God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer

From the acclaimed author of the memoir Sink, a novel about Black life in Philadelphia and the struggle to build intimate connections through the eyes of a struggling ex-Army grad student.

"Intoxicating, propulsive ... utterly mesmerizing." —Kaveh Akbar, bestselling author of Martyr!

After a deployment in the Iraq War, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student and EMS worker, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother.

Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility. Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues.

God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer is a powerful examination of every day Black life—of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics.

★ "Magnificent." —Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)

★ "An astonishingly accomplished novel." —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

WINNER OF THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION • FINALIST FOR THE ART SEIDENBAUM LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE • A PW BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE

Joseph Earl Thomas is the author of Sink, a memoir, the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and the story collection Leviathan Beach (Grand Central, 2026). His prose, poetry and criticism has been published in The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Dilettante Army, and The New York Times Book Review. Sink was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s MFA program in prose, he earned his PhD in English at The University of Pennsylvania and teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College. At The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, he also teaches courses in Black Studies, Poetics, Queer Theory, and Video Games.