Two Dollar Radio — Fall 2020 Rights Catalog

“As much a literary movement as a publishing company.” —Publishers Weekly

BOOKS TOO LOUD TO IGNORE.

2020 Catalog

Two Dollar Radio

“As much known for their ability to curate boundary-pushing writers as they are for their DIY aesthetic.” Bustle “Publisher of some of the best gritty Americana novels of the past decade.” The Atlantic “They are delivering so much genuinely exciting fiction that they make it look easy.” Los Angeles Times

TWO DOLLAR RADIO is a family-run outfit founded in 2005 with the mission to reaffirm the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry.

We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.

NIGHT ROOMS

Refracting life through the lens of horror films, Night Rooms masterfully leaps between reality and movies, past and present—because the “final girl’s” story is ultimately a survival story told another way.

Essay Collection | Biography & Autobiography | Family & Relationships - death, grief | Performing Arts - horror films

Synopsis

essays by Gina Nutt

Trade Paper Original, 978-1-9781953387-00-4 US $15.99, MARCH 2021 5.5” x 7.5”, 172 pages

“Night Rooms is vulnerable, cinematic, and positively transcendent.

Gina Nutt uses themes and details from horror films as a way into a meditation on the deaths she’s experienced in her own life, acting as a kind of literary final girl, asking, what does it mean to survive? Nutt’s exploration of this question is captivating to read, as her chainsaw-sharp sentences carve a path toward the truth. I love this book.”

—Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I’m Someone Else

“In a horror movie, an infected character may hide a bite or rash, an urge, an unwellness. She might withdraw or act out, or behave as if nothing is the matter, nothing has happened. Any course of action opposite saying how she feels suggests suffering privately is preferable to the anticipated betrayal of being cast out.”

—from Night Rooms

Night Rooms is a poetic, intimate collection of personal essays that weaves together fragmented images from horror films and cultural tropes to meditate on anxiety and depression, suicide, body image, identity, grief, and survival.

Whether competing in shopping mall beauty pageants, reflecting on childhood monsters and ballet lessons, or recounting dark cultural ephemera while facing grief and authenticity in the digital age, Gina Nutt’s shifting style echoes the sub-genres that Night Rooms highlights—spirit-haunted slow burns, possession tales, slashers, and revenge films with a feminist

GINA NUTT is the author of the poetry collection Wilderness Champion. She earned her MFA from Syracuse University. Her writing has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, Joyland, Ninth Letter, and other publications.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio

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WHITEOUT CONDITIONS novel by Tariq Shah

Literary Fiction | Urban |Noir Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-91-0 US $14.99, MARCH 2020 5.5” x 7.5”, 142 pages

“’Funerals are kind of fun,’ the narrator of Shah’s debut admits in the opening pages. ‘I’ve cultivated a taste.’ Then his childhood friend dies, and the narrator must brave a blizzard to pay his respects.”

—Azam Ahmed, New York Times “Whiteout Conditions contains the language of a poet-turned-fiction writer... and the beauty of the phrasing is often in pointed contrast to the goofy stupidity of the characters’ actions... Whiteout Conditions is a book concerned with toxic masculinity’s erasure of the self; it’s walls and moats. In the face of death, Ant and Vince concentrate on hurting each other, drinking, taking drugs, pursuing inadvisable revenge plots — anything to plug the hole where their heartache dwells.”

—Caryl Pagel, Full Stop “With the last of my loved ones now long dead, I find funerals kind of fun. Difficult to pinpoint what it is. I’m drawn to them. Call it an article of faith. They aren’t what they used to be. And I am not my old self.”

—from Whiteout Conditions

In this exploration of male friendship, toxic masculinity, grief, violence, prescription drug abuse, and working-class life in the suburban Midwest, Tariq Shah emerges as an impressive new voice willing to mine the darkness of character’s psyches.

