Blurred Boundaries Award Winner

Tue 3 Sep 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover Good news for Anya Johanna DeNiro whose short novel OKPsyche has been chosen as the winner of the Blurred Boundaries Award at this year’s Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards. You can read more about the awards here and here are the rest of this year’s winners:

FANTASY

Tashan Mehta, Mad Sisters of Esi (HarperCollins India)

SCIENCE FICTION

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chaingang All-Stars (Pantheon / Harvill Secker)

NOVELLA

Indra Das, The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar (Subterranean Press)

SHORT FICTION

Kristina Ten, Approved Methods of Love Divination in the First-Rate City of Dushagorod (Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine)


Anya in New York

Thu 2 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Anya Johanna DeNiro will be in New York next week for two readings from her novel OKPsyche, both of which are with top notch readers. John Wiswell will be reading from his debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In, on Wednesday at the KGB Bar Fantastic Fiction Series and then on Thursday Anya will be in conversation with Astoria Bookshops bookseller and author Nino Cipri. Don’t miss these!

Wed. 5/8, 7 p.m. KGB Bar, New York, NY, with John Wiswell
Thu. 5/9, 7 p.m. Astoria Bookshop, Queens, NY, with Nino Cipri

Astoria Bookshop logo


Anya DeNiro: Madison, Marshall, & NYC

Thu 14 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover Anya Johanna DeNiro has some new readings lined up this spring for her book OKPsyche. We also found recently that it is a finalist in the Blurred Boundaries (how great!) category of  The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards.

Here are the readings and one more may be added in New York on Friday 5/10:

3/25, 6 p.m. A Room of One’s Own, 2717 Atwood Ave., Madison, WI
4/11, 8 p.m. Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, MN
5/8, 7 p.m. KGB Bar, New York, NY


Locus 2023 Recommended Reading List

Thu 1 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

In 2023 we (only) published four books and I’m happy to see three of them are on the Locus Recommended Reading list. The one title missing is Ayize Jama-Everett’s series capper Heroes of an Unknown World—at least The Last Count of Monte Cristo, his great Afrofuturist graphic novel, is listed.

As ever, congratulations to everyone whose work made the list! Do I think more of the list makers should read LCRW? Well of course! How could they miss our monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, semiannual, dammit, annual issue from last year? (I mean, maybe they all read it and didn’t enjoy any of the stories, but, come now, how likely is that?)

The three titles, which if you are reading this you may be familiar with, that did make the list are:

Kij Johnson, The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories

Sarah Pinsker, Lost Places: Stories & the original story novelette first publisher there, “Science Facts!”

Anya Johanna DeNiro, OKPsyche


Seattle Picks: LGBTQIA+ Fiction 2023

Fri 26 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

I spy with my little eye* Anya Johanna DeNiro‘s OKPsyche on the Seattle Public Library Picks for the best LGBTQIA+ Fiction 2023. There are 33 titles there, it would make a great reading list.

* DuckDuckGo


DeNiro on Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans

Wed 3 Jan 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche coverSomething good to start the new year with: Anya joins Mary Anne Mohanraj and Benjamin Rosenbaum on Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans for a conversation about her novel, OKPsyche. The conversation roves all over: on genre, gender, writing, history, poetry, and more — not to be missed.


Top 5 Bestsellers 2023

Tue 19 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Top 5 shipped from distroHere are our top 5 bestsellers so far this year by numbers shipped from our distributor:

  1. Sarah Pinsker, Lost Places
  2. Nathan Ballingrud, North American Lake Monsters
  3. Kij Johnson, The Privilege of the Happy Ending
  4. Anya Johanna DeNiro, OKPsyche
  5. Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

In 2023 we published the Liminals series capper from Ayize Jama-Everett, Heroes from Another World. Ayize had an amazing year: he published 3 books (including a great Afrofuturistic graphic novel The Last Count of Monte Cristo) and put out a documentary, A Table of Our Own: “an extraordinary and thought-provoking documentary that delves into the rich tapestry of the African-American experience, exploring the intersection of psychedelic substance use, spirituality and the pursuit of social justice.”

We followed Ayize’s novel with Sarah Pinsker’s second collection which was included in Slate’s Best Books of the Year.

Then came Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche — I think the review I enjoyed most was Jake Casella Brookins in Locus which started off, “I was completely unprepared for how powerful Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche is” and leapt off into the kind of review that I alwayshope to read of a book I love.

Our final book of the year was Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending. 10 years in the making, it’s a weird and wide-ranging collection and was recently reviewed in the Washington Post by Michael Dirda.

We’re shipping books & zines from our warehouse and Book Moon daily. Orders welcome!

An Uneasy Stage

Wed 8 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Happy to note that Kirkus just posted a review of Anya’s OKPsyche and it will be in their December 1st issue. Here’s how it begins:

An unnamed trans woman is at an uneasy stage in her metamorphosis. She has finally cast off the male persona that never fit her, but she has yet to become the woman she dreams of being. Part of her discomfort is physical—she does not have the body she wants—but much of it is social and emotional. She knows that most strangers do not see her for what she is. Her ex-wife is still adjusting to what is, for her, a surprising new reality. Her mother deadnames her. And, most importantly, her young son is shutting her out. DeNiro’s significant achievement here is making palpable the excruciating, inescapable self-consciousness of her main character. Her decision to narrate in the second person is a bold one; this move will help some readers immerse themselves in the story, but it will just as likely alienate others.


