Hello, all:
We're having a book launch next month here in Chicago, and you're all invited! (Or rather, as many of you as the fire marshall will allow in the bookstore.) Details below:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Launch Party for The Dark Will End The Dark by Darrin Doyle
Tortoise Books is thrilled to announce the Chicago launch party for our newest project, Darrin Doyle’s The Dark Will End The Dark. We will be celebrating with a series of readings on Friday, March 13th at Powell’s Bookstore at UIC, 1218 S. Halsted, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. In addition to the featured author, we’ll be featuring a variety of local writers, including:
- Ben Tanzer, director of publicity for Curbside Splendor and author of My Father’s House, Orphans, and Lost in Space.
- Joseph G. Peterson, author of Wanted: Elevator Man and Gideon’s Confession.
- Rachel Slotnick, RHINO prize winner and Pushcart-nominated author of the forthcoming In Lieu of Flowers.
- Giano Cromley, finalist for the High Plains Book Awards and author of The Last Good Halloween.
This is the first author we’ve recruited from outside Chicago, and the first one who’s already been traditionally published. It’s an important step in our slow and steady strategy to provide a viable and vibrant alternative to both the strictures of traditional publishing and the low-quality free-wheeling anarchy of the self-publishing marketplace—but more importantly, it’s a great chance to showcase an electrifying collection of stories from a tremendously talented writer.
About the Book
Stunning and visceral in its emotional impact, The Dark Will End The Dark collects 14 stories by veteran author Darrin Doyle. Deftly mixing realism and fabulism, bleakness and hope, sparkling dialogue and unforgettable characters, these literary Midwestern Gothic tales remain in the reader’s mind long after the last page is turned.
"The human body, logic, and language are all rent apart and remade dazzlingly anew in these fourteen stories. With the droll fabulism of Nikolai Gogol and the moral heft of Shirley Jackson, Doyle’s characters face problems both surreal and all-too-real...Fantastical yet close to the bone, these stories are both wounding and wondrous."
- Monica McFawn, author of Bright Shards of Someplace Else, winner of the Flannery O’ Connor Award
"Doyle's stories are lamentations, demented fairy tales, and quests for enlightenment in which the author explores bodily dysfunction and ungainly lust while familial love hums in the background. In the manner of George Saunders, Doyle uses his smart, light language to lift readers above the darkness of shame and humiliation that brings so many of his characters to their knees."
- Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Once Upon a River and American Salvage, finalist for the National Book Award
"Darrin Doyle’s a mad scientist who has stitched together a hauntingly beautiful collection from tattered body parts and a strange, ragged heart. It is only after you’ve been defibrillated by the stories in The Dark Will End the Dark that you realize you’ve been dozing through the days. Doyle’s got his fingers on the pulse of our brave new American psyche and his writing blazes electric."
- Jason Ockert, author of Wasp Box and Neighbors of Nothing
About the Author
Darrin Doyle has lived in Saginaw, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Cincinnati, Louisville, Osaka (Japan), and Manhattan (Kansas). He has worked as a paperboy, mover, janitor, telemarketer, pizza delivery driver, door-to-door salesman, copy consultant, porn store clerk, freelance writer, and technical writer, among other jobs. After graduating from Western Michigan University with an MFA in fiction, he taught English in Japan for a year. He then realized he wanted to pursue fiction writing and permanently stop doing jobs he didn’t love, so he earned his PhD from the University of Cincinnati.
He is the author of the novels Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet: A Love Story (LSU Press) and The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (St. Martin’s), and the short story collection The Dark Will End the Dark (Tortoise Books). His short stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, Harpur Palate, Redivider, BULL, and Puerto del Sol, among others.
Currently he teaches at Central Michigan University and lives in Mount Pleasant, Michigan with his wife and two sons. His website is www.darrindoyle.com.