Deep Vellum

Dear Readers, We're getting into the swing of our spring season and bringing you the best fiction, nonfiction, and poetry around—English originals and translations! This month opens up on May 5th with Pink Tongue Out, Blind Cat, a collection of experimental lyrics by major Colombian poet María Paz Guerrero, translated by National Book Award winner Robin Myers! On May 19th, we enter the darker regions with Ito Romo's Chicano Gothic vampire epic Filth Eaters. (Scroll down to find an interview with Ito on the years of research that went into the book.) Then, on May 26th, we travel from the US-Mexico border to the Russia-Ukraine border with Andrey Kurkov in the new paperback edition of his Diary of an Invasion, a startling collection of dispatches from a nation under siege. June will see the much anticipated publication of Antonio Moresco's The Beginnings, the first volume of his epochal Games of Eternity trilogy, translated by Max Lawton. We've also got a paperback edition of Manon Steffan Ros's multi-award winning The Blue Book of Nebo, a post-apocalyptic tale of mothers, sons, secrets, and survival, translated by the author from the original Welsh.  One less happy note to close out this message. We've made the difficult decision to delay publication of Mircea Cărtărescu’s Theodoros, translated by Sean Cotter. The new publication date will be October 26th, 2027. Deep Vellum Publisher Will Evans explains the decision: “Great books take time, and publishing is about playing the long game. Mircea Cărtărescu lived with the idea of Theodoros for decades, then spent two years writing it. The result of this long gestation process was a new monument of 21st century literature, an inimitable vision by one of the genuine visionaries of our time.  “Mircea has entrusted us to bring his masterpiece into English. We owe it to him and to his readers all over world to give this book the time it needs to become immortal.” You can read the full press-release here. Happy reading! Your Friends at Deep Vellum New in May 2026! Order Pink Tongue Out, Blind Cat, by María Paz Guerrero (translated by Robin Myers) From one of Colombia’s most innovative modern poets, María Paz Guerrero’s poetry collection, Pink Tongue Out, Blind Cat, is filled with sinuous verses on the human experience told with cadence of salsa music. Unnamed bodies are cut open in search of disease, legs buckle and collapse under pressure, and a blind cat stalks its way through the collection, bumping into unseen objects as it travels. María Paz Guerrero’s poetry collection is both experimental and lyrical, forcing readers to fall into its eerily clipped rhythm. Available May 5th, 2026 Filth Eaters, by Ito Romo A high-strung and inventive literary horror that will delight fans of Stephen Graham Jones and Mariana Enriquez, Ito Romo’s debut novel traces the thousand-year lineage of a new kind of vampire—the mestizo Filth Eater. Hopping back and forth in time from the Indus River Delta in 1099 to the Muslim Spanish empire of the 1400s to a flooded cyberpunk New York City of the future, Filth Eaters pulls at the threads of empire, greed, and climate collapse, but the beating, bloody heart of the story is our very human desire for the love that gives life meaning. The debut novel from a celebrated writer of “Chicano Gothic” stories, this surprising, gory saga turns a new page for a centuries-old genre. Available May 19th, 2026 Preorder Preorder Diary of an Invasion, by Andrey Kurkov Dispatches from a nation under siege, from the winner of the NBCC Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize for Grey Bees When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, novelist and journalist Andrey Kurkov was forced to flee his adopted hometown of Kyiv. This journal is a harrowing record of the months leading up to and after the invasion, as Kurkov migrates to the Ukrainian countryside for shelter. In small villages, surrounded by other refugees, he pens incisive dispatches on the latest border conflicts and bombardments affecting his loved ones. These wartime entries ruminate on Ukraine’s historic past and possibilities for its future. Available May 26th, 2026 Coming Soon in June 2026! The Blue Book of Nebo, by Manon Steffan Ros Winner of the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing 2023, this post-apocalyptic story that captured the heart of Wales gets to the heart of the mother-son relationship, the making of myth, and the humanity within us all. After nuclear disaster, Rowenna and her young son are among the rare survivors in rural north-west Wales. Left alone in their isolated hillside cottage, after others have died or abandoned the towns and villages, they must learn new skills in order to remain alive. Despite their close understanding, mother and son have their own secrets, which emerge as in turn they jot down their thoughts and memories in a found notebook. Available June 16th, 2026 Preorder Preorder The Beginnings, by Antonio Moresco (translated by Max Lawton) The first book in Antonio Moresco's epochal Games of Eternity trilogy, now