Synopsis

On the heels of the holidays, as severe weather batters Chicago, Ant returns after 5 years away. He’s going with childhood friend, Vince, to Vince’s teenage cousin Ray’s funeral. With the passing of Ant’s mother and grandparents, and estrangement from his father, he’s tried to wipe the slate clean, and in so doing has adapted a quirky attraction to the grandiosity and traditions of funerals.

Ray’s death is different. Ray was a decade younger than Ant and Vince, who they always got stuck looking after, and for that reason they share many formative memories: getting bomb pops the muggy summer the power was off, sneaking Ray his first taste of booze, or the time Ray TARIQ SHAH, born and raised in Illinois, writes fiction and poetry, and has work appearing or forthcoming in Jubilat, Heavy Feather Review, No, Dear Magazine, ANMLY (fka Drunken Boat), Gravel, BlazeVox, and other publications. From 2007-2009, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mozambique, and he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, where he now teaches. His chapbook, heart assist device, was a finalist for the 2019 no, dear/small anchor press chapbook series.

Whiteout Conditions is his first novel.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio Rights sold: UK/Commonwealth (Dead Ink Books)

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TWO DOLLAR RADIO GUIDE TO VEGAN COOKING Cookbook | Humor | Stories | Vegan Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-95-8 US $14.99, SEPTEMBER 2020 5.5” x 5.5”, 126 pages

“A perfectly hilarious way to learn some badass recipes.”

—Gary Lovely, Buzzfeed If you’ve searched online for a recipe, you’ve likely encountered a digressive treatise on personal history, none of which actually has anything to do with how to make enchilada sauce. After extensive scrolling, you’ve really only uncovered that self-taught chef/blogger Linda needs to talk to a professional counselor about her relationship with her mother. In addition to exquisite recipes and vegan life hacks, executive vegan chefs Jean Claude van Randy and Speed Dog view food as a story: nary a meal is prepared without recalling when Speed Dog summited Goat Peak in Banff armed with nothing more than a sack full of cherry ring pops and a wily pack burro.

This Guide to Vegan Cooking is for you if: • You’re looking for satisfying vegan food; • Interested in a vegan diet but unwilling to give up cheese; • Accessible vegan recipes that don’t require hard-to-find ingredient; • The adventurous tales behind the meals.

We are all explorers, vegan food explorers — join us on this culinary journey as we slay Vegan Hunger Demons.

TWO DOLLAR RADIO GUIDE TO NAMING YOUR BABY Humor | Parody | Adult Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-96-5 US $14.99, NOVEMBER 2020 5.5” x 5.5”, 126 pages

Your friends are in the hospital, awaiting the arrival of their first child. Then, you see the Instagram post: “Hey everyone, mom and son are doing fine. Happy and healthy! We want to introduce you to… KEITH.” What do you say? I mean, you’re meant to say congratulations, but do they know? Keith is clearly step-dad’s name, and there have been no recorded Baby Keiths on record since the last time gas was 5 dollars a gallon. Is it ironic? Maybe it’s ironic. Like DadCore, but … a baby.

With Two Dollar Radio’s Guide to Naming Your Baby, you’ll find plenty of useful information—charts, graphs, potential career paths, projected family trees—to help you avoid blame when your full-grown Karen asks you why everyone asks her if she wants to see a manager. Your Karen is into horses, we know, but that’s why you should have gone with Millie.

Also inside: • Fiona: Ahh, yes, you like Disney. Who doesn’t? But there are no actual princesses, while many women grow up to become penpals with murderers and marry them in prison. You’re playing with fire.

• Dylan: Can you still love your child if they grow up to send dick pics through LinkedIn? • Hailey: It’s hard to hear anyone say “I’m not racist, but…” especially when it’s a 14-year-old. Who wronged her? It was you.

In this ever-changing world, it’s hard to know how life is going to turn out for your new- or soon-to-be-born. You can’t keep them from getting their heart broken. And you won’t be able to shield every force of evil from them over the course of their whole life. You will, however, be able to avoid naming them Harley. You will need our help.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio

THE BOOK OF X novel by Sarah Rose Etter

Literary Fiction | Sci-Fi |Surreal Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-81-1 US $17.99, JULY 2019 5.5” x 7.5”, 300 pages

BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR. —Vulture, The Thrillist, Buzzfeed The Believer Book Awards Shortlist.

