Congratulations on the publication of HER BODY AMONG ANIMALS by Paola Ferrante publishing today with Book*hug Press!
In this genre-bending debut collection merging horror, fairy tales, pop culture, and sci-fi, women challenge the boundaries placed on their bodies while living in a world “among animals,” where violence is intertwined with bizarre ecological disruptions.
A sentient sex robot goes against her programming; a grad student living with depression is weighed down by an ever-present albatross; an unhappy wife turns into a spider; a boy with a dark secret is haunted by dolls; a couple bound for a colony on Mars take a road trip through Texas; a girl fights to save her sister from growing a mermaid tail like their absent mother.
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.
Praise for HER BODY AMONG ANIMALS:
“The women in Paola Ferrante’s sly and startling collection beguile us with their curiosity, vulnerability, and wit as they navigate unsettling metamorphoses that bring them closer to the vast expanses of the sea and stars and farther away from the mundane cruelties of mortality and men. Precise yet poetic, sharply observed yet compassionate and tender, these cautionary tales for future generations burst the bounds of genre and take us into new and exciting literary realms.” —David Demchuk, Scotiabank Giller Prize–nominated author of The Bone Mother and RED X
“Paola Ferrante’s monster-haunted stories are as dark as a moonless lake—and as beautiful.” —André Forget, Amazon Canada First Novel Award–nominated author of In the City of Pigs
“Paola Ferrante’s writing is so daring, so sharp and visceral, and yet so effortless. Gorgeous, wry, and unsettling, Her Body Among Animals pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go until the final page—even then, you might still find yourself thinking about these stories any time you see a spider spinning a web or a bird flying overhead. These stories are unlike anything I have ever read, and Ferrante is one of the most exciting and original new voices in Canadian literature.” —Amy Jones, author of Pebble & Dove
“This collection dives deep beneath the surfaces of water bodies and pits in the sand, beyond reflections in the mirror, spectral traces on the glass, flashes of light from the cosmos, and between the unintelligible spaces that separate individual minds, bodies, and species from one another in shared and vulnerable ecosystems and domestic spheres. The characters are alive between worlds, seeking to make sense of the unreality of reality and the reality of unreality. Strangeness and beauty abound amid violence and disorientation. The constellations shimmer and speak. Language slips so meanings are rarely clear but the slips are often darkly funny and eerily sublime. These stories are a testament to a mind that travels far and a voice that speaks an urgent language.” —Angélique Lalonde, Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted author of Glorious Frazzled Beings
“The vibrant stories in Paola Ferrante’s collection Her Body Among Animals transport the reader to strange, yet achingly familiar territory. Ferrante holds up a funhouse mirror to our contemporary moment with her sharp and dazzling prose. At the heart of these stories is the emotional truth of what it means to be human, told from unexpected perspectives: a sentient robot, a wife-turned-spider, and Mother Units. These wondrous narratives showcase the infinite scope of the universe and the ways in which we struggle to survive.” —Doretta Lau, author of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?
Paola Ferrante is a writer living with depression. Her debut poetry collection, What to Wear When Surviving a Lion Attack (2019), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She has won Grain Magazine’s Short Grain Contest for Poetry, The New Quarterly’s Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award, Room Magazine’s Fiction Contest, and was longlisted for the 2020 Journey Prize for the story “When Foxes Die Electric.” Her work appears in After Realism: 24 Stories for the 21st Century (2022), Best Canadian Poetry 2021 (2021), North American Review, PRISM International, and elsewhere. She was born, and still resides in, Toronto.
Paola is represented by Marilyn Biderman and Amanda Orozco.
Congratulations!