reviews_and_ramblings | Event: Michael Graves's reading

Date: Tuesday, October 25
Time: 19.00 - 22.00
Place: Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Boston

Join Michael Graves and Michael Schiavone as they celebrate the releases of their two debuts novels. Michael Schiavone has had his short work published in magazines such as Glimmer Train and Narrative as well as the Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology. His debut novel, Call Me When You Land tells the story of a mother divided from her son by the death of his absent father.

Michael Graves' fiction has appeared in numerous journals, including Lodestar Quarterly and Velvet Mafia, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart and the Million Writers Award. In his first collection of short stories, Dirty One, he tells strange tales of adolescence in a dying town.

Dirty One by Michael Graves
Paperback: 152 pages
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions (September 6, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0983285101
ISBN-13: 978-0983285106
Amazon: Dirty One

Set in the 1980’s, Dirty One follows a pack of adolescent characters who live in the acid-drenched, suburban town known as Leominster, Massachusetts—the plastics capital of America, as... well as the birthplace of Johnny Appleseed.

In the story, “From Kissing,” a sixth-grader named Butch has his first homosexual tongue kiss during a monster truck show and, after a bout of the flu, he is convinced he has somehow contracted AIDS. With “Curls and Curls,” nine-year-old Lee hates his kinky, brown head of hair and is seemingly possessed with magic, casting spells to unfurl his evil tresses.
In “A Snow Day,” eleven-year-old Cassidy longs to be the next mega-watt, teen pop star, but is forced to deal with her crazy classmates, her gay father, and her dog that continually vomits in the driveway. “Do It” follows a tween named Denise as she seeks her first sexual experience with a boyfriend who can never remain erect. Denise strives for high school greatness while her gay best friend is crowned king of all local paper routes.

These selections join five more, constructing the remarkable world of Dirty One.