Shirley Jackson Award-Winner — Novel.

“Etter brilliantly, viciously lays bare what it means to be a woman in the world, what it means to hurt, to need, to want, so much it consumes everything.” —Roxane Gay “I loved every page of this gorgeous, grotesque, heartbreaking novel.”

—Carmen Maria Machado

Synopsis

The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday — school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents — with the surreal — rivers of thighs, men for sale, and fields of throats — Cassie’s

A captivating new work of feminist sci-fi in the vein of Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado, The Book of X meaningfully addresses contemporary issues of gender and belonging with a haunting, readable tale filled with surreal flourishes.

I WAS BORN A KNOT LIKE MY MOTHER and her mother before her.

Picture three women with their torsos twisted like thick pieces of rope with a single hitch in the center.

The doctors had the same reaction each birth: They lifted our slick warped bodies into the air and stared, horrified.

All three of us wailed, strange new animals, our lineage gnarled, aching, hardened.

Outside, beyond the bright white lights of the hospital, the machine of the world kept grinding on, a metal mouth baring its teeth, a maw waiting to clench down on us.

—from The Book of X SARAH ROSE ETTER is the author of Tongue Party. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cut, Electric Literature, VICE, Guernica, Philadelphia Weekly, and more. She is the recipient of writing residencies at the Disquiet International Program in Portugal, and the Gullkistan Creative Program in Iceland. She earned her MFA from Rosemont College. She lives in Austin, Texas.

Rights held: World, Film/TV Rights sold: Audio, Italian (Black Coffee)

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SOME OF US ARE VERY HUNGRY NOW essays by Andre Perry Essay Collection Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-83-5 US $15.99, NOVEMBER 2019 5.5” x 7.5”, 184 pages

BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR. —PopMatters “These essays shine with broken humanity and announce the arrival of a new voice in contemporary nonfiction, but they do so with heaps of melancholia and frustration instead of answers. That Perry can hurt us and keep us asking for more is a testament to his talent as a storyteller.”

—Gabino Iglesias, NPR “Beautiful, brilliant, bold...Tantamount to a slice from the Americana songbook. These essays are ballads, images from the self, isolated and marginalized in other countries and in his own land.”

—Christopher John Stephens, PopMatters “[Andre Perry’s] essays are most satisfying for their largely meandering nature, the abstention from a resolution. Most pieces end on quiet, melancholic notes, without a way out.”

—Brandon Yu, San Francisco Chronicle “Perry’s debut collection of essays, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, charts a course into his past, offering a vision complete with imagined talk-show interviews, fragments of scripts and even multiple-choice questions.”

—Los Angeles Times 12

The essays in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now take the form of personal reflection, multiple choice questions, screenplays, and imagined talk-show conversations, while traversing the daily minefields of childhood schoolyards and Midwestern dive-bars. The impression of Perry’s personal journey is arresting and beguiling, while announcing the author’s arrival as a formidable American voice.

Synopsis

With luminous insight and fervent prose, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now travels from Washington DC to Iowa City to Hong Kong in search of both individual and national identity. While displaying tenderness and a disarming honesty, Perry catalogs racial degradations committed on the campuses of elite universities and liberal bastions like San Francisco while coming of age in America.

Kendrick, Lady Day, Howlin’ Wolf. These songs are civil wars, are emancipations, are movements for deferred liberties, are the sorrows of systematic isolation, and are the joys of understanding that a fractured life is still life nonetheless. And fractured lives are not just black lives but Native lives, immigrant lives, and white lives too—the whole continent.

