​The Flat Woman is a novel that explores climate change through the lens of feminism. Compared to Kafka's Metamorphosis, The Flat Woman is a humorous novel that raises questions about personal responsibility in times of mass disaster.

 

The Flat Woman was called "a thoughtful and affecting dystopian parable" by Kirkus Reviews who recommended you purchase the book.  It has been featured in Electric Literature, The Advocate, Debutiful, Southern Review of Books, New Delta Review, Strange Horizons, and other outlets. You can order a copy of The Flat Woman here.​

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The Flat Woman won FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize and was publishes by University of Alabama Press  and Fiction Collective 2 on November 12th 2024.

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​Vanessa Saunders is a writer living in New Orleans. She teaches as a Professor of Practice at Loyola University New Orleans. She was the editor-in-chief of Helium Journal from 2013 to 2016. 

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Her writing has appeared in Writer's Digest, Writer's Chronicle, Seneca Review, Sycamore Review, Los Angeles Review,  Nat. Brut, Entropy, PANK, Passages North,  Stockholm Review of Literature and other journals.​​ 

 

Her novel, Invisible Illnesses, was the runner-up for the Faulkner Wisdom Novel In-Progress Award in 2025. This is a novel of magical realism and gothic horror that takes place in a world of living buildings. It follows the story of Martha: when the children in the house she works in start to go missing, she begins an investigation that culminates in the revelation of a family secret.

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Vanessa is also at work on a book-length prose poem in style of Lyn Hejinian's My Life in the Nineties. 

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