06/02/2026
Join us!
After Judson Merrill publishes a story that becomes fodder for conspiracy theorists and fuels a violent clash, he’s desperate to write something—anything—that rises above our toxic online hysteria. When he discovers a daring and brilliant researcher studying the poisonous effects of conspiracy theories, Merrill is convinced she holds the key to diagnosing America’s demented culture. But shortly after she agrees to an interview, she vanishes, and any possible diagnosis vanishes with her. Merrill’s search for her takes him across Europe and turns up a trail of unsettling research and confounding clues. The story he pieces together offers an explosive explanation for our collective sickness and reveals the many ways in which our media, our communications, and our very beliefs have become fatally diseased. If he can unravel the sprawling conspiracy behind our affliction, he’ll still have to convince a paranoid world in which everyone believes what they want to believe.
Inspired by the way the novel began—as a fraud and a thief, stealing and repurposing popular storytelling forms—Judson Merrill seeks to make visible the changing and dangerous ways we tell stories. He has taught writing for the past 15 years, at Brooklyn College, the University of Southern Maine, and privately. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, Unstuck, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and other publications. He has been an Artist in Residence at Millay Colony, Ox-Bow, Lighthouse Works, Hewnoaks, and Guild Hall. He is currently co-producing a film he wrote about coming of age in an anxious, demented country.
