“A pioneering literary press.” Tribeca Film Festival’s ‘Future of Film’
Rights Catalog Spring 2015
“[Two Dollar Radio] has released some of the finest works of contemporary fiction.” The Brooklyn Rail “Aesthetically consistent, editorially adventurous.” Village Voice “I marvel at [their] idealism.” Times Literary Supplement
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.
Eric Obenauf Publisher/Editorial Director eric@twodollarradio.com Eliza Wood-Obenauf Director of Brand/Copy Chief elizajane@twodollarradio.com Molly Delaney Production Assistant & Marketing molly@twodollarradio.com
141 East Town St., Suite 200 Columbus, OH 43215 740-504-7456 @TwoDollarRadio TwoDollarRadio.com
NOT DARK YET novel by Berit Ellingsen Literary Fiction | Science Fiction Trade Paper Original, Gatefold 978-1-937512-35-4 US $15.99, NOVEMBER 2015 5.5” x 7.5”, 212 pages
“[Ellingsen] is just starting what promises to be a major career, but already giving readers a unique and fascinating perspective.” —Jeff VanderMeer
Brandon leaves his boyfriend in the city for a quiet life in the mountains, after an affair with a professor ends with Brandon being forced to kill a research animal. It is a violent, unfortunate episode that conjures memories from his military background. In the mountains, his new neighbors are using the increased temperatures to stage an agricultural project in an effort to combat globally heightened food prices and shortages. Brandon gets swept along with their optimism, while simultaneously applying to a new astronaut training program. However, he learns that these changes – internal, external – are irreversible. A sublime love story coupled with the universal struggle for personal understanding, Not Dark Yet is an informed novel of consequences with an ever-tightening emotional grip on the reader. BERIT ELLINGSEN is a Korean-Norwegian writer whose stories have appeared in Norton’s Flash Fiction International Anthology, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Unstuck. She is the author of the story collection Beneath the Liquid Skin, and the novel Une Ville Vide, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the British Science Fiction Award.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
THE GLACIER novel by Jeff Wood Literary Fiction | Science Fiction | Thriller Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-41-5 US $14.99, SEPTEMBER 2015 5.5” x 7.5”, 152 pages
—Blurbs forthcoming from Hampton Fancher (screenwriter of Blade Runner) and Jon Raymond (screenwriter of Night Moves, Meek’s Cutoff, Wendy and Lucy). A
brilliant and visceral cinematic novel about authenticity and the
american condition.
The Glacier is a spellbinding work of fiction that re-imagines the American frontier of the late-nineties and early-aughts, a time when cookie-cutter developments stamped the countryside beige. Following a caterer at a convention center, a surveyor residing in a storage unit, and the dazed and death-obsessed denizens of the burbs, The Glacier is a poetic rendering of the pre-apocalypse. JEFF WOOD is an actor and writer from Ohio currently living in Berlin. He is a founding member of the experimental film/art group Rufus Corporation and a Wallabout Oyster Theatre Player. His 10year collaboration with Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation produced the works 89 Seconds at Alcazar; The Rape of the Sabine Women; whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir; and numerous international screenings including the MoMA, SFMOMA, The Smithsonian, The Whitney, and the Toronto, Berlin, Thessaloniki and Sundance Film Festivals. He was a 2014 Fellow in Screenwriting with the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
SQUARE WAVE novel by Mark de Silva Literary Fiction | Crime | Mystery Trade Paper Original, Gatefold 978-1-937512-39-2 US $16.99, FEBRUARY 2016 5.5” x 7.5”, 382 pages
A grand novel of ideas and compelling crime mystery, about security states past and present, weather modification, and imperial influences. Carl Stagg is a historian researching imperial influence in 17th century Sri Lanka, itself a security state, who makes a living as a watchman in a factionalized America where confidence in democracy has eroded. Along his nightly patrol, Stagg finds a beaten prostitute, one in a series of monstrous attacks he learns. Suspicious of his supervisor’s intentions, Stagg partners with a fellow part-time watchman, Ravan, to seek the truth. Ravan hails from a family developing storm-dispersal technologies, whose research is jointly funded by the Indian and American governments. The watchmen’s discoveries put a troubling complexion on Stagg’s research, giving it new shape and impetus, just as the weather modification project begins to appear less about dispersing storms than weaponizing them. By gracefully considering the effect of a militarized state upon the personal nature of its citizenry, as well as the study of microtonal music and weather modification, Square Wave signals the triumphant arrival of a young writer certain to be considered one of the most ambitious and intelligent of his generation.
MARK DE SILVA holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Cambridge. He is an editor at Aeon Media, having earlier worked on the opinion pages of the New York Times. His writing has appeared in The New Inquiry, The Paris Review Daily, and the New York Times.
