The Pulpit vs. The Hole

EXCERPT

Ten, fifteen feet up, at hilltop, sat a sort of boulder, wedged waist-deep in the earth up there, perhaps having landed eons before, at high speed from a distant star. The Pulpit, they called it, though no one ever preached there. This mammoth rock with the weird bumps and pocks-its tumors, its acne-loomed there, unmoved. If you dared, you could sneak up from the back end trail and peek down here at the hymn-singers’ heads, bowed down or bored but all the same oblivious. And you’d be the eye in the sky.

"With descriptions that flash and sparkle with the same youthful exuberance of his young characters, Jay Shearer gives a different and welcomed kind of coming-of-age tale.  This work is touching, surprising and, most of all, smart."

– Percival Everett, judge of the 2011 Fiction Chapbook Competition

Jay Shearer’s writing has appeared in multiple publications, including Other Voices, Beloit Fiction Journal, Main Street Rag, Southeast Review, and Southern Indiana Review. He currently teaches at Purdue Calumet and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two sons.

Book design by Diana Arterian.

Book cover art by Richelle Gribble, whose work was presented in numerous exhibitions including three solo shows at the Helen Lindhurst Gallery in Los Angeles, the International Print Center New York Gallery, and at Christie’s in the Rockefeller Center salesroom.

LINKS/NEWS

Review in Conium Review

Review in Front Porch Journal

Review in HTMLGIANT

Review in The Literary Review

Review in PANK

Review in Prick of the Spindle