In this debut collection of experimental short fiction, John Madera explores the complexities of identity, memory, history, and language, revealing the heterogeneities and instabilities that distinguish the post-industrial world. Born of diaspora and transversalism, the fourteen stories in Nervosities exhibit narrative modes and voices that converge on our ever-evolving culture of violence, mediatization, and fragmentation. Ultimately, these fictions enact a realization of what Deleuze and Guattari (via Antonin Artaud) call “the cancerous body of America, the body of war and money.” Reading Nervosities is at once a journey to an alternate universe and an uncanny chronicle of all-too-familiar terrain.

JOHN MADERA’s fiction has been published in Conjunctions, Hobart, Salt Hill, Sleepingfish, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many others, while his criticism has appeared in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. A recipient of an M.F.A. from Brown University as well as two grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, Madera lives in New York City, where he serves as editor-in-chief of Big Other and runs the literary publicity company Rhizomatic.