First Law of Holes by Meg Pokrass
“The people in these stories need Meg Pokrass. Their lives are tough but her imagination is the fire-lasso that can save them, save us.” –Bob Hicok, author of Elegy Owed and Sex & Love
A sixteen-year-old transplanted Pennsylvanian navigates sunburn and heartbreak in equal measure while falling in love with a very tan ghost. A girl with drunk scribbles on her shoes searches for fragments of an old flame inside the boy at the mall food court. And a female circus contortionist, daughter of a failed clown, comes to terms with the first law of romantic relationships: Once in a hole, stop digging.
InFirst Law of Holes, award-winning author Meg Pokrass delivers a stunning selection of stories from the past fourteen years of her flash fiction career, tackling themes of belonging, obsession, messy love and loneliness with her trademark, unconventional storytelling.
Publication Date: September 10, 2024
Paperback
ISBN: 9781950539987
PRAISE FOR MEG POKRASS
“The people in these stories need Meg Pokrass. Their lives are tough but her imagination is the fire-lasso that can save them, save us.” –Bob Hicok, author of Elegy Owed and Sex & Love
“The nuanced tonal complexity, which can go from the whimsical to a darker irony in the turn of a phrase, has been a signature feature in the work of Meg Pokrass.”—Stuart Dybek, author of Ecsatic Cahoots
“In the universe of Pokrass’s fictions, planets are gloriously misaligned, stars and suns trail love of desperate sadness, black holes serve up dogs, spiders, cats, and galaxies explode everything we thought we know about the human heart.” —Pamela Painter, author of Fabrications
“To enter the portals of Pokrassland is to go on a magical journey: here there are sex-charged buffalo men and melancholic women who fear six-foot spiders and fall in love with their therapists. It’s a place where people make bald statements and odd connections, where there are strange animals, purple stars and ‘a deep-ruby moon.’ Unpredictable, funny and charming, the world Meg Pokrass is a land that readers will enter gladly and, mesmerised, they will most definitely want to stay.” —Nuala O’Connor, author of Nora: A Love Story of Nora and James Joyce
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Meg Pokrass is the author of eight flash fiction collections, two award-winning collections of hybrid prose, and two novellas-in-flash. Her books include Damn Sure Right (Press 53, 2011), The Dog Looks Happy Upside Down (Etruscan Press, 2015), My Very End of the Universe: Five Novellas in Flash and a Study of the Form (Rose Metal Press, 2015), Alligators At Night (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2018), Triple #12 (Ravenna Press, 2019), Alice In Wonderland Syndrome (V. Press, 2020), The Dog Seated Next to Me (Pelekinesis, 2020), The Loss Detector, a novella-in-flash (Bamboo Dart Press, 2021), Spinning to Mars (Blue Light Press, 2021), and co-author of The House of Gran Padano, with Jeff Friedman (Pelekinesis Press, 2022). Forthcoming in 2023 is Disappearing Debutantes (from Outpost 19), co-written with Aimee Parkison.
