-eyed artfulness, elegance, and seriousness, that no summary or paraphrase can approach an adequate description of its riches. Just turn to page one and start reading."— Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize Award winning author of TINKERS

“The people in these stories need Meg Pokrass. Their lives are tough but her imagination is the fire-lasso that can save them, save us.” –Bob Hicok, author of Elegy Owed and Sex & Love

Celebrate Lindsey’s newest novel, The Avian Hourglass with her this fall! With seven events scheduled throughout the Midwest (and hopefully a couple more to come!), there are many opportunities to meet Lindsey, discuss her book, ask her questions, and get your signed copy. Check out her website for more details about each event!

"The Avian Hourglass is splendidly odd and arresting. Drager establishes her themes of loss and duplication and catastrophe and estrangement and connection and sends them orbiting perfectly around each other, round after round, in an orrery of grieving and wonder."—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations and The Illumination

We’re so honored that Dzanc House at Dzanc Books is one of the recipients of the AAACF Arts & Culture Grant AND the AAACF EmpowerMENt Grant!

“William Gay is richly gifted: a seemingly effortless storyteller…a writer of prose that’s fiercely wrought, pungent in detail yet poetic in the most welcome sense.” -The New York Times Book Review

Lindsey Drager, the author of four wonderful Dzanc novels (The Sorrow Proper, 2015; The Lost Daughter Collective, 2017; The Archive of Alternate Endings, 2019; and The Avian Hourglass, 2024), sat down with designer Steven Seighman in an interview for Spine magazine about her forthcoming novel, The Avian Hourglass.

We’re excited to announce that Tara Isabel Zambrano’s Ruined a Little When We Are Born will be available as an audiobook! Announced on June 24th, audio rights for Ruined a Little When We Are Born were sold to Kim Budnick at Tantor Media.

Lance Olsen returns to Between the Covers to discuss his two new books, his uncategorizable multiverse fiction Absolute Away, and his new collection of philosophical essays and interviews on writing Shrapnel:Contemplations.

“Plainspoken protest stories that balance head and heart in their attempts to evoke empathy… Ehtesham-Zadeh’s admiration and indignation for the women of Iran always shine through.” –Kirkus Reviews

"In Urabá, Columbia, the banana trade is an extremely violent and unsettling history, one that Grostephan resists sugarcoating. Unlike an actual banana, there is nothing banal or mild about The Banana Wars. Told from several compelling perspectives, this novel is blistering, unflinching, and hard to put down."—Jen Beagin, author of Big Swiss and Vacuum in the Dark

“A surreal story bridges historical trauma with existential nightmares. ... Olsen depicts the horrors of history and more speculative anxieties with equal power. Impossible to classify, this novel raises big questions about memory and identity.” –Kirkus Reviews

Mom Egg Review released the April edition of their monthly online column, MER Bookshelf, and three Dzanc titles made the cut!

“Matthew Baker’s writing can only be described in the many yets it creates: humorous yet disturbing, gripping yet patient, timely yet timeless. In The Sentence, Baker offers a precise, visionary story of survival and community told in the form of a sentence diagram. On its surface a dystopian cautionary tale, this novella is a startling reflection on language, trust, and desperation in the face of fascism. This is Baker’s most exciting work yet.”— Isle McElroy

“Powerful… Unigwe’s textured imagery and rich, lyrical prose make this a welcome addition to Nigerian feminist literature.” ––Publisher’s Weekly

We’re so honored that Dzanc Books is one of the recipients of the MACC Relief Grant! Thanks so much to our founders, our staff, our brilliant authors, and our wonderful community. Nothing would be possible without you.

"In this short e-pistolary novel, a seasoned American author, Giorgio, is caught between reality and fantasy in pursuing his infatuation with an Italian beauty. ... The work is lifted by its wry charm and creepy cleverness." ––Kirkus Reviews

A small Dzanc mystery: the original print run of Stephen Graham Jones’s brilliant Not for Nothing was printed without chapter nine. Subsequent reprints have corrected this error, but if you have one of the originals, you can find the entire text of Chapter 9 below.

We are excited to announce our featured mentor of the week: Shya Scanlon! Shya Scanlon is the author of the novel The Guild of Saint Cooper and the poetry collection In This Alone Impulse. He received his MFA from Brown University. His essays and short fiction have appeared in Lit Hub, Guernica, The Literary Review, The Mississippi Review, The Believer, The Rupture, Hobart, and elsewhere.