OKPsyche in Locus

Tue 7 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

The new issue of Locus has a roundtable on short fiction with Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Usman T. Malik and an interview with superstar Carmen Maria Machado, both of which I’m looking forward to seeing when my print issue arrives. But the first thing I read in the pdf was Jake Casella Brookins’s review of Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche. I can’t reprint the whole thing but it is worth reading before and after you read the book. It starts off:

I was completely unprepared for how powerful Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche is. Told in second person by a carefully unnamed narrator, the novel blends fantasy, science fiction, and absurdism; it’s also a very grounded and personal work. The narrator, a trans woman trying to reconnect with her young son, trying to find friendship and love in a hostile world, is aided by magical figures and contraptions, but it’s her voice that stands out. This is absolutely brilliant writing: raw and unflinching in how it portrays transphobia and self-doubt, sweeping and dynamic in its use of language and imagery.

And all I can say is that I am so glad the reviewer read the same book I did and hope many people will pick up the book and see how strong it is.


The Real Challenge

Thu 2 Nov 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Anya Johanna DeNiro contributed a short recommendation to Poets & Writers magazine for what to do as a writer when stuck or when the mind is lodged somewhere not useful. Read it here:

Whenever I get stuck I don’t go to one single thing to unlodge myself. . . .


Local Paper Goodness

Fri 20 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

I was reading our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, at first breakfast with our kid (me: tea; toast: marmite; toast: peanut butter & banana) this morning & was delighted to see a review of Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending — which Kij launches on Tuesday at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas, and then next week, 10/26-29, she’ll be a Guest of Honor at this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City, MO. I don’t know how Steve Pfarrer keeps up, he also wrote today’s above-the-fold story on Smith College Museum of Art’s new show, Sum of its Parts.

I was even more delighted when I followed the jump to read the rest of the review and found he had also reviewed Anya Johanna DeNiro’s “dreamlike, speculative novel” OKPsyche. I hope wherever you’re reading you have a decent local paper. If not, I highly recommend our paper which I finished reading when I went back for second breakfast with Kelly (porridge with miso and fresh tomato).

Review in the local paper! Titled "Fantasy fiction from Small Beer Press: The Privilege of the Happy Ending By Kij Johnson Small Beer Press Fantasy writer Kij Johnson has a long list of awards and award nominations to her name, from Nebula and Hugo Awards — two of the premiere prizes for fantasy and science fiction writing — to World Fantasy Awards. She and her publisher also have a good sense of humor: Her newest collection of work, “The Privilege of the Happy Ending,” includes the subtitle “Small, Medium & Large Stories.” (Many of the pieces have previously been published separately.) Published by Small Beer Press of Easthampton, “Privilege” indeed offers work of varying length, from vignettes of just a few pages to a novella-length tale, “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe,” which won a World Fantasy Award; NPR voted it one of the best books of 2016.

Review of OKPsyche in our local paper, yay! The unnamed narrator of “OKPsyche,” a dreamlike, speculative novel by Anya Johanna DeNiro, lives in or around Minneapolis in a not-too-distant future in which climate change and economic inequality have brought increasing ugliness and violence to the country. “The street is mostly empty except for surplus-green tents in the greenway and armed guards in front of the luxury towers. The creative class needs tactical teams to protect them from people who are not them.” But the heart of this short novel, published by Small Beer Press, is about the narrator’s journey as a trans woman, someone who’s trying to come to terms with the pain of her closeted past even as she struggles to find her way in a fragile, uncertain present. Part of that present is the fallout from the narrator’s transition: Her ex-wife and 11-year-old son, Aaron, now live in another Midwestern state, and the narrator is desperate to reconnect with Aaron...


Twin Cities Book Fest

Thu 12 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

This weekend in Minnesota the Twin Cities are celebrating everything bookish with Rain Taxi’s annual Book Fest and you can catch both Anya Johanna DeNiro, author of OKPsyche, and Kij Johnson, author of The Privilege of the Happy Ending on a panel there on Saturday morning at 11 a.m.

Kij launches her book in 10 days time at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, KS, but Magers & Quinn should have some early copies tomorrow and both she and Anya will be available to sign their new books.


Literary, Trans, and Science Fictional Spaces

Fri 22 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Anya's picture of the book from BlueskyAs Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche moves out into the world I’m delighted to have seen a couple of reviews pop up — we’re publishing four books this year so getting review space against those behemoths who publish 12 or 15 books a year/month/day in September is an enjoyable achievement and it will be fun to see what other kind of literary, trans, and science fictional spaces this transtastic little novel will be written up in.

Nina MacLaughlin wrote about the book for the Boston Globe:

“An exploration of ensoulment and embodiment, and the search for both, told by a trans woman in lush sink-into-it prose. . . . In our world of violence and fires and floods, of hatred born of fear, of the regular messy tasks of living, DeNiro writes of what it is to locate, again and again, the deepest part inside oneself, with bravery, humility, and grace.”

and E.C. Barrett has reviewed it in Strange Horizons and it is a treat to see the book read so closely.

