A Strange Object

A Strange Object started in Austin in 2012. Its founders, Jill Meyers and Callie Collins, had both worked at the literary journal American Short Fiction. They took the name from Donald Barthelme's story "Florence Green Is 81", where a character called Baskerville says the aim of literature is a strange object covered in fur that breaks your heart. Since 2019 the press has been an imprint of Deep Vellum, the Dallas nonprofit Will Evans founded in 2013. Meyers is the editor who acquires for the list.

The first book was a story collection by Kelly Luce, and short fiction has stayed close to the center of the list. The press has a record of publishing debuts. Katie Chase's first collection, Man and Wife, appeared in May 2016. Rita Bullwinkel's Belly Up followed in May 2018, stories in which bodies turn into furniture, instruments and ghosts. The same year the press brought out a book for writers, Michael Noll's The Writer's Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction. Noll takes a single page from each of forty contemporary novels and stories, points out what the writer is doing there, and sets exercises based on it.

North Sun: Or, The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther is the book that brings most readers here. Ethan Rutherford's first novel came out in March 2025 and runs to 386 pages. It begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1878, as the American whaling industry was declining. It was a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction and was on the longlist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. In an interview with BOMB, Rutherford said that what stayed with him from his whaling research was how readily people destroy other living things for their own comfort. The novel is built around that unease.

The list is still growing. Deep Vellum has announced Doris W. Cheng's Keep Your Enemies Close for August 2027 and Emma Komlos-Hrobsky's Charm, Strange, Beauty for fall and winter 2027-28. A reader can expect a small number of books each year, mostly literary fiction. Many are first books by writers who take risks. The press says it cares about design as well, so the books are made to look as odd as the writing inside.