Noir day or night

Special Dispatch for Labor Day Weekend: A Pre-Order Opportunity

La Bloga columnist Margaret Elysia Garcia sends this video for your appreciation. Garcia is author of the El Martillo Press collection, Chicana Noir and Other Stories,"> coming October 2026. Pre-order at the publisher's website (link here).

Chicana Noir might not be familiar to some readers, whereas "noir" has long been a staple of publishing, and a La Bloga favorite genre, e.g. Akashic Books' cityname noir series: https://labloga.blogspot.com/2015/10/review-chicago-noir-classics-news-on.html

Preview readers lavish compliments upon the writer and her stories. For example, Jesus Salvador Treviño observes, ""Margaret Elysia Garcia’s writing is enthralling, introspective and honest. In Chicana Noir and Other Stories, she elevates commonplace people and events and infuses them with metaphoric and, at times, horrific meaning."

Ariel Gore shares her view that ""In Chicana Noir and Other Stories, the real horror isn't supernatural—it's adjuncting without health insurance. From the fever dream of "Chicana Noir Story #1" to the revenge fantasy of "The Last Cruise," Margaret Elysia Garcia writes with the urgency of someone who knows that survival itself is resistance. Garcia's narrators exist in the margins"

From El Martillo's website, "Macondo fellow Margaret Elysia Garcia is the author of the poetry collection the daughterland (El Martillo Press, 2023), of the short story collection Graft (Tolsun Books, 2022), and the poetry chapbooks Iconistas!, and Burn Scars, (Lit Kit Collective, 2025, 2022). She’s the co-editor of the anthology Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Survival in California’s Fire Country (AK Press, 2025). Her second short story collection Chicana Noir and Other Stories will be published in 2026 by El Martillo Press. She's the recipient of Chapman University's non-tuition fellowship for Creative Writing."