Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs

George Singleton has published twelve books, including These People Are Us; The Half-Mammals of Dixie; Why Dogs Chase Cars; Novel; Drowning in Gruel; Work Shirts for Madmen; Pep Talks, Warnings, and Screeds; Stray Decorum; Between Wrecks; Calloustown; Staff Picks; You Want More: Selected Stories. He has also published over two hundred stories in magazines and journals like the AtlanticMonthly, Harper’s One Story, Playboy, Georgia Review, Zoetrope, North American Review, Story, LitMag, Southern Review, Mid-American Review, Fiction International, The Quarterly, Carolina Quarterly, Agni, Oxford American, Virginia Quarterly Review, Five Points, Black Warrior Review, Subtropics, Texas Review, and Glimmer Train. He lives in Spartanburg SC.

“Legendary South Carolina absurdist Singleton weighs in with anotherrollicking collection. … A Southern original adds to his gallery of Southernoriginals.” —Kirkus starred review“Singleton delivers an offbeat collection filled withSouthern eccentrics. … Singleton lights up the colorful and odd situations withwit and verve. Southern fiction fans will have a blast.” —Publishers Weekly“A delightful, occasionally disturbing and unapologeticallyhonest exploration of Southern life … There’s a beautiful brokenness drivingthese characters toward their distinctive causes that’s born from the mostbasic of compulsions — the human need to belong.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution“Pleaseknow that it is against my nature to fling the word ‘genius’ around like asandlot football. I’ve used it maybe five times, and in all of those instancesI applied it to composers, partly because I don’t understand how they do whatthey do. Being a fiction writer, I understand all too well how we do what wedo. But George Singleton is a genius, because he repeatedly manages to make melaugh, often uproariously, when my first impulse is to cry. How he accomplishesthis feat is as mysterious to me as the twelve-tone music of, say, ArnoldSchoenberg. But I know this: contemporary American literature—and I daresay thecountry itself—would be more vibrant if we had more writers like him. GeorgeSingleton is something perhaps even rarer than a genius. He’s a treasure.”—Steve Yarbrough, author of Stay Gone Days