Nightbitch cover

An Unexpected Combo: Canine Identity and Motherhood

It’s not every day you come across a novel like Nightbitch. Out this past summer from contributor Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch cleverly uses the fantasy genre to challenge long-held societal norms. The story centers on a new mother who has sidelined her career to raise her newborn. In the child’s second year, she begins to feel that she is actually a dog: dark hair grows on the back of her neck and her canine teeth appear sharper. When she mentions this to her husband, who travels for business often, he doesn’t think anything of it. As her canine feelings intensify, the mother heads to the library in search of cure. There, she discovers A Field Guide to Magical Women: A Mythical Ethnography and a curious group of mothers who have secrets of their own. Both lead her down an unexpected path…

Nightbitch bravely trailblazes a new path – the confluence of an alter-canine-identity and questions about motherhood. Dark, humorous, and creative, Nightbitch was one of July’s most anticipated books.

“Rather than childbirth twisted into hideous shapes by the male artistic eye, in this book art crawls out of motherhood with an exhausted, sweating, blood-strewn, but joyous howl. . . Creativity and motherhood don’t need to be at each other’s throats, like vampires or zombies. In Nightbitch they feed in the same night on the same wild prey.”

The Boston Globe

Nightbitch is available from Doubleday and you can find purchase information here. The novel has been optioned for film by Annapurna Pictures with Amy Adams set to star.

Rachel’s essay “I Was the Mennonite Kid” was featured in Issue 4. Check out her website and Twitter to learn more about her work and find her upcoming events. Congratulations, Rachel!

Contributor Update, Kelli Russell Agodon

Join Superstition Review in congratulating past contributor, Kelli Russell Agodon, on her forthcoming book, Dialogues with Rising Tides, out April 27th. Kelli, in this poetry collection, “facilitates a humane and honest conversation with the forces that threaten to take us under. The anxieties and heartbreaks of life―including environmental collapse, cruel politics, and the persistent specter of suicide―are met with emotional vulnerability and darkly sparkling humor. Dialogues with Rising Tides passionately exclaims that even in the midst of great difficulty, radiant wonders are illuminated at every turn.”

“Kelli Russell Agodon’s poems in Dialogues with Rising Tides, her strongest book to date, navigate everyday anxieties and dramatic questions of life-or-death with equal doses of pathos and humor, reminding us that our choices in a world of chaos add up to something, reminding us of the responsibility to ‘care for our ghosts.’ Her interior world is lined with fragments of family tragedy while her outer world confounds her, the rising tides of environmental collapse, not a metaphor but a reality. Her oceanic views of the world teeter on the edge of a cocktail or a gunshot. Funny, sad, and a perfect read for unsettling times.”

Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of Field Guide to the End of the World

To pre-order your copy of Dialogues with Rising Tides click here. Also, be sure to check out Kelli’s website and Twitter as well as her past work in Issue 3.

Contributor Update, Thomas Gresham

Join us in congratulating past Superstition Review contributor Thomas “Tex” Gresham on the release of his experimental collection, Heck, Texas. Tex is a screenwriter and fiction author and is currently studying screenwriting at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. The book is a play on the stereotypical disreputable Texas town and lies somewhere between the real and imaginary. The book was released on September 4th and is available at Barnes&Noble, Bookshop, and Amazon.

The back of Heck, Texas reads: “Somewhere deep in East Texas, the hunt is on, fueled by self-hate, cough syrup, white whales, massive zits, freakshows, madness, dead pets, lost children, killer coffee, rats, Satan, good times, bad people, vomit, dementia, diarrhea, sex, and clowns. Your favorite brand of disease is back in stock. Welcome to Heck, Texas.”

Congratulations, Tex!

Stay up-to-date with Tex by visiting his website here or his Twitter here. Be sure to also take a look at his short story for Issue 21 here.