Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Upflow” by Diego Gerard Morrison

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Upflow by Diego Gerard Morrison, which will be published on October 27, 2026 by Split/Lip Press. You can pre-order your copy here.

Mexico City’s water system is the costliest and most absurd on the planet. A series of dams in neighboring states hydro-elevate water past drought-stricken communities before water arrives, polluted and chemically treated, into the drained lakebed that used to be Tenochtitlan, heart of the Aztec Empire, and what is now the overgrown and arid metropolis of Mexico City. From there the water is used before black, residual wastewater finally filters back to the countryside to grow food for the city.

In Diego Gerard Morrison’s darkly funny, picaresque, and hydro-ethnological stories, Upflow follows the path of water in and out of Mexico City. Scarcity, pollution, corruption and even amplified earthquakes rise through the ghostly lakebed of Mexico City’s past to manifest in the present. Through surrealist and historical romps spanning the Spanish conquest, the subsequent desiccation of the lake, as well as modern stories warni...