Transmutation

Transmutation is an innovative, magical collection about all the things that pulse with possibility: love in all forms, belonging, reckoning, and reclamation. Each sentence is a gem, multi-faceted and full of light. Alex DiFrancesco has the kind of imagination that saves lives. --K-Ming Chang, author of Bestiary Transmutation is an eerie darling of a collection. Alex DiFrancesco has written stories here that are so unearthly they feel as if they have gossamer wings, characters lifting off the page to hold court in startling three-dimensional life. Some playful, some terrifying, all crafted with care--Transmutation is the kind of story collection that will stick with you for days after reading. DiFrancesco is a radiant talent. --Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of the novel Mostly Dead Things In Transmutation, monsters come in many forms but so does grace. Here you will find a merciful vampire, a shrewd lobotomized woman, a repentant rock star, a trans girl finding kinship with a mythical green hag. Alex DiFrancesco's characters are outsiders, often victims of a cruel world, but they are never just victims. These masterfully wrought stories transmute suffering into a kind of triumph, in which harsh realities are never softened but are somehow, sometimes, transcended. --Jennifer Wortman, author of This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love. Transmutation is haunting yet immediate, horrifying yet gorgeous, stylishly blasphemous yet earnestly spiritual. I expected clever ghost stories about gender, but what I got will stay with me for a very long time. --Meredith Russo, author of If I Was Your Girl DiFrancesco's characters are not simply reflections of who we appear to be, they are our real selves, the ones we try so very hard to keep hidden. These stories lay them bare and demand that we acknowledge them in all of their wondrous imperfection. Grimy, raw, and glittering with truth, these are portraits of the human heart. --Michael Thomas Ford, author of Shirley Jackson Award finalist Lily Multilayered, poetic, insightful stories that won't let you put them down. Transmutation is simultaneously an absolute pleasure and heartache of a read. I thought about the stories in this book for weeks after I finished them, reliving the small details, searching for new meaning, which I always found. --Chavisa Woods, author of Things To Do When You're Goth in the Country and 100 Times (A Memoir of Sexism) These stories howl like Greek furies about everyday cruelty and the queer monstrous that lives to spite it. Our Nick Cave heir apparent, DiFrancesco here advances the project of the Transmasculine Gothic with a haunting instrumentation and an elegiac rage. --Jeanne Thornton, author of Summer Fun This memorable collection of short stories displays the wild talent of Alex DiFrancesco to push boundaries and explore the imagination while simultaneously comforting and strengthening their readers. --Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine This beautiful collection of stories features trans and queer characters across many times and places. Some of the stories have magical elements; others are straight-up realistic. They're about family and first love, growing up, queer community, and the weird disconnect between the world as it is and the world as we experience it. DiFrancesco's writing is gorgeous. There's an eerie beauty in each of these stories, and the characters all feel strikingly real. --Laura Sackton, BookRiot