Tell God I Don't Exist

“Timmy Reed’s stories are so strange and so funny that it’s impossible to stop reading them. There is a great imagination at work in Tell God I Don’t Exist and I’m grateful to have been a witness to it.” - Michael Kimball, author of Big Ray and Dear Everybody “If George Saunders and Russell Edson had a baby he’d probably grow up to write like Timmy Reed. These stories are beautifully haunting, surprisingly bizarre, and wonderfully imaginative. It is a joy to read such fresh and mind-bending prose.” - Jessica Anya Blau, author of Drinking Closer to Home and The Summer of Naked Swim Parties “Timmy Reed’s Tell God I Don’t Exist announces a wildly gifted new voice. These stories are at once intimate and vast, full of beauty and strangeness and grit and heartbreak. A luminous debut.” - Laura van den Berg, author of What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us “…I think it’s amazing.” – Scott McClanahan (http://entropymag.org/the-weird-interview-scott-mcclanahan/) “In a world of posturing and worrying about public perception, it’s liberating to let loose and give in to the ecstatic joy that characterizes Reed’s oeuvre.” - Quincy Rhoads, HTML Giant (http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/25-points-tell-god-i-dont-exist/) “If you come to this book with expectations of what a short story should be, prepare to have them pleasantly, if fleetingly, defied. If you go in with no expectations, then congratulations, you may be one of the few people who don’t need art like this.” - Baltimore City Paper (Full Review: http://citypaper.com/arts/books/book-review-em-tell-god-i-don-8217-t-exist-em-1.1532044) “Really, Reed’s characters are just looking for beauty, just like anybody else. The irony, of course, is that they often experience a beauty we would find enthralling if we were in their situations. This is part of the point he’s making, I think, that there’s beauty in our own lives that we miss for various reasons. But we should pay attention. There’s a beauty in all life, and there’s beauty in connection.” - C.L. Bledsoe, Prick of the Spindle (http://www.prickofthespindle.com/index.htm) “His writing includes bizarre otherworldy situations taking place on earth; apocalyptic atmospheres where subtle tenderness exists; our new technology juxtaposed against things more primitive; surreal images in mundane costumes. His terse sentences hauntingly make you laugh.” - Matthew Sherling, Cutty Spot (http://cuttyspot.tumblr.com/post/71531951056/some-of-my-favorite-media-i-can-remember) “If Aesop’s Fables every decided to get weird, really weird, they’d look a lot like Tell God I Don’t Exist.” - Beach Sloth (Full Review: http://beachsloth.blogspot.com/2013/04/tell-god-i-dont-exist-by-timmy-reed.html) “The prose itself is refreshingly unique. The sentences layer themselves into often-unexpected situations, expressing themselves with a clarity that never makes you feel lost, despite the rabbit holes (or perhaps mole tunnels) that they often lead you through. The experiences in each feel tangible, despite the dream-like way in which they often unfold.” - Rachel Wooley, Monologging (Full Review: http://monologging.org/?p=1431)

Timmy Reed is a writer from Baltimore, Maryland. He has recently published or has work forthcoming from a number of places including Akashic Books, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Everyday Genius, Necessary Fiction, and Atticus Review. He is the recipient of a 2015 Baker Artist Award as well as the author of the story collection Tell God I Don't Exist (2013), the novel The Ghosts That Surrounded Them (2015). He has a hagiographic novel, Miraculous Fauna, forthcoming from Underground Voices in 2016 and reality television satire, Star Backwards, forthcoming from Dostoyevsky Wannabe in late 2015. Learn more here: http: //underratedanimals.wordpress.co