So when we sing this Americana songbook we should be awake and know that when we sing someone else’s song we are also singing our own. —from Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now ANDRE PERRY lived in post-dot-com crash San Francisco in the early 2000s. He worked first in tech and advertising before becoming a middle-school teacher. At night, he navigated the local independent music scene, playing in several bands and producing events for artists across mediums. After moving to Iowa City in 2005, he co-founded the Midwest edition of the week-long music and literature gathering, Mission Creek Festival. This is his first book.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio 13

THEY CAN’T KILL US UNTIL THEY KILL US essays by Hanif Abdurraqib Literary Collection | Essays Trade Paper Original, Gatefold 978-1-937512-65-1 US $15.99, NOVEMBER 2017 5.5” x 7.5”, 222 pages

BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR. —Rolling Stone, NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books “I loved [They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us], like beyond all measure. It’s spectacular.” —Samantha Irby, The New York Times

“The Ohio poet/critic digs deep into what it means to be American in our moment — and how much music has to do with it.” —Rolling Stone “With a voice that rings clear off the page, Abdurraqib is an accomplished wordsmith, whose reflections on pop culture are intensely personal, political and utterly compelling.” —CBC “Poignant and important. Abdurraqib offers a perspective that connects music, art, and memory, with the political realities of our time.”

—Esquire “A collection of death-defying protest songs for the Black Lives Matter era.” —Chicago Tribune “Abdurraqib unites familiar sounds with fresh observations about music and the state of contemporary America... essential, gripping reading.” —Pitchfork 14

“A much-needed collection for our time. [Abdurraqib] has proven to be one of the most essential voices of his generation.” —NPR “Funny, painful, precise, desperate, and loving throughout. Not a day has sounded the same since I read him.” —Greil Marcus, Village Voice A GROUND-BREAKING INSTANT CLASSIC THAT PROVES ABDURRAQIB A BELLWETHER FOR OUR TIMES. Synopsis In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.

In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now.

While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill is gripping, immediate, and soul-stirring.

HANIF ABDURRAQIB is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism has been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New York Times, and MTV News, where is a columnist. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was published in 2016 by Button Poetry.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio Rights sold: UK/Commonwealth (Melville House), Audio, Italian (Black Coffee), Korean (caracal) 15

PALACES novel by Simon Jacobs

FOUND AUDIO novel by N.J. Campbell

Literary Fiction | Mystery | Horror Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-55-2 US $15.99, JANUARY 2018 5.5” x 7.5”, 242 pages

Literary Fiction | Mystery | Noir | Thriller | Adventure Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-57-6 US $14.99, JULY 2017 5.5” x 7.5”, 162 pages

“[A] mysterious work of metafiction... dizzying, arresting and defiantly bold.”

—Laura Pearson, Chicago Tribune “Brilliant. In an age of instant information access, Found Audio is a clever reminder that some places, experiences, and mysteries must be earned through sweat, blood, and fear.” —Electric Literature For the first time ever, Found Audio presents a complete transcription of the unsettling audio recordings of a mysterious unnamed adventure journalist and his decades-long pursuit of the Borgesian “City of Dreams,” alongside analysis from audio expert, Amrapali Anna Singh.

Synopsis

Amrapali Anna Singh is an analyst capable of discerning the most cryptic details from audio recordings. One day, a mysterious man appears at her office in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, having traveled a great distance to bring her three Type IV audio cassettes that bear the stamp of a library in Buenos Aires that may or may not exist. On the cassettes is the deposition of an adventure journalist and his obsessive pursuit of an amorphous, legendary, and puzzling “City of Dreams.” Spanning decades, his quest leads him from a snake-hunter in the Louisiana bayou to the walled city of Kowloon on the eve of its destruction, from the Singing Dunes of Mongolia to a chess tournament in Istanbul. The deposition also begs the question: Who is making the recording, and why?

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio 16

“A master class in anxiety and atmosphere.

Jacobs creates a setting that fans of Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy will enjoy while still offering up fresh frights.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review “In Simon Jacobs’ tense, unwinding novel Palaces, two Midwestern punks wander an anarchic, eerily unpeopled landscape, breaking and entering into abandoned mansions and becoming more nihilistic by the day.” —Pitchfork With incisive precision and a cool detachment, Simon Jacobs has crafted a surreal and spellbinding first novel of horror and intrigue.

