A huge congratulations to C. Kubasta, author of Abjectification: Stories & Truths for being a Distinguished Favorites for the 2021 Independent Press Award!
Abjectification mines our most intimate moments to flesh out the horrors of human interaction. In the isolated system of these stories, the past is animate and tangible, located in the body, fantasy & nightmare intertwined. Like matter, what we’ve loved isn’t destroyed, it merely changes forms. A man thinks he’s found a haven from the past with a new love in “Freak Show”; Meghan seems sensitive to exposure, but she isn’t the woman Jeff imagines he’s been sleeping with at all. A small family begins remodeling their home in “Shedding,” but their six-year-old daughter Emmy discovers unsettling things in the walls. In “Hand-Me-Down,” Carly Jo welcomes her high school boyfriend back into her life after he moves home to care for his dying mother; she’s haunted by the mother’s presence in their lives and in their bed. Old friends reconnect, disregarding “Boundaries,” only to discover a force is whittling the group down, their new spouses and partners in lethal danger. Kubasta’s collection is creepy, haunting, and unapologetically sexy.
C. Kubasta was born in a small town, a place where the winter light through bare branches always looks a little spooky. Her previous novels This Business of the Flesh (Apprentice House), and Girling (Brain Mill) explore small-town life through the interrelationships of complex and flawed protagonists. Her poetry is widely available in a variety of journals, and the poetry collections Of Covenants (Whitepoint Press), and All Beautiful & Useless (BlazeVox). She lives, writes, and teaches in Wisconsin, where she continues to be fascinated by the subtleties of language, meaning, and the stories we choose to tell, as well as those we don’t.
You can find more information about Kubasta’s winning on their website today!
https://www.independentpressaward.com/2021distinguishedfavorites