Life Before Dolphins was written during Kirmen Uribe’s fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
While working in the library, a writer discovers an unfinished book about the Hungarian pacifist and feminist Rosika Schwimmer. As he follows the traces of her life—her struggle against war, exile, and statelessness—he is drawn back into his own memories of childhood in Europe, shaped by the revolutionary and feminist women in his family.
Moving between archive and memory, unfinished manuscript and personal recollection, Life Before Dolphins explores migration not only as the crossing of borders but as a return to the histories we carry within us. Formally inventive and emotionally searching, the novel is a meditation on migration, masculinity, and the search for peace.
Coffee House Press, January 2027.
