You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Influx Press buys Paola Ferrante’s ‘genre-bending’ short story collection
Influx Press has acquired Paola Ferrante’s “genre-bending” debut collection of short stories, Her Body Among Animals, in which “women challenge the boundaries placed on their bodies while living in a world among animals, where violence is intertwined with bizarre ecological disruptions”.
Publisher Gary Budden acquired UK rights from Marilyn Biderman and Amanda Orozco at the Transatlantic Agency at the Transatlantic Agency, with publication scheduled for August 2024.
The publisher said of the collection: “Magical yet human, haunted and haunting, these stories act as a surreal documentation of the mistakes in systems of the past that remain very much in the present. Ferrante investigates toxic masculinity and the devastation it enacts upon women and our planet, delving into the universal undercurrent of ecological anxiety in the face of such toxicity, and the personal experience of being a new mother concerned about the future her child will face.
“Through these confrontations of the complexity of living in a woman’s body, Her Body Among Animals moves us from hopelessness to a future of resilience and possibility.”
Ferrante said: "I am so excited Influx Press is publishing Her Body Among Animals in the UK because it’s a dream to work with a press that embraces and champions the strange and genre-bending. I can’t wait for my short fiction collection to be part of such a fierce catalogue that rips open the cutting edge of speculative fiction and literary horror."
Budden added: “Paola’s collection is exactly the kind of work we’re looking for at Influx – bold, genre-straddling fiction unafraid to tackle real-world issues through strange and uncanny stories that leave an indelible mark.”
The author has won multiple awards for her writing, including Grain Magazine’s Short Grain Contest for Poetry, The New Quarterly’s Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award and Room Magazine’s Fiction Contest. Ferrante was also longlisted for the 2020 Journey Prize for her story, “When Foxes Die Electric”. She was born in Toronto, where she still resides.
