Announcing the next book in Zero Street Fiction

The University of Nebraska Press is pleased to announce the selection of the next book in the fiction series, Zero Street. Open Wounds by Sam Moe will be published on May 1, 2027.

Open Wounds is a short story collection of ghosts, lost daughters, and transformation. Each story focuses on a different set of characters who, for reasons relating to trauma or violence, are incapable of communicating with each other. Characters transform into ragdolls and nymphs. The person you desperately need to speak with turns into a wolf at your dinner party, then swallows you whole. The stories represent the lived experiences of queer folks who had to live alternative lifestyles to avoid the violence of their families. This is a collection about how we grow differently in safe spaces and unsafe spaces.

Sam Moe is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. She is the author of eight books including her most recent poetry collection, Red Halcyon, forthcoming from Querencia Press and her debut short story collection, I Might Trust You (Experiments in Fiction, 2025). She has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and received fellowships from the Longleaf Writer’s conference and the Key West Literary Seminar.

“I was immediately captured by the voice of Moe’s fiction, so haunting and vivid, but with a bit of an edge that kept the tensions taut throughout, and with a sly wit that grounded these dreamlike scenarios in the present moment,” Series Editor Timothy Schaffert writes. “The book keeps drawing me back into it, calling out to me.”

Series Editor SJ Sindu writes, “Open Wounds is a multi-faceted gem—each story reflecting a slightly different view of academia, transformation, bisexuality, love outside the boundaries of monogamy, fine dining and serving and cooking, parties, seances. I was drawn to the lyricism, the ultra-specificity of the details that bring the tapestry of Moe’s worlds to life, the matter-of-fact tonality with which the fabulist elements in this book are introduced and handled.”

Open Wounds is the winner of the Barbara DiBernard Award, a prize for a book published by Zero Street and named for Dr. DiBernard who was professor emerita in the Department of English and the Women’s and Gender Studies program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As a scholar, activist, teacher, and mentor, Dr. DiBernard was a pioneer in LGBTQ+ literary studies, women’s literature, and disability studies, and a longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ authors and publishing.

Zero Street is committed to LGBTQ+ literary fiction with commercial potential, providing LGBTQ+ authors opportunities for a wide readership in the trade fiction market. The series editors are Timothy Schaffert, bestselling author of The Perfume Thief, and SJ Sindu, author of Blue-Skinned Gods. The series seeks LGBTQ+ literary fiction of all kinds, from stories of modern life to innovations on traditions of genre and are particularly interested in BIPOC authors, trans authors, and queer authors over 50.