Tales from the Eternal Cafe Format: Paperback

Tales from the Eternal Cafe, author Janet Hamill’s debut short story collection, offers a thrilling, unwinding trail of tales that excite and mystify; drift then deliver a powerful punch that readers will devour. Like Karen Russell, George Saunders, José Luis Borges and Isabel Allende, Janet Hamill’s writing lures readers willingly into a labyrinth of surprise and suspense, with humor lurking just on the other side of pathos; a tear just moments away from bright, well-deserved laughter.

The seventeen crisp stories included in Tales from the Eternal Cafe offer a plethora of fascinating characters and scenarios: a brief memoir from Baudelaire’s publisher; a letter from a writer who knows he is going mad; an exasperated Italian film director unable to inspire Europe’s most famous actor during the shooting of a brothel scene.

The book includes an introduction by the author’s lifelong friend, singer-songwriter-poet-author Patti Smith, whose book Just Kids, received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010.

Janet Hamill is a novelist, poet, musician and painter, affiliated with the international neo-surrealist movement. She has published five poetry collections, including Troublante (Oliphant Press), The Temple (Telephone Books), Nostalgia of the Infinite (Ocean View Books), Lost Ceilings (Telephone Books), and, most recently, Body of Water (Bowery Books) in November 2008, which was nominated for the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Prize. Her poem “K-E-R-O-U-A-C,” included in the widely praised anthology, Bowery Women Poems (Bowery Books 2006) and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Janet’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970, The Low-Tech Manual, Living with the Animals, The Unmade Bed, Deep Down: The New Sensual Writing by Women, Bomb, City Lights Review, Café Review, New Wilderness, The World, Recluse, Kansas Quarterly, Poetry Flash, and the Hart Crane Newsletter.

Patti Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses. Her memoir, Just Kids, was awarded the National Book Award in 2010.