Slow Guillotine

Teo Rivera-Dundas is a writer in western Massachusetts. His work has received support from the Wassaic Project, Anderson Center at Tower View, California Institute of the Arts, and the University of California, San Diego. His writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, Meridian, Tupelo Quarterly, and Desperate Literature's annual Eleven Stories anthology, among other publications.

"Slow Guillotine's subversive, heat-seeking pulse is defiantly pro-ennui, embracing projectile vomit and the thing we want most besides love, that is—language at the very edge, and the shedding of our perpetually too-snug skins."—Jess Arndt, author of Large Animals: Stories"An incisive, fluid, and absurdly funny portrait of both the bookselling industry and of what it's like to try to piece a life together in Manhattan while young(ish) and poor. Whether talking about book-return scams, clowns, social media, cooking, the awfulness of searching for an apartment, tattooing, or pop-ups, Slow Guillotine is sharply observant as it eviscerates the movie myth of New York and replaces it with something less romantic but much more real, current, and painfully hilarious."—Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World"Teo Rivera-Dundas makes the banal shine brilliantly—because when you're young and in New York, geared with friendship, queerness, and art, even the most mundane trivialities can turn into bold misadventures. Slow Guillotine is a tender, slithering threat: hope hovering, ready to strike."—Lily Hoang, author of A Bestiary

• Ten Notes About Work Before We Can Get StartedAnother Note (To the Reader)In the Summer We Are Inside Preparing FoodA Snake Appearing in DreamsI Have Yet to Develop a Skincare RoutineTen More Notes About WorkStill WinterLook How Badly It Wants to LiveWeeks Not MonthsFinal Ten Notes About WorkAcknowledgments