First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories

by Meg Pokrass

Overview

“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.

In First 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781950539987
Publisher:	Dzanc Books
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Sales rank:	891,421
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

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. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, she now lives in Scotland. 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.

Editorial Reviews

Brilliant. Dazzling. The stories in First Law of Holes embody disjunction at its finest and most startling. And always, always deliver each story with a generous serving of heat and heart. It is a Meg Pokrass collection to return to again and again and again.”

—Pamela Painter, author of Fabrications: New and Selected Stories

“When you begin a collection of flash fiction by someone as synonymous with the genre as Meg Pokrass, you can’t help but go in with the highest of expectations. With First Law of Holes, Pokrass’s new and selected stories, not only does she meet these expectations, but far exceeds them. What a pleasure it is to take this journey through this foundational writer’s career, to see that lineage of ideas and observations, of heartbreaks and celebrations, of images and actions, to watch her evolve into the master she has become.”
 
—Michael Czyzniejewski, author of The Amnesiac in the Maze: Stories

“First Law of Holes feels like an entire universe of characters and experiences. Infinite, expanding and dotted with stars.”

—Charmaine Wilkerson, author of Black Cake

 

“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 builds is a location readers will enter gladly and, mesmerised, they will most definitely want to stay.”

—Nuala O’Connor, author of Nora and Seaborne

 

“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. Here, strange and normal go hand-in-hand, a marriage that explains nothing but makes so much clear.”

—Bob Hicok, author of Water Look Away

From the Publisher