Trash Mountain

Bradley Bazzle’s first novel, Trash Mountain, won the 2016 Red Hen Press Fiction Award, judged by Steve Almond. His short stories have won awards from The Iowa Review, New Ohio Review, and Third Coast. They also appear in New England Review, Epoch, Copper Nickel, Web Conjunctions, and other literary journals. Bradley grew up in Dallas, Texas, and has degrees from Yale, Indiana University, and the University of Georgia, where he taught writing. He remains in Athens, Georgia, with his wife and daughter.

"The novel has an episodic feel, as Ben encounters an array of fellow students, potential employers, and local luminaries. Throughout, Bazzle chronicles the ways in which Ben’s early idealism erodes under more complex concerns. The novel’s tone is occasionally uneven: Bazzle’s observations on questions of race and class feel rooted in a social realism tradition, while other characters, like a long-winded local businessman and his father, a contentious figure nicknamed “Donkey Dan,” seem imported from a more broadly satirical work. Bazzle’s novel explores the compromises one makes in life even as it blends the gritty and the extravagant along the way."--Kirkus Reviews