Garden and Gun “asked experts at independent bookstores across the South for the summer reads they’re recommending to book lovers right now.” Jonathan Sanchez of Blue Bicycle Books in Charleston, SC describes The New and Improved Romie Futch as “a magical realism Southern gothic novel about this middle-aged, often drunk, often broke taxidermist. Sort of dark, very funny.” Check out the list here.
I love The Georgia Review and am stoked to have a story in the Summer 2017 issue. For a limited time, you can access it online. A random snip: “In the vast boudoir of a Gordes mansion, a kaftan-clad OB-GYN smeared Aquasonic gel upon the pop star’s belly. Despite her devotion to natural childbirth, the goddess could not resist the reassurance of a fifth-month ultrasound, and Carlo held her sweaty hand. Her doula and midwife, also wearing white tunics, chanted ancient Sumerian fertility hymns as the OB-GYN pressed the diva’s bulging abdomen with her magic wand.” Read more here.
According to Elle (India), fans of Black Mirror should read The Circle (Dave Eggers), The Status of All Things (Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke), and my story collection The Wilds:
A disabled elderly woman gets bionic legs,a middle-aged woman participates in grotesque rejuvenation therapies on a Carribean island and a teenaged girl finds herself embroiled in the weird schemes of her friend’s wacky grandmother. Julia Elliott’s debut collection of genre-bending stories mix gothic elements with a dystopian bent and a healthy dose of sci-fi thrown in for good measure. The stories are filled with dark humour and unexpectedly poignant moments.
For other TV-related book recs, check out “What you should be reading based on your favorite TV show.”
I wrote a warm fuzzy story about motherhood for the Fall 2016 Conjunctions: Other Aliens. From a recent NewPages review: “The result of their love is Adelaide, a child who is not entirely human and uses serrated gills inside her mouth to feed on her mother’s blood. The narrator’s world is changed forever as she copes with the pain and joy of becoming a mother. Elliott’s prose is excellent and her story stands out as one of my favorites in this collection.” Hoping for a reprint in Mothering Magazine: “Ten Tips for Gently Weaning Your Blood-Suckling Alien Baby.”
I’m pleased to see that Read it Forward has declared “The Wilds” spellbinding (along with four terrific collections by other writers) in “Five Spellbinding Short Story Collections.”
Julia Elliott’s stories are creepy—but in a good way. A girl wearing a crown of bird bones is taken captive by a pack of wild boys; an old woman in a nursing home explores with her robotic legs; a spa in the Caribbean overs gruesome treatments. These works of short fiction vacillate between weird and wonderful and through them, Elliott redefines the “Southern Gothic” genre.
For over three decades, Conjunctions has been a haven for weird and innovative writers, and I’m proud to have another story (“Clouds”) in this amazing anthology edited by author Bradford Morrow. Other Aliens “collects works of literary science and speculative fiction: innovative short stories, poetry, and essays that explore the vast precincts of unfamiliarity, of keen difference, of weirdness and not belonging.”
I enjoyed virtually chatting with Danielle Susi of Entropy about Medieval female mystics, Christ’s foreskin, a mystical experience I had eating shark steak, scaring people with my SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), and my ideal last supper on earth. Read this Dinnerview.
Bustle says, “If you’re not addicted to Black Mirror, then you know someone who’s addicted to Black Mirror. For the uninitiated, Black Mirror is a British anthology series that examines the relationship between humans and technology in the digital age. If you’re looking for more of the show but you’ve already binge-watched every episode, take a look at these 13 books like Black Mirror.”
Chicago Review of Books has included “The Wilds” in “The 9 Best Horror Stories You Can Read (For Free) This Halloween,” along with great stories by Nathan Ballingrud, Sofia Samatar, Brian Evenson, Nnedi Okorofor, Jeff VanderMeer, Kelly Link, Laird Barron, and Madeline Gobbo and Miles Klee.
The title story from Elliott’s 2014 collection is a perfect introduction to her singular brand of speculative, neo-Southern Gothic fiction. When a new family moves into the neighborhood, a young girl on the brink of womanhood is intrigued by a boy who wears a wolf mask.
Lincoln Michel, Editor-in-Chief of Electric Literature and author of the magical collection Upright Beasts, recommends that “if you didn’t get enough bleak, dystopian scenarios” after binge-watching this season’s Black Mirror, you should check out “similar science fiction novels to tide you over until the next season.”
Check out “12 Books to Read after Binge-watching Black Mirror” on GQ. It’s lovely to find The Wilds on a list with some of my favorite weird books:
In the story collection The Wilds, Julia Elliott mixes science fiction visions with a Southern gothic style—think Black Mirror by way of Flannery O’Connor. Elliott enters her dark worlds from surprising angles. “LIMBs,” for example, takes place in a depressing nursing home where residents move around with Leg Intuitive Motion Bionics limbs. Other stories look attempts to make robots experience love by downloading sonnets and novels into their brains and a horrifying spa resort where the vain rich try to prevent aging through “controlled” diseases. While the premises of these stories are captivating, the real star of Elliot’s work is her lyrical and loopy Southern gothic prose.