A loud, fast-paced debut that punches the road-trip novel right in the face.
MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING
by Zee Carlstrom
Flatiron, Spring 2025
(via Neon Literary)
The newly nameless narrator of MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING has rejected the gender binary, flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate job, is most likely brain damaged from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is drinking enough booze for two people.
A call from their mother with the news that their conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing, launches the narrator from Chicago to Deep Red Arkansas in a stolen car and their new bestie in tow a self-proclaimed « garbage goth » with her own emotional baggage (and someone on her tail). Along the way. they unpack the narrator’s childhood, one ruled by the whims of their father’s anger and paranoia, and a recent personal loss they would rather eat glass than face.
An unflinching interrogation of class rage, economic (im)mobility, the liberal/conservative divide, toxic masculinity, and the rot at the heart of capitalism, Make Sure You Die Screaming is the loud, funny, tragic, fucked-up enby road-trip novel of our times.
Zee Carlstrom is a creative director and writer from Illinois. They live in Brooklyn.
Through eleven illustrated essays, GIVE ME SPACE BUT DON’T GO FAR encourages readers to understand anxiety as a part of them, a neutral thing as unavoidable and intrinsic as any other part of their body. Anxiety isn’t an obstacle, it’s a roommate. Or in Haley Weaver’s case, her anxiety is represented by a wide-eyed tangle of string, Weaver reveals over the course of the book that it isn’t an enemy to defeat or an obstacle to overcome. Anxiety just is, and it’s never going away, but if we care for it with tender curiosity and attention, it has many gifts to offer. With care, practice, and the friendship of some really great coping mechanisms, you can learn how to live with your anxiety roommate in a mutually respectful, affectionate, even meaningful way.
A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty and suffering. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of houseless people bathing in the bay. Start-up burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men literally set themselves on fire in the streets.
Whether working in food service or in high-end retail, lit by a laptop in a sex chat or by the camera of an acclaimed film director, sharing a dangerous apartment in the city, a rooming house in China or a vacation rental in Mallorca, the protagonists of the ten stories comprising Paul Dalla Rosa’s debut collection, An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life, navigate the spaces between aspiration and delusion, ambition and aimlessness, the curated profile and the unreliable body.
The Year of Return, linked to the 400th anniversary of slaves landing in the US, memorialised the many who died during the slave trade in Ghana, particularly at Elmina Castle, while encouraging members of the African diaspora to visit. As Black diasporans around the world make the pilgrimage to West Africa, three African-American friends join in the festivities to explore Ghana’s colonial past and its underground queer scene. They are thrust into the hands of two guides, Kobby and Nana, whose intentions aren’t clear, yet they are the narrators we have to trust. Kobby, a modern deviant according to Nana’s traditional and religious principles, offers a more upscale and privileged tour of Ghana and also becomes the friends’ link to Accra’s secret gay culture. Nana’s adherence to his pastor’s teachings against sin makes him hate Kobby enough to want to kill.