AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF HOLES

326pp., paperback, First SA Edition, Black Ghost Books, Johannesburg, 2026.

ISBN: 9781049274683

Published in French translation by Rot-Bo-Krik, Paris, in 2022 as Archéologie des trous. Published in English by Bridge Books, Chicago, in 2023.

Working between fabulism, dark realism and autofiction, these 24 short stories by South African writer Stacy Hardy propose the creative and liberatory possibilities of holes, which are everywhere: in bodies, in the ransacked earth, in erased lives and memories, in forgotten loves and lovers and the endless massacres.

"Hardy’s collection explores the possibilities of the body under violence as a container, as a historical site, and as a vehicle for transcendence. The image of the hole and its excavation becomes a means by which Hardy communicates how beyond absence, beyond the void, beyond the repressed, there lies the unconscious: unruly, untamed, and utterly full of life. With stories that range from the despicable cruelties of racial violence to the experience of abjection in a gendered body, and that navigate the thin line between acts of barbarity against animals and people, Hardy’s collection is uneasy, uncomfortable, and utterly unmissable." Anette Lepique, Chicago Review of Books

"These wild, weird, amazing stories create life, create the best and most vibrant art, out of the many ways that death is absorbed into our worlds, our minds, our bodies. From bullet holes to black holes, from mouth holes to safe holes to buildings with holes in their centers, Stacy Hardy's writing blasts its way from absence into vital and unforgettable presence. When the extreme violence of misogyny and racialized capitalism becomes a normal part of our life and landscape, it is art and great writing that helps us see both our damage and our potential escape routes. An Archaeology of Holes is a collection that will stay with me for a very long time." Daniel Borzutzky, author of The Performance of Becoming Human, winner of the National Book Award

Stacy Hardy was born in 1973 in Polokwane. She is the author of the short fiction collection Because the Night (2015), and her writing has appeared in various anthologies and journals including the New Orleans Review, New Contrast, The Evergreen Review and Black Sun Lit. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Wits University, an editor at the Pan-African platform Chimurenga, a partner in the African creative writing teaching initiative Saseni, and a founder of Ukuthula, a project that develops new writing from and against gender-based violence. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago, has hosted interdisciplinary workshops and writing intensives in numerous locations including Dakar, Kigali, Cairo, Tombwa (Angola), Nairobi, Lagos, Berlin, New York, and online, and has facilitated graduate seminars and writing workshops worldwide.