Dia VanGunten  avatar

    Dia VanGunten

    Dia VanGunten focuses on intimate, character-centered storytelling. Sometimes that character is herself. Her current fiction project — Pink Zombie Rose — is an existential love story set at a societal tipping point. EiC of Cream Scene Carnival
    New Orleans , LA, United States

    Books

    Selected work (30 publications)

    In The Mood Magazine, 2023
    Cartoon Archetypes Miss Piggy knows she’s bacon, so she can’t figure out why Kermit is always playing games
    media
    television
    TV
    Querencia Press, 2023
    In The Air (In The Teeth)She says that the way that people say things, aloud, but she is surprised by that. She is embarrassed at the way it leaves her mouth, gray and dusty, like gravel.
    graphic narrative
    pzr excerpt
    pzr undeads
    God's Cruel Joke - July 2023, 2023
    Body Of Organs In the oily soil beneath the overpass, glittered with glass, and littered with plastic, two wild dogs scrap over your heart which you meant to bury very deep in case you wanted to go back for it.
    graphic narrative
    pink zombie rose
    pzr excerpt
    pzr undeads
    Fatal Flaw, 2023
    Strings & AttractorsWe’re strung with the threads of time, in articulated skeletons, so it shouldn’t be this easy to slip into the past
    horror
    graphic narrative
    pink zombie rose
    pzr excerpt
    pzr undeads
    Querencia Press, 2023
    Stop The World And MeltGender is irrelevant. We’re only a series of reincarnated souls, churned out like playdoh, squeezing through the hole in a star shape.
    second person
    graphic narrative
    pink zombie rose
    pzr excerpt
    pzr undeads
    Scavengers Lit, 2023
    Heart of December - Comic Winter has a black muscle in its frozen core, an oily machine that pumps starry matter into plumed breath, and underneath the surface, there are spreading veins of frost.
    second person
    pink zombie rose
    pzr excerpt
    pzr undeads
    Apocalypse Confidential , 2023
    On The BlinkThe world is a ruffle, a folded tapeworm, upper sides, undersides, and each teeming surface was oblivious to the next.
    graphic narrative
    pink zombie rose
    pzr excerpt
    pzr undeads
    Fatal Flaw, 2022
    Heart of DecemberYou’d think death would be like the cave of a hibernating bear, but it’s a thousand family recipes, scratched out and written over, floured and translucent with grease.
    horror
    existential
    pink zombie rose
    pzr excerpt
    pzr undeads
    Gypsophilia , 2023
    Living DollShe wore wide legged Hawaiian print jumpsuit, zippered with palazzo pants, a primo example of 70’s resort wear, and shoes with plastic heels shaped like two of the seven dwarves.
    pink zombie rose
    Angelique Lautrec,
    pzr excerpt
    100 Subtexts Magazine, 2022
    Following The Wrong Star A station wagon braked on a patch of ice, turned sideways, and nearly lost its Christmas tree. Pine needles landed in the slush.
    romance
    Christmas
    pink zombie rose
    Angelique Lautrec,
    aton verne
    100 Subtexts Magazine, 2023
    Everlasting Love Black lucite featured a gothic engraving: a bone white skull was etched into the high-shine surface. Aton lifted the lucite lid.
    punk rock
    romance
    fashion
    halloween
    pink zombie rose
    Angelique Lautrec,
    pzr excerpt
    aton verne
    On The High Literary Journal, 2022
    Monster MashThe black Cadillac pull from the curb. The headlights flipped on to illuminate a mob of zombies.
    romance
    halloween
    pink zombie rose
    Angelique Lautrec,
    aton verne
    Open Sewers , 2022
    We Had LoveThe crowd bounced, jumping collectively, Checkerboard linoleum took the beating. Shelved records anchored the room.
    pink zombie rose
    atom verne,
    shane zabat
    pzr excerpt
    100 Subtexts Magazine, 2022
    Black Steel In The Hour of ChaosPenny candy. Pickled eggs. Dusty crates of Sundrop soda pop. A very specific combination of scents encapsulated a tiny store in a Detroit alleyway.
