A Strange Object

Oh, hi. We're back. As you may know, A*O is now part of Deep Vellum, along with these storied imprints: Phoneme Media, La Reunion, and Dalkey Archive. We couldn't be happier.

Our first new title we're putting out as A*O/DV is the collection FARTHEST SOUTH by Ethan Rutherford, haunting and hopeful by turns, which just earned a star in Kirkus! Here's the review:

FARTHEST SOUTH & OTHER STORIES | Kirkus Reviews Fairy tales and bedtime stories for those dark nights of the soul.

We are absolutely thrilled to share the news: Rita Bullwinkel’s BELLY UP has won the Believer Book Award. “There’s real tenderness, agency, and humanity coursing through these perfect and uncanny, sharp-witted stories,” says the Believer. Congrats to Rita!

“It is so much to ask of someone, to sit with your fiction, and so I am hyperaware of the need for brevity and momentum. In life and fiction, I have found that sentimentality is something that is not to be trusted. It’s not an honest feeling, and so I don’t find it moving. It’s a screen feeling, as in, people feel sentimental about something when they are unable to look at the truth of it. I find so much of life to be about making nice with people. We must smile and we must get along. And so, I find it deeply refreshing, when reading, to sit in voices that have stripped all of the superficiality away and tell things plainly. This plainness seems the most honest to me.” —Rita Bullwinkel talks to Patty Yumi Cottrell at The Paris Review

This Flesh Container We Call a Body: An Interview with Rita Bullwinkel Rita Bullwinkel speaks with Patty Yumi Cottrell about her first short-story collection, ‘Belly Up.’