My Volcano

ABOUT * Winner of the Sator New Works Award. * New York Public Library's "Best Books of 2022" * Kirkus Reviews' "Best Fiction Books of 2022" * 2022 Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, Longlist. * "A Most Anticipated Book" —Lambda Literary, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Tor.com, The Chicago Review of Books, LGBTQReads, Ms. Magazine, The Mary Sue My Volcano is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a menagerie of characters, as they each undergo personal eruptions, while the Earth itself is constantly shifting. Parable, myth, science-fiction, eco-horror, My Volcano is a radical work of literary art, emerging as a subversive, intoxicating artistic statement by John Elizabeth Stintzi. On June 2, 2016, a protrusion of rock growing from the Central Park Reservoir is spotted by a jogger. Three weeks later, when it finally stops growing, it’s nearly two-and-a-half miles tall, and has been determined to be an active volcano. As the volcano grows and then looms over New York, an eight-year-old boy in Mexico City finds himself transported 500 years into the past, where he witnesses the fall of the Aztec Empire; a Nigerian scholar in Tokyo studies a folktale about a woman of fire who descends a mountain and destroys an entire village; a white trans writer in Jersey City struggles to write a sci-fi novel about a thriving civilization on an impossible planet; a nurse tends to Syrian refugees in Greece while grappling with the trauma of living through the bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan; a nomadic farmer in Mongolia is stung by a bee, magically transforming him into a green, thorned, flowering creature that aspires to connect every living thing into its consciousness. With its riveting and audacious vision, My Volcano is a tapestry on fire, a distorted and cinematic new work from the fiercely talented John Elizabeth Stintzi. Additional Reading: The Rumpus presents: "What to Read When It’s the End of the World," a reading list by My Volcano author John Elizabeth Stintzi, April 22, 2022. View the book trailer for My Volcano, created by author John Elizabeth Stintzi: EVENTS: March 23, 2022 (Free | Zoom | 6:00 PM PST): City Lights Booksellers & Publishers presents: John Elizabeth Stintzi reads from their new novel My Volcano. This event is made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation March 24, 2022: Author and poet JES (John Elizabeth Stintzi) discusses My Volcano with the Prince George's County Office of Human Rights and Memorial Library System. March 30, 2022 (5:30 pm - 6:30 pm | Zoom) Click here to register on eventbrite. Join The Watermill Center for an intimate conversation with artist and writer, John Elizabeth Stintzi, featuring a reading of the artist's work, followed by a guided conversation and Q&A, moderated by Andrea Cote. Viewpoints is The Watermill Center’s year-round conversation series, granting artists and art enthusiasts the opportunity to gather and discuss creative themes vital to the contemporary moment. Hosted at both its East End campus and online, Viewpoints engages with the community through intriguing dialogue, artist talks, and lectures that span across disciplines. April 9, 2022: Mission Creek Festival 2022 John Elizabeth Stintzi, Reneice Charles, and Tameka Cage Conley Venue: The Tuesday Agency (132 E Washington St, Iowa City, IA 52240) Doors: 4:15 PM, Conversation: 4:45 PM—5:45 PM Admission: Free and open to the public April 13, 2022 (7 - 9pm EDT | Zoom) John Elizabeth Stintzi and Megan Milks, hosted by The Odyssey Bookshop Click here to register on this free event. John Elizabeth Stintzi talks about their new novel, My Volcano. They will be joined in conversation by Megan Milks, author of Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body. Reviews Scroll to bottom for Goodreads reviews. My Volcano is Winner of the Sator New Works Award The Sator New Works Award, selected by Two Dollar Radio editors, goes to an author who identifies as transgender or non-binary for a book-length work of fiction or non-fiction. This publishing prize was made possible by Sator Press, a nonprofit publishing company operated by Ken Baumann from 2009-2019. My Volcano is included in the New York Public Library's "Best Books of 2022" View the full list of "Best Books for Adults 2022" My Volcano is included in Kirkus Reviews' "Best Fiction Books of 2022" View the full list of "Best Fictional Voices of 2022" My Volcano is Longlisted for the 2022 BPL Book Prize Brooklyn Public Library and the Brooklyn Eagles announce the longlist nominees for the 2022 BPL Book Prize. "I