City of Dancing Gargoyles

Now Available for Preorder

directly from the publisher SFWP

or Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Amazon, or Walmart

Coming September 2024

In the parched, post-apocalyptic Western U.S. of the 22nd Century, wolves float, bonfires sing, and devils gather to pray. Water and safety are elusive in this chaotic world of alchemical transformations, where history books bleed, dragons kiss, and gun-toting trees keep their own kind of peace.

Among this menagerie of strange beasts, two sentient stone gargoyles, known only as “E” and “M,” flee the rubble of their Southwestern church in search of water. Along the way, they meet climate refugees Dolores Baker and her mother Rose, who’ve escaped the ravaged West Coast in search of a safer home. This quartet forms an uneasy alliance when they hear of a new hope: a mysterious city of dancing gargoyles. Or is it something more sinister? In this strange, terrible new world, their arrival at this fabled city could spark the destruction of everything they know. 

Tara Campbell summons fantastical magic in this kaleidoscopic new speculative climate fiction. 

Interviews

"The World is an Uncomfortable Place" -- interview with Myna Chang for X-R-A-Y Lit Mag

Advance Praise for City of Dancing Gargoyles

"This strange, sharp warning of a novel is a little bit Calvino, a little bit Atwood, and a little bit Anne Carson - but the monsters and the cities and the post apocalyptic landscape are entirely Tara Campbell originals, bleak and wry and brilliantly written. I'd read pretty much anything Campbell writes, and this one had me hooked from the opening lines."

~Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You and The Unfinished World


"City of Dancing Gargoyles is a book that will leave you thirsty, an epistolary arroyo of rocky beauty, a kind of love like the scraping of stone teeth."

~Meg Elison, Hugo and Locus award winning author


"Stones with wings, fearful blankets, angry candy, wind chimes who would rather gurgle than ring--everything in this weird, post-apocalyptic landscape is alive! City of Dancing Gargoyles intertwines the research of fledgling academics with the epic journeys of human and magical climate refugees, near-future families seeking new homes, new lives. Campbell fills our minds with the glorious improbabilities they encounter, depicting changes that test the fragile boundaries around what we’ve always thought could happen. Sharp and true, her language brings us face-to-face with the inescapable wonders surrounding both them and us every day, in every way."

~Nisi Shawl, multiple award-winning author of Kinning, Everfair, and Speculation

"Campbell deftly weaves between absurdist worlds and a post-apocalyptic journey across a parched American landscape, never losing sight of the poetry of the human condition. An eerily prescient adventure across a drought-ridden America, with Tara Campbell’s signature in every line: dark absurdism and existential whimsy with a heartbeat. If you want to imagine six impossible things before breakfast, read this book."

~Yohanca Delgado, O. Henry Prize Winner, co-author with Janelle Monáe: The Memory Librarian


"Carrying on the post-apocalyptic experimental coolness of Dhalgren, written in an effervescent style, with unexpected humor & characters who will stay with you."

~Raven Belasco, author of the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series


"In the metaphorically deft City of Dancing Gargoyles, trees wield guns, books bleed, ghosts sink into rising waters, and creatures of flesh and of stone alike are seekers in a climate-ravaged world. This is a trippy, engrossing, visually-stunning zoetrope of a novel, swirling with storytelling that warns us, moves us, and changes us. Tara Campbell has written a singular eco-fantasy that is an exciting addition to the literary canon of the U.S. West."

~Sharma Shields, author of The Cassandra and The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac


"Inventive, absorbing, and utterly original, Tara Campbell's City of Dancing Gargoyles sweeps readers into a near future landscape plagued by both the familiar and strange, and populated with the most surprising of characters. At once a post-apocalyptic fantasy and an intricate fable about how to navigate a transformed world, Campbell's brilliant novel left me transfixed."

~Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, author of What We Fed To The Manticore