Acquisition: Daniel A. Olivas’s Chicano Frankenstein
Daniel A. Olivas
Forest Avenue Press is delighted to announce the acquisition of Daniel A. Olivas’s Chicano Frankenstein, a novel, slated for publication in March 2024.
Chicano Frankenstein addresses issues of belonging and assimilation through a modern retelling of the Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley classic. An unnamed paralegal, brought back to life through a controversial process, maneuvers through a near-future world that both needs and resents him. As the United States president spouts anti-reanimation rhetoric and giant pharmaceutical companies rake in profits, the man falls in love with lawyer Faustina Godínez. His world expands as he meets her network of family and friends, setting him on a course to discover his first-life history, which the reanimation process erased. With elements of science fiction, horror, political satire and romance, Chicano Frankenstein confronts our nation’s bigotries and the question of what it truly means to be human.
“Our readers were quickly smitten with Daniel’s sharp wit, pitch-perfect dialogue, and the powerful exploration of belonging to a society that judges people by their appearances,” said Publisher Laura Stanfill. “We’re so excited to add this delightful and powerful novel to the Forest Avenue catalog.”
Daniel A. Olivas, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, was born and raised near downtown Los Angeles. He is an award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction, plays, and poetry including, My Chicano Heart: New and Collected Stories of Love and Other Transgressions (University of Nevada Press, forthcoming), How to Date a Flying Mexican: New and Collected Stories (University of Nevada Press), and Things We Do Not Talk About: Exploring Latino/a Literature through Essays and Interviews (San Diego State University Press). Olivas co-edited The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles (Tía Chucha Press), and edited Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press). Widely anthologized, he has written on culture and literature for The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, Alta Journal, Jewish Journal, Zócalo, and The Guardian. He writes regularly for La Bloga, a site dedicated to Latinx literature and the arts. Olivas received his degree in English literature from Stanford University, and law degree from UCLA. By day, Olivas is an attorney and makes his home in Southern California with his wife (and law school sweetheart), Susan Formaker, who is an administrative law judge. They have an adult son, Ben Formaker-Olivas, who is a graduate of UCLA and works in the video game design industry.
Forest Avenue Press was founded in 2012 in Portland, Oregon. Titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West.
