BOOKS

Vanessa's feminist experimental novel, The Flat Woman, won FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize. It will published by the University of Alabama Press and FC2 in fall 2024. 

Description 
 

In The Flat Woman, women exclusively are blamed for the climate crisis. Seagulls drop dead from the sky, and the government, instead of taking responsibility, scapegoats a group of female ecoterrorists.

When a girl’s mother is incarcerated for climate crimes, she is forced to raise herself alone. As a young woman, she begins a romance with an environmental activist whose passion makes her question her own role in the world.

By turns hilarious, deadly serious, and completely absurd, The Flat Woman asks who gets the right to call themselves a good person in a world ripe with disaster.

The Flat Woman is certain to appeal to fans of feminist and experimental literature, as well as fans of Margaret Atwood, Renee Gladman, Bhanu Kapil, Maggie Nelson, Kelly Link, and Anne Carson.

You can pre-order the book on Amazon here.

Press

"The idea of a “feminist magic-realist ecological dystopia” sounds didactic, but Saunders deftly avoids preaching, instead showing us a simplified and constrained view of a world undergoing collapse in a way completely familiar. By the end, I was turning pages as fast as I could click." -Chris Turner-Neal, Country Roads Magazine. Read full review here.

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"This book packs a punch in only 160 pages. Provocative, engaging, and informative. We need this book more now than ever." -Debutiful, "Nine Noteworthy Books to Read This November"

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"Surreal, funny, repulsive, and brilliantly thought-provoking, The Flat Woman is an example of what bold and original climate writing can do." -Electric Literature, "The Flat Woman Asks What Came First: Climate Change or Sexism?"

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"Saunders could give a master class on how to effectively use humor to explore serious issues," -Trampoline Poetry 

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"Using elements of magical realism, Saunders creates a world that highlights societal issues in which women are held responsible for the implications of the climate crisis" -Loyola Maroon

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“With deft efficiency, Vanessa Saunders lets a mini-matrix of motifs and characters mirror a society's worth of ecological, political, and personal crisis. A beautifully constructed work of feminist realism.” —Nell Zink, author Avalon
 

“Richly textured and chillingly poetic, The Flat Woman is filled with pure enthrallment. A mother, a child-like woman, an Elvis impersonator, and an aunt—all caught in an intricate web of seagull terrorism, spattered with ash and feathers—plunges the reader into an intricate and inscrutable collision of forces.”
—Vi Khi Nao, author of Swimming with Dead Stars

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"I wanted to create a world that wasn't quite dystopian; not quite ending, but on the edge," an interview with Minor Literature

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"I don’t believe in art as an object of emotional catharsis. For that reason, I don’t write about my personal life in my work," an interview with Rob Mclennan 's blog