McSweeney's Issue 56 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern)

Issue 56 delivers new work from Michelle Tea, Jose Antonio Vargas, T. C. Boyle, Dantiel W. Moniz, Genevieve Hudson, Jincy Willett, to name a few, and a section of staggering fiction from emerging Nigerian writers soon to be household names, with an introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. There are botched home invasions and perception-heightening witchcraft, disillusioned mailmen and playlists for the comatose, posthumous visits from lovers and nail-biting prison breaks.

And, if that weren't enough, this opulent hardcover issue also includes a captivating ten-page illustrated story by Rui Tenreiro that begins on the cover, and poems by Soviet-era absurdist Daniil Kharms, translated by Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Ferris. Time to cancel your plans-something more important has come up.

chimamanda ngozi adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including the New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of three novels: Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), as well as a short-story collection, The Thing around Your Neck (2009). Her most recent work is Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.

Ope Adedeji dreams about bridging the gender-equality gap and destroying the patriarchy. She is a lawyer and editor. If you do not find her reading, you'll find her writing.

T. C. Boyle is the author of twenty-eight books of fiction, including the novel Outside Looking In (spring 2019). "The Apartment" is his seventh story for McSweeney's, and it will be included in his next collection, along with stories from the New Yorker and Esquire.

Dawn Davies is the author of Mothers of Sparta: A Memoir in Pieces (Flatiron Books, 2018), as well as many other essays and stories. Her hobbies are free weights, poodles, and hair. Sometimes she teaches at writers' conferences. She lives in weird Florida.

Michael Deagler's fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, KROnline, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska.

Adachioma Ezeano is an alumna of Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop. Her work has appeared in Brittle Paper, Deyu African, 9jafeminista, Critical Literature Review, and elsewhere.

Katie Farris is the author of Boysgirls (Marick Press) and the coeditor of Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose (Tupelo Press).

Mary Houlihan is a comedian, writer, actor, and visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York.

Genevieve Hudson is the author of the story collection Pretend We Live Here (Future Tense Books, 2018), the hybrid memoir A Little in Love with Everyone (Fiction Advocate, 2018), and the forthcoming novel Boys of Alabama (Liveright, 2020). Her writing has been published in Catapult, Hobart, Tin House online, No Tokens, Bitch, the Rumpus, and other places. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright Program and artist residencies at Dickinson House, Caldera Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the MacDowell Colony.

Chukwuebuka Ibeh was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 2000. His short stories have been long listed for the Awele Creative Trust Short Story Prize and have appeared or are forthcoming in New England Review of Books, Clarion, the Charles River Journal, and elsewhere. He is an alumnus of the Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop.

Kristen Iskandrian is the author of the novel Motherest. Her short stories have been published in The Best American Short Stories 2018, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2014, Zyzzyva, Ploughshares, McSweeney's, Tin House, and many other places. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is working on opening an independent bookstore.

Ngozi John studies English and literature at the University of Calabar, in Nigeria. In most of her writing, she explores individual struggle. She is interested in creating beautiful art experiences in Africa. Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press).

Shubnum Khan's debut novel, Onion Tears, was shortlisted for the Penguin Prize for African Writing. She was selected as one of the Mail & Guardian's "200 Young South Africans." She is the 2018 Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat Octavia Butler Fellow. She lives in Durban, South Africa, and is working on a second novel and a collection of micro-memoirs.

Daniil Kharms was a Russian absurdist poet who was a cofounder of OBERIU movement. He died of starvation in Stalin's camps.

Reif Larsen is the author of the novels I Am Radar and The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, which was a New York Times best seller and was adapted for the screen by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie). Larsen's essays and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, GQ, Tin House, Travel + Leisure, One Story, the Millions, and the Believer. He currently lives in Troy, New York.

Dantiel W. Moniz is a homegrown Floridian whose work has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, and Joyland, among other publications. Her debut story collection, Milk Blood Heat, is forthcoming from Grove Atlantic.

Michelle Tea's latest book is Castle on the River Vistula, the final installment in her YA mermaid-y fantasy series. Her recent essay collection, Against Memoir, won the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is the creator of Drag Queen Story Hour, among other things.

Roy Udeh-Ubaka exists between selves. When centered, he writes to them, for them, and about them. He is an alumnus of Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop, and his stories have been published online in Bakwa magazine and are forthcoming in Wasafiri.

Jose antonio Vargas is an author, journalist, filmmaker, and the founder of the nonprofit organization Define American.

Emerson Whitney is the author of the memoir Heaven, forthcoming from McSweeney's in 2020, as well as the poetry book Ghost Box (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2014). Emerson teaches in the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Goddard College and is the Dana and David Dornsife Teaching Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Southern California.

Jincy Willett is the author of the short-story collection Jenny and the Jaws of Life and the novels Winner of the National Book Award, The Writing Class, and Amy Falls Down. She is currently at work on a third Amy novel.