What to Buy Your Friends and Relatives - Jeff Parker

Back to some Holiday suggestions for you, this time from friend and damn good writer, Jeff Parker.   Beyond writing a unique little collection of stories, and a truly fine novel, Jeff also teaches at the University of Toronto and is beyond instrumental in the annual functioning of the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg and Kenya.

Twenty Grand by Rebecca Curtis – because short story collections are rarely as daring and technically sound.

The Sabotage Café by Joshua Furst – what says holiday cheer more than a  runaway gutter punk whose narratorial presence is confused throughout with that of her suburban mother?

Encouragement for a Man Falling to his Death by Christopher Kennedy – because if Chris Kennedy were Santa Clause all our stockings would be stuffed with oranges and riddles of self-worth.

Four Letter Word: New Love Letters edited by Joshua Knelman and Rosalind Porter – because Bigfoot and Margaret Atwood wrote one.

American Youth by Phil Lamarche – because the great American past time is no longer baseball.

Pyres by Derek Nikitas – because any book which includes, in only the first 20 pages, the theft of a cd from the mall by a young punk chick and the subsequent blowing off of her father’s head in a carjacking is required reading for any and all chestnut roasts.

Comments

[snackywombat]

this is great! also, those seminars look really interesting. do you know anything more about them?