Terese Svoboda has won the Guggenheim, the Bobst Prize in fiction, the Iowa Poetry Prize, an NEH translation grant, the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, a Jerome Foundation video prize, the O. Henry Award for the short story, and a Pushcart Prize for the essay. Her opera WET premiered at L.A.'s Disney Hall.  Roxy and Coco, her 20^th book, will be published in 2024.

Everyone likes ghost stories – except Dog on Fire isn't exactly that. Imagine a sad-funny elegy, Cather channeling Saunders, with infusions of sly wit. Imagine a sibling who is so inscrutable he seems to be from another family entirely, who dies before you get to know him. Of course the family's dysfunctional: an alcoholic mother who carves wax guns, a father whose passion is smoking anything vaguely edible, a sister who hears her dead brother in a door molding. A dreadful dust storm gets the book off to a good start with a glimpse of its shovel-wielding ghost. What the book does best is haunt. Dog on Fire's short, and its succinct almost-poetry seeks to enchant you, Nabokov-style.

“Dog on Fire Svoboda has performed the astonishing dual feat of writing what could be called a contemporary “Dustbowl Gothic” novel.” –  Rone Shavers, author of Silverfish

“With its fierce wit and insight, Dog on Fire is thrillingly alive to this bewildering moment.” – Rene Steinke, author of Friendswood

“Dog on Fire is a blisteringly perceptive novel about grief, secrets, and the intractability of love.”-- Dawn Raffel, author of Boundless as the Sky.