By Ana Simo

In a word-drunk romp through an alternate, preapocalyptic America, Ana Simo's fiction debut, Heartland, turns the classic murder mystery on its head with the story of a thwarted author's elaborate revenge on the woman who stole her lover, blending elements of telenovela, lesbian pulp noir, and dystopian satire.

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Holly Hughes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Jill Dolan, Editors

Collected in a history of the WOW Café, the downtown women's experimental theater space where it was first performed, Ana Simo's Pickaxe "shifts between farce and tragedy. It is operatic, presents a rarefied reality, and exhibits her preoccupation with political violence. Pickaxe is dark and brutal. The characters are historical figures—Leon Trotsky, Frida Kahlo, and Ramon Mercader—but they are fictionalized, as are the events surrounding them."

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Situated in Lower Manhattan around the time of deadly race riots in early 20th century New York, an immigrant family from Cuba grapples with memory, race, and assimilation.

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