Dog on Fire, the nineteenth book (and seventh novel) by Terese Svoboda ’78 will be released in early 2023 from Flyover Fiction, University of Nebraska Press.
Her fourth book in five years in four genres, Dog on Fire is coming on the heels of Theatrix: Poetry Plays (Anhinga Press, 2021) and Great American Desert (Mad Creek Books, 2019), a collection of stories that was a finalist for the 2019 Forward Book Award.
With Dog on Fire, Svoboda enters the realm of the supernatural. The novel’s description hints at the mysteries that abound within its pages. “Everyone likes ghost stories—except Dog on Fire isn't exactly that. Imagine a sad-funny elegy, Cather channeling Saunders, with infusions of sly wit. Imagine a sibling who is so inscrutable he seems to be from another family entirely, who dies before you get to know him. Of course the family in Dog on Fire is dysfunctional: an alcoholic mother who carves wax guns, a father whose passion is smoking anything vaguely edible, a sister who hears her epileptic dead brother in door molding. A dreadful dust storm gets the book off to a good start with the glimpse of a shovel-wielding ghost. What Dog on Fire does best is haunt, and its succinct almost-poetry seeks to enchant you.”
René Steinke, author of Friendswood, praised the novel, saying, “With its fierce wit and insight, Dog on Fire is thrillingly alive to this bewildering moment. This novel about family, grief, and all the ways we remain mysteries to one another is both memorable and brilliant. I’m grateful for Terese Svoboda’s searing vision and for her singular, inventive prose, which always makes me see the world in an entirely new way.”
Fellow alumna Karen Russell ’06, author of Swamplandia, called Svoboda “One of our best writers.”
Dog on Fire will be released in March of 2023 and is available for preorder now.
Terese Svoboda is the author of nineteen books of poetry, fiction, biography, memoir, and translation. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bobst Prize in fiction, the Iowa Poetry Prize, an NEH translation grant, the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, a Jerome Foundation video prize, the O. Henry Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Her opera, WET, premiered at L.A.'s Disney Hall. Her eighth novel, Roxy and Coco, will be published in 2024.