    graphic narrative
    pink zombie rose
    Viridian Door X, 2022
    White Teeth / Black Leather Twin veins pulsed neon pink in the diner’s futuristic skin. He stepped into the fragrant steam.
    pink zombie rose
    atom verne,
    shane zabat
    Apple In The Dark, 2022
    Gingerbread HouseThe roof rippled in stripes of ruffled cedar, delicate layers of puff pastry. While the windows weren’t grouted in frosting, it had that effect.
    speculative
    romance
    magical realism
    anticapitalist
    pink zombie rose
    Angelique Lautrec,
    Outlander, 2022
    BewebbedWithout the Web, you wouldn’t know I want a real doll, but one that’s pastel, like an alien, and also, obviously, a strap-on, so I can show my extraterrestrial guest a good time.
    friendship
    online communities
    Cringe Magazine , 2022
    WeightThat “us” feeling gets us right in the reward center. Our brains bleep and bloop and shoot rainbow stars.
    feminism
    culture
    pop culture
    Kinda Weird Magazine , 2022
    ContactRadio is the hand reaching into us, our own starry nebulae, our blackest holes. We connect. We broadcast. We choose.
    memory
    punk rock
    music
    childhood
    In The Mood Magazine, 2023
    Twin Binge I’m an evil twin—greedy, jealous, stark-raving mad, and cold-bloodedly homicidal. I mean, maybe. Vanishing Twin Syndrome is not uncommon.
    media
    television
    TV
    Soft Star Magazine , 2023
    The Mysteries Of Dia Van BurdickShe lowered the knife and it grew even brighter — a giant throbbing Yayoi Kusama pumpkin, snake in a slithering neon skin.
    experimental
    speculative
    speculative cnf
    Outlander, 2022
    Grocery Lists Are ArtLike the one I used to buy when we were sleeping in the love-den. For months, we camped within that screened-in porch.
    Outlander, 2022
    Maraschino Cat Show A pastel record played on a Fisher-Price turntable. Puff the Magic Dragon. The basement smelled of damp concrete and old carpet.
    childhood
    first person
    Cream Scene Carnival, 2022
    AftershaftThe convertible is white on white—an ivory paint job and a tattered ragtop. The wings lower, tucking into the bird, and I rise up
    childhood
    spirituality
    Outlander, 2023
    Trickster In Twelve Churches Inside the whale, it was round and blue like the dome of a Greek church.
    childhood
    religion
    spirituality
    Dreams In Hiding Anthology, 2022
    Dreams Do Come True
    Anthology
    childhood
    Polyester , 2022
    On Snooze But that’s my very special dick and I took that photo with a mini toy-like Polaroid which in itself is funny. A dick’s gotta be in on the joke.
    humor
    gender
    neurodivergent
    anger
    feminism
    #MeToo
    transgender
    patriarchy
    acadamia
    sexualization
    Deadbeat Poets , 2022
    The Secret To A Long Fabulist Marriage In the teeth of memory, he whispers. “What are you wearing?” After midnight, with a half-finished chapter, I’m wearing a laptop. More writer than woman, my answer is only half sexy: beaver-eyed below the waist, 3 pistachio shells in my sports bra.
    coming of age
    relationship
    mischief
    summer
    writing
    muse
    connection
    fabulism
    nostalgia
    Run Amok Books , 2022
    Gladiator Not far from Lake Erie, like a suburb of Detroit, there’s Toledo; a city so alluring that Jamie Farr was willing to crossdress if it meant the military might ship him home. Or so he claimed.
    craft
    autism
    writing
    muse
    connection
    technology
    Solstice Literary Magazine, 2022
    En Caul Like Margaret Mead, I’m fat with memory; hundreds and hundreds of thousands; millions of memories. I keep meaning to sit down and actually count them. It would be strange to bring that upon myself, to let them come at me willy nilly, good and bad.
    experimental
    mental health
    existential
    surrealism