One or Several Deserts

 Carter St. Hogan

A startling debut full of stories that refuse to be polite and that challenge what you thought you knew about genre, about fiction, and even about prose itself. Carter St. Hogan puts the magic back into magical realism and then cracks it back open and turns it inside out and leaves its glorious insides streaming in the wind of their words. Transgressive, sacrilegious, touching on a unique and previously unknown fleshy gnosticism: this is a roadmap for where the fantastic has yet to go. – Brian Evenson

One or Several Deserts by Carter St. Hogan unlocks, transfigures, and destroys. This book of short stories pushed me towards a new knowledge unlocked through seeing the body as it is; cut open & bloodlet. Each story builds, breaks, and bleeds all over the reader, an argument for survival in a violent world. Carter St Hogan proves that writing is nourishment towards our collective continuing. – LA Warman

Carter St. Hogan's fearlessly innovative, unsettling stories run amok with a stark tenderness, and whirlwind poetic prose, that their fabric often lingers like only the best writing can. A not-to-miss, startling debut. – Fernando A. Flores

The way Carter's language spiders through these stories does a certain thing to my brain—akin to napping in a bed of knives. Tuck yourself in. –  John Elizabeth Stinzi

One or Several Deserts is the debut of an extraordinarily gifted writer who manages both surface and depth in ways few others even try. Here is some of the most dazzling prose I have read in quite some time. With this collection, Carter St. Hogan emerges as a literary artist of significant originality and accomplishment. – Garielle Lutz

Queer, strange, grotesque: eight intimate fictions give voice to bodies at the margins as they yearn and claw at their own flesh. Some of these bodies flicker in and out of reality; some find rebirth in a sentient disease; some consume the bowels of their lovers; others wrestle with sexual awakening at the hands of a giant stone in the wide American prairie. Bristling with defiance, cruel but tender, "One or Several Deserts" bends reality with a logic all its own.

Carter St.Hogan is a nonbinary writer, performer, and educator based in Austin, TX. S/he earned their MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 2016, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming from McSweeney's, The Best American Experimental Writing of 2020, Tarpaulin Sky Magazine, FANZINE, and others. S/he has been supported by residencies with Surel’s Place (Boise, ID), HIVE Arts Collective (Austin, TX), the Disquiet International Program (Lisbon, Portugal), and Brown University (Providence, RI). Currently at work on a concept album about a trans saint and a book of geo-erotic Western horror, their portfolio can be found at cartersainthogan.com

Out Now! April 11,2023