OKPsyche: a novel

(Paperback)

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An amazing short novella which incorporates the changing world of a trans woman as she navigates a world perhaps slightly weirder than our own.

An unnamed trans woman is looking for a sense of belonging, a better relationship with her son, and friends that arent imaginary in this playful and aching short novel. As she navigates the many worlds she belongs to she wrestles with her many anxieties and fears about the world around her. Her son and ex live in another state. Companion robots are popping up. Environmental disasters are being outsourced from the coast to the Midwest. And at any time anyone anywhere might turn out to be a new friend or an enemy.

Reviews

"That trust in emotional urgency over conventional logic to guide a story is, for me, a critical part of a queer aesthetic. Coming out is about obeying an interior, often inarticulable emotional push over majority logics. . . . DeNiros gorgeous and emotionally flawless navigation . . . is masterful, cerebral but full of complex feeling, and nothing short of word-magic.
Theodore McCombs, Fiction Unbound

"Surreal and lyrical.
Publishers Weekly

What makes the story even more compelling, is that DeNiro gives you all this, allegory and action, without ever losing sight of the heart of the story: the fundamental bond and evolving relationship between two characters who choose different ways to survive, and yet find a greater power, and maybe even a new kind of salvation, when they come together.
Maria Haskins

Strange, menacing worlds whose contours only gradually become clear (or, perhaps, more complexly mysterious).
Dylan Hicks, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Minnesotan DeNiro gives us large hunks of riveting weirdness.
Mary Ann Grossman, St. Paul Pioneer Press

Wildness, fierceness, and anarchic imagination are traits, then, to be prized in this book, above beauty, order, and senseor, in classical terms, the Dionysian over the Apollonianand process.
Strange Horizons

Each story feels new, unique, and important.
Leah Schnelbach, Tor.com

Author Bio

Anya Johanna DeNiro is a fiction writer and editor living in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of City of a Thousand Feelings and the forthcoming short novel OKPysche. Her fiction has been on the Honor Roll for the Otherwise Award, on the shortlist for the O.Henry Award, and a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. Her stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Catapult, Strange Horizons, DIAGRAM, Asimov's, and Fence.