Second Acts in American Lives

Equal parts prose-poems, flash stories, riddles, and mythological prologues to the lives of spent Americans—struggling, murderous, born again, drug-addled, sexual, hopeful, despairing, soaring—this collection stands on the edge of genre definition and questions what it means to be at the cusp of living. Punchlines, plays on words, dad puns, and yo’ mama jokes straddle the saddle with deep metaphorical lessons on society today, making companions of dark humor and serious wit. A seance of poetics and politics, this collection of glimpses into the disheveled and desperate, the cerebral and celebrated, the gangly and glorious, conjures what it is to be American in a society as stupid as it is terrifying. Illustrated by Jacob Heustis.

RYAN RIDGE is the author of three previous books, including the hybrid novel, American Homes (University of Michigan Press, 2015), which was the Michigan Library Publishing Club's inaugural book club pick. His work has appeared in Tin House Flash Fridays, Mississippi Review, Potomac Review, Lumina, NERVE, DIAGRAM, Passages North, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. He's the winner of the 2016 Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction (judged by Jonathan Lethem) and his chapbook, Weird Weeks, cowritten with Mel Bosworth, won the Editors' Prize from The Cupboard Pamphlet and will be published in the fall of 2018. He's an assistant professor at Weber State University and lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. He edits the literary magazine, Juked. MEL BOSWORTH is the author of the novel, Freight, and the poetry chapbook, Every Laundromat in the World. He lives in Western Massachusetts.