Two Dollar Radio has been quietly rocking the publishing world since its inception in 2005. The Ohio-based indie publisher and “family outfit” turns twenty this year, and we at Lit Hub want to extend a hearty happy birthday.
In a literary landscape that’s often knocked for a fear of risk-taking, Two Dollar Radio regularly champions under-sung weirdos and audacious stylists. They publish literary genre fiction, and askew memoir. Their slate favors voice-driven, totally brazen books that chronicle breakdowns—some solo, some systemic.
In honor of their twenty years of doing business, here are ten titles from the Two Dollar backlist that deserve a place on your radar. (Note: there’s a lot to love there, so consider this merely a place to start!) Happy birthday, TDR. And long live the indie press!
Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
If the multivalent Hanif Abdurraqib isn’t already sitting pride of place on your nightstand, I am here to tell you: get wise. This stunning collection of autobiography-infused music criticism is heart-forward and quietly huge. I’ve given this one as a gift more times than I can count.
Nora Lange, Us Fools
This debut novel was a high point of my 2024 reading. The story follows Bernie, a young girl growing up on a farm in Central Illinois during the mounting ag-crisis of the late 70s. As a beautifully told, voice-y look at the obligations of sisterhood, this one put me in mind of another favorite: All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews.
Grace Krilanovich, The Orange Eats Creeps
This madcap novel from 2011 has been called “beautiful and deranged” by better minds than mine. Following a teen vampire who traipses through a 90s Pacific Northwest on a quest for a missing sister, this book is like Dark Twilight. But, you know. Punk rock.
Sean Avery Medlin, 808s & Otherworlds
One more reason to love Two Dollar Radio? Its commitment to hybrid, hard-to-classify works of cultural interrogation. This motley collection of liner notes, prose poems, and praise songs is an ebullient entry into that canon. In these pages Medlin, a multimedia storyteller and performer, concocts “a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized.”
Dima Alzayat, Alligator and Other Stories
This debut story collection is currently high on my TBR pile. I remember being struck by the author’s bold POV in this Adroit Journal story, a few years back. Detailed, bracing, and highly attuned to the present moment, the pieces in Alligator…explore the psychology of ‘otherness.’
Gina Nutt, Night Rooms
I regularly look to TDR for its form-curious non-fiction. So here’s another essay collection that relates personal stories in surprising containers. In Night Rooms, Nutt considers her life in and alongside her favorite horror films, forming “a narrative that explores identity, body image, fear, revenge, and angst.” (As NPR’s Gabino Iglesias once put it.)
Scott McClanahan, Crapalachia
This memoir of a rural West Virginia childhood was one of those books that got breathlessly passed around my circle for a while in the late aughts. Crapalachia stays beloved for its witty, stylish prose and palpable love of place. I’ve been meaning to revisit it, ever since that evil son of Appalachia rose to power on the wings of a much worse biography.
Andre Perry, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now
The form-bending essays in this collection consider the paradox of identity. Perry takes on one of my favorite subjects—reconciling the art we love with an artist’s troubled politics, and/or a certain identity—in this incisive piece. Throughout the book, his writing is sly and perceptive.
Sarah Gerard, Binary Star
I picked up Binary Star at the Queens Public Library in 2016, knowing almost nothing about its insides. Years later, sentences from this feverish chronicle of a disordered eater still surface. (“Feeling is fleshy. Don’t touch me.”) This one’s a spiky, poetic rumination that stealthily engages the epic.
Katya Apekina, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish
This punch of a novel, much-feted on its debut in 2018, has Gothic overtones. From the first scene, it’s just So Dark. But a sneaky humor creeps in. Following two sisters who are shuttled between their troubled parents, this book explores how allegiances are formed in families. Walk, don’t run.
