They Will Dream in the Garden

Mexico City native Gabriela Damián Miravete writes fiction and essays that have been translated to English, Italian, Portuguese, French, and published in A Larger Reality/Una realidad más amplia (part of the Hugo Award Finalist project The Mexicanx Initiative Scrapbook), Boundaries & Bridges: The Wiscon Chronicles Vol. 12 (Aqueduct Press) and the World Fantasy Award Finalist anthology Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic (Small Beer Press). She won the Otherwise Award (formerly James Tiptree, Jr. Award) for the short story “They Will Dream in the Garden”. She loves working in collaborative projects such as the art & science collective Cúmulo de Tesla and Mexicona: Imaginación y Futuro, a speculative fiction literary festival in Spanish. Gabriela spends (maybe too much) time listening to rocks, whales, and what Fellini and Chewbacca, her two cats, have to say about life on planet Earth.

"They Will Dream in the Garden is a devastating fever dream of a collection. Lyrical and lush, but also startlingly direct. A major book from a unique voice. A must read."—Jeff VanderMeer"Gabriela Damián Miravete is arguablyone of the most important writers of speculative fiction in Mexico,and her collection, They Will Dream in the Garden, showcasesthe breadth and depth of her work. Ranging from a bemused humanismreminiscent of Le Guin to disarming surrealism that reminds one ofMurakami, these eleven stories are also deeply rooted in Mexico asplace and culture and history. Damián Miravete masterfully wieldssemantics and syntax, trope and scheme, to draw us through unexpectedlayers in every piece, like delicate palimpsests that yield uponclose observation startling phrases containing unforgettable truths.And balancing this technical skill is an emotional resonance, perhapsbest felt in the harrowing and moving title story. They WillDream in the Garden is a must-have for readers of literary andgenre fiction alike, and let us hope that Gabriela captivates withsuch tales for many more years to come."—David Bowles, award-winning authorof The Prince & the Coyote  “Spun of nightmares and spiderwebs,This collection of stories by the Mexican author Gabriela Damián Miravete stretches from itsroots in the Surrealist Movement to encompass the best and the worst of human imagination.Miravete brings us visions of worlds where animals and humans connect in mutual respect, womenare valued for their abilities to empathize and collectively provide solutions, and thedead reach out to support the living in our daily worries. In addition, the collection includesthe best psychotropic adventure story I have read. Every page of They Will Dream in theGarden is drenched in images of water. Every story gives us a chance to re-imagine ourselves in aworld where feminism has won out against the evils of the drug trade, of patriarchy, and ofmachismo. If only. But we can dream.”—Kathleen Alcalá, author of Spiritsof the Ordinary“Luminous stories, haunted withmemories as deep as the roots of the oldest ahuehuete, They Will Dream in the Garden is chargedwith a sense of justice that shows the world as it is, and as itcould be.” —Christopher Brown, Philip K. Dick Award-nominatedauthor of Tropic of Kansas “In They Will Dream in the Garden,Gabriela Damián Miravete takes the speculative genres and makes them her own, so specific toMexico but with that fairy tale quality of being anywhere or nowhere. This is a magnificentcollection of short stories, with characters full of determination to invent and fashion with the tools theyhave, that never forgets that humans are the species that “praises beauty while destroyingit.”—Matthew David Goodwin, editor ofLatinx Rising and co-editor of Speculative Fiction for Dreamers