DZANC STAFF Steven Gillis, Co-Founder and Publisher Dan Wickett, Co-Founder Guy intoci, Editor-in-Chief Jeffery Gleaves, Director of Marketing & Publicity Michelle Dotter, Editor Pat Walsh, Director of Foreign Rights Steven Seighman, Design BOARD OF DIRECTORS Steven Gillis (Chair), Jeff Parker, Jeremy Chamberlain BOARD EMERITUS Doug Wilson, James Rosenfeld, Peter Fayroian NATIONAL COUNCIL Fred Ramey, Jessica Stockton Bagnulo ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Dzanc Books is supported, in part, by grants from the Community Founda- tion of SE Michigan, specifically targeted grants from John and Jean Wickett, the Meijer Foundation, and various individuals Visit our website: www.dzancbooks.org 1 WELCOME TO DZANC BOOKS TABLE OF CONTENTS Shortly after opening our doors in 2006, Dzanc Books was hailed as “the future of publishing” by Publishers Weekly. A fully invested publishing house with print distribution through Consortium, and eBook distribution through Open Road Media, Dzanc Books is committed to not only publishing great DZANC FRONTLIST BOOKS.................................4 works, but promoting our authors through print and online media, author tours, and through audio/visual THE OLD REACTOR media. In our first few years, Dzanc authors have been reviewed everywhere both in print and online, a novel by david ohle OFFERINGS FROM A RUST BELT JOCKEY including the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Believer, Time Out New York, NewPages, Bookslut, a novel by andrew plattner Mid-American Review, American Book Review, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Publishers Weekly, A DIFFERENT BED EVERY TIME stories by jac jemc Rain Taxi, Elle Magazine, Vanity Fair, and numerous others. With award-winning authors such as Josip BY LIGHT WE KNEW OUR NAMES Novakovich, Laura van den Berg, and Hesh Kestin, coupled with great emerging writers like Sean McGrady, stories by anne valente Eugene Cross, and Jac Jemc, Dzanc is excited to present the best and the brightest authors writing today. THE Maggot People a novel by henning koch THE Annotated MIXtape As of 2008, Dzanc has also formed imprint relationships with other established independent publishers. essays by joshua harmon These publishers continue to run editorially as they did previously; however, they now have the publicity History of Cold Seasons stories by joshua harmon and distribution support of Dzanc Books. Heading into 2014, these publishers include OV Books, Keyhole Books, Starcherone Books, Ellipsis Press, and Disquiet. These relationships have led to extraordinary Come Away a novel by stephen policoff works by authors such as Allison Amend, Tod Goldberg, James Morrison, Stacey Levine, Joshua Cohen, and Alissa Nutting as well as a cutting-edge anthology of 30 Writers Under 30. The titles publishing under MY Beautiful Hook-Nosed Beauty QUEEN Strut Wave poems by jeff kass the Disquiet imprint are works in translation or works written in English with a heavy foreign country Words & Wisdom of Charles Johnson aspect to them. Between Dzanc and our imprints, we publish novels, short story collections, poetry essays by charles johnson collections, anthologies, works in translation, nonfiction, and chapbooks in both print and eBook form. IF I Knew THE Way, I Would TAKE You Home stories by dave housely Dzanc Books also supports three literary journals: The Collagist, an online monthly that GUN, Needle, Spoon contains fiction, poetry, essays, novel excerpts, and book reviews; and Monkeybicycle, an online journal a novel by patrick o’neil of both fiction and poetry that features podcasts. THE GUILD of ST. Cooper a novel by shya scanlon As a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc Books is also fully committed to developing LIKE A woman writing programs in the schools and community at large. Dzanc funds and has operated workshops and a novel by Debra Busman Writer-in-Residence programs in several cities, including Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and New York. Dzanc THE Zoo, A Going a novel j.a. tyler has also set up a low-cost writing instruction program for beginning and emerging writers by connecting them with accomplished authors through the innovative Dzanc Creative Writing Mentorships. Dzanc WAIT ’TIL YOU HAVE REAL PROBLEMS poems by scott beal has organized the Disquiet International Literary Program, a writing conference held in Lisbon, Portugal. Dzanc creates internship opportunities for students looking to gain valuable experience in independent RECENTLY PUBLISHED.......................................36 publishing. With a full vision for our future, both as publishers and as leaders in the community, Dzanc is excited about what we can do to continue bringing great books to wider audiences while inspiring THE ReprINT SerIES..........................................40 generations of readers to come. THE