Jessica Levai

Jessica Lévai has loved stories and storytellers her whole life. After a double major in history and mathematics, a PhD in Egyptology, and eight years of the adjunct shuffle, she devoted herself to writing full-time. You can find her work at Strange Horizons, Cossmass Infinities, and Reactor Magazine. Her first novella, The Night Library of Sternendach: A Vampire Opera in Verse, won the Lord Ruthven Award for Fiction. She dreams of one day collaborating on a graphic novel, and meeting Stephen Colbert. Check out her website, JessicaLevai.com, for links and more.

Photos by Matthew Stein Photography

 
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Announcements & Events

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THE GLASS GARDEN is a nominee for the 2025 Shirley Jackson Awards
THE GLASS GARDEN is a nominee for the 2025 Shirley Jackson Awards

Lanternfish Press is thrilled to announce that The Glass Garden by Jessica Lévai is a nominee for the 2025 Shirley Jackson Awards in the Novella category.

Cover Reveal: THE GLASS GARDEN by Jessica Lévai
Cover Reveal: THE GLASS GARDEN by Jessica Lévai

We’re delighted to reveal the cover design for Jessica Lévai’s sophomore novella, The Glass Garden. Design by Kimberly Glyder with art direction by Christine Neulieb.

Acquisition: New science fiction novella by Jessica Lévai
Acquisition: New science fiction novella by Jessica Lévai

Lanternfish Press is pleased to announce the acquisition of The Night Library of Sternendach author Jessica Lévai’s second novella for publication in Spring-Summer 2025.

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Featured
Featured
The Glass Garden
Unavailable on Website

by Jessica Lévai

“A sensual, despairing, beautiful hallucination.”

—Greg Rucka, writer of Lazarus

Dr. Therese Blake is a homebody archaeologist devoted to the history of planet Earth. But when her sister Lissy makes a stunning discovery near an abandoned colony on a distant exoplanet, the sisters team up to discover its secrets.

Eerie, luminescent images cover the walls of an underground cavern. The glass garden looks like a payday to Lissy, who’s been struggling to turn a profit to keep her salvage crew fed and paid. Therese, however, insists on careful academic procedure. She can’t figure it out: Is the anomaly an artificial creation–or a living organism?

As the anomaly’s mystery draws the sisters into an obsessive orbit, it turns out neither greed nor science can offer protection from its relentless gravity.

STERN-web-medium.jpg
Unavailable on Website

by Jessica Lévai

“A stunning achievement in storytelling and the poetic form.”

—Emily Leverett, editor of Predators in Petticoats

In starry Sternendach, as long as
The vampire Graf has ruled this land
The Heller clan, with weapons strong as
Their wills, have killed his kindred and
Been killed in turn. The two sides nearly
Destroyed themselves. The Graf saw clearly
The need to make the killing cease,
And forced a pact to keep the peace.
The youngest of the Heller faction
Is Kunigunde. Trained to fight
It never suited her aright.
She can’t deny her soul’s attraction
For books and poetry, and for
The Graf, who gave her these and more.

Kunigunde is destined to become the next in a long line of Heller clan vampire hunters—but her soul is drawn to books, poetry, and the vampire Graf. Set in 1960s Europe, The Night Library of Sternendach is an unabashedly melodramatic opera-in-sonnets that weaves a sweeping, suspenseful tale readers won't be able to put down.

Recipient of the Lord Ruthven Assembly Award in Fiction
A Ladies of Horror Fiction 2021 Readers’ Choice Selection