will read anything that comes from JES’s twisted imagination and love it. This ingenious, insightful, unconventional and expansive eco-horror is no exception." —Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine "2022 ‘Best of the Rest’: Our Favorite Books of the Year!" "My Volcano, an ambitious, astonishing pageant of a book... This is also a book about contemporary estrangement and violence, about the wounds and hauntings of history, of climate collapse… I loved that the book felt like an explosive device injected into our current era—and into history itself—and detonated. I loved the bombast of the book, the feeling that I was tearing through time and space while reading it, the mystery of how all the pieces fit together, the remarkable and unrelenting presence of each rendered moment." —Lauren Markham, 2023 Tournament of Books (The Morning News) MARCH 8 (2023) • PLAY-IN MATCH: 2 A.M. in Little America v. An Island v. My Volcano,  Judged by Lauren Markham "My Volcano is a radical novel in the sense that it imagines total, systemic renewal as a solution to current systems of oppression. It imagines all these violent vectors as, ultimately, attacks on human connectivity. On a micro level, it explores this disruption and detachment too. Characters are often watching others through screens, yearning to communicate what they’re holding within to people whom they find it easier to experience through distance." —ML Kejera, 2023 Tournament of Books (The Morning News) MARCH 17 • OPENING ROUND: The Rabbit Hutch v. My Volcano, Judged by ML Kejera "Remarkably unique... Ultimately, the volcano offers a symbol of hope—of renewal and creation... The culmination of the novel offers the reader a feeling of solace, not loss—of transcendence, not defeat. Readers of My Volcano may grapple with the erratic, compelling, and transcendent prospect of our present and our future, but they’ll find it worth the extraordinary adventure." —Samantha Fitch, West Trade Review (Read the review of My Volcano) Joe Walters of Independent Book Review names My Volcano at the top of the list of "30 Impressive Indie Books of 2022" "Stintzi’s prose is a flow of incredible empathy. Reading along is like watching a master painter in progress, as My Volcano is a triumph in every way I can imagine: in form, genre, and prose. If we are lucky, if we live in one of the better timelines of Stinzti’s world, My Volcano will be read and studied for many years to come." —Ben Ghan, Filling Station (Read the review of My Volcano) "In this novel, Stintzi explores cultural, geographical, personal, and emotional relationships. In tandem, themes of global society, technology, and the digital disconnect of modern life punctuate the book with a resonant insight. My Volcano is a gorgeous unpacking of what it means to live as the world changes around us in ways we don’t always understand." —Wendy J. Fox, BuzzFeed "17 Books From Independent Publishers You Need To Read This Summer" "My Volcano by John Elizabeth Stintzi is beautiful, weird and profound... I will be thinking about My Volcano for a long time. It’s a fascinating, ambitious and energetic novel, and a feat of story construction. So many balls are in the air, but the author juggles them beautifully. Stintzi’s writing is crisp, quick and clear, and their imagination is extraordinary. I flew through this book." —Michael P. Ventura, Books on GIF (Read the review of My Volcano) "There is nothing I can write about this book that will capture the whole of it. It is a piece of surreal and beautiful art that defines categorization and explanation. In June of 2016, a massive volcano begins growing in Central Park. From there, a disjointed but beautifully symphonic narrative emerges, as characters all over the world begin to experience strange events. Somehow, in writing about giant bugs and time travel and weird escape rooms and magical bees, Stintzi has hit on some essential truth about what it feels like to be a human on this bizarre, heartbreaking, ever-changing, impossible planet." —Laura Sackton, BookRiot "20 Must-Read Under the Radar Queer Books From the First Half of 2022" "As My Volcano unfurls outward, growing more surreal and bizarre, leading to eruptions both figurative and literal, it becomes a story about our struggle to connect with those we love and the planet we seem hellbent on destroying... Akin to Isabel Waidner and Jenny Hval, two marvellous writ­ers whose surrealist work defies categorisation, Stintzi doesn’t concern themselves with the reader’s ability to keep up. Instead, they adopt a style that suits the story, a style reflective of volcanoes and