from my email, Deep Vellum news

 

Dear readers, Spring is here, and we are seeing the winter's labors take root and grow. The past weeks have brought us to Los Angeles for AWP, where we got together with our authors and translators, reconnected with old friends, and met so many new readers; to Iowa for the Mission Creek Festival, where Will was on a panel on literary translation with Bela Shayevich & Gary Lovely, and Eliana sold books at the Small Press & Literary Magazine Book Fair; to New York as Rodrigo Fresán and Will Vanderhyden arrived to be fêted as finalists at the National Book Critics Circle Awards for Melvill, along with NYC's own Wei Tchou for Little Seed. At home in Dallas, we loved seeing the Dallas Art Book Fair continue to bloom! We're also planting the seeds of an exciting new project: SMU Project Poëtica and Deep Vellum Publishing are collaborating on a new partnership, Central Track Poetry. Together we will publish ten poetry books per year—both English-language originals and works in translation—and SMU Project Poëtica will sponsor all of Deep Vellum’s poetry events held at the bookstore and throughout the city. Thanks for reading, Your friends at Deep Vellum

April Releases

Perpetual Law by Mario Bellatin, tr. Stephen Beachy Novel | Deep Vellum | 9781646053384 | $15.95 From Latin America’s literary prankster Mario Bellatin: a novella that puzzles from the first page with its liminal, Lynchian atmosphere. In an unnamed country by the sea, a grieving kleptomaniac known only as Our Woman is determined to reach the House. There, she will be able to listen to her childhood voice. As she winds her way through a day replete with odd choices and unresolved conclusions, the losses that define Our Woman take clearer shape, while the circumstances of her world turn more opaque. Inhabitants form poetry salons and line up for measly food distributions. Authoritarian landladies maintain an iron-grip on their complexes, men in blue overcoats roam the streets, and train stations remain deserted. Perpetual Law thwarts convention, casting a mysterious pallor over typical narrative questions: what is happening here, and why? A patron to all that is subversive and unruly, Mario Bellatin’s work beckons to engage with the reality of borders, linguistic exile, and the types of self-estrangement that can barely be articulated. Translated into English by Stephen Beachy, Perpetual Law is familiar as it is disturbing; enrapturing as it is challenging. It is an important key to Bellatin’s complex body of work.

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Best Literary Translations 2025, guest editor Cristina Rivera Garza Series edited by Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Öykü Tekten & Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún Anthology | Deep Vellum | 9781646053735 | $23.95 Best Literary Translations redefines the canon of global literatures in English translation, showcasing the brave and brilliant work of contemporary translators and editors. Guest edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Cristina Rivera Garza, Best Literary Translations 2025 features poetry and prose originally written in nineteen languages, brought into English by some of the most talented translators working today. Contemporary and historical works stand side by side in the second edition of the annual anthology, including poems, short stories, essays, and hybrid works drawn from submissions spanning dozens of countries and languages. Featuring work from the top literary journals with U.S.-based editors, ranging from ANMLY to World Literature Today, BLT 2025 honors excellent literature from a diverse range of authors and translators.

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ATTILA(s)

Attila by Aliocha Coll, tr. Katie Whittemore Novel | Open Letter | 9781960385376 | $15.95 "My life will not make any sense when Attila is finished," declared Aliocha Coll about his mesmerizing final novel. In this groundbreaking "untranslatable" work, he channels Joycean experimentalism to explore the fragility of empires, the future of the city, and the weight of legacy.  Attila the Hun, reimagined as a visionary leader, contemplates the fate of his people at the gates of Rome. His son, Quijote, is caught between empires and ideals, forced to choose between his father's vision of a Hunnic utopia and the decaying allure of Roman civilization. As Rome burns, Quijote journeys through both real and surreal landscapes, encountering psychedelic visions, mystical revelations, and existential dilemmas. Quijote's journey blurs the lines between past and future, uniting Biblical, Classical, and Buddhist traditions while moving between planes of existence. Attila is an intricate and elusive masterpiece from the explosive and disorienting imagination of Aliocha Coll, where characters from myth and history intermingle in a stunning labyrinth of allegory and metaphor.