“. . . the second-person telling lets the reader in on a conversation this character is having with herself as she creates within herself the understanding that she needs: a sort of literary camera obscura that offers glimpses of how she pieces her historically disparate selves together.”


Love to Open Up a Newsletter/Newspaper

Fri 8 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

. . . and see OKPsyche. First this morning in the Boston Globe Nina MacLaughlin included a lovely write up of Anya’s novel and then in this week’s Consortium Communiqué newsletter, there was Sam Edge’s lovely write up!

1) Boston Globe:
In Anya Johanna DeNiro’s slim and shining new novel, “OKPsyche,” published by Small Beer Press, based in Western Mass and run by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, is an exploration of ensoulment and embodiment, and the search for both, told by a trans woman in lush sink-into-it prose. Old snow takes on the look of “the coat of a cocker spaniel who needs a bath.” And “time compresses into apple seeds.” DeNiro, a trans author based in Minnesota, writes with vulnerability and force, looking at fear and shame, other people’s and the narrator’s own, looking at courage, at trans parenthood and love-finding, at the way reality and the people in it shift and bend, moving forward and backward at once. “Venus is clearly cis (myrtle, rose, apple, poppy). Venus is vengeful, unknowable (dove, sparrow, swan, hare, goat, ram) . . . Venus is able to make it up as she goes along.” In our world of violence and fires and floods, of hatred born of fear, of the regular messy tasks of living, DeNiro writes of what it is to locate, again and again, the deepest part inside oneself, with bravery, humility, and grace.

2) Consortium Communiqué, Sam Edge, Epilogue Books of Chapel Hill, NC:
“An allegorical and lyrical short novel about a transgender woman struggling to belong in a near future populated by emotional support robots and a ceaseless slew of environmental disasters.”


One Week to OKPsyche

Thu 7 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Come out Twin Cities — or, order your signed/personalized copy from Moon Palace:

One week tonight: Anya Johanna DeNiro launches her new novel, OKPsyche

9/14/23 6 p.m.

Moon Palace Books (FB)
3032 Minnehaha Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55406


Anya, Prairie Lights, 10/27

Fri 25 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover - click to view full sizeWe’ve just confirmed another event for Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche this one in October at the justifiably famed and lovely Prairie Lights in Iowa City.

How great is the reading series? Tonight’s reading is kind of a stunner: National Book Award finalist Jamel Brinkley reading from his new short story collection, Witness, and then in conversation with Carmen Maria Machado. Check out the rest here.

More details to come as we get closer but for now set your landyacht’s autodrive calendar to Iowa City for 7 p.m., October 27th, and plan on arriving in time to browse those shelves.


Starred Booklist Review

Mon 14 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover - click to view full sizeAnya Johanna DeNiro’s forthcoming OKPsyche is a short but powerful novel that just garnered a starred review from Booklist:

“DeNiro’s novel is a lyrical, emotionally powerful story about what it means to try and find a place for yourself in the midst of a hurricane of climate disaster, violence, and fear. It’s a story told through weird, ghostly, haunting fantasy. Fans of enigmatic speculative fiction like Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield (2022), will enjoy this tale of queer parenthood, of the reality of the sharp fear of trans lives, and of complicated self-discovery.”

Booklist Review of the Day button


OKPsyche Launch: 9/14

Thu 22 Jun 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Delighted to say we’ve set up a launch reading for Anya Johanna DeNiro and her short novel OKPsyche at Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis, MN on Thursday, September 14, at 7 p.m.

OKPsyche cover - click to view full size


Brilliant Reds and Greens and Purples

Wed 10 May 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover - click to view full sizeWe received a lovely note from Isaac Fellman, author of Dead Collections, on Anya Johanna DeNiro’s forthcoming short novel OKPsyche:

“OKPsyche is a spectacular novel, like a shard of stained glass in brilliant reds and greens and purples. DeNiro shows us the impossible and the possible with equal honesty. The book is a chronicle of hope and hurt and freedom, suffused with anxiety and grace, and told in prose that just won’t quit. It’s major. You’ll remember where you were when you read it.”


Heartfelt and Uncanny

Thu 4 May 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover Delighted to say report that we received a fabulous quote for Anya DeNiro’s forthcoming OKPsyche from Morgan M. Page, screenwriter of Framing Agnes:

“Tense and funny, heartfelt and uncanny, Anya Johanna DeNiro takes us on an hallucinogenic tour through the mind of a woman on the edge. Guided by strange angels or losing touch with reality — either way, it’s happening to you!”

And then I saw this lovely early review on Edelweiss from a bookseller, Sam Edge at Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill:

“An allegorical and lyrical short novel about a transgender woman struggling to belong in a near future populated by emotional support robots and a ceaseless slew of environmental disasters. DeNiro writes with a complexity that reflects the internal emotional struggles of her unnamed protagonist as she fights for happiness and a better relationship with her young son. A uniquely told and refreshingly weird story of self-realization and the courage it takes to love.”