Jeff Parker’s characters stumble awkwardly into situations that reveal the darkest sides of themselves: Encountering a female Chechen suicide bomber on a bus ride in Russia, a man finds himself sexually aroused by the terrorist act he’s sure she’ll commit. A father reluctantly accompanies his draft dodger son to Quebec where he erects an enormous and obscene American flag in his front yard. A character who accidentally swallows a penny during a roadside sobriety test finds himself in a state of existential angst when it stays inside him. The characters in these fifteen voice-driven, comic stories show the trammelled among us, beaten down time and time again, still finding cause in the world for hope.

Jeff Parker is the author of the novel Ovenman (Tin House Books). His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Matrix, Ploughshares, The Walrus, and others. He and artist William Powhida collaborated on the collection of images and stories The Back of the Line (DECODE). With Mikhail Iossel he edited Rasskazy: New Fiction From a New Russia (Tin House Books) and Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (Dalkey Archive). He is currently the Acting Director of the MA in the Field of Creative Writing program at the University of Toronto.

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