The winner of our second book contest, The Sacred Text of Rosa Who is Great—written by Marcus Lund and illustrated by Stella Peach—is out now!

Rosa wasn’t happy but she was aware. She watched the stars at night. She wandered up mountains. She was not like the others in her village. Confronted by a villager late one evening, she decides to leave the village to seek out the gods on the mountainside, to find a place where she can simply be unhappy. The villagers can only speculate what happened to Rosa on her voyage but they do know that when she returned everything was different. Told in text and in illustrations, The Sacred Text of Rosa Who is Great is a book about who is chosen and how we choose them.

“I’m always fighting with someone or fighting for something. I am fighting the evictions that are happening at an alarming rate in San Francisco. I am fighting as an artist and as a member of my community. I’m not a very happy person these days. On rare occasions, I get packages in the mail. I received this tiny little book in the mail full of colorful illustrations and beautifully crafted sentences. It made me happy for a minute. I devoured its words and in doing so, I stumbled upon a little sentence that reminded me of my sadness. “To be happy is to be unaware.” Thank you Mr. Lund for this seemingly simple reminder and thank you for this book. It is a necessary read.”

— Truong Tran

“If it’s true that “gods need to speak to us in the middle of the day” and so they will “push us into sleep, forcing us into naps or quick dozes at the table,” then The Sacred Text of Rosa Who Is Great might well be the moment before waking. Urgently manifesting as media & medium, Marcus Lund & Stella Peach have offered up the greatest gift: a vivid prophecy in dream, remembered.”

— Meg Day

“I have been looking for this book for years! Against every modern trend: a brilliant, old-world, handmade piece of magic.”

— Andrew Sean Greer

Marcus Lund lives in Oakland, CA and has an MFA from Mills College. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Paper Darts, 580 Split, and 34th Parallel, among many others. He is currently finishing up his first novel with the help of his pug, Iris.

Stella Peach lives, loves, and creates in the in-between. A musician as well as visual artist, their work focuses on gender, the shape of the universe, magic, the natural world, and the unseen. Stella lives and works in Oakland, California.