Crocosmia

A revelatory novel (or parable) of art, adventure, and radical politics, set in a world on the precipice.

A philosophical fable, Crocosmia centers on Maya as she recollects the ＂great turning＂--a moment of radical social and ecological change effected in part by the art of her mother, Jane. As Maya recalls her upbringing--from a commune run by anarchist nuns to a time of rural isolation before her mother’s disappearance--Mellis’s prose gorgeously conjures a life defined by revolutionary thought and action and the interplay and tension between family life and political commitment. At once a fantasy, a handbook to political thought, and a work of eco-fiction, this lush novel meditates on how, in a world on the precipice, dreams of communal care can bloom.

Miranda Mellis is the author of Demystifications (2021); The Instead; The Spokes (2012); None of This Is Real (2012); The Revisionist (2007). She has been an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and Millay Colony. She received the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction, the Michael S. Harper Praxis Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She grew up in San Francisco and now lives in Olympia, Washington.