Work
Novels
Monstrilio
2024 Balcones Fiction Prize
Finalist VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
An NPR Books We Love 2023
An Elle Our Favorite Books of 2023
A Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Best Horror and Best Debut Novel
A Barnes & Noble Best Books of 2023
A Book Riot Best Books of 2023
A Shondaland Best Debut Novel of 2023
A The Observer Best Books of 2023
A Huffpost Best Books We Read in 2023
A Powell's Best Books of Horror 2023
Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.
A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.
“At once heartbreaking and unapologetically strange, this is a cross-cultural, syncretic, folksy, razor-sharp narrative about the horrors of grief and the eternal debate over nature versus nurture. . . . Monstrilio packs in a lot, and the author pulls it off brilliantly. It is at once dark and tender, at times bleak, but balanced with humor that borders on slapstick . . . an outstanding debut; for all the ground being broken in genre-bending horror, his is a distinctive, exciting new voice in fiction.”—Gabino Iglesias, Los Angeles Times
Short Stories
- "Jeremy" in Barrelhouse, 2024
- "Motel" in Apartamento Magazine, 2023
- "The Tremendous One" in Catapult, 2023
- "Iceberg, Mine" in The Common, 2022
- "Forgotten" / "City" / "Church" in Passages North, 2022
- "Fluffschatten" in Ninth Letter, 2021
- "Boss" in Passages North, 2021
- "Pencil Werewolf" in Chicago Quarterly Review, 2019
Articles & Miscellanea
- "On Dia de Muertos, the Dead Return To Eat Us" in Simply Recipes, 2023
- "HORROR DOES A BODY GOOD, OR, THE STORY OF MY TEETH" in CrimeReads, 2023
- "Review: How to Order the Universe by Maria Jose Ferrada" in The Common, 2022
Short Films
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