Contributer Update: Terese Svoboda

Available February 1
Winner of the Juniper Prize for Fiction
Available March 1

We at Superstition Review are pleased to congratulate previous contributor Terese Svoboda on her upcoming release of two novels!

In Roxy and Coco, the namesake sisters are two glamorous harpies—mythical bird women—attempting to outrun extinction and fix the planet by preventing child abuse, one child at a time. Navigating urgent social work with abusive parents, personal attractions with complicated suspicions, curious homicides and surprise interventions, Roxy and Coco is a mythical reimagining with the soul of modern woes and foes, and the thrill of modern superheroes. 

Winner of the Juniper Prize, The Long Swim is a collection of cynical, irreverent, and formally daring short stories. From a runaway circus lion that haunts a small town where two lovers risk more than their respective marriages, to a junket to Cuba and an ambassador’s dalliance with a niece hide dark secrets and political revolution. Inventive, dark, and absurd, these stories capture Svoboda’s clear-eyed, wry angle on the world: a place of violence and uncertainty but also wild beauty, adventure, and love both lasting and ephemeral. Globe-trotting, barbed, nuanced, and deeply human, The Long Swim will speak to fans of Lauren Groff, Helen DeWitt, George Saunders, and Amy Hempel.

Both novels have already received enthusiastic reviews:

“There are many mythic reimaginings out there, but I can guarantee you that Roxy and Coco is unlike anything you’ve read—Terese Svoboda’s harpies are winged avengers, a celestial task force who save kids who have been abused by their terrestrial protectors.” 

—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! and Sleep Donation

“Existing at the sweet spot between Rachel Ingalls’ Mrs. Caliban, Donald Barthelme’s Snow White, and James Purdy’s I Am Elijah ThrushRoxy and Coco plucks a creature out of myth to bring it into our present—and does so in a way that keeps a steady eye on the flaws of our own weird moment. Rarely has fantastic fiction managed to say so much so deftly about the real while still offering a terrific, strange and highly original read.”

—Brian Evenson, author of Last Days and Song for the Unraveling of the World

“Terese Svoboda is a master of the dire and the blackly comic and a virtuoso of economy and voice, and The Long Swim features the jaunty and the wounded who in extremis maintain their wit and lacerating self-awareness.”

—Jim Shepard, author of The Book of Aron and Like You’d Understand, Anyway

“One of those writers you would be tempted 
to read regardless of the setting or the period 
or the plot or even the genre.”

—Bloomsbury Review

Terese Svoboda is the author of over twenty books, including fiction, poetry, biography, translation, and memoir, including the recent novel, Dog on Fire (2023). Her many honors include a Guggenheim fellowship, the Bobst Prize in fiction, the Iowa Poetry Prize, An NEH translation grant, The Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, a Jerome Foundation grant, the O. Henry Award for the short story, and a Pushcart Prize for the essay.

You can read her story in Superstition Review Issue 7 here. You can read her interview for s[r] here. She has also published guest posts on our blog. Her work can be found in its entirety on her website.

A photo of Chauna Craig

Chauna Craig’s Wings & Other Things


Congratulations to Chauna Craig for her new short story collection Wings & Other Things, published by Press 53. While her characters differ in terms of circumstance, each story centers around women trying to fly: a widow searching for her past self, a stranded artist accepting a ride from a stranger, lovers sequestered in a cornfield. Her collection is both a migration and a transformation, filled with unusual, eye-catching phrases. Railroad tracks morph into an “infinite number line,” and a lightning bolt becomes a “tentacle of the unseen.” Craig captures longing, loss, and freedom as she tells the women’s stories.

The women in these stories are certainly willing to pay to get where they need to go—whether it’s out of bad relationships or into new formed lives. These stories are full of hard-won wisdom, sharp insights, and generous compassion. Her characters suffer from and bear up under ordinary though devastating failures and disappointments, but through force of will, wit, and wonder they persevere and often prevail.

Kerry Neville, author of remember to forget me

Chauna Craig grew up in Montana. Her work has appeared in Jellyfish Review, Blue Fifth Review, and elsewhere. To learn more about her, visit her website.

In small-town, rural, or city life, these women, in perfectly drawn revelatory moments, show us what we settle for and how we are haunted by what could’ve been. These stories and the characters in them disquiet and rivet, demanding our attention and inviting our reflection on how one reconciles the desire for escape with the need to stay put. Subtle and artful in its choreography of miscommunications and conflicting desires, this is an intelligent and absorbing collection. 

donna miscolta, author of Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories

Visit Press 53 to purchase Wings & Other Things.

A photo of Bojan Louis.

Bojan Louis’s Sinking Bell: Stories


Winner of an American Book Award for his poetry collection Currents, Bojan Louis is making his fiction debut with Sinking Bell: Stories. Published by Graywolf Press, Sinking Bell: Stories is a collection that centers on collisions of love, cultures, and racism. All of Louis’s stories take place in or near Flagstaff, Arizona, and they include stunning portrayals of all kinds of people—from metalheads to construction works—struggling to live their complicated lives.

Louis’s prose carries his poetic sensibility with a decided rhythm and resonant detail, and the narrators achingly convey their outsider status. The result is immersive and powerful.

publishers weekly

Bojan Louis is Diné of the Naakai dine’é, born for the Áshííhí. His debut novel Currents received an American Book Award in 2018. His work has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, Yellow Medicine Review, and elsewhere. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Arizona. To learn more about him, visit his website.

Sinking Bell doesn’t shy away from the dim corners of life. . . . You’re going to want to take your time with this one, and then you’re going to want to press it into the hands of all your best people.

Kelli Jo Ford, author of crooked hallelujah

To purchase Sinking Bell: Stories, go here.

