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Slow Guillotine

A Novel
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( 16 ratings, 12 reviews)
Brief Description
Winner of the Barbara DiBernard Prize in FictionSlow Guillotine follows three broke weirdos whose collective desire to make and think about art is constantly interrupted by their art-industry-adjacent minimum-wage jobs. Throughout the novel, the three friends' day jobs in a failing independent bookstore, a sterile gallery... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$6397

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Using humor and thoughtful poetics to examine the impact structural violence takes on the body, Slow Guillotine follows three broke weirdos whose collective desire to make and think about art is constantly interrupted by their art-industry-adjacent minimum-wage jobs.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Winner of the Barbara DiBernard Prize in Fiction

Slow Guillotine follows three broke weirdos whose collective desire to make and think about art is constantly interrupted by their art-industry-adjacent minimum-wage jobs. Throughout the novel, the three friends' day jobs in a failing independent bookstore, a sterile gallery in downtown Manhattan, and miscellaneous living rooms across the Long Island birthday-party-clown circuit interweave with their attempts to come to terms with their precarity, gender-dysphoric embodiment, and the floating dream of collective liberation.

Spanning one year and told through an obsessive first-person present tense, Slow Guillotine brings the bildungsroman structure through the autofictional looking glass, questioning how "coming of age" could be feasible in a society of debtors, wage laborers, and renters.

Series: Zero Street Fiction

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  • Slow Guillotine
    Winner of the Barbara DiBernard Prize in FictionSlow Guillotine follows three broke weirdos whose collective desire to make and think about art is constantly interrupted by their art-industry-adjacent minimum-wage jobs. Throughout the novel, the three friends' day jobs in a failing independent bookstore, a sterile gallery in downtown Manhattan, and miscellaneous living rooms across the Long Island birthday-party-clown circuit interweave...
    Paperback
    $6397
    Available
    Ships in 2-3 weeks
  • All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere
    Winner of the Barbara DiBernard Prize in Fiction Fantastical, sensual, and as beguilingly strange as they are insightful and real, the stories of All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere are centred around intimate familial or romantic relationships. These stories feature protagonists who make awesome discoveriesβ€”from the beautiful to the horribleβ€”in seemingly mundane situations. The protagonists in each story come from marginalised...
    Paperback
    $5500
    Available
    Ships in 2-3 weeks

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781496247315

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 01 March 2026

Country: United States

Imprint: University of Nebraska Press

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 140.0mm

Height: 216.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 220

About the Author

Teo Rivera-Dundas is a writer in western Massachusetts. His work has received support from the Wassaic Project, Anderson Center at Tower View, California Institute of the Arts, and the University of California, San Diego. His writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, Meridian, Tupelo Quarterly, and Desperate Literature's annual Eleven Stories anthology, among other publications.

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