At a time when the American publishing industry increasingly perceives fiction lovers as rather delicate creatures—easily offended, allergic to ambiguity, afraid to venture outside their comfort zones—Nothing Sacred: Outspoken Voices in Contemporary Fiction was born of the opposite assumption. While the twelve authors represented in this anthology could scarcely be more diverse in their worldviews, cultural backgrounds, thematic obsessions, and prose styles, they all share two attributes: an abiding respect for their readers, and a ravenous appetite for audacity. Among the characters you'll encounter in these stories are a former child star who fears he has become just another piece of Hollywood jetsam; a band of Cuban immigrant children determined to celebrate Independence Day on their own terms; a Holocaust survivor turned serial killer; an alternate-history Malcolm X confronting J.Edgar Hoover's squad of zombies; a medical student who supports himself by starring in video porn; a rogue AI in thrall to a notorious Christian heresy; and a Tennessee Trump voter with a gift for making moonshine whiskey and spouting colorful rhetoric.
Bernard Schweizer is a literary scholar with twelve books (monographs, essay collections, and editions) to his credit, including the pioneering study Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism (Oxford University Press, 2011) and British feminist writer Rebecca West's posthumous work Survivors in Mexico (Yale University Press, 2003), which Schweizer put together from the author's archives. Schweizer, who grew up in Switzerland, earned a Ph.D. in British Literature from Duke University and then joined the English faculty at Long Island University, Brooklyn, in 2002. After retiring as an emeritus professor in 2019, his literary passions drove him to found Heresy Press as a haven for ambitious, outspoken fiction from writers of all backgrounds.
James Morrow is an American writer specializing in historical fiction and fantasika. To date he has published four stand-alone novellas and ten novels, including the critically acclaimed Godhed Trilogy. His literary honors include the World Fantasy Award (twice), the Nebula Award (twice), and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Morrow lives in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, in proximity to his adored wife, two enigmatic sheepdogs, and a beloved broken-down houseboat.
"I highly recommend this gathering of boldly original voices with a predominant tone of wild invention and fearlessness side by side with the intimacy of domestic life in our turbulent American times." - Joyce Carol Oates
"Incandescent . . . perhaps the finest, most courageous, most profoundly moving anthology I've read in a decade or two. Here gathered is genius, compassion, courage . . . an exhilarating gift to readers everywhere." - Junot Díaz
"Pushing the boundaries at every turn, Nothing Sacred gathers twelve stories of virtuoso eclecticism and ingenuity. Its storytellers are wildly different in vision and formal approach, and the tales they tell form a literary crazy quilt that leaves the reader bewildered, dazzled, and wanting to read more. Often dark, sometimes hilarious, always distinctive, this collection is a revelation." - Bradford Morrow
"The brilliant diversity of visions and sensibilities represented in Nothing Sacred not only makes this collection entertainingly unpredictable but speaks to some of the deepest questions currently ripping our society apart, including the true meaning of diversity." - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
"NOTHING SACRED: Outspoken Voices in Contemporary Fiction is the first anthology from Heresy Press, and it's loaded with quality short stories from writers who come from various backgrounds. Each has their own voice and style that is worth paying attention to, no matter how uncomfortable their words may make the reader feel. Readers who only read the publisher's mission statement could be forgiven for thinking this might be a collection of war-on-woke tales, or deliberately provocative prose whose only aim is to kick a hornet's nest. This is not the case at all. Though a number of the tales are indeed provocative and hard-hitting in their style and subject matter, each has an honesty at its core, a human truth that is recognizable. For the most part, the writing is more poetic than polemic. NOTHING SACRED: Outspoken Voices in Contemporary Fiction is a finely edited, well-designed anthology of contemporary fiction. A bright start for a bold, small press." - IndieReader
