“Melissa Lozada-Oliva is one of the Latina writers to watch. [These stories] are heartbreaking and also funny and a little weird . . . I just adore her.”
—Xochitl Gonzalez, The TODAY Show
“Deeply poetic, delightfully weird.”
—Emma Specter, Vogue
“Lozada-Oliva’s short stories are luminescent, uncanny, and infused with earnestness and humor.”
—Ariél M. Martinez, BOMB Magazine
“Dazzling . . . The author’s rich, economical worldbuilding and character development give this slim volume more punch than most collections of similar size.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Lozada-Oliva shines in this scintillating collection of stories about young women navigating desperate situations . . . [She] effectively uses body horror and the uncanny to spotlight the monstrous forms her characters’ insecurities can take. Readers will be enthralled.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Beyond All Reasonable, Doubt Jesus Is Alive! is unsettling, darkly funny, and strangely hopeful. Lozada‑Oliva crafts stories that linger like whispered confessions, leaving you with the sense that survival and belief are never simple, but they are always profoundly human.”
—Corrine Watson, West Trade Review
“Lozada-Oliva’s cleverness shines through a collection that will unsettle you in the best way.”
—Christina Orlando, Reactor
“Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a wonderful, wonderful writer . . . What is most striking to me about Lozada-Oliva’s work is its tenderness in spite of the strangeness: she always loves the ghosts. No matter how surreal her writing gets, she never loses the thread of compassion.”
—James Folta, Lit Hub
“Magic, humor, and faith ground Lozada-Oliva’s story collection, which features beheaded bodies, bizarre video games, sentient tails, and haunted punk houses.”
—Eva M. Baron, The Millions
“The stories in Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus is Alive! are like ghost stories that ghosts would tell about the living to scare each other. Melissa Lozada-Oliva must secretly have two hearts or something! A single plane of reality is never big enough for her; in this emotionally iridescent collection, she pulls off charm and gloom with equal aplomb.”
—Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection
“Melissa Lozada-Oliva writes with a perfect blend of intoxicating magic and unflinching humor, illuminating the visceral tensions of yearning and darkness that define our most human moments. A beautiful, sharp-tongued collection that feels like an instant classic with an edge all its own.”
—Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman and Godshot
“Eerie, hilarious, tender and surreal, Melissa Lozada-Oliva makes her mark as a shimmering patron saint of the weird girl lit world.”
—GennaRose Nethercott, author of Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart and Thistlefoot
“Hilarious and deliriously odd, Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus is Alive! dives giddily into the joys and troubles of being a flawed person. I was mesmerized by each of Lozada-Oliva’s delicious jumps of imagination, landing in a place more marvelous and heart-achingly human than I would ever expect.”
—Gerardo Sámano Córdova, author of Monstrilio
“Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive! is beautiful, moving, weird, and complex in all the best ways. With precision and the command of language of an accomplished poet, Lozada-Oliva puts into words feelings and truths I didn’t know how to name, but immediately recognized. A wild ride of a single imagination.”
—Ananda Lima, author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil
“In Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s hands, girlhood is the eerie, seething, unsurvivable thing that women all know it to be. Lozada-Oliva’s protagonists cry, scheme, joke, lie, mourn, humiliate themselves, and scream for attention in settings both familiar and fantastical. It’s a mark of the author’s brilliance that as they do all this, they also charm us, every step of the way.”
—Rax King, author of Tacky
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