Fresh Dirt from the Grave

Shipwrecks, dive bars, possession, and science--this is where contemporary horrors and ancient terrors meet.

In Fresh Dirt from the Grave, a hillside is "an emerald saddle teeming with evil and beauty." It is this collision of harshness and tenderness that animates Giovanna Rivero's short stories, where no degree of darkness (buried bodies, lost children, wild paroxysms of violence) can take away from the gentleness she shows all violated creatures. A mad aunt haunts her family, two Bolivian children are left on the outskirts of a Metis reservation outside Winnipeg, a widow teaches origami in a women's prison and murders, housefires, and poisonings abound, but so does the persistent bravery of people trying to forge ahead in the face of the world. They are offered cruelty, often, indifference at best, and yet they keep going. Rivero has reworked the boundaries of the gothic to engage with pre-Columbian ritual, folk tales, sci-fi and eroticism, and found in the wound their humanity and the possibility of hope.

Giovanna Rivero was born in the city of Montero, Santa Cruz, Bolivia in 1972 and is a writer of short stories and novels. She holds a doctorate in Hispano-American literature. In 2004, she studied on the Iowa Writing Program and in 2006 she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship that enabled her to take a masters in Latin American literature at the University of Florida. In 2014, she received her doctorate from the same university.​ In 2011, she was selected by the Guadalajara Book Fair as one of the 25 upcoming stars of Latin American literature.She is the author of the books of short stories Las bestias (1997, Premio Municipal Santa Cruz), Contraluna (2005), Sangre dulce (2006), Niñas y detectives (2009) and Para comerte mejor (2015, Premio Dante Alighieri 2018). She has also published the books for children La dueña de nuestros sueños (2005), which received the Premio en Cuentos Franz Tamayo, and Lo más oscuro del bosque (2015, recommended book of the year by the Bolivian Academy of Children's Literature). She has published four novels: Las camaleonas (2001), Tukzon (2008), Helena 2022 (2011) and 98 segundos sin sombra (2014, Premio Audiobook Narration and filmed by Bolivian director Juan Pablo Richter). Her literary work, which moves between horror literature and science fiction, is regarded as an immense contribution to the renovation of the fantastic genre in Latin America.

Isabel Adey is a translator (Spanish and German to English) and editor based in Edinburgh. She has taught translation at the postgraduate level and has been translating professionally since 2011. Former winner of the Goethe-Institut Emerging Translators' Program, she has a passion for unusual books that deal with cultural identity, women's rights, and migration. Her debut translation of Marc Raabe's novel_Homesick (_ Zaffre Publishing) was brought out in 2018. She has also translated Self-criticism and Tea in Augsburg by the Colombian writer Marvel Moreno, in collaboration with Charlotte Coombe.