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Happy ‘pub’ days: Casey, Irish, Okorafor, Ríos

By Kristen LaRue-Sandler — March 20, 2025

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Covers of books by Hayden Casey, Bradley Irish, Nnedi Okorafor, and Alberto Rios

 

Four faculty members in the ASU Department of English announce books recently published or forthcoming this spring. Works include short stories, literary theory, metafiction and poetry that explore surrealism, neurodiversity, disability, and desert harmonies.

'Show Me Where the Hurt Is: Stories' (Split Lip Press, 2025)

Hayden Casey’s debut collection will release in April. From the publisher:

  • “A collection of stories about love and grief, anchored in brokenness—broken people, broken relationships, broken systems—and the obsessions and insecurities that prevent us from revealing ourselves to one another. The characters in Hayden Casey’s debut collection 'Show Me Where the Hurt Is' are on quests for betterment, for pleasure, for distraction—and ultimately, for transformation.

    One woman takes up work as an 'in-betweener,' hired to fill the lonely gap between relationships. A college student devotes himself to hot yoga in the wake of his mother’s unexpected death. When a buzzy new weight-loss pill hits the market, a woman signs up for a trial—and tries to hide it from her partner. An undergrad becomes entangled in her roommate’s feverish relationship with a grad student and watches in horror as the pair begins to sprout each other’s body parts.

    Across thirteen stories that brush up against the strange and surreal, 'Show Me Where the Hurt Is' tenderly exposes old wounds that have been carefully concealed so that we might understand the hurt in one another.”

Casey is an instructor of English at ASU, where he also earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing in 2022.

'Literary Neurodiversity Studies: Current and Future Directions' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

Bradley Irish authored this Palgrave Pivot volume in the press’s Literary Disability Studies series. From the publisher:

  • “This book is a concise but comprehensive introduction to the field of literary neurodiversity studies, a growing approach to literary criticism that has emerged in the past decade. Its three parts are designed to: 1) introduce readers both to the general concept of neurodiversity and to current outlooks, approaches, and key scholarship from literary neurodiversity studies; 2) to present one possible vision of the future of literary neurodiversity studies, by offering an argument about how the field might further entwine with more general research on literary cognition, literary emotion, and literary sensation; and 3) to model for readers how one might perform a neurological reading of a literary text, by offering a sustained analysis of Shakespeare’s Othello. It also contains an extensive bibliography of existing scholarship from literary neurodiversity studies, which will provide an indispensable resource for new and experienced researchers in the field.”

Irish is an associate professor in the Department of English at ASU.

'Death of the Author: A Novel' (William Morrow, 2025)

Nnedi Okorafor’s newest work of fiction is a semi-autobiographical “book-within-a-book.” From the publisher:

  • “In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful sci-fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. The future of storytelling is here.

    Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it 'Rusted Robots.'

    When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.

    A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, "Death of the Author" is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of 'Yellowface' with the heartfelt humanity of 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.' Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it.”

Okorafor is a professor of practice with a dual appointment in the Department of English and the Interplanetary Initiative at ASU.

'Every Sound Is Not a Wolf' (Copper Canyon Press, 2025)

The newest collection of poetry by Alberto Ríos will be released in April. From the publisher:

  • Alberto Ríos’ "Every Sound is Not a Wolf" evokes and awakens the senses—the smell of herbs, 'the geckos at their mysterious work.' Even silence grows loud and expansive in its stillness. Told entirely in couplets, and with remarkable lucidity, Ríos balances the harmonies and disharmonies found throughout all of existence—between people and the natural world, between life and death, between spirit and body, between borders real and imagined. What does it mean for a body to house two languages? And what is an imaginary line between countries? From backyard to Sonoran desert, from mining town to river, this collection journeys the human experience, through grief and joy, tuned to the 'small buzzing of a live world.' Ríos asks us to feel the connective electric pulse between all things, to find newness, musicality, and beauty in the mundane. That the world keeps moving forward, this is miracle enough."

Ríos is a Regents Professor of English and University Professor of Letters at ASU, where he further holds the Katharine C. Turner Chair in English and directs the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.