Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Acid Green Velvet” by Grace Krilanovich

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Acid Green Velvet by Grace Krilanovich, which will be published on September 8, 2026 by Two Dollar Radio. You can pre-order your copy here!

The breathtaking and consequential first novel in nearly two decades from the award-winning author of the cult sensation, The Orange Eats Creeps.

In the late 19th century on a remote California beach, two young tramps—Paulette and Kenneth—threaten to kill a menacing man who wronged them: Paulette’s father, Rodney Eligon.

A handful of years later, the Central Coast town of Anzar has become the stomping grounds for all manner of cults, eccentrics, earth religions, and communal living. Presiding over the town from the luxe frivolity of their family manor, the Hasleys have ruled Anzar for generations. Their grip on the town is threatened by the rise of the working class, and their union with the vagrant population. Meanwhile, Paulette has taken up residence in the home of Johnny Hasley, a wealthy faux-socialist poseur, hoping to become his wife. Her plans are complicated by boot-prints in the garden signaling the arrival of Kenneth, who carries with him a dark secret that poses a grave threat to both of them.

In Anzar’s cracked mirror, Californian freakiness meets Victorian preoccupations with the domestic, pollution and filth, haunted houses, fringe societies, living death, spiritualism, vampiric women, and class parasites. Acid Green Velvet is a surreal powder keg of nihilism, fathers and their failures, manifest destiny, and American identity, penned in rapturous prose by the fiercest writer of her generation.

Here is the cover, designed by Eric Obenauf with art by Scott Treleaven:

Grace Krilanovich: I first became aware of Canadian artist Scott Treleaven’s work in 2007, with his solo show at Marc Selwyn Fine Art called “Witchcraft Through the Ages.” I was instantly intrigued by a series of iconographic collage works presenting a queer occult realm which drew heavily from the world of zines, underground film, queercore, pagan ritual, punk and goth. Casting their long cultural shadows were Crowley, Genet, Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Darby Crash, and Genesis P-Orridge. The pictures teemed with wolves and dogs, flowers, snakes, knives, insects, and sigils. Treleaven’s human subjects—most he photographed himself—were transposed onto the rotting environs of the squat and the punk show, the forests of violent fairy tales, ruins, or desecrated city streets. Guys in repose, laden with flowers, or napping with wolves; guys bearhugging huge bouquets of flowers. There were mountains of skulls; there were long strands of saliva. The textures of Xerox, hand-cut paper, and watercolor washes made the collages sparkle with an uncanny spell-like power. After seeing the exhibition, I sought out Treleaven’s 2007 monograph Some Boys Wander By Mistake, with texts by Dennis Cooper. I was just starting to write what would later become Acid Green Velvet. “Witchcraft” and Some Boys seeped into my writing, and reverberated eerily with the draft I’d already started, the path I was making with this book. Treleaven’s work is part of the novel’s DNA.

Two Dollar Radio publisher Eric Obenauf and I collaborated on the design. The cover looks slightly like an Olympia Press Traveller’s Companion book, which is cool. I’m glad it’s not making literal use of the color “acid green.” I’m also glad Eric talked me out of the psychedelic font I’d assumed this title should have, considering the book’s “Gilded Age meets the Age of Aquarius” conceit. But no, an elegant serif typeface was what suited best. I’m a sucker for that red-orange.

Scott Treleaven granted permission to use his art (so grateful for that!), and sent me dozens of files. I chose this collage because of the connection to dogs/wolves in the book, but also this guy’s attitude is just so off-kilter and enigmatic, crouching nude with his animal friend and enormous flowers. You can’t really see his face, so he could be almost any man in the book. His stance is loose and rangy, but he’s ready to pounce. He’s waiting. The look in the wolf’s eye is bashful, a little mysterious. Delicate spidery chrysanthemums dominate the background. The photo could plausibly be from 1880 or 1967, which is tantalizing, and meshes with the novel’s slipperiness and the liberties it takes with time and place. Who does this guy think he is, the vanguard of some new ferocious form of flower power? My characters are often trying to justify their actions by claiming a quasi-animal lineage. They seek to revert to an imagined ancient state of being, a false purity they think gives them the upper hand in the aftermath of societal collapse.

Eric Obenauf: I originally pictured a design along the lines of a poster I saw for Eddington, which I learned was a piece of art by David Wojnarowicz addressing the AIDS crisis. Acid Green Velvet conflates contemporary sensibilities with characters in a historical setting, so I was researching archival illustrations of animals, landscapes, and the American west, imagining presenting them in a hip, modern manner.

Grace has lived with this book for nearly two decades and had strong ideas for how she wanted to package the book. I’m a sucker for texture on book covers, and Scott Treleaven’s artwork is wonderfully tactile and absolutely striking, while also feeling simultaneously punk and timeless. I can understand why Grace wanted to feature it on the cover. Thankfully Scott was into the idea, and from there it was just a matter of settling on the perfect fonts and alignment.