“Compelling scientific and emotional explorations that raise the question: What awaits us when we cross the line?”
—Kirkus Reviews

A squatting tenant in El Barrio refusing his landlord’s eviction offer while his nurse contemplates taking a nefarious offer of her own. Star jumping to the next constellation without the girl you love. Stopping a quantum mechanical fungoid Casanova who is ravaging the galaxy’s hearts and star maps.

Whether it be courage, resignation or lust that lead to a decision, one thing is certain: don’t buckle up because seatbelts don’t work here.

From the 2022 Chautauqua Janus Prize winner Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos comes a sci-fi, sensual, and literary debut short story collection and like her prize-winning story, “Jean”, genre and medium are not holding her back. Event Horizon: Stories of No Turning Back is a prose-driven collection of stories themed around the astrophysical phenomenon of black holes and their unforgiving boundaries of “no return”—their event horizons. What arises is a tantalizing question for characters grappling with cosmic decisions in their lives, whether in their living rooms, on space stations or exoplanets: what awaits on the other side of the “event horizon”? An array of celebrated artists help answer this through the sequential art of comics, canvas work, and photography.

The collection is introduced by comics, prose and astrophysics academia: Dr. Frederick Luis Aldama (Professor Latinx), the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities in the English Department at the University of Texas, Austin; Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University Dr. Marcel Agüeros; and Dr. Mariana Espinosa Aldama, Member of the Mathematical Modeling of Social Systems Department at the Research Institute on Applied Mathematics and Systems at UNAM.

6 prose stories with art. 3 short comics. 1 one-shot comic (25 pages). 3 academic letters of introduction. Original canvas work. Original photography throughout.

“…Pitsirilos has assembled an eclectic roster of creators from many different mediums, resulting in a work that is diverse in both forms and perspectives… All should prove a delight for SF aficionados.” –Kirkus Reviews

“…By having the courage to place Latinx feminist issues in space and in futuristic settings, Pitsirilos has lifted Latinx literature from the flat earth most of our fiction is set.” –Ernesto Quiñonez, Author of Bodega Dreams

This book is like you being characters in THE EXPANSE reading bell hooks while sipping a drink at a bar in an asteroid belt with Neil DeGrasse Tyson next to you pointing out some intergalactic sh*t going down in the constellation next door, while your mom is calling you cosmic-collect to remind you of the reality ofyour messy life back on Earth as you feel the woman on the other side of you slowly running her crystal stiletto heel up your leg.