Katherine Dunn published her best-selling, National Book Award finalist novel Geek Love in 1989, which quickly catapulted her into a cult classic status. Before Geek Love, she wrote a novel that was rejected by her publisher, that then sat in an archive for nearly half a century until Editor Naomi Huffman dug it up and brought it to light. Toad, published posthumously by MCD Books, is a dark and edgy portrait of a young woman who over the course of the novel retreats from society into a self-imposed exile. Dunn’s writing is discomfiting, absurd, grotesque, yet lyrical and captivating. As the editor puts it, Dunn’s work “delights in making the reader squirm”, so we thought that’s exactly what we’ll do with the cover.