Red Ants - by Kimberly Blaeser (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This bold and genre-defying prose debut by the prizewinning poet incorporates social, historical, and supernatural elements to create a collection that is both contemporary and timeless, communal and deeply intimate

Kimberly Blaeser's singular stories center Anishinaabe characters who bring traditional tribal stories into contemporary experiences and break the stereotypes too often used to portray them. Here, we experience an Indigenous America inhabited by fancy dog contests, social protests, tree doctors, monsters, mosquitoes, and facial recognition software, all while blending, in the most exciting ways, the genre elements of magical realism, humor, horror, and speculative literary fiction.

At the heart of the collection is the story "Red Ants," which opens on the rez between a jump rope chant and a test proctor's smile, where two girls learn how easily a life can be reduced to numbers, and how quickly those numbers can tilt ordinary days into something mythic, unsettling, and deeply human. Blaeser delves into the complexities of kinship and survival, exploring how the smallest moments of cruelty or tenderness can shape generations.

For readers of Night of the Living Rez and Crooked Hallelujah speaking to larger issues of race, culture, and history, Red Ants explores alienation, displacement, and loneliness elevated through the precision of language, fierce emotional intelligence, and the haunting sense of place that permeates every page.

Review Quotes

Chicago Review of Books, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year

"Red Ants is a dynamic collection of contemporary Anishinaabe stories that feel both timely and timeless. . . I love short stories that feel more expansive than their word count, and each story in Kimberly Blaeser's debut collection operates like their own galaxies of possibility." --Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books

"Kimberly Blaeser's stunning debut story collection is filled with receding shorelines, revolutionaries, tricksters, whip-smart women, found family, and monsters that stalk the land. Red Ants feels like sitting at the feet of your favorite aunties and cousins deep into the night. The stories send pulses of fear and unease through you, break your heart, and leave you rolling with laughter. I love when my favorite poets write prose. Though Red Ants may be her first work of fiction, I'll be counting the days until Kimberly Blaeser's next one." --Kelli Jo Ford, author of Crooked Hallelujah

"Kim Blaeser's Anishnaabe characters in Red Ants are deeply human, full of compassion and resilience, told through her gift for craft and precision of detail on the line level. Here Blaeser proves she is one of our most thoughtful writers working today. I absolutely devoured this collection of stories." --Brandon Hobson, National Book Award finalist and author of The Removed

"Red Ants is a gorgeous collection of contemporary Anishinaabe stories in the very best of our storytelling traditions. Generous, funny, and intimate, with Blaeser's signature stunning poetics, these stories feel like old friends exploring belonging, the places that make us, and the people and spirits who are our kin." --Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of Theory of Water

"Kimberly Blaeser's prose stands alone. Each one of the stories in this kick ass debut harnesses a kinetic voice, the energetic bodies behind them as real as if they were sitting next to you. This collection has it all: realism, horror, speculative futurisms, myths of the past made present. I laughed. I remembered. I wanted to fight. Long have I admired Blaeser's lyrical and incisive poetic voice, and now, her prose." --Bojan Louis, author of Currents: Poems and Sinking Bell: Stories

"Red Ants is a stunning collection of short fiction, with gorgeous prose and images bearing the fingerprints of a poet at the height of her gifts. Each story lands with impactful moments of wisdom, insight, even shock regarding the uncanny turns a life can take. A remarkable, imperative read that lingers in the imagination--these powerful stories will haunt me forever." --Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls

About the Author

KIMBERLY BLAESER, former Wisconsin poet laureate, is the founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets. Her six poetry collections include Ancient Light, a 2026 National Book Foundation Science + Literature title; Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance; and Copper Yearning, winner of the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award. Other awards include the O. Henry Prize in fiction, Writer for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. Blaeser is Anishinaabe, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, who grew up on the reservation in northern Minnesota. She is an MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts and a Professor Emerita at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Learn more at www.kblaeser.org