Coming October 2026!
HOW TO LOSE AT LONGING
A. K. HERMAN
From A. K. Herman, shortlisted for the 2025 OMC Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, a collection of insightful, sensual and unsettling stories that explore longing, that peculiar human ache.
​
In “Keepsake,” a waitress and a sailor form an erotic bond out of survival and maybe a little help from the supernatural. In “The Rules,” a daughter follows her mother’s twelve strict rules to secure a husband. In “Dance,” a young woman uses seduction to create rules of her own. In “Speedo,” a necklace heals a man’s mind, and reveals truths he wants to forget. In “Up Down,” indigenous people revolt against the Capuchin forced labor system with deadly and disturbing results. A devoted husband in “The Both” searches for a way to keep both his wives, and himself, happy. In “Small Castles,” a live-in nanny is caught between fraying bonds with her host-family and powerful external forces. And in the title story, a lover’s sudden death forces an old man to return to the past and confront the roots of his own painful longing.
​
A mesmerizing, and, at times, surreal collection, How to Lose at Longing reveals an author in command of the written word with emotionally resonant prose and characters you’ll be thinking about long after the last word.
The Believers: Stories
A. K. Herman
A. K.’s wondrous and shattering debut collection imbues people on the periphery with power hardly visible to outsiders—where no one conforms to type. In the title story, to leave a seemingly friendly and supportive church, a family must risk everything.
In “The Iridescent Blue-Black Boy with Wings (After Márquez),” children find a winged boy in a seaside village in Tobago. In “Ready for the Revolution?” uncertain lovers play rough with identity politics, and are set on an unexpected path. In “Drink the Dew,” love and wrath become one, while the young woman in “Inside,” navigates a complicated business arrangement with her lover.
In “Love,” a scandalous affair produces a love child, born with a dark omen, while in “Exile,” a pregnant teen from a staunchly religious family, is exiled to have her baby in secret. A gardener in “Love Story No. 8,” falls for a rich man’s daughter to disastrous ends. The Believers is at once poignant and subversive, utterly haunting and unforgettable.