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Attila by Javier Serena, tr. Katie Whittemore Novel | Open Letter | 9781960385352 | $15.95 From the author of Last Words on Earth—an reimagining of Roberto Bolaño’s life—comes a book articulating the final years of Aliocha Coll, one of Spain’s most innovative writers as he completes his masterpiece, Attila (see above). Living alone in Paris, estranged from his family, suffering from heartbreak and possibly madness, Alioscha Coll works with saintly intensity on what will be his final manuscript: Attila. Once the final words have been written, he vows to end his life, convinced that his existence will lose all purpose. Told through the viewpoint of a literary critic and journalist, Attila expands Javier Serena’s investigation into artists who remained dedicated to their art, to their aesthetic vision in the face of complete dismissal by the publishing world and reading public. In the case of Last Words on Earth and Ricardo Funes (the stand-in for Bolaño in that novel), things work out and he briefly becomes the star of the literary world—could the same happen for Alioscha Coll?

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Forthcoming

[gamerover] by Giancarlo Huapaya, tr. Ryan Greene Poetry | Phoneme Media | 9781646053759 | $18.95 | May 13 A political, poetic excavation of the human landscape, charting the history of geography through the historic movement of its residents' bodies and complicated habits.

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Come Round Right by Alan Govenar Novel | Deep Vellum | 9781646053742 | $28.95 | May 6 New from writer, photographer, and filmmaker Alan Govenar, Come Round Right is a deeply personal novel and a paean to a pivotal moment in American history—when the Vietnam War was raging, and the idealism of the 1960s was losing ground to frustration, anger, and violence.

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Crocodiles at Night by Gisela Heffes, tr. Grady C. Wray Novel | Deep Vellum | 9781646053766 | $17.95 | May 20 Crocodiles at Night follows the difficult journey of death and all it affects—family, memories, place—through the eyes of a woman as she travels between her home in Houston and her ailing father in Argentina.

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VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation by Dmitry Bykov, tr. John Freedman Nonfiction | Open Letter | 9781960385390 | $18.95 | June 10 How does a comedian become the face of a nation's fight for survival? In VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation, celebrated Russian author Dmitry Bykov unpacks the extraordinary rise of Volodymyr Zelenskyy—from a TV star to a wartime leader defying a global superpower. With wit and razor-sharp insight, Bykov dives into the moments that shaped Zelenskyy's improbable journey, revealing the man behind the headlines.

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In the News

Tetra Nova was reviewed over at The Rumpus: “At once playful and devastating… Terazawa’s polyvocal book signals a grand revolutionary beginning.” You can also read an interview with Sophia Terazawa in Joseph Alcala's newsletter, The Thought of the Thing. Ultramarine got some great write-ups in the Chicago Review of Books and On the Seawall. Dive deep into Ultramarine in this interview with translator Eve Hill-Agnus in Write or Die Magazine North Sun got a starred review in Kirkus, and another rave in The Baffler. Ethan Rutherford shares his North Sun playlist over at Largehearted Boy Republic of Consciousness Prize winner Melvill garnered a review in World Literature Today, and a mention in this feature at Words Without Borders, in which Tobias Carroll writes: "By the time Melvill reaches its end, this heady, formally inventive, and often absurd book arrives at a deeply moving place and turns a tragic image into one of profound human connection." Publishers Weekly reviewed Attila by Javier Serena and gave a starred review to Attila by Aliocha Coll—plus they did a profile on the two together. The Attilas are also the subject of this essay in Review 31. The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses recommends TERROR COUNTER (forthcoming) on its reading list for Arab American Heritage Month. Deep Vellum's own James Webster was featured in this column on marketing "difficult" literature in Dirt.

Events

ANNIVERSARY PARTY Another year, another reason to gather. The Wild Detectives and Deep Vellum have spent years building a space where literature, music, and conversation create something larger than the sum of their parts. This anniversary, we’re doing what we love most -bringing together the voices, sounds, and people who have shaped this place. See you there, Dallas!

Come on out!

Tom Ross presents Miss Abracadabra at the Warner Library in Tarrytown, NY.

Join us!