Rights held: North American
Now a major motion picture starring Sarah Silverman! I SMILE BACK novel by Amy Koppelman Literary Fiction | Movie Tie-in Movie Tie-in Edition, 978-1-937512-42-2 US $15, DATE TBD 5.5” x 7.5”, 192 pages
“Powerful. Koppelman’s instincts help her navigate these choppy waters with inventiveness and integrity.” —Los Angeles Times “Koppelman explores with ruthless honesty a woman come undone.” —Bookslut “Koppelman mostly writes from inside Laney’s disillusioned mind, ricocheting between the quotidian details of wife and motherhood and big-picture musings, forming exquisite stand-alone tone poems.” —Elle Now a major motion picture starring Sarah Silverman in her dramatic-acting debut, and Josh Charles, I Smile Back tells the affecting tale of Laney Brooks, a mother and wife on a self-destructive streak. She takes the drugs she wants, sleeps with the men she wants, disappears when she wants. Lurking beneath Laney’s seemingly composed surface is the impulse to follow in her father’s footsteps, to leave and topple her family’s balance in the process. The film adaptation of I Smile Back premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival in the prestigious U.S. Dramatic competition. Silverman’s affecting dramatic turn in the lead-role has garnered praise in film trade reviews as “tremendous,” “terrific,” and “awards worthy,” and will inspire an onslaught of attention upon the film’s national theatrical release. AMY KOPPELMAN is a graduate of Columbia’s MFA program. Her writing has appeared in The New York Observer and Lilith. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children, and is the author of the novels, A Mouthful of Air, and I Smile Back. She adapted the screenplay for the film from her own novel. Rights held: World Rights sold: Audio
HAINTS STAY novel by Colin Winnette Literary Fiction | Western | Acid Western Trade Paper Original, Gatefold 978-1-9375123-2-3 US $15.99, JUNE 2015 5.5” x 7.5”, 212 pages
“Haints Stay puts to mind the very best contemporary novels of the old West, including those by powerhouses like Charles Portis, Patrick DeWitt, Robert Coover, Oakley Hall, E.L. Doctorow and Sheriff Cormac McCarthy himself, not to mention Thomas McGuane’s classic screenplays for The Missouri Breaks and Tom Horn. But Colin Winnette has his own dark and delightful and surprising agenda. Be wary. He might be the new law in town.” —Sam Lipsyte Brooke and Sugar are killers. Bird is the boy who mysteriously woke beside them while between towns. For miles, there is only desert and wilderness, and along the fringes, people. The story follows the middling bounty hunters after they’ve been chased from town, and Bird, each in pursuit of their own sense of belonging and justice. It features gunfights, cannibalism, barroom piano, a transgender birth, a wagon train, a stampede, and the tenuous rise of the West’s first one-armed gunslinger. Haints Stay is a new Acid Western in the tradition of Rudolph Wurlitzer and Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff: meaning it is brutal, surreal, and possesses an unsettling humor. COLIN WINNETTE is the author of Revelation, Animal Collection, and Fondly—which was listed among Salon’s Best Books of 2013. He is an associate editor of PANK Magazine, and conducts a regular interview series for The Believer ‘Logger.’ His writing has appeared on BuzzFeed, Electric Literature, and in The Believer. Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
THE ONLY ONES novel by Carola Dibbell Literary Fiction | Science Fiction Trade Paper Original, Gatefold 978-1-937512-27-9 US $16.99, MARCH 2015 5.5” x 7.5”, 368 pages
“Breathtaking. A debut novel on par with some of the best speculative fiction of the past 30 years. It’s that good, and that important, and that heartbreakingly beautiful.” —NPR “Fascinating... A heart-piercing tale of love, desire and acceptance.” —The Washington Post Inez wanders a post-pandemic world, strangely immune to disease, making her living by volunteering as a test subject. She is hired to provide genetic material to a griefstricken, affluent mother, who lost all four of her daughters within four short weeks. This experimental genetic work is policed by a hazy network of governmental Ethics committees, and threatened by the Knights of Life, religious zealots who raze the rural farms where much of this experimentation is done. When the mother backs out at the last minute, Inez is left responsible for the product, which in this case is a baby girl, Ani. Inez must protect Ani, who is a scientific breakthrough, keeping her alive, dodging authorities and religious fanatics, and trying to provide Ani with the chilldhood tha Inez never had, which means a stable home and an education. CAROLA DIBBELL is a highly regarded rock critic whose fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, Fence, and Black Clock. Writing about books as well as music, Dibbell was a Village Voice contributor for many years. The Only Ones is her debut novel.
