Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive

Electric Literature included my little book on 15 Must-Read Small Press Books of Spring 2026!!!!!

Wendy J. Fox writes: “In this linked collection of speculative fiction, an accountant who is learning to swim is interrogated by her humanoid companion; a woman is unanchored in time and cannot remember giving birth to her daughter or even who she is; and in the title story, a couple argues incessantly and from such deep unhappiness the woman dreams hopefully of contracting a fatal tumor. Gadsby’s stories have simmering resentment, the cruelty of children, and the terror of never belonging as characters right alongside her unhappy people, threaded together with recurring themes. The effect is a glittering collection with high emotional tension.“ Especially that my name sits alongside Hollay Ghadery and Kim Fu….like what the actual?? If you know how much I have read Kim’s book, for a greater understanding of domestic horror, for her gift of dark characters doing impressively fucked up things, you will know why she’s one of go-to short story writers!

15 Must-Read Small Press Books of Spring 2026

Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive as chosen as a Spring 2026 title on CBC Books Canadian Fiction list!!!

“Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive is a collection of short stories brimming with elements of psychological realism, horror and speculative fiction, all tied together by the different types of life-altering love.”

Check out my conversation with Vanessa Shields.

It will be posted on her blog shortly, but for now here is the link.

Please check out the Upcoming Events for days/times you can join me in promoting (I mean celebrating…lol) this book!

In the miracle that is a first book, I am so excited that my collection of short stories was published by Guernica Editions in March 2026.

Writers I admire so much have shared their very kind words, and I am eternally grateful!

Halfway into the first page of this collection, I thought “what the hell is this?”. And then I couldn’t put the book down. Alison Gadsby has a flair for writing the gritty, weird and topsy-turvy of life. — Farzana Doctor, author of Seven and The Beauty of Us

These stories are a sometimes jarring, always hypnotic, staccato phase out of the world we know and simultaneously—through Gadsby’s deep rootedness to our reckless and remarkable humanity—a tether to it. Unforgettable. — Hollay Ghadery, author of The Unravelling of Ou and Widow Fantasies

Gadsby’s vivid prose simmers with quiet rage at the ordinariness of violence, the casualness of cruelty, and the normalcy of misogyny. There is something electric running through these subtly linked stories – don’t be surprised when they leave you feeling lit up. — Anuja Varghese, author of Chrysalis and A Kiss of Crimson Ash

Searingly sharp, intricately constructed, and hugely original, BREATHING IS HOW SOME PEOPLE STAY ALIVE takes you down into the viscera of life while showing you just what the world is today. It’s an unforgettable read and an unforgettable experience. — Damian Tarnopolsky, author of Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster

With razor sharp sentences and a deeply compassionate heart, Alison Gadsby’s stories unfold to reveal beautiful and startling truths that stay with the reader long after the reading is done. — Carleigh Baker, author of Last Woman and Bad Endings 

Reviews

Natalia Yanchak for the Montreal review of Books: “Gadsby’s writing is clean, sharp, and direct. Her words are driven and uplifting despite the emotionally complex and difficult themes the reader is exposed to. It would be unfair to characterize the collection as negative. The stories remain hopeful and strangely optimistic, and underline the power of even a small change. Many are stories of survival, tales of escape, of finding freedom and resolution, or of folks simply taking a moment to allow themselves to come up for air.” Read More.

Joy Farrell, Joy Reads Books: “Alison Gadsby truly excels at inviting us into the inner lives of women, not at their best or most achieved, but when their sexuality turns them to brutes and their apathy is intent on destroying all that is good around them. Anger and retributive violence are made available to women’s curiosity in “Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive”” Read More.

Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive blurs the lines between horror, catastrophic speculative fiction, and psychological realism in a collection that might best be described as weird fiction. These connected stories offer dark reconstructions of lives brimming with desperate loneliness. They allow us to bear witness to the life-altering love of sisters, brothers, mothers… the life-altering love that buoys them as they struggle to stay afloat in the wake of childhoods they merely survived.

Order from your local bookstore now. Preorders are super important for book success, so if you can, I will be eternally grateful!