We're proud to announce that in 2017 Featherproof will publish acclaimed poet Zachary Schomburg's first work of fiction, the novel Mammother. It's a fabulist tale set in the town of Pie Time, concerning a young man who takes on the job of holding the random objects born from the bodies of those who have died in the plague of God's Finger. Beneath the book's strangeness, surrealism, and absurd humor is a heavy tenderness and sincerity that explores family, mourning, loss, relationships, time, and our complicated relationship with death.
Past praise for his past work:
“With wit, humor, tenderness, and his characteristic, logic-bending surrealism, Schomburg probes into the subjects of futurity, personal history, and mythmaking.”
“…out of chaos, darkness, fire, and violence Schomburg builds a fearlessly balanced galaxy, a cosmos inhabited by angry mobs and bleeding trees but thick with sweetness and blossoming light.”
“Schomburg’s meditations on death … often seem to be a way of thinking about what it means to be present, to be breathing in the now, to be a human in a busy world.”
“[His tone is] morbid, yet ironically luminous and welcoming, an opposition that creates tension and electricity, that propels a reader through the narrative with a pleasant discomfort.”
Zachary Schomburg was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Iowa. He earned a BA from the College of the Ozarks and a PhD in creative writing and poetry from the University of Nebraska. His books include The Man Suit, Scary, No Scary, Fjords vol. 1 (which won the 2013 Oregon Book Award), and The Book of Joshua. Schomburg co-edits Octopus Books and lives in Portland, Oregon.