Once Wild: Stories by s b del llano (Debut Collection, pre-order)

Set against a vast swath of humanity and place, the stories in Once Wild capture deeply intimate yet universally resonant dimensions of our lives. Whether transporting us to humid fecund tributaries in Amazonas or to the winter-gripped streets of Manhattan, del llano’s visceral scenes are fueled by unflinching clarity.

A writer in New York eulogizes his father’s global legacy, unearthing a haunting secret from their exotic and remote past. A fiery, trailblazing midwife in Texas confronts lingering shadows of a violent event from her youth, striving to reclaim her sense of agency and purpose in life. A Salvadoran refugee who has become a lawyer travels to rural Iowa to face a conservative farm family with the painful truth surrounding their son’s tragic drowning in Hawaii. An Ohio aircraft engineer wrestles with inner demons when one of his planes goes down fatally in Argentina.

The widow of a renowned Poet Laureate devises a plan to smuggle her late husband’s ashes into Mozambique to the Indian Ocean, honoring his final wish to have his remains scattered across the seven seas. An affluent family in Connecticut is thrown into turmoil during the holidays when their eldest son returns home in drag, a bold attempt to reconcile the suicide of his younger brother. A retired urban professor experiences a curious awakening following a surgical procedure under propofol, leading him to a life-altering decision. An agnostic scientist from Sweden finds herself alienated in her marriage when her husband’s profound connection with the divine challenges her paradigm of love and existence.

del llano’s wide range of voice delivers characters, places and scenes with passion and longing, both heartbreaking and humorous. These are journeys of resilience and survival.

“s b del llano’s bold debut collection reminds me of the massive paintings of Delacroix or David in that there is so much to take in on every inch of the canvas, so much majestic nature, vivid life, and tragic humanity that you feel helpless, overwhelmed, and enlarged. Bold colors, characters bursting with life, and large gestures abound. The title story—and the title itself—is a perfect example with heartbreaking tragedy against a backdrop of raw, beautiful, and terrifying nature. And what range! This is a world tour of culture in one volume; the planet is his canvas. del llano is an incredible new voice in literary fiction.”

—Matt Bondurant, author of North Country, Oleander City, The Night Swimmer and Lawless

“s b del llano is a unique voice in fiction writing, a poet of a storyteller. Don’t get me wrong, the pieces in Once Wild are all story all the time, deep and sometimes quite dark—great characters, settings, imagination – and the writing is beautifully precise and wonderfully evocative.”

—Jeffrey Ford, author of Pandemonium Waltz and The Empire of Ice Cream

“Once Wild is a sweeping and deeply humane collection, rich with lyrical prose and striking narrative range. s b del llano crafts unforgettable characters navigating grief, faith, and the fragile beauty of sur-vival.”

—LaToya Watkins, author of Perish, The Book of Chuck and Holler, Child

“Once Wild has a huge heart and enchanting writing style that envelops readers in settings around the globe—settings created with easy familiarity and intimate affection. The characters inhabiting its pages live wildly different lives in divergent places; they come together from different backgrounds. But they’re all trying to find refuge, a home on this planet earth, and the reader stumbles, runs, and swims against the tide with every one of them. Each character in this book, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly has a soul etched in lyrical prose. s b del llano holds humor and tragedy beautifully in balance, and his first book is a masterwork both for its literary prowess and the sheer reverence for life that radiates from its pages. The search for the wild and beautiful self sometimes ends in tragedy, sometimes in comedy; always in beauty. These stories will embed themselves in your heart.”

—Julie Price Carpenter, author of The Last Train out of Hell and Things Get Weird in Whistlestop

“s b del llano’s debut collection moves effortlessly between ethereal and particular, probing the existential while revealing mystery in the rituals of daily life. He renders the grit and mettle of Manhattan with the same attention he affords the ochres and umbers of his child-hood in the Amazon. With richness and reverence—and an astonishing range—Once Wild heralds a profound, incisive literary voice. del llano reminds us that storytelling is not simply entertainment; it’s the basis of cultural humanity and the fertile soil in which we might grow ourselves.”

—Susan Ayotte Norman, author of The Best of Their Blunders

s b del llano is a writer, poet, and educator. His fiction, non-fiction, and poetry appear in Reunion: The Dallas Review, Sojourn, Hindsight Magazine and The New Guard. del llano was raised among indigenous and multicultural communities in Colombia, South America. He received a Master of Liberal Arts at Southern Methodist University and completed his PhD in Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas.

His forthcoming novel, Song of Managraça (High Frequency Press) is set near his home in the forested dunes of the Indian Ocean in Mozambique, where he spends summers writing, reveling in nature, and contributing to local communities. He divides the rest of his time between New York City and Dallas. Once Wild is his debut collection.

ISBN: 978-1-962931-66-3, EPUB ISBN: 978-1-962931-67-0, LCCN: 2026900828. Jacketed hardcover with printed case laminate, 230 pages. $30.00. Forthcoming July 28.