Synopsis

John and Joey are a young couple immersed in their local midwestern punk scene, who after graduating college sever all ties and move to a perverse and nameless northeastern coastal city. Late one night, forced out of their living space, John and Joey are driven to take shelter in a chain pharmacy before emerging to a city in full-scale riot. They find themselves the only passengers on a commuter train headed north, and exit at the final stop to discover the area entirely devoid of people. As John and Joey negotiate their future through bizarre, troubling manifestations of the landscape and a succession of abandoned mansions housing only scant clues to their owners’ strange and sudden disappearance, they’re also forced to confront the resurgent violence and buried memories of their shared past.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio 17

THE VINE THAT ATE THE SOUTH novel by J.D. Wilkes

SEEING PEOPLE OFF novel by Jana Beňová

translated by Janet Livingstone Literary Fiction | Translation Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-59-0 US $14.99, MAY 2017 5.5” x 7.5”, 126 pages

“Fans of inward-looking postmodernists like Clarice Lispector will find much to admire here.”

—NPR

Winner of the EU Prize for Literature, Seeing People Off is the English-language debut of a dazzling contemporary female voice.

Synopsis

There is a liveliness and effervescence to Jana Beňová’s prose that is magnetic. Whether addressing the loneliness of relationships or the effectiveness of rat poison, her voice and observations call to mind the verve and sophistication of Renata Adler or Rosalyn Drexler, while remaining utterly singular.

Seeing People Off follows Elza and Ian, a young couple living in a humongous apartment complex outside Bratislava where the walls play music and talk, and time is immaterial.

Drawing on her memories, everyday interactions, observations of postsocialist realities, and Elza’s attraction to actor Kalisto Tanzi, Seeing People Off is a kaleidoscopic, poetic, and deeply funny portrait of a relationship.

JANA BEŇOVÁ is one of the most acclaimed Slovak writers, winner of the European Union Prize for Literature.

She is the author of the novels Seeing People Off, Get Off! Get Off!, Parker, and Honeymoon (forthcoming from Two Dollar Radio), as well as three collections of poems.

Rights held: World English, Film/TV, Audio

Literary Fiction | Adventure | Horror Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-55-2 US $15.99, MARCH 2017 5.5” x 7.5”, 208 pages, 13 B&W Illustrations

“A relentlessly fun novel, the literary equivalent of a country-punk album that grabs you and refuses to let go. Undeniably one of the smartest, most original Southern Gothic novels to come along in years.” —NPR “A sly, rollicking Southern phantasmagoria that finds the sweet spot between tall tale and something more dangerous and psychological.

Hilarious, profane, entertaining, and sneakily written.” —Jeff VanderMeer

Synopsis

In a forgotten corner of western Kentucky lies a haunted forest referred to locally as “The Deadening,” where vampire cults roam wild and time is immaterial. Our protagonist and his accomplice—the one and only, Carver Canute—set out down the Old Spur Line in search of the legendary Kudzu House, where an old couple is purported to have been swallowed whole by a hungry vine. Their quest leads them face to face with albino panthers, Great Dane-riding girls, protective property owners, and just about every American folk-demon ever, while forcing the protagonist to finally take stock of his relationship with his father and the man’s mysterious disappearance.

J.D. WILKES is a visual artist, musician, author, filmmaker, and Kentucky Colonel, perhaps best known as the charismatic frontman for Th’Legendary Shack Shakers, a band that has been described as a “dynamite group” by Stephen King, and whose music has been featured on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack for HBO’s TrueBlood.

Rights held: World, Film/TV Rights sold: Audio

THE DROP EDGE OF YONDER novel by Rudolph Wurlitzer

THE ORANGE EATS CREEPS novel by Grace Krilanovich Literary Fiction | Horror Trade Paper Original, 978-0-9820151-8-6 US $16, SEPT 2010 5.5” x 7.5”, 192 pages

Literary Fiction | Adventure | Western Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-61-3 US $15.99, MARCH 2017 5.5” x 7.5”, 252 pages

“One of the most interesting voices in American fiction.” —Rolling Stone “The most hallucinogenic Western you’ll ever catch in the movie house of your mind’s eye. With Drop Edge, Wurlitzer has considerably raised the stakes.” —Bookforum Published to international acclaim, Wurlitzer’s first novel in a quarter-century became an instant counter-cultural classic.

