Small Press Points

Founded this past spring by Jill Meyers and Callie Collins, former editors of American Short Fiction, A Strange Object (www.astrangeobject.com) publishes novels, novellas, and story collections from its headquarters in Austin, Texas. “We established the press in order to focus on debuts and all manner of risky, heartfelt fiction,” Meyers says. “And while we’re fiercely independent, we believe in a return to certain publishing traditions—to the cultivation of new voices, to meticulous editing, to writer-editor collaboration.” The name is a nod to a Donald Barthelme quote: “The aim of literature…is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.” The press’s first book, the debut story collection Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail by Kelly Luce, will be published in October. The second, Nicholas Grider’s Misadventure, will be released in January 2014. All titles will be published both in print and in digital editions; the editors plan to open submissions in the spring of 2014. “We like offbeat and uncanny, along with solid storytelling and potent emotional charge,” Meyers says of the work A Strange Object seeks to publish. The editors have also launched a quarterly event series, Tesseract, combining literature, film, and music, which will be taking place at various established events across the country this fall, including the Brooklyn Book Festival, San Francisco’s Lit Crawl, and the Texas Book Festival. Future plans involve an online magazine, Covered With Fur, which will publish original short fiction, essays on craft and construction, and creative nonfiction that “encourages the reader to reexamine curious and everyday objects.”