Newsletter #11

This time: The Heresy Press Book Club; News; Guest Essay by Meghan Daum; Notes from Advisory Board Members

I. Our Book Club takes off!

We are pleased to announce the launch of Speakeasy: the Heresy Press Book Club. The club will consist of a series of virtual meetings of free-thinking readers. Members are invited to participate in a guided discussion of select Heresy Press titles, as well as an open Q&A with the author.

“The goal of 'Speakeasy' is to re-orient literary conversation, away from adversarial interpretations, towards the timeless aesthetics of literature and fiction’s rich world of ideas. Topics may include style, plot, character, symbol, motif and authorial intention. Members will receive guiding questions prior to each meeting. While we encourage robust dialogue, 'Speakeasy' takes place in a casual atmosphere. Members are invited to have a glass of wine, cocktail, or beverage which 'pairs' well with the book of the evening” (Britton Buttrill, Moderator).

Led by playwright, novelist, and literature teacher Britton Buttrill, Speakeasy promises to create a community of resilient and appreciative readers. Membership enrollment is open until February 28^th. Each meeting will be dedicated to a recently published Heresy Press title.

The first meeting will take place on April 1, 2025—Fool’s Day—and will focus on Richard Walter’s satirical novel Deadpan.

→→ Sign up for Speakeasy: The Heresy Book Club here.

---

II. News

• Additional Heresy Press titles are re-published by Skyhorse in beautiful hardcover editions:

1. The Hermit by Katerina Grishakova. Publication date: April 8, 2025.

Critics rave about this novel:

"Brisk, ruthless, and ceaselessly observant, The Hermit is an intimate portrait of the very smart people—full of moral compromise and spiritual conflict—who wreak dumb havoc in our world. Andy Sylvain is a hero of our time, and the novelistic gifts of Katerina Grishakova bring him and the other characters to vibrant life.” 
— Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left To Come Looking For You

“The Hermit quests after the transcendent and immaterial underneath glitter and social capital. Trading room floor, party, monastery, woods, and city: The Hermit is a beautiful exploration of the difference between loneliness and solitude, entertainment and true contemplation.”
— Emmalea Russo, author of Vivienne

→→ Pre-order your hardcover copy here.

---

2. Animal: Notes from a Labyrinth by Alan Fishbone. Publication date: April 22, 2025

This searingly honest work of autofiction is finding readers internationally.

“Boldly experimental in form, yet with enough narrative drive to hold the reader’s attention, Animal: Notes from a Labyrinth is a refreshingly challenging read. Author Alan Fishbone’s meta-textual, frequently scatological novella will linger long in the memory of those bold enough to enter its labyrinth.” 
— IndieReader

→→ Pre-order your hardcover copy here.

---

• Heresy Press Books to be published in Ireland and UK this spring!

Mercier Press, Irelands oldest independent press, will publish two books by Heresy Press authors in the coming months:

• Animal: Notes from a Labyrinth will be published in Ireland and UK on May 7

• Unsettled States by Tom Casey will come out in Ireland and UK on June 25.

---

• Deadpan by Richard Walter wins honors

1. Deadpan received an Honorable Mention in General Fiction at the 2024 Hollywood Book Festival! 🎬📖

2. Deadpan was selected as an Editor’s Pick for the 2024 BookLife Prize, earning a Grade A rating and a 9.0/10 score! 🏆📚

The BookLife editor’s review praises the novel’s depth, style, and gripping storytelling. Read the full review here.

---

• New novel for the Heresy Press 2026 line-up

Heresy Press is excited to announce the acquisition of a new novel titled Imagine My Surprise! by K.S. Haddock. We welcome Keith to the growing Heresy Press author family!

Summary:
“Keenan Harris is born again. Literally. Murdered by his own cronies with an overdose of fentanyl, he is reincarnated fully conscious into a newborn baby boy. Stuck in a useless body, he discovers it’s been five years since his demise; worse yet, he's been saddled with hapless millennial parents and planted in suburbia. Forced to come to terms with his predicament, he bides his time and surreptitiously plots until he can confront his killer. Part coming-of-age story, part crime novel, Imagine My Surprise! is a darkly comic meditation on childhood in the 21st century and the dangers of substance abuse.”