Rights held: North American
BINARY STAR novel by Sarah Gerard Literary Fiction Trade Paper Original, Gatefold 978-1-937512-25-5 US $16, JANUARY 2015 5.5” x 7.5”, 182 pages
“Rhythmic, hallucinatory, yet vivid as crystal.” —NPR
“The particular genius of Binary Star is that out of such grim material in constructs beauty. It’s like a novel-shaped poem about addiction, codependence and the relentlessness of the everyday, a kind of elegy of emptiness.” —New York Times Book Review The language of the stars is the language of the body. Like a star, the anorexic burns fuel that isn’t replenished; she is held together by her own gravity. With luminous, lyrical prose, Binary Star is an impassioned account of a young woman struggling with anorexia and her long-distance, alcoholic boyfriend. On a road-trip circumnavigating the United States, they stumble into a book on veganarchism, and believe they’ve found a direction. Binary Star is an intense, fast-moving saga of two young lovers and the culture that keeps them sick (or at least inundated with quick-fix solutions); a society that sells diet pills, sleeping pills, magazines that profile celebrities who lose weight or too much weight or put on weight, and books that pimp diet secrets or recipes for success. SARAH GERARD’s work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine’s ‘The Cut,’ Paris Review Daily, Slice Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Bookforum, and other journals. She is the author of the chapbook Things I Told My Mother and a graduate of The New School’s MFA program for fiction.
Rights held: North America Rights sold: Audio
THE ABSOLUTION OF ROBERTO ACESTES LAING novel by Nicholas Rombes Literary Fiction | Mystery | Thriller Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-23-1 US $15.95, NOVEMBER 2014 5.5” x 7.5”, 162 pages
“Kafka directed by David Lynch doesn’t even come close.” —3:AM Magazine
“I very much enjoyed this weird, disturbing, sometimes effed-up novel about strange films, lost films, and the fragile faith in the difference between our fictions and our realities.” —Jeff VanderMeer, Electric Literature In the mid-’90s a rare-film librarian at a state university in Pennsylvania mysteriously burned his entire stockpile of film canisters and disappeared. Roberto Acestes Laing was highly regarded by acclaimed directors around the globe for his keen eye, appreciation for eccentricity, and creativity in interpretation. Unsure at first whether Laing is a pseudonym or some sort of Hollywood boogeyman, a journalist manages to track the forgotten man down to a motel on the fringe of the Wisconsin wilds. Laing agrees to speak with the journalist, but only through the lens of the cinema. What ensues is an atmospheric, cryptic extrapolation of movies and how they intertwine with life, and the forgotten films that curse the lost librarNICHOLAS ROMBES teaches in Detroit, Michigan. He is author of Ramones from the 33 1/3 series and the book 10/40/70. His writing has appeared in The Believer, Filmmaker Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, n+1, and The Rumpus.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
ANCIENT OCEANS OF CENTRAL KENTUCKY novel by David Connerley Nahm Literary Fiction | Mystery | Thriller Trade Paper Original, Gatefold & Deckle Edge 978-0-9832471-8-0 US $16, AUGUST 2014 5.5” x 7.5”, 182 pages * One of the Best Books of 2014.
—NPR, Flavorwire, Electric Literature “Wonderful. While this isn’t a thriller, at least in any traditional sense of the word, it’s deeply suspenseful. It’s impossible to stop reading until you’ve gone through each beautiful line, a beauty that infuses the whole novel, even in its darkest moments.” —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, an iridescent tableau of family joy and strife, swimming at the lake, sneaking candy, late-night fears and the stories told to quell them. Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky is a wrecking-ball of a novel that attempts to give meaning and poetry to everything that comprises small-town life in central Kentucky. Listen: they are the ghost stories that children tell one another, the litter that skirts the gulley, the lines at department stores. A gorgeous, haunting, prismatic jewel of a book. DAVID CONNERLEY NAHM was born and raised in a small town in central Kentucky. Currently, he lives in the mountains of Virginia where he practices law and teaches Law and Literature at James Madison University. His short stories have appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Trunk Stories, Eyeshot, and on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
CRYSTAL EATERS novel by Shane Jones Literary Fiction | Science Fiction Trade Paper Original, Gatefold & Deckle Edge 978-1-937512-18-7 US $16, JUNE 2014 5.5” x 7.5”, 168 pages
“Jones demonstrates a tightrope-like eye for finagling between Pynchon-esque quasi-sciencefictional feelings and the book’s physics, allowing almost anything to happen at any time, wrapped in a Wallace-like grip of childlike awe. The result is a novel that, paragraph to paragraph, is alive with imagination. Crystal Eaters is the rarest of kinds of objects, one that replenishes its readers’ crystal counts by simply being read.” —Vice Remy is a young girl who lives in a town that believes in crystal count: that you are born with one-hundred crystals inside and throughout your life, through accidents and illness, your count is depleted until you reach zero. As a city encroaches daily on the village, threatening their antiquated life, and the Earth grows warmer, Remy sets out to accomplish something no one else has: to increase her sick mother’s crystal count. An allegory, fable, touching family saga and poetic sci-fi adventure, Shane Jones underlines his reputation as an inspired and unique visionary. SHANE JONES (b. 1980) first novel, Light Boxes, was originally published by Publishing Genius Press in a print run of 500 copies in 2009. The novel was reviewed widely, the film optioned by Spike Jonze, and the book was reprinted by Penguin. Light Boxes has been translated in eight languages and was named an NPR best book of the year. Jones is also the author of Daniel Fights a Hurricane and The Failure Six.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio