Seven Stories Press

A POLONAISE FOR FELIX

Lida had never been afraid of anything. Maybe because she did not watch TV or read the newspapers. Lida would listen to the radio and knit. She would sit in her small, cramped room on the bed under a monochrome tapestry (a naked woman on a riverbank), knit, and, of course, listen to the radio.

Lida swam in the Dnipro all year. Almost every day, fearless and hardened by nature, she went to the river, resolutely crossed the long sandy beach covered with islands of ice and mounds of snow, walked out on the frozen surface, looked for an ice hole left by fishermen, took off her clothes, but for a faded-pink and at one time red swimsuit, firmly rested her hands on the edges of the hole, and dove in. And all this happened year after year, until one February day she didn’t resurface from beneath the ice. For almost a minute, an unexpected force carried her away from the ice hole through the dark waters of the Dnipro, farther from the light and closer to death.

Felix rescued Lida. He often accompanied her when she was swimming. He walked into the distance, smoked, walked carefully along the icy quiet surface of the reservoir, looking toward the fairway, as if expecting desert caravans of dushman armed with Stingers to swim out of the frosty haze. But, of course, there were no caravans. And, of course, no dushman either. And when he looked back, there was no Lida. Felix rushed to the ice hole and beneath the murky ice he saw her gray flailing body. He threw off his jacket, plunged to the waist, slid his fingers along her body, looked for something to grab onto, finally grabbed her hair, pulled. Lida hit her head on the bottom of the ice, scratched her face and hands, had almost stopped breathing, and, as was made clear later, had said goodbye to life. In the murky crystal of the cold water, she managed to catch a glimpse of the light edge of the sky, remembered the summer and the sound of reeds in the backwaters between the villages of Chervona Sloboda and Lesky, the tall pines of the Sofiyivka Park, and the spring morning draft that swayed the whitewashed lace curtains hanging in the cottage’s summer kitchen. And most of all, she thought about how it was a pity that there was so little and that there could have been a little more: summer, reeds, sunshine, forest skirted with dried mushrooms, limitless lawns of heather, and silver poplars in the wind, pouring over the transparent afternoon splendor. And this was the most frightening of her fleeting thoughts.

After this, Lida didn’t swim in winter anymore.

Perhaps the river’s ice was the only thing that frightened her.

—

Felix was discharged in ’89. After he was wounded, shell-shocked, and held in captivity, the Moscow leadership started to seriously doubt his usefulness. According to the law, while waiting for retirement, he had to work somewhere, so he was taken on as a truck driver for a pasta factory. His influential friends from the Soviet party got him the job. At first, before he got used to it, Felix wandered around the factory open-mouthed. He hardly understood anything and did not trust anyone. The consequences of the shell shock did not let up for a long time. He was allowed not to work, so he wandered between the shops, sat for hours beneath the leaky shed roof, and smoked, watching the measured flow of factory life. Curiously, he repaired the fence around the flowerbed, poisoned a hornet’s nest near the public toilet, and drew a realistic penis for the funny bear on the May Day poster.

And finally, he found his way. He joined a group of veterans of the Afghan war (some criminals among them), who drove around the grounds in a truck with black plates, while workers, those who couldn’t get away with not working, filled the truck with groceries: Soviet cognac, condensed milk, butter, sacks of flour and pasta, boxes of candies and cakes. After the truck passed the checkpoint without obstacle, it rolled in the direction of the Eastern Borderlands and finally unloaded on the right bank of the Western Bug River. The patrons of the party got part of the money, something was thrown to the director of the factory, and everything else was divided and spent on booze. At the same time, Felix collected payments at the central market. They resold purchases there, provisions bought from the villagers. The payments were small, but the market was big. Sometimes he took goods instead of the money. A silver-haired Azerbaijani with a missing ear got him sweet peppers and tomatoes. Fat-bottomed Ada specialized in meat. One agreeable old man brought eggs and farmer’s cheese directly to Felix’s apartment.

The building he lived in was right across from the market. It was a new, brick building from ’86 with large bright rooms and glassed-in balconies. The neighbors were mostly officers of the 40th Army of the Soviet Ground Forces and their families. Felix got a three-room apartment on the fourth floor. His wife, Tanya, and daughter moved in while Felix was still stationed in Afghanistan. Just like a thousand of his army friends, he outfitted the apartment with Japanese appliances hauled on donkeys and camels by caravanners from Pakistan and covered the living room with a fluffy, patterned rug requisitioned from the Bagram market. The furniture, however, was from Romania, but beech wood, a bespoke order from the factory in Baia Mare. His wife took care of decorating the apartment. In the beginning, Felix did not care about the apartment, the appliances, not even the rug, though he had taken a long time selecting it and was anxious about it, asking the seller detailed questions and bargaining for each afghani, and having reached an acceptable price, he came away with it for free. And when he returned, he still did not care. He was used to an austere life; he couldn’t care less about the cozy apartment. Then he came to his senses, looked around, but it was too late to change anything.

ARTEM CHEKH is a Ukrainian author and soldier. He is the author of some sixteen books, including Absolute Zero, and his work has been translated into English, Polish, Czech, and Russian. Chekh is currently serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

April 15

Seven Stories Press Acquires Two Dollar Radio

ANNOUNCING SEVEN STORIES PRESS x TWO DOLLAR RADIO

April 15, 2025, New York, NY – Seven Stories Press publisher Dan Simon and Two Dollar Radio publisher Eric Obenauf announce today the acquisition of Two Dollar Radio, an Ohio-based independent, by New York City-based Seven Stories.

Founded in 2005 by Eric Obenauf and Eliza Wood-Obenauf, Two Dollar Radio publishes bold works of literary fiction and essay collections. Eric Obenauf joins Seven Stories as publisher of the Two Dollar Radio imprint, which will continue to publish four to six original titles per year on average, including their New Classics series.

Penguin Random House Distribution Services will be tasked with sales and distribution in the U.S., Canada and globally, beginning January 1st, 2026. In the UK, sales and distribution will be with Turnaround Distribution.

Ingram Distribution Services will continue to sell and distribute the Two Dollar Radio list through 2025.*

Also joining Seven Stories is Two Dollar Radio staffer Brett Gregory, who will act as publicity and marketing coordinator for the Two Dollar Radio imprint and for certain Seven Stories titles.

Co-founder Eliza Wood-Obenauf will continue to work on special projects. The Obenaufs and Gregory will work remotely from Ohio.

Two Dollar Radio Headquarters, a bookstore and café, will remain under the ownership of the Obenaufs.

“Seven Stories has been one of our literary polestars since before we launched Two Dollar Radio,” Obenauf says. “I’m a great admirer of their list, and I believe that ours complements theirs in very intriguing ways. I look forward to being a part of their team, and to learn from them and their expertise. It’s been a sometimes exhausting and yet monstrously rewarding journey to reach this point, and Eliza and I couldn’t be more thrilled to strengthen Two Dollar Radio under the Seven Stories umbrella so that it can continue to prosper for the next twenty years and beyond.”

Simon adds, “Eric and I are very similar in that we personalize our work to an extreme degree. This has its advantages and its disadvantages, but on the plus side it can inspire loyalty in our authors and colleagues and strengthens our ability to be really good editors and publishers. I deeply admire the twenty-year history of Two Dollar Radio and all that Eric and Eliza Jane have done here. I’m also really interested in their aesthetic and cool sense that literature belongs in a fundamental way in contemporary life.”

READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT IN PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Dan Simon, the publisher of Seven Stories Press in New York City and Eric Obenauf, the publisher of Two Dollar Radio in Columbus, Ohio have announced that Seven Stories has acquired Two Dollar Radio. The acquisition was finalized on April 1 and the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Two Dollar Radio, which releases four to six frontlist titles each year and has approximately 80 titles in print, becomes Seven Stories’ fourth imprint, joining its Spanish-language imprints Siete Cuentos and Ocean Sur, and children’s imprint, Triangle Square Books for Young Readers. Obenauf remains publisher and editorial director, while his spouse, Eliza Wood-Obenauf remains consulting editor. Brett Gregory will continue to coordinate marketing and publicity for Two Dollar Radio, and also serve as marketing and publicity manager for Seven Stories. The trio will work remotely from Columbus.

Obenauf and Wood-Obenauf retain ownership of Two Dollar Radio Headquarters, the bookstore/café/bar they have operated in Columbus since 2017.

With the deal, Simon remains the majority owner of Seven Stories, while Obenauf and Wood-Obenauf have become minority partners as have Seven Stories national sales director Bill Rusin and co-publisher/publicity director Ruth Weiner. “It’s an acquisition,” Simon told PW in an interview conducted with him and Obenauf. “At the same time, it’s an initial step toward there being multiple stakeholders here and minority partners.”

Obenauf said he and Wood-Obenauf regard the transition as “sort of the next generation of Two Dollar Radio.” He noted that while operating a small indie press “is incredibly rewarding,” it "can also be incredibly mentally exhausting, [especially] if you don't have access to gobs of capital.” He and Wood-Obenauf launched Two Dollar Radio in 2005 because, he said, “we just wanted to work on books; we just wanted to edit books and work with authors, and that sort of thing.”

“Our authors and our books aren't benefiting when we're spending all of our time poring over spreadsheets and just trying to exist on a day to day basis,” he said, “So we see this as the next iteration of Two Dollar Radio that doesn’t just benefit our books and authors, but also sustains Two Dollar Radio into the future for the next 20 years and beyond.”

Two years in the making

Obenauf reached out to Simon two years ago to discuss the possibility of Seven Stories acquiring Two Dollar Radio. The two first met in 2009 at BookExpo America, and Simon was instrumental in helping Two Dollar Radio obtain U.K. distribution with Turnaround Publisher Services. Obenauf noted that there is a “great confluence” between Seven Stories and Two Dollar Radio, both in their approaches to publishing and in their lists. Seven Stories is known for its mix of literature and politics with a decidedly left-wing bent, while Two Dollar Radio is renowned for its quirky, edgy list of primarily fiction and essay collections.

“It was incredibly important that Two Dollar Radio remain independent,” Obenauf said. “Being acquired by one of the multinational corporations wasn’t ever something that we considered. We wanted to feel invested continuing forward, not just with Two Dollar Radio, but with Seven Stories as well.”

"Eric and I really are true believer publishers in exactly the same way,” Simon added. "It's so personal for him, and that's like looking in the mirror for me; it's so personal to me. I think it strengthens our ability to be really good editors and publishers, and I think that the loyalty of our authors to Seven Stories and to Two Dollar Radio reflects this."

Simon praised Two Dollar Radio for “punching way above its weight” by publishing such authors as Hanif Abdurraqib, Nora Lange, Bennett Sims, and many other critically-acclaimed writers. “At the same time,” he said, “it’s a manageable entity, in relationship to our size.” Two Dollar Radio will continue to be distributed by PGW through the fall, and then will switch to Seven Stories’ distributor, Penguin Random House Distribution Services, on January 1, 2026. Turnaround will continue to distribute Two Dollar Radio in the U.K.

Reflecting upon the acquisition – the first in Seven Stories’ 30-year history – Simon said both presses "are kind of alternative in the best sense: we’re not part of the club. We're most excited when we want to publish something that nobody else wants to publish. You know, we're very rarely in an auction situation. I have so much respect for so many independent publishers, but at the same time, I don't want to be part of the club. And Two Dollar Radio is certainly not part of the club; after all, they're in Columbus, Ohio.”

With the addition of Two Dollar Radio, Simon said, Seven Stories "has an extraordinary brain trust now, including Eric, Eliza Jane, and Brett. We, I think, are positioned for success and growth -- it's the only way to survive in this pretty merciless marketplace that we're in.”