Forthcoming, November 2025
$29.99
136pp, paperback
225 x 165mm
ISBN: 978-1-98-850352-3
Jack Remiel Cottrell’s second book of short fiction ushers the reader into a liminal world of grief and dreams. Stories of heartbreak and betrayal jostle with incisive cautionary tales about self-aware AI, deranged algorithms, memory transplants and bionic enhancements. The Emotion Dealer is a kaleidoscopic exploration of technology, art, cities, capitalism, disinformation, loneliness and greed. It is a guide for our troubled moment and a book that will make you wonder what – if anything – we are leaving for those who come after us.
“The Emotion Dealer is constantly surprising, deeply incisive, and finely attuned to the way people interact with each other. Cottrell is already a master of the short story form.” —Brannavan Gnanalingam
“Inventive and full of feeling, this is fiction that gets into your blood, changes you. Cottrell is an alchemist of language, a mad scientist of story, transmuting essential ideas and moments into fascinating and faceted prose formations – you’ll be dazzled and moved by even the briefest of these glistering creations. In this collection, you have just about everything you could ever want, right there with you.” —Anthony Lapwood
“The Emotion Dealer is astounding. This is a collection of urgent contrasts – gentle yet brutal, hopeful yet terrifying, dark yet so full of light. Jack takes us on a journey of what could be and is, leading us by the hand into a future as wicked and foreboding as it is radiant. Fears are brought to life and created in our image, and the result is absolutely captivating. The best works are those that make us feel, and The Emotion Dealer demands we do. The challenge is exhilarating. What a gift this collection is.” —Emily Writes
Jack Remiel Cottrell (Ngāti Rangi) is the author of one previous collection of short fiction, Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson (Canterbury University Press, 2021). His work has been published in anthologies such as Te Awa o Kupu (Penguin, 2023) and Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy (Paper Road Press, 2021). He was the Verb Wellington Writer in Residence in 2022 and was awarded a Creative Fellowship by Creative New Zealand in 2024. He lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.