An interview with Bojan Louis—”Auditory Hallucinations”—appeared in Issue 20 of Superstition Review.

Picture of Jen Michalski

Jen Michalski’s The Company of Strangers


Congratulations to Jen Michalski for her new short story collection The Company of Strangers, coming in January 2023. Published by Braddock Avenue Books, The Company of Strangers follows members of Generation X, who are often queer and always searching for meaning and happiness in their lives. Michalski examines the themes of eroding community and family in a variety of ways: from a gay man suddenly confronted with parenthood to a lesbian having an affair with her brother’s wife.

The Company of Strangers is perfect for those searching for messy characters who are confused about what kind of lives they’ve lived and looking for ways to make meaning in them.

Fueled by love, longing, and regret, these captivating stories drop us into the lives of people we come to care deeply about. These are rich, wild, surprising romps of stories with endings that wow. What an immense pleasure to be in the company of these strangers, thanks to Jen Michalski’s brilliant storytelling.

Kathy Anderson, author of Bull and Other Stories

Jen Michalski’s work includes The Tide King, The Summer She Was Underwater, Close Encounters, and others. To learn more about her, visit her website.

A kaleidoscopic and candid exploration of the gritty corners of our desires and all that is left unsaid. By turns irreverent and deeply heartbreaking, Michalski masterfully constructs a collage of sexuality, belonging, and a search for what is possible atop strip malls, parking lots, and bowling alleys. Reminiscent, in some ways, of the genre-pushing work of Zach Doss, Etgar Keret, and Kim Chinquee, Michalski unequivocally carves out a space that is all her own—daring, deeply human, and often gut-wrenching.

Sequoia nagamatsu, author of how high we go in the dark

To preorder The Company of Strangers, go here.

Jen Michalski’s short story “Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?” appeared in Issue 27 of Superstition Review.

The book cover for "It Falls Gently All Around"

It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories


Congratulations to Ramona Reeves for the upcoming release of her debut book It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Reeves’ collection of eleven short stories feature Babbie and Donnie, an ex-call girl and ex-trucker looking to reforge themselves. Reeves’ book focuses on themes of race and class within the context of Mobile, Alabama, the same town Reeves herself grew up in.

The Drue Heinz Literature Prize is awarded to authors of short fiction. Winners have their books published by the University of Pittsburgh Press to make their writing available to the world. Past judges have included Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, and Raymond Carver.

These big-hearted stories offer a kaleidoscopic vision of Mobile, Alabama, a place marked by a tangled history and no less tangled present. With insight, humor, and tenderness, Ramona Reeves renders lives as notable for their frailties and bruises as they are for their grace and grit. Like the work of Sherwood Anderson or Elizabeth Strout, these linked stories take us deep inside a community, even as they plumb the solitary, fiercely particular depths of inner life.

Elizabeth Graver, Drue Heinz Literature Prize guest judge and author of The End of the Point

Ramona Reeves’ writing has appeared in The Southampton Review, Pembroke, Bayou Magazine, New South, and elsewhere. Find out more about Reeves through her website.

Ramona Reeves has fully brought to life a cast of flawed, breaking people with bravery and resilience to spare. The book is a triumph of wise and compassionate storytelling.

kevin mcilvoy, author of one kind favor

To pre-order It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories, you can go to the University of Pittsburgh Press’s website, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.

Ramona Reeves’ nonfiction piece “Hope Chest” appeared in Issue 20 of Superstition Review. Read it here.

A photo of Chelsea T. Hicks' 2022 book A Calm and Normal Heart.

Join Labriola Center Book Club: Chelsea T. Hicks’ A Calm & Normal Heart

The cover of Chelsea T. Hick's 2022 book A Calm and Normal Heart.
A Calm & Normal Heart (Unnamed Press, 2022)

A Calm & Normal Heart is Chelsea T. Hicks’ first book, a collection of short stories depicting the complicated desires of young Native people. Some stories, like “Tsexope,” take place in our modern world, blending history with current culture; others, like “A Fresh Start,” dive into the past. Each story is united by its incorporation of poems in Wazhazhe ie, the Osage language.

Hicks is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation. She currently lives in Oklahoma, where she offers creative writing workshops to writers using Indigenous languages. Her writing has appeared in LA Review of Books, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, the Believer, The Audacity, Yellow Medicine Review, Indian Country Today, and elsewhere.

Register here to join the Labriola Center Book Club’s discussion of A Calm & Normal Heart. This event is free and takes place online from 10am – 12pm on Sunday, August 28. The Labriola National American Indian Data Center focuses on both current and historical Indigenous authors across the globe.

Contributor Update, Erin McGraw: Joy

Image of Joy: And 52 Other Very Short Stories

Today we are happy to announce the news of past contributor Erin McGraw! Her newest book, a collection titled “Joy: and 52 other very short stories”, was just published this month by Counterpoint Press. The stories follow beautifully flawed characters as they experience daily life and the pain, confusion and tension that comes with. Chauna Craig, another past contributor, puts it best in a book review for New York Journal of Books, “McGraw makes us love [the characters] for all their human flaws and fragile hopes.”

S[r]’s interview with Erin from Issue 3 can be found here, more information on the collection can be found here.

Chauna’s review can be found here, and her nonfiction piece for Issue 14 can be found here.

Congratulations, Erin!

Contributor Update, Sherrie Flick: New Collection of Short Stories “Thank Your Lucky Stars”

Thank Your Lucky Stars coverToday we are proud to announce the upcoming release of Sherrie Flick’s newest short story collection titled Thank Your Lucky Stars. The collection is available for pre-order at UPNE. Congratulations, Sherrie!

Not Talking About Sage” by Sherrie Flick can be read in Issue 10 of Superstition Review.