Fiction Collective 2
160 pages
November 2024
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.
Driven by complex academic and moral questions, 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.
Vanessa Saunders is a professor of practice at Loyola University New Orleans. Her hybrid work, fiction, and poetry has appeared in Seneca Review, Los Angeles Review, Sycamore Review, Passages North, and [PANK] among others. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she received her MFA from Louisiana State University.