New in translation
BAD SEED by Gabriel Carle, translated by Heather Houde
About the book:
A vibrant debut short story collection depicting the disillusionment that comes with being young and queer in Puerto Rico.
The visceral, wildly imaginative stories in Bad Seed flick through working-class scenes of contemporary Puerto Rico, where friends and lovers melt into and defy their surroundings—nightclubs, ruined streets, cramped rooms with cockroaches moving in the walls. A horny high schooler spends his summer break in front of the TV; a queer love triangle unravels on the emblematic theater steps of the University of Puerto Rico; a group of friends get high and watch San Juan burn from atop a clocktower; an HIV positive college student works the night shift at a local bathhouse. At turns playful and heartbreaking, Bad Seed is the long overdue English-language debut of one of Puerto Rico’s most exciting up-and-coming writers.
“An extraordinary literary debut.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Gabriel Carle
Gabriel Carle (b. San Juan, 1993) is a writer and academic researching queerness, race, migration, and the environment in Caribbean literatures and cultures. They completed a BA in Escritura Creativa at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, and an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish at New York University. They are based in New York City.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR:
Heather Houde is a self-taught visual artist, writer, and translator from Philadelphia. She is the author of Thin Skinned, and her stories and translations have appeared in A Gathering of the Tribes, The Common, Latin American Literature Today, The Southwest Review, and The Shoutflower.