translated into English for the first time. Like a photo-negative of Franz Kafka, or Virginia Woolf, Moresco’s sweeping novel turns the stream-of-consciousness inside out, and offers nothing interior. Here, much like in real life, you will not be privy to the thoughts and feelings of others. Everything must be experienced as it happens. From our narrator’s years in seminary, to his activities as a political radical, to his attempts to become a writer, The Beginnings is a shapeshifting journey across the 20th century, and across all of literature itself. Available June 23rd, 2026 New Publication Date: October 26, 2027 Theodoros, by Mircea Cărtărescu (translated by Sean Cotter) A “pseudo-historical” epic of human ambition and the quest for power, from Romania’s most celebrated contemporary writer. Seven archangels relay the captivating and frequently terrifying tale of Theodoros (or Tudor, or Tewodros, as he is variably known): a servant, a runaway, a pirate, an emperor, a lovesick romantic. From Wallachia to Greece to Ethiopia, “you” undertake a series of surreal quests rooted as much in real-life history as they are in legend and myth.  A departure from the self-investigations of Solenoid and Blinding, Theodoros retains all the sentence-level linguistic brilliance that has won Cărtărescu worldwide acclaim. Preorder A Brief Interview with Ito Romo This week, we sat down (virtually) with author, academic, and 11th-generation South Texan Ito Romo, to discuss the ten years of research that went into his short-but-mighty first novel Filth Eaters, a future classic in the "Chicano Gothic" tradition. You’ve said that this book took you ten years to write, and that much of that time was spent on research. Can you describe your research process? For ten years, as I wrote, I got lost in beautiful tangential research, or as the kids say, I went down many rabbit holes—you know, the long, enjoyable research where one "find" leads to a book and that book leads to another five sources. For example, in Filth Eaters, I had to find out how the vampire Radamés would’ve actually traveled to the New Spain. Turns out, he’d have traveled by frigate ("types of boats used to travel from the Iberian Peninsula to the Port of Veracruz, Mexico, 1866", but that’s another research story). Then that "travel search" info made me think about the history of this intercontinental route.  So here’s the story: The vampire Radamés arrived at the very port Carlota and Maximilian had just come through less than a year and a half before him in May of 1864. And before that, Hernán Cortés himself founded the port in 1519 after traveling north from his initial arrival in the Yucatan Peninsula. And before him, the people of the great Olmec empire had inhabited the Veracruz area as far back as 1000 BC. There are just so many stories happening in the same place, all of those lives connected by the intertwining of space and time and history, so many levels of existence, there is so much to learn before I write. And I love this. What are some facts most Americans don’t know that informed your perspective on the history you’re telling? What I learned during my research--particularly the information about the history of the Americas, especially the stories about the Americas that we're not told--deeply informed my writing. A few facts you may not know: - The Great Pyramid of Cholula (Mexico) is the largest pyramid (by volume/4.5 million cubic meters) in the world.  - World Populations, 500 AD: Constantinople 400,000; Rome 100,000; Antioch 150,000; Carthage 100,000; Athens 110,000; and Teotihuacán (Mexico) 125,000 - Chewing gum was brought to the US from Mexico by Gen Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (1860s). Both the Aztecs and Maya used gum for fresh breath and teeth hygiene. - At the time of the Spanish conquest in 1521, Tenochtitlán, present day Mexico City, had 200,000 inhabitants. Madrid had 100,000. London had 50,000. - The tomato is not from Italy. It was found to be already domesticated by 500 BC in México.  - The potato is not Irish. It originated in southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia and was domesticated 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. There are over 4,000 varieties. - Corn was domesticated in southern Mexico 10,000 years ago. Today, more corn is produced and consumed globally than rice! (1.2 billion metric tons to 500–800 million tons). Subscriptions! Get the latest and greatest from Deep Vellum! With a subscription, you will receive one brand-new book per month from the Deep Vellum catalog.  Subscribe Support Deep Vellum! Support Deep Vellum Deep Vellum is a nonprofit literary arts center and publisher. Our mission is to bring the world into conversation through literature. We build community around the literary arts by hosting conversation-driven events and foster inclusion in the literary arts by publishing works by writers from around the globe and from our home base in Texas. We couldn't do any of it without our generous donors. Thank you for your support in making it all possible!