close
close

Two dollars radio will be twenty this year. Here you can find your radical backlist. ‹Literary hub

March 14, 2025, 2:01 p.m.

The publishing world has shaken the two-dollar radio quietly since it was founded in 2005. The indie publishing house and “family outfit” based in Ohio will be twenty this year, and we at Lit Hub want to expand a hearty happy birthday.

In a literary landscape that is often tapped for fear of risks, two dollar radio regularly organize crazy and bold stylists. They publish literary genre fiction and chic memoirs. Their slate favors language-driven, completely brazen books that record information and clean solo, some systemically.

In honor of their twenty -year shops, you will find ten titles from the backlist with two dollars that earn a place on their radar. (Note: There is a lot to love there. Just think about this A place to the starT!) Happy birthday, TDR. And live the indie press!

You can't kill us until you kill us

Hanif Abdurrraqib, You can't kill us until you kill us

If the multivalent Hanif Abdurraqib is not already proud of the square on her bedside table, I am here to tell you: become wisely. This breathtaking collection of music criticism enriched with autobiography is heart -in and quiet. I gave this more often as a gift than I can count.

Nora Lange, US approaches

This debut novel was a highlight of my reading of 2024. The story follows Bernie, a young girl on a farm in central illino during the assembly AG crisis of the late 1970s. As a more beautiful voice-y view of the sisterhood's obligations, he has one other favorite in mind: All of my measly worriesFrom Miriam Toews.

The-orange-eat-creeps-2

Grace Krilanovich, The orange eats crawl

This crazy novel from 2011 was referred to by better heads as “beautiful and corrupted”. After a youthful vampire who goes through a northwest northwest of the 90s in search of a missing sister, this book is like dark dusk. But you know punk rock.

Sean Avery Medlin, 808S & Otherworlds

Another reason to love two dollars radio? His commitment to hybrid, difficult to classify works by cultural survey. This Motley collection of liner notes, prose poems and praise songs is an ebully entry in this canon. On these pages, Medlin, a multimedia storyteller and performer, “produces a speculative reality in which Blackfolk is also superhuman and dehuman.”

Dima Alzayat, Alligator and other stories

This debut story currently contains high on my TBR stack. I remember Adroit Journal History, a few years ago. Detailed, tense and very much set to the present moment, the pieces in Alligator…Explore the psychology of “difference”.

Night room: Essays from Gina Nutt

Gina Nutt, Night room

I regularly look for TDR for his form-Kurious-Sachbücher. So here is another collection of essays, which obtains personal stories in surprising containers. In Night roomNutt looks at her life in and next to her favorite horror films and forms “a story, identity, body image, fear, revenge and fear”. (As Gabino Iglesias expressed NPR once.)

Scott McClanahan, Crapalachia

These memoirs of a childhood in West Virginia were one of these books that were driven around my circle in the late Aughts for a while. Crapalachia remains loved for his funny, stylish prose and noticeable love for the place. I wanted to visit it again since this evil son of Appalachia rose the wings of a much worse biography.

Andre Perry, Some of us are now very hungry

The form -bending essays in The Collection looks at the paradox of identity. Perry accepts one of my favorite subjects – the art that we love to build in this fast piece with the troubled policy of an artist and a certain identity. His letter is smart and sensitive throughout the book.

Sarah Gerard, Double star

I took off Double star in the Queens Public Library in 2016 when he knew almost nothing about her inside. Years later, sentences from this febrile chronicle of a disordered eater appear. (“The feeling is meaty. I don't touch me.”) This is a prickly, poetic rumination that secretly incorporates the epic.

Katya Aepekina, the deeper the water the ugly the fish

This stroke of a novel, which was celebrated a lot in his debut in 2018, has Gothic overtones. It is only from the first scene So dark. But a sneaky humor sneaks in. After two sisters who stayed between their troubled parents, this book examines how the loyalities are formed in families. Go, don't run.