Synopsis

The Drop Edge of Yonder is an adventurous book that explores the truth and temptations of the American myth. Beginning in the savage wilds of Colorado in the waning days of the fur trade, the story follows Zebulon Shook, a mountain man who has had a curse placed on him by a mysterious Native American woman whose lover he murdered. The book follows Zebulon as he encounters people obsessed with greed and the politics of expansion. The trail takes him to the remote reaches of the Northwest, a journey that traverses the Gulf of Mexico to Panama, and up the coast of California to San Francisco and the gold fields.

RUDOLPH WURLITZER is the author of Nog, Flats, Quake, and Slow Fade, and a non-fiction book, Hard Travel to Sacred Places. He has written numerous screenplays, including Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Two Lane Blacktop, and Walker.

Rights held: World, Film/TV Rights sold: French (Christian Bourgois Editeur), German (Residenz Verlag), Spanish (Tropo Editions), Audio

“Breathless, scary, and like nothing I’ve ever read before. Krilanovich’s work will make you believe that new ways of storytelling are still emerging from the margins.” —NPR “A steamy cesspool of language that stews psychoneurosis and viscera into a horrific new organism — the sort of muck in which Burroughs, Bataille, and Kathy Acker loved to writhe.” —The Believer National Book Foundation’s ‘5 Under 35’ Award NPR Best Books of 2010 | The Believer Book Award Finalist

Synopsis

The most brazen and memorable contemporary American debut, The Orange Eats Creeps follows a girl with drug-induced ESP and an eerie connection to Patty Reed (a young member of the Donner Party who credited her survival to her relationship with a hidden wooden doll), searches for her disappeared foster sister along “The Highway That Eats People,” stalked by a conflation of Twin Peaks’ “Bob” and the Green River Killer, known as Dactyl.

Rights held: World Rights sold: Film/TV (Mary Harron/Greencard Productions), Audio 21

CRAPALACHIA memoir by Scott McClanahan Literary Fiction | Memoir | Biography Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-03-3 US $16, APRIL 2013 5.5” x 7.5”, 172 pages

“[McClanahan] aims to lasso the moon. The man has purpose. This is his symphony, every note designed to resonate, to linger.”

—New York Times Book Review “Scott McClanahan is one of those rare writers who achieves Kafka’s credo that a book should be the axe that shatters the icy soul of our interior. Crapalachia, with its tongue-in-cheek title, is anything but refuse and detritus. In fact, it’s a broken and half-sung ode to place and people and history, a personal reclamation of falsehoods cast on rural communities in West Virginia.” —Ocean Vuong, Literary Hub A contemporary classic, Crapalachia is an endearing coming-of-age story that announced Scott McClanahan as a resounding talent.

Synopsis

Crapalachia is a portrait of Scott McClanahan’s formative years, coming of age in rural West Virginia, during a stretch of time where he lived with his Grandma Ruby and Uncle Nathan, who suffered from cerebral palsy. Peopled by colorful characters and their quirky stories, Crapalachia interweaves oral folklore and area history, providing an ambitious and powerful snapshot of overlooked Americana. Beyond the artistry, there is an optimism, a genuine love for people and the past and memories.

Even more, there is a grasp to bridge the disconnect between reader and writer, for McClanahan’s stories to bind us closer to one another.

Rights held: World Rights sold: Audio, French (Editions Cambourakis), German (Ars Vivendi Verlag)

HOW TO GET INTO THE TWIN PALMS novel by Karolina Waclawiak

Literary Fiction | Comedy Trade Paper Original, 978-0-9832471-8-0 US $16, JULY 2012 5.5” x 7.5”, 192 pages

“Reinvents the immigration story.”

