UNCHECKED SAVAGERY

ISBN: 9781938900013
Publication date: October, 2012
76 pages, 5.3″ x 7″
Read Press Release (PDF)

EXCERPT

In the morning we will discover that three floors up six students were killed that night in what the police call a murder-suicide. An antique knife is the weapon. The boy studying in the room next to the scene heard no screams and no struggle. He didn’t even hear the bodies hit the floor. On the tree outside, the lynching tree, there are knots that look just like faces. They say if you speak to the tree on nights of the new moon the faces will whisper back. But they will only whisper your name.

PRAISE

“These miniature worlds celebrate the strange and the ordinary, burger shacks and full moons and a woman who has a crisis of faith over Soul Train. Glenn Shaheen blends the laugh-out-loud funny with a wistful wisdom so cutting you might feel a little bad that you laughed. ‘What children we are of disappointment and luxury,’ a character tells us, and the reader nods: disappointment in ourselves or our lovers or Soul Train, maybe, but never a moment of disappointment in these stories.”

LINKS/NEWS

Excerpt in Wigleaf

Review in BSCENE Magazine

Review in PANK

AUTHOR

Glenn Shaheen is the author of the poetry collection Predatory (University of Pittsburgh Press), which won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. His work has appeared in The New Republic, Redivider, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Born in Nova Scotia, he currently lives in Michigan where he serves on the board of the Radius of Arab-American Writers, Inc.

DESIGNER

Book art by Scott Massey.