Synopses & Reviews
Praise for Lincoln Michel:
"Lincoln Michel is one of contemporary literary culture's greatest natural resources."—Justin Taylor, Vice
Time passes unexpectedly or, perhaps, inexactly at the school. It's hard to remember what semester we are supposed to be in. Several of the clocks still operate, but they don't show the same time. The red bells, affixed in every room, erupt several times each day, yet the intervals between the disruptions wax and wane with an unknown algorithm. The windows are obscured by construction paper murals. Consequently, the sun rises and falls in complete ignorance of those of us attending the school. Many of us participated in the decorations in some lost point of childhood. A few of us still have dried glue under our fingernails.
In the room I sit in now, the windows are covered with a glitter and glue reenactment of the colonization of Roanoke by Sir Walter Raleigh. Outside of the window, who knows?
Children go to school long after all the teachers have disappeared, a man manages an apartment complex of attempted suicides, and a couple navigates their relationship in the midst of a zombie attack. In these short stories, we are the upright beasts, doing battle with our darker, weirder impulses as the world collapses around us.
Lincoln Michel's work has appeared in BOMB, Oxford American, Tin House, the Believer, the Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. A founding editor of the literary magazine Gigantic, Michel also serves as an online editor for Electric Literature.
Review
Michels stories are often an uncanny combination of sinister and funny, tender and sad. Laura van den Berg calls them 'mighty surrealist wonders, mordantly funny and fiercely intelligent,' and many of them will soon be released together in Michels first story collection Upright Beasts.”
The MillionsSome of the stories are remarkable . . . A strong debut."Kirkus
Review
The world presented in Michels admirable debut collection is similar to our own, yet twisted just enough to feel strange. . . Michel frequently knocks his brief bursts of prose out of the park.”
Publishers WeeklyMichels stories are often an uncanny combination of sinister and funny, tender and sad. Laura van den Berg calls them 'mighty surrealist wonders, mordantly funny and fiercely intelligent,' and many of them will soon be released together in Michels first story collection Upright Beasts.”The Millions
Some of the stories are remarkable . . . A strong debut."Kirkus
"Put on your seat belt, its a ride towards Lovecraftian country houses and Long Island-like suburbia, to places we know and love and places we dare not think of. . . some of these stories will ignite your imagination, while others will force you to retreat from the real world temporarily. . . For all of the elements in this collection that make this fiction, there is an absolutely stunning image of what its like to be human, to live life and allow it to slip away, as Michel says: 'Death, in all its myriad incarnations, was, as always, right around the corner.' . . . its not just about how frighteningly close a writer can bring us to our imagination, its how close he can bring us to our reality."Heavy Feather Review
Synopsis
Twenty-one genre-bending stories of bestial transformation, accidental murder, erotically-challenged dictatorship, and other tales of darkness, absurdity, and confusion.
About the Author
Lincoln Michel is the coeditor of Gigantic Worlds (Gigantic Books, 2014), an anthology of science flash fiction. He received his MFA from Columbia University and his work has appeared in NOON, BOMB, Oxford American, Tin House, The Believer, The Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. A founding editor of the literary magazine Gigantic, Michel also serves as an online editor for Electric Literature and as an English instructor at Baruch College. A self-described fairly-frequent tweeter,” he tweets from @TheLincoln and resides in Brooklyn, NY.