—New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice Anya is a young woman living in a Russian neighborhood in L.A., torn between her parents’ Polish heritage and trying to assimilate in the U.S. She decides instead to try to assimilate in her Russian neighborhood, embodied by the nightclub, the Twin Palms.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio THE ABSOLUTION OF ROBERTO ACESTES LAING novel by Nicholas Rombes

Literary Fiction | Noir | Mystery Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-23-1 US $15.99, NOVEMBER 2014 5.5” x 7.5”, 162 pages

Kafka directed by David Lynch doesn’t even come close. —3:AM Magazine In the mid-’90s a rare-film librarian at a state university in Pennsylvania mysteriously burned his entire stockpile of film canisters and disappeared. Years later, a journalist tracks the librarian down, to find out what movies were burned, and why.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio 23

ANCIENT OCEANS OF CENTRAL KENTUCKY novel by David Connerley Nahm

Literary Fiction | Thriller | Mystery Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-20-0 US $16, AUGUST 2014 5.5” x 7.5”, 192 pages

“Deeply suspenseful... it’s impossible to stop reading until you’ve gone through each beautiful line.” —NPR Leah’s little brother, Jacob, disappeared when the pair were younger, a tragedy that haunts her still. When a grown man arrives at the non-profit Leah directs claiming to be Jacob, she is wrenched back to her childhood.

A mysterious, lyric exploration of childhood, loss, and ghost stories.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio THE CORRESPONDENCE ARTIST novel by Barbara Browning

Literary Fiction | Family Drama Trade Paper Original, 978-0-9763895-9-0 US $15, DECEMBER 2008 5.5” x 7.5”, 194 pages

“Powerful.

Koppelman’s instincts help her navigate these choppy waters with inventiveness and integrity.”

—Los Angeles Times Now a major motion picture starring Sarah Silverman, I Smile Back “explores with ruthless honesty a woman come undone.”

Rights held: World Rights sold: Italian (Safara Editore), Audio NOTHING novel by Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon

Literary Fiction | Comedy Trade Paper Original, 978-0-9820151-9-3 US $15.99, MARCH 2011 5.5” x 7.5”, 192 pages

Literary Fiction | Mystery Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-11-8 US $16, NOVEMBER 2013 5.5” x 7.5”, 187 pages

Both witty and devastating. —Nylon

“Apocalyptic and psychologically attentive.”

—New York Times Book Review

An unremarkable woman has been carrying on with an internationally recognized artist, largely via e-mail. To protect her paramour’s identity, she creates a series of correspondent, alternative lovers in a selfdestructing roman à clef.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio 24

I SMILE BACK novel by Amy Koppelman

Epic wildfires snake through the Missoula valley as James hitchhikes into town in search of clues to his father’s mysterious death two decades earlier. What he finds instead are Ruth and Bridget, two Frenemies on a dangerous path.

Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio 25

TWO DOLLAR RADIO is a family-run outfit founded in 2005 with the mission to reaffirm the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry.

We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.

Two Dollar Radio titles have been honored by the National Book Foundation, finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, named notable books of the year by the New York Times, and made yearend best-of lists at O, The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Slate, Salon, The Believer, and others.

The Brooklyn Rail credits Two Dollar Radio with publishing “some of the finest works of contemporary fiction,” while The Los Angeles Times has said we provide the industry with “an air of possibility, the belief that the future was very much in play.” Publishing Perspectives dubbed Two Dollar Radio “a budding literary movement;” The Seattle Stranger envisioned us leading a “dream industry” out of the wreckage of corporate publishing.

ERIC OBENAUF Publisher/Editorial Director/Rights eric@twodollarradio.com / 740-504-7456 ELIZA WOOD-OBENAUF Chief Operations Officer elizajane@twodollarradio.com BRETT GREGORY Assistant Editor brett@twodollarradio.com

Rights and publicity queries: ERIC OBENAUF eric@twodollarradio.com 740-504-7456 French:

German:

Italian:

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