---

---

III. GUEST ESSAY

“I Never Thought My Books Would Burn”

By Meghan Daum

Many changes have occurred since the Heresy Press Advisory Board meeting and literary celebration in New York last December. On January 8, my home in Altadena, California was destroyed in the wildfires that engulfed several parts of the Los Angeles region that week. My neighborhood was in the foothills of a large forested area but it was not considered a particularly high risk fire zone. Like most of my neighbors, I regarded evacuation as just a precaution and took hardly anything with me, figuring I’d be back the next day. As it turned out, many of the homes in the canyons, the real “high risk areas,” were spared while the fire ripped through the more densely populated neighborhoods. None of us ever imagined something like this could happen.

As a renter, I am fortunate to have merely lost all of my possessions, not my house itself. But possessions can mean more to us than we often admit, and while it’s easy to dismiss such a loss as just “stuff,” the grief can sneak up on you. My house contained many hundreds of books, including tattered and annotated hardcovers of titles that shaped my worldview and my creative voice. As a writer, this is an especially bitter loss, perhaps even more so than the loss of many versions and iterations of my own book manuscripts, printed out, bound with rubber bands and marked up with the handwriting of great and even legendary editors. My manuscripts might have been of interest to other people one day in the distant future, but my books were of interest to me in the present. They were what I saw on my shelves every time I walked into my living room or my office. They were my tastes reflected back to me.

Some books (many, if I’m honest) were yet to be read. There’s nothing quite like looking at your own booksheves and feeling excitement at the surprises they might hold. This is what makes a book collection truly alive. Now I will start over from scratch. Actually not now, because I don’t have a permanent or even semi-permanent place to live and stacks of books are the last thing I need. But someday I will begin to rebuild. It will be interesting to see what those first shelves look like, what books will populate them first. I hope they’re books written by my friends. That seems only right. And maybe that will even be enough.

Tune in to Meghan Daum’s incisive commentary on culture, art, and society by subscribing to her Substack.

---

---

IV. NOTES FROM OUR ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS:

• Sherman Alexie’s work is featured in two New Yorker 100-year-anniversary anthologies (for poetry and fiction).

“It's the 100th anniversary of The New Yorker and my story, 'What You Pawn I Will Redeem' is featured in the anthology A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker, while my poem, 'The Facebook Sonnet,' can be found in the A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker. There are only three writers who are included in both anthologies: John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, and me. Quite the company for an Indian boy to keep!” (Sherman Alexie)

Congratulations!
To enjoy more of Sherman Alexie’s prose and poetry, subscribe to his Substack.

---

• James Morrow’s story “Ghost Goggles” appears in Conjunctions: 83.

“The current issue of my favorite literary journal is Conjunctions:83 Revenants, The Ghost Issue, co-edited by Bradford Morrow and Joyce Carol Oates. Among the authors represented are Margaret Atwood, Paul Tremblay, Elizabeth Hand, Jonathan Carroll, Jeffrey Ford, and the late Peter Straub. The two editors also contributed original stories. 

My own offering, 'Ghost Goggles,' turns on the conceit that the 'ghost viewer' devices handed out in William Castle’s 1960 humdrum horror film, '13 Ghosts,' were actually functional. My child-hero is named Miles, and he leaves the world via a Henry James allusion: ‘his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped’” (James Morrow).

Readers may buy the anthology here.

---

• Steven Pinker’s new book on the phenomenon of common knowledge, When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life, is forthcoming this fall.

From one of the world’s most celebrated intellectuals, a brilliantly insightful work that explains how we think about each other’s thoughts about each other’s thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness, which we experience as something that is public or “out there,” is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.

"The book has an analysis of social media outrage mobs, and a chapter called 'The Canceling Instinct,' on why even the people who should be most dedicated to free speech — writers and scholars — are tempted to cancel and censor" (Steven Pinker).

Readers can pre-order this fascinating book here.