“You can try bracing yourself for the ride this story takes you on, but it’s best to just surrender. Your wig is going to fall off no matter what you do.” – Saeed Jones
“Intensity and experimentation have definitely survived the transition to long-form writing — along with Blackburn’s exquisite sentences, which burst with heartbreak, rivalries and machinations.”- Carolina A. Miranda
“Dead in Long Beach, California is febrile, high concept, fragmented; in a way, it’s an anti-novel that applies her shortform philosophy to longform.” – Mariella Rudi
“Venita Blackburn’s prose is stunning, sensitive and that-made-me-snort funny. Richly layered and ambitiously structured, this unconventional novel about death and denial is bizarre in the best way.” – Lucy Tu
“Dead in Long Beach, California is the work of a gifted writer who understands love bonds, family, death and inevitability, but also has a sense of humor about all of the above. Blackburn’s novel presents grief as memory puzzle, grief as creative license, grief as fuel for delusion and awakening.” – Naomi Elias
NYTimes Review
“[Blackburn’s] sentences zing with lively precision . . . as the narrative scaffolding stabilizes, we see how Coral’s grief is braced within it — held alight, too, by the disarming humor and vivacity of Blackburn’s prose. Told by machines from the future, Blackburn’s idiosyncratic grief novel is as freshly devastating as they come.” —Megan Milks, The New York Times Book Review
“I’m a huge fan of Blackburn’s razor sharp writing and can’t wait for her debut novel. Described as “a layered, page-turning reckoning with what it means to be alive, dead, and somewhere in between,” this is sure to be a novel you don’t want to miss.”
— Rachel León, Daily Editor
Venita Blackburn 