Mandolin’s First Collection, “Through the Drowsy Dark,” Is Out!

Aqueduct Press — a small publisher that specializes in “bringing challenging feminist science fiction to the demanding reader” — has published “Through the Drowsy Dark,” a collection of poetry and short fiction by Rachel Swirsky, also known to “Alas” readers as Mandolin.

Congratulations, Mandolin! This is Mandolin’s first published book (although clearly it will not be her last).

Here’s how Aqueduct describes the 146-page paperback book:

Through the Drowsy Dark collects ten stories and nine poems by Nebula- and Hugo-nominee Rachel Swirsky, “a terrific writer who’s been making a name for herself with a string of intelligent, perceptive stories,” as critic Jonathan Strahan characterizes her. In Through the Drowsy Dark, Swirsky’s characters struggle with too much and too little emotional control, with heartbreak, with grief that has gone deep underground; they search for nothingness, for difference, for oneness. One commits a terrible crime because she believes it’s the moral thing to do, while another digs up a dead dog because the very thought of kissing it on the lips makes her clitoris throb. Swirsky’s explorations of the heart and mind are fearless—and dangerous fictions indeed.

You can purchase Through the Drowsy Dark on the Aquaduct Press website, Amazon, and many other booksellers.

By the way, the cover illustration was drawn by me. Here’s a big version of it, if you’re interested: