Maria S. Picone’s new prose chapbook coming from CONIUM!

May 21, 2023

CONIUM’s next release will be This Tenuous Atmosphere
by Maria S. Picone / 수영

Slated for release in late 2023 or early 2024.

CONIUM’s next release will be This Tenuous Atmosphere, a linked series of surreal, speculative fictions from Maria S. Picone/수영. The book follows Asia, a Korean girl who becomes a hybrid spacecraft and goes to live among the ghost men and their culture of destructive capitalism in space. Asia never forgets her longing to return home and find her mother, but she is torn between loyalty to her port of origin and a desire to explore deep space.

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Maria S. Picone/수영 is a queer and neurodivergent Korean American adoptee who won Cream City Review’s 2020 Summer Poetry Prize and the first ever Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Award from Salamander. Her debut poetry chapbook, Adoptee Song, will be published by Muddy Ford Press in 2023. She has been published in Tahoma Literary Review, Vestal Review, Salamander, Orca Lit, Fractured Lit and more including Best Small Fictions 2021. Her work has been supported by The Juniper Institute, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, GrubStreet, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Tin House Writers Workshop. She is Chestnut Review’s managing editor, Uncharted Mag’s associate editor, and assistant fiction editor at Foglifter as well as volunteering for other literary magazines and organizations as an editor, reader, and grant reviewer. She holds an MFA in fiction from Goddard College. Find out more at mariaspicone.com, Twitter @mspicone.

Photograph of the author, Maria S. Picone.

Sarah Gerard’s THE BUTTER HOUSE coming in 2023!

Nov 5, 2022

Coming in 2023 from Conium Press

The Butter House, by Sarah Gerard

Launch party at AWP Seattle in March, 2023.

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In early 2023, Conium Press is releasing The Butter House, a new chapbook from Sarah Gerard. This story follows a woman who moves from New York to a Florida bungalow with her boyfriend. She navigates contradictory landscapes of love and possession, nature and built-environment, empathy and sympathy. She becomes a surrogate caretaker for a colony of feral cats. She grows a garden. She interrogates what it means to care for somebody or something. This is a delicate story, but it chooses deliberate moments to scratch and bite with the ferocity of a territorial alley cat.

Sarah Gerard is the author of the novels True Love and Binary Star and the essay collection Sunshine State. They are the recipient of a 2021 Lambda Literary Dr. James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. Sarah’s short stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, T Magazine, Granta, McSweeney’s, The Believer, Vice, Electric Literature, and the anthologies We Can’t Help It If We’re From Florida, One Small Blow Against Encroaching Totalitarianism, Tampa Bay Noir, Erase the Patriarchy, and I Know What’s Best For You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom. Learn more about Sarah Gerard’s work on their website.

Advance Praise for The Butter House

“A couple moves into the titular Butter House, and soon find themselves mired in the project of cat care. Sarah Gerard writes beautifully and precisely about the visceral, secretive feline landscape, and the possibilities that emerge when this world intersects with the human realm—challenging the couple at the center of The Butter House to renegotiate their relationship to care and what it means to feel at home.”

—Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears

“The Butter House is like a lithe and seductive feline, sinking its uncut claws into you. Sarah Gerard’s prose is quiet and contemplative and then chaotic in bursts, also not unlike a cat. The Butter House incisively considers the simultaneous care and cruelty of pet ownership, and Gerard is masterful in writing into all the nooks and crannies of a relationship. It’s the tale cat people deserve.”

—Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, author of Helen House

Interested in a Review Copy?

Let’s talk! Use the field below to tell us a bit about yourself and/or any review outlets that you’re associated with.

AWP Preview: TJ Fuller’s “Slim Fit”

Mar 24, 2019

TJ Fuller is reading at our March 28th AWP Offsite Event: “Books & Brass.” He won our Flash Fiction Contest, judged by Rebecca Schiff, author of The Bed Moved. In his surreal winning story, “Slim Fit,” the narrator jumps into a commercial for slim fit jeans; the story is rife with creativity, longing, and humor. Rebecca Schiff says “From the first sentence, ‘Slim Fit’ brings us into its strange, funny world. TJ Fuller trusts that the movement of language and his delight in its premise will become the reader’s delight. It does.”

As part of TJ’s contest prize, we’ve made this story into a limited-run micro-chapbook. This micro-chap includes craft cardstock cover, bleached linen interior pages, a more natural and pulpy interior leaf. The binding is hand-sewn, and each copy will be signed and numbered.

“Slim Fit” will be distributed at the reading for free, along with some other Conium Press swag. Take a peak at the images below, and be sure to get your complimentary copy at our event!

Emily Koon’s “We Are Still Here” is available for pre-order

Mar 16, 2019

In early 2017, we announced Emily Koon’s We Are Still Here as the winner of our Book & Chapbook Contest, judged by Matt Bell. Two years later, a couple revisions, a half-dozen cover mock-ups, and we’re finally ready to bring this beast of a book to market. It’s slated for release this July. We’ll have printed galleys on display at this year’s AWP Conference in Portland. If you’re a reviewer interested in receiving an advance copy, reach out to editors@coniumreview.com.

We Are Still Here contains thirteen short stories and a novella. Throughout this stellar debut, discover a surreal band of mall dwellers, a fairy tale featuring goblins and ghosts, a “go wherever” story in which Lizzie Borden is fully prepared to give her mother forty whacks, and more.

Matt Bell, author of Scrapper, says “Emily Koon’s We Are Still Here is a smart and surprising debut, with each story alive to the many absurdities of life—as well as the joys and the heartbreaks those absurdities contain. Funny and inventive, this book will thrill fans of Amelia Gray, Lindsay Hunter, or Laura van den Berg, while introducing readers to Koon’s own exciting talent.“

Pre-order your copy of Emily Koon’s debut collection here.

“The Conium Review: Vol. 7” now available for order!

Dec 31, 2018

The wait is over. This year’s issue has been sent to the printer and is ready to order. Orders will ship in early January, 2019. This year’s issue features work from Suzanne Burns, Chelsea Harris, Emily Wortman-Wunder, Sonal Sher, Matt Kolbet, Bridget Apfeld, Anita Goveas, Alison Closter, and Christopher James. Readers will find a mermaid addicted to over-the-counter supplements, a never-ending race, disappearing limbs, and other wildly imaginative tales. With deft prose, these stories reflect on obsession, longing, and loss.

This volume includes “The Endangered Fish of the Colorado River,” by Emily Wortman-Wunder, winner of The Conium Review‘s 2018 Innovative Short Fiction Contest. The contest was judged by Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker and Northwood. Maryse says “‘The Endangered Fish of the Colorado River’ is a moving meditation on parental and ecological grief, an exceptionally accomplished examination of losses big and small. Restrained, precise, and wise, the author shows us how, in the attempt to save something, we risk losing everything.”

Get a copy of the issue directly from our website, and keep an eye out for it at your local bookstore or through your favorite online retailer. For large quantity orders, we use Ingram Book Group for distribution.

About the Contributors

A native of Wisconsin, Bridget Apfeld holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and a BA from the University of Notre Dame. She lives in Austin, TX and work as a production assistant at the University of Texas at Austin. Her previous and forthcoming work is featured in various journals, including So to Speak, The Fem, Dislocate, Midwestern Gothic, Dappled Things, Newfound, Brevity, and Verse Wisconsin. She is currently editing her second novel.

Suzanne Burns writes both fiction and poetry in Bend, Oregon and Paris, France. The Chicago Tribune recently published her short fiction.

Alison Closter teaches high school students literature and writing near Boston. She has previously published a short story in Flying South Magazine, and she has a flash fiction piece forthcoming in Monkey Bicycle.

Anita Goveas is British-Asian, based in London, and fueled by strong coffee and paneer jalfrezi. She lurks in libraries and her local independent bookshop, Bookseller Crow. She was first published in the 2016 London Short Story Prize anthology, most recently in Pocket Change, Haverthorn, Moonchild Magazine, Riggwelter Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, former cactus mag, and Litro. She tweets erratically @coffeeandpaneer

Chelsea Harris has appeared in Literary Orphans, Smokelong Quarterly, Minola Review, The Fem, The Portland Review, and Grimoire, among others. She received her MFA from Columbia College Chicago.

Christopher James lives, works and writes in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has previously been published online in many venues, including Tin House, Fanzine, McSweeney’s, SmokeLong, and Wigleaf. He is the editor of Jellyfish Review.

Matt Kolbet teaches and writes in Oregon.

Sonal Sher was born in Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir and did her education in Delhi, pursuing a bachelors in Physics from Hindu College. She worked for a not-for-profit organization Hippocampus Reading Foundation and as a journalist for Deccan Herald and Hindustan Times. Recently she wrote her first feature film, Chidiakhana produced by Children’s Film Society of India. She is an alum of the UEA Creative Writing Course organized by University of East Anglia and was part of the first edition of New Writers’ Mentorship Programme in Jaipur Literature festival 2017.

Emily Wortman-Wunder lives in Denver, Colorado. Her work has appeared in Vela, Nimrod, Terrain, High Country News, and many other places.

2018 Innovative Short Fiction Contest deadline extended!

May 2, 2018

The deadline has been extended for this year’s Innovative Short Fiction Contest, judged by Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker (FSG, 2016) and Northwood (Black Balloon Publishing, forthcoming).

Originally slated to close on May 1st, you have two extra weeks to submit. The final deadline will be May 15th.

Full guidelines are located on our website.

You can upload your submission through our Submittable page.