WRITER-in-RESIdeNCE PROGRAM.........44 2 3 THE OLD REACTOR a novel by david ohle A strange and twisted tale of two imaginary cities of the future from the author of the cult classice motorman Moldenke is sent to the “free” prison town at Altobello with an indeterminate sentence for defecating on a grave. It was an accident. He has a rare bowel condition. Altobello is full of Jellyheads and features an old nuclear reactor on the edge of town. No one seems to remember what the reactor really is until it’s almost too late. David Ohle is the author of Motorman, The Age of Sinatra, and The Pisstown Chaos. He has taught fiction writing at the University of Texas in Austin, the University of Missouri in Columbia, and currently teaches both fiction and screenwriting at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. “No amount of description will prepare you for the icky, cavernous, taboo places in your mind to which he’ll lead you, hand in hand, Virgil to your Dante. You’ll rec- ognize some of these places, of course. The question is, how did he get in there?” — The Believer “…awesomely carving deep, black holes into the edifice of the English language.” — Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet Fiction | Trade Paper | 5.5 x 8.5 | September 2014 | 184 pages | $14.95 ISBN: 978-1-936873-56-2 Rights: US/UK/Canda/Ireland, Translation 4 5 OFFERINGS FROM A RUST BELT JOCKEY a novel by andrew plattner a jockey experiences an unexpected crest in his career and decides to pursue a woman he might otherwise not have Decades in the saddle have taught longtime jockey Carl Arvo about all the things he can have and all the things he cannot. An unexpected turn of fortune gives him the chance to be with a woman, Christine Fleming, who in some ways is the person he’s been looking for his entire life. Andy Plattner is a longtime horse-racing journalist and has published two short story collections, one of which, Winter Money, won the Flannery O’Connor Award. His stories have been published in journals such as The Paris Review, Fiction, Epoch, and The Sewanee Review. “There are grooms and trainers and bookmakers aplenty, but it’s the crazy woman who stuffs her house with other people’s garbage, the corrupt, know-it-all cop, and the pot-smoking floozy that provide the swing and verve.” —Boston Review “Plattner’s stories prove again and again that you don’t have to be flashy to be good.” —Louisville Courier-Journal Fiction | Trade Paper | September 2014 | 5.5 x 8.5 | 224 pages | $14.95 ISBN: 978-1-936873-59-3 Rights: World, Performance, Audio, and Serial 6 7 A DIFFERENT BED EVERY TIME stories by jac jemc follow-up to the highly praised My Only Wife, a 2013 pen/bingham finalist In Jac Jemc’s short stories, a woman lures men home, scouring them for answers. A man swallows perfume to forget and a thief steals even the air from the room. A band of pretty girls rot from the outside in and a petty charade amongst a pair of identical sisters turns into so much more. Both acute and lyric, A Different Bed Every Time peeks into fairy tales and domestic dramas and the locked-up minds of the disturbed for moments so brief you cannot look away. Jac Jemc’s My Only Wife was a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Jemc received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has completed residencies at Ragdale and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Chicago. “To Jemc the world is a place where each person, every human cypher, must devour another. What then can we do, if we are devoured, if we are overcome with our own devouring? Her escape plan is inspired and ancient—to become protean, to dwell in costume after costume, parceling away the truth that can be found in each. But where is it hid? Ask her, though she may not say.” —Jesse Ball, author of Silence Once Begun Fiction | Trade Paper | October 2014 | 5.5 x 8.5 | 184 pages | $14.95 ISBN: 978-1-936873-53-1 Rights: World and Audio 8 9 BY LIGHT WE KNEW OUR NAMES stories by anne valente thirteen stories exploring the thin borders between wonder and loss and magic and grief From midnight sirens to pink dolphins to a fight club of young women who meet beneath the aurora borealis, By Light We Knew Our Names examines the beauty and heartbreak of the world we live in, and the one that hovers just beyond it, enigmatic and out of reach. Across thirteen stories, this collection explores the thin border between wonder and loss, between magic and grief within the human experience. Anne Valente’s fiction appears in Hayden's Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, The Journal, and Redivider, among others, and her essays appear in The Washington Post and The Believer. She is also the author of the fiction chapbook An Elegy for Mathematics (Origami Zoo Press, 2013). Winner of Copper Nickel's 2012 Fiction Prize, her work was listed as notable in Best American Non-Required Reading 2011.