Invasions

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. 2019 Lambda Literary Award finalist for Transgender Fiction. A body-swapping personal trainer and her trans girlfriend turn to a life of crime. A man mourning his dead lover becomes trapped in the mind of the leader of a bathhouse raid. A trans man, recovering from top surgery paid for with a stolen credit card, finds strange connection and condemnation among his fellow patients. The fifteen stories in this debut fiction collection from author Calvin Gimpelevich move in the borderlands between realism and surrealism, investigating gender, class, relationships, and the powers we still hold within spaces of powerlessness. They articulate the invasions we commit, the invitations we receive to cross over into another person's world.

INVASIONS blew my mind. Flipping between speculative worlds deeply rooted in realness and emotion and more familiar landscapes that tip on the edges of personal apocalypses, Gimpelevich's writing is strong and sure, taking us places we really haven't been. I'm hooked.--Michelle Tea

In INVASIONS, Calvin Gimpelevich writes fearlessly about trans and queer bodies, sex, and the possibilities of gender. In these edgy, strange stories, characters transform, transition, and transgress to discover themselves and, sometimes, each other.--Carter Sickels

Gimpelevich's stories are so firmly controlled, immaculate lakes with roiling depths that unapologetically probe interlocking webs of queerness, class, protection, disability, transness, addiction, race, and love. This is one of the most gripping, crisp, and moving collections of short fiction I have read in a long time.--Casey Plett

INVASIONS flows from experiences that border on the divergent and taboo--polyamory, secret queer encounters--into the surreal, the unreal, the fluidity of moving from body to body. Gimpelevich writes with a rhythm that sings like a rock ballad; we have no idea where he might take us next and we don't much care as long as we get to come along.--Afrose Fatima Ahmed, City Arts