seismic activity—unstable, fluid and constantly shifting underfoot.... My Volcano might be steeped in the strange, the absurd, and the esoteric, but Stintzi’s care for the planet and their desire for us all to be better than we are couldn’t be any more lucid and direct." —Ian Mond, Locus Magazine (Read the review of My Volcano) "John Elizabeth Stintzi (My Volcano) On Writing A Doomscroll Novel And Finding Humanity In The Absurd" (June 14, 2022) Listen to the Origin Story Podcast interview "Ultimately, the novel gives us a funhouse mirror of ourselves and our society: entertaining, thought-provoking, and purposefully strange. The volcano—any of our volcanoes—always threatens to overwhelm, demanding our attention. The question remains what, if anything, we will do about it." —Nathaniel Drenner, Independent Review of Books (Read the review of My Volcano) "Written in brief excerpts, My Volcano is an absurd and moving examination of people’s reactions when the unexpected happens... These stories unfold and build to a bigger narrative of the present." —Margaret Kingsbury, BuzzFeed News "26 Science Fiction And Fantasy Novels By Trans And Nonbinary Authors" "The premise of My Volcano is weird and wonderful: one day in 2016, a growth sprouts up in Central Park. Over the next few weeks, it gets bigger and bigger and is ultimately determined to be a volcano. Against this backdrop, Stintzi weaves a kaleidoscope of stories showing the mundane, momentous, and increasingly bizarre ways Manhattan’s newest resident creeps into the lives of a variety of characters." —Allison McNearney, The Daily Beast "The Best Summer Beach Reads of 2022" "It starts with a volcano sprouting up in Central Park. A kaleidoscopic portrait of a menagerie of characters, as they each undergo personal eruptions, while the Earth itself is constantly shifting. A parable, myth, science-fiction, eco-horror, and a radical work of literary art." —Emily Pullen, New York Public Library "New LGBTQ Fiction for Pride 2022" "My Volcano by John Elizabeth Stintzi, published by Two Dollar Radio, is the kind of book that makes indie publishers so important." —John Warner, Chicago Tribune "Biblioracle discusses the enduring trend of time travel books" "The stories and narrators of John Elizabeth Stintzi's novel reflect on a variety of societal responses to ecological trauma—including a desire to capitalize on it." —CBC Books "11 Canadian books to read for Earth Day 2022" "[Stintzi's] new novel, My Volcano, is an ambitious tapestry of characters from all over the world, across time and space, all experiencing different versions of eco-catastrophe. Stintzi’s work is kaleidoscopic in scope and depth, and they are a gifted storyteller no matter the genre." —Sarah Neilson, Shondaland "Trans and Nonbinary Writers to Read on This National Transgender Day of Visibility and Beyond" "This innovative work of eco-horror follows a cast of characters from Tokyo to Afghanistan to Jersey City. Stintzi documents particularly strange moments in their lives all under the shadow of a scientifically incomprehensible Mount Fuji-sized volcano growing in the middle of Central Park. Gripping and disorientingly realistic, My Volcano is truly a unique exploration of vengeance and human struggle." —Amanda Rivera, Bookshop.org "Independent Press Books for Independence Day" My Volcano included in "14 new books to revive your reading life." —Katie Yee, Lit Hub "One of the most exhilarating [novels] I’ve read in years." —Abeni Jones, Autostraddle (Read the review of My Volcano) "A kaleidoscopic, contemporary folktale with added acerbic juice, like when Dylan went electric. Stintzi somehow funnels the tumultuous present into a sprawling novel of collision and connection that’s both timely and timeless. This is very weird shit indeed." —Hazel Jane Plante, author of Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) "My Volcano, John Elizabeth Stintzi’s audacious second novel, is a phantasmagoria of barely controlled chaos... My Volcano suggests we are much more than our bodies—these needy carapaces that house us—and more, even, than our individual consciousnesses." —Zsuzsi Gartner, Literary Review of Canada (Read the full review of My Volcano in Literary Review of Canada) "Packed with astonishing imagery, poetry, ideas, and true weirdness, this book begins with one concept—a volcano in Central Park—only to continuously 'elevate' from there—on every single page—yet always keeping masterful control." —Michael Narkunski, Booksoup (West Hollywood, CA) ^Image from @mikenark "Short, punchy chapters paint a vast, weird portrait of our world that spans concurrent tim