turning strange thoughts into stories

The author Alison Gadsby with evening light falling across her face with a scene of nature in autumn colours blurred behind her
The author Alison Gadsby with evening light falling across her face with a scene of nature in autumn colours blurred behind her

Alison Gadsby is a fiction writer and interviewer of authors.

Her debut collection of short stories, Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive, was published by Guernica Editions in March 2026, receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews. Alison's first novel, Dreams of the Weary, will be published in Fall 2027 by Palimpsest Press.

More about Alison

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.

More about this book and Alison Gadsby's forthcoming novel

  • "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."

    —Natalia Yanchak, Montreal Review of 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."

    — Joy Farrell, Joy Reads Books

  • "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

  • "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."

    —Arleigh Baker, author of Last Woman and Bad Endings