All Lit Up Gift Guides

Thanks so much to Erica McKeen and Susan Sanford Blades for including Anecdotes (Book*hug Press) on their gift guides for All Lit Up!

Thanks so much to

Erica McKeen

and

Susan Sanford Blades

for including Anecdotes (Book*hug Press) on their gift guides for All Lit Up!

For that busy person on your list who might not have time for long-form fiction, Anecdotes is the perfect pick. Whip-smart and brutally funny, these bite-sized bits of poetry and prose blend flat-faced reportage with sardonic absurdism to dig into difficult contemporary topics: political apathy, climate disaster, sexual violence, and the stickiness of the female body. They also provide useful life advice, like how to invoke imaginary children in order to win an argument, how to find a good psychic after your cat runs away, or how to avoid being murdered at your job interview. Part of the surprise and delight of Mockler’s writing is that it resolutely defies genre. Short stories give way to autofiction, which in turn gives way to found poetry and a chain of scenes linked by their recurring protagonists, Past and Future: strange and poignant personifications. Equal parts blunt and rambling, abrasive and comically healing, Anecdotes peels back the gummy layers of reality, revelling in its ludicrous inner core.

—Erica McKeen (author of Cicada Summer and Tear)

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For your friend who wants to laugh their way to the climate apocalypse:
Anecdotes by Kathryn Mockler (Book*hug Press)

This is a book of short fiction, one-act plays, and poetry, all with an eye to the climate crisis, the misogyny, and the capitalist apathy that plague our world and populate our nightmares. It is not a depressing read, though! Mockler writes with a vulnerability and tongue-in-cheek humour that will draw you in and allow her message to land with a loud, self-aware thud. The content of this book ranges from auto-fictive short stories based on Mockler’s childhood and young adulthood, to climate grief–based found poems, to parables featuring The Past, The Present, and The Future. Throughout, Mockler’s voice is unsentimental and nonchalant, which makes the content—she covers childhood bullying, sexual violence, shame, loneliness, climate change, the meaning of the universe—resonate all the more deeply. This book is totally inventive and irreverent, displaying humanity at its vilest, but in the most fun way possible.

—Susan Sanford Blades, All Lit Up (author of Fake It So Real)

Check out the rest of the All Lit Up Gift Guides on the All Lit Up Blog!

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