We are so very excited to begin reading submissions for the inaugural, 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize for small presses in the United States and Canada.
In the meantime, three of our 2022 judges—Michelle Malonzo, Ben Fountain, and me, Lori Feathers—are delighted to share some of our favorite small press reads from 2021.
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Dreaming of You by Melissa Lozada-Olivia
(Astra House)
The ultimate pop-rock opera. It’s a poetry collection, a memoir, and a song crafted as one. It’s a zombie-horror-fantasy wet dream. It’s a book in verse. And in short, it’s about a poet who resurrects Selena from the dead. Needless to say this book cannot be categorized. Each page reverberates with desire, grief, and longing. There is a grotesque love affair unfolding on the page between the cast, Melissa, Selena, and Yolanda that is awkward and unholy but also full of tenderness and heart. Dreaming of You is a love story and a tribute to womanhood, a critique of celebrity culture and an ode to Selena and what she signified for so many of us. It’s a book that redefines narrative, myth and magic and I will forever be haunted by Melissa’s creation. –Michelle
Eat the Mouth That Feeds You by Carribean Fragoza
(City Lights)
Ferocious, gothic, utterly fantastic and unabashedly Chicanx. The short stories in this collection are grotesque, heartbreaking, bizarre, beautiful, and full of wonder. Fathers are often absent and Mothers—their grief, pain, and fortitude—are the foundation of many of these stories with the children being the harbinger of change, hope and destruction. The stories will slice you in two. The prose in this collection feels so terrifically tight that reading these stories feels like an unraveling. If you read The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, then I strongly suggest you read this magnificent book. –Michelle
Funeral for Flaca by Emily Prado
(Future Tense)
A Chicanx coming-of-age memoir. Prado traces and sorts through her own identity and sense of becoming through key moments throughout her childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. With candor, heart, and humor she dissects her very being—coming to terms with the parts of herself that are hers alone and that which has been forced upon her by others. It’s about losing and mourning your sense of self and finding joy in who you decide you get to be. In Funeral for Flaca Prado sheds all her skins and does so openly on the page and shares that with us. Reading this book is a lesson in self-care and vulnerability. Funeral for Flaca is a tender debut of a powerful new voice. –Michelle
The Accommodation: The Politics of Race in an American City by Jim Schutze
(Deep Vellum)
A classic, unsparing account of racial politics and white supremacy in Dallas. This outstanding book was first published in 1986 by the Citadel Press of Secaucus, New Jersey, after its original publisher, Taylor Publishing Company of Dallas, dropped the book under intense pressure from the city’s establishment. Reading the book, you’ll see why: Schutze delivers a damning narrative of racial power politics in Dallas from the city’s beginnings to the 1980s, with particular emphasis on the fire bombings and expropriation of black-owned property in the 1950s. Now reissued by Deep Vellum Publishing, this suppressed, hard-to-find classic will hopefully now find the wider audience it justly deserves. –Ben
As You Were by Elaine Feeney
(Biblioasis)
A not-to-be-missed debut novel—smart, witty, and very engaging. Feeney’s protagonist Sinead lands in a crowded hospital room with a colorful set of fellow patients whose private dramas soon are made public due to lack of privacy and the indignities of hospital care. Sinead has been the family breadwinner—a successful real estate broker whose skill and ambition provide a comfortable life for her husband and their three young children. But Sinead has kept her cancer diagnosis a secret, and time in the hospital allows ample opportunity to reflect on her feelings toward her loving husband and her past. Two things set this extraordinary novel apart: the amazing writing—lyrical, natural, often very funny, and always affecting; and Sinead, a woman with whom Feeney captures the pain of self-reflection and the stubborn resilience of hope. –Lori
I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart
(Two Dollar Radio)
Powerfully renders Ukraine’s troubled past and more recent tragedies as it converges around characters who are witness to the 2013 violent repression of demonstrations in Kiev. More than historical fiction Pickhart explores the cultural and emotional context of what it means to be Ukrainian. With a fresh, bold narrative style that joins reportage and deep character study, Pickhart delivers a series of provocative set pieces that underscore the weight of historical memory and the toll of Russian domination. An eye-opening novel by a stunningly talented writer. –Lori
The Pastor by Hanne Ørstavik, tr. Martin Aitken
(Archipelago Books)
Another beautiful and haunting gem from this Norwegian author. A quiet, resonant novel in which a young female pastor narrates the story of her self-exile to a sparce outpost in the far North and her relationships with the village locals—a rough, hardworking bunch who hide their vulnerabilities. Amongst descriptions of the pastor’s everyday life we see scenes from her past, including an intense, fraught romance and her research into the historical abuses inflicted on the local indigenous people. Ørstavik’s narrator reflects deeply on the insufficiency of language to explain faith and the nexus between goodness and truth. The Pastor is the fascinating story of a woman in a strange setting who continually probes the vital question of how to live a meaningful life. –Lori
