Cover art courtesy of Matthew Revert
“The hyper-capitalist world Silverfish satirizes so keenly is neither brave nor new. It’s ours already—only mixed through a peak trickster’s crossfader. On the 1, a concentrated slice of sci-fi life during Profit War-time. On the 2, a jam of code and language/langaj. With the brilliant Rone Shavers on the cut, what could be a perfectly lacerating record of a plutocratic dystopia, gets spun into something even more wild: a hot-to-death fiddle solo played as ‘the world, and word, [are] already shifting around us.’”
— Douglas Kearney, author of Buck Studies and Mess and Mess and
SILVERFISH
Finalist for the CLMP 2021 Firecracker Award for Fiction
Named one of the Best Fiction Books of 2020 by The Brooklyn Rail
Published by Clash Books
What if the apocalypse already happened and you just didn’t notice? That’s one of the central questions of Silverfish, a novel that details a slice of life in the Incorporated States of America: a country much like our own, but one in which the corporatization of culture is so total and complete, so deeply ingrained so long ago that no one can remember an alternative. And in this America, citizens are “born to fail” – mainly because they lack the language and cognitive skills by which to identify their condition. That’s the premise of this experimental novel, a dark Borgesian romp into the labyrinthine depths of language. Silverfish is a syncretic tour-de-force that recombines elements of Afrofuturism, sci-fi, and wartime fiction with linguistic and literary theories to issue a dire warning about what happens when we choose to pretend our past never happened, thereby ensuring that we stumble blindly into a future we’ve already lived. Part prophecy, part literary collage, and part social justice remix, it’s a wholly immersive, intertextual sojourn. More than just a damning indictment of our contemporary moment, Silverfish is fiction written both for and after the end of history.
“Silverfish has left me with big feelings that I need to sit with and explore. It has also left me with big questions that don’t necessarily have answers, but requires an intense process of thought and being, in order to come close to some answers. You’re in for a treat, Reader/Elegba/Hermes/Alternate Being.”
—Steven Dunn, author of Potted Meat and water & power
“Rone Shavers’ debut novel Silverfish is a lodestar of imaginative brilliance. Dazzling in its linguistic and technological breadth, abounding in voices and allusions, and a model of narrative economy and virtuosity, Silverfish is a 21st century Afrofuturist masterpiece.”
— John Keene, MacArthur award-winning author of Annotations and Counternarratives
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Two short pieces, “Effing Florida” and “Ode to Ron DeKKKantis.” Forthcoming in Unlikely Stories. Vol. 5: September 2023.
“Three Crônicas.” In Action, Spectacle magazine. Summer 2023.
“Cronica of the Grand Allusion” and “Crônica del Crepúsculo.” In Hairstreak Butterfly Review. Issue 5: March 6, 2023.
“Rooted/Indigenous,” and “Black Powerful.” Two short pieces in the anthology, Black Powerful. Natasha Marin, editor. McSweeney’s Books, 2022.
Four Crônicas.” In BOMB magazine, Issue 160, Summer 2022.
Ten Crônicas: A prose chapbook from The Magnificent Field press. May 2021.
“Crônica of the Hermit.” Online at Pine Hills Review. May 19, 2021.
“Trigger Fail.” Online at Taint Taint Taint Magazine. May 15, 2021.
“Crônica on The Aesthetic” and short flash piece titled “My Sporting Life.” Bull Magazine. April 22, 2021.
“Form and (Dis)Content, Volume II: Speculative and Experimental Approaches to Language by Authors of Color.” Introduction and editorial work by Rone Shavers. A compilation showcasing work by Krista Franklin, Kenning JP Garcia, Douglas Kearney, and Jennifer Maritza McCauley. In Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, Vol 46.1, Spring 2021.
“Especially Since and Mainly Because.” Crônica in Vestal Review. December 15, 2020.
Published short essay on Albany, New York’s Dove and Hudson bookstore for the “On Books and Their Harbors” section of the Kenyon Review. Nov. 26, 2020.
“Sugah Heys Back” Prose poetry in Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora. Vol 45.2, Fall 2020.
“Crônica of 13 Beginnings” in Boyfriend Village, the online edition of Black Warrior Review. August 2020.
Published round-up review of several new BIPOC books for the “What I’m Reading Now” column of Tarpaulin Sky. July 2020.
“Monster Mash.” Review of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James. American Book Review, Vol. 40, Number 6. September/October 2019.
“Crônica for the 25th Letter.” Rigorous magazine, Volume Three, Issue 3. July 2019.
“Four Crônicas.” Online at Big Other. July 15, 2019.
“Two Crônicas.” Barzakh: A Literary Magazine, Spring 2019.
Exhibition catalogue, “In Place of Now: Established and Emerging Artists Explore Black Identity through an Afrofuturist Lens.” Opalka Gallery, Sage College, Albany, NY. February 2019.
Exhibition wall text for “In Place of Now.” Opalka Gallery, Sage College, Albany, NY. February - April 2019.
“A Cronica da Cidade [The Cronica of the City].” Online at The Operating System. April 2, 2018.
“Letter to the Man of the House.” Auburn Avenue literary magazine, Autumn/Winter 2017.
“BOSS!” Rigorous magazine, Volume One, Issue 1. January 2017.
“Identity Crisis.” Review of Blackass, by A. Igoni Barrett. American Book Review, Vol. 37, Number 6. September/October 2016.
“An Essential One.” Review of Book of Numbers, by Joshua Cohen. American Book Review, Vol. 37, Number 2. January/February 2016.
Review of Oreo, by Fran Ross. BOMB magazine, No. 133, Fall 2015.
“Fear of a Performative Planet: Troubling the Concept of ‘Post-Blackness.’” Critical essay in The Trouble With Post-Blackness. Houston A. Baker and K. Merinda Simmons, eds. Columbia University Press, 2015.
“Joe Biden is My Homeboy.” Fiction online at Thoughtcatalog.com. January 2013.
“Recuperating History: An Interview with Karen Tei Yamashita.” Online at Fiction Writers Review. August 14, 2013.
Review of I Hotel, by Karen Tei Yamashita. Online at The Quarterly Conversation. Winter 2011.
“Conscious Knowledge.” PANK Magazine Online, No. 5.11. November 2010.
“The End of Agape: On the Public Debates Surrounding the Work of William Gaddis.” Critical essay in Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System. Joseph Tabbi and Rone Shavers, eds. University of Alabama Press, 2007.
“Percival Everett.” Interview in BOMB magazine, No. 88. Summer 2004.
“Paul Beatty.” Interview in BOMB magazine, No. 72. Summer 2000.