Fiction. In this novel, by poet and essayist Mark Wallace, a scientist creates gilled human monstrosities that are also avatars of the possibility of imaginative transcendence. Experimentation in language and in the laboratory produce equally vertiginous results. "In these worlds, ideas and narratives flurry madly and wink out like sparks, the dead walk, and the monstrous is never far away. Part Lovecraft, part de Sade, part B-horror movie, part philosophy, DEAD CARNIVAL is a schizophrenic and uniquely American Novel of Ideas"--Brian Evenson "Mark Wallace writes like John Hawkes dreaming of Paul Bowles having a gothic nightmare"--Ron Sukenick. Wallace's HAZE: ESSAYS, POEMS, PROSE and NOTHING HAPPENED AND BESIDES I WASN'T THERE are also available from SPD.

About the author: Mark Wallace's most recent book is Felonies of Illusion, just out from Edge Books. His most recent book of fiction is Walking Dreams: Selected Early Tales. Wallace has authored more than ten books and chapbooks of poetry, including Nothing Happened and Besides I Wasn't There and Sonnets of a Penny-A-Liner. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His multi-genre work Haze (Edge Books) was published in 2004, and his first collection of fiction, The Big Lie, was published by Avec Books in Fall 2000. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications. Along with Steven Marks, he edited Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s (University of Alabama Press) a collection of 26 essays by different writers on the subject of contemporary avant garde poetry and poetics. Wallace teaches literature and creative writing at Cal State San Marcos.