Fiction. Part punk rock concept album, part poetic observation, and part man-in-the-street reporting, WISH LIST, Gerry LaFemina's debut collection of stories, chronicles the lives of people who just might be someone you know. His characters—alienated teens, mid-life crisis adults, those suffering from loss or from love—are survivors of the ordinary traumas of America. Sometimes funny, sometimes tender, sometimes heartbreaking, these stories invite us into a world that those familiar with LaFemina's poems will know: one willed with pathos and grit.
Author City: FROSTBURG, MD USA
Gerry LaFemina is the author of six collections of poetry, including GRAFFITI HEART (winner of the Anthony Piccione Prize in Poetry), THE WINDOW FACING WINTER, THE PARAKEETS OF BROOKLYN (winner of the Bordighera Prize), and VANISHING HORIZON; two collections of prose poems; and WISH LIST, a collection of short stories. A former punk musician and a former member of the Associated Writing Programs Board of Directors, he directs the Frostburg Center for Creative Writing at Frostburg State University, where he also teaches. He divides his time between Maryland and New York.
Reviews and Other Links
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"LaFemina is a writer for the new millennium his gritty, authentic voice is full of the anxiety of possibility, his characters restless with disappointment and longing, trying to make the world cough up just one true thing. Reading these stories is like taking a walk on the top rail of a suspension bridge all belief and carelessness sad and comic and altogether human."
—Jonis Agee
"There are 1001 reasons to read Gerry LaFemina's masterful stories about addicts, jacked-up families, ad hoc dance clubs, barely sane vinyl record collectors, angry nerds, gamblers, and love both stunted and verdant. You'll encounter unforgettable characters drawn with just the right shadow, just the right light; you'll love the descriptive passages that only an adept poetic sensibility could write; you'll be conveyed smoothly by the El Dorado narrative pace. But amid all the technical virtuosity, there is the boy-in-black punch of the bass, the fevered slam-dance of drums, the burn of a Fender Stratocaster. This is Punk in short story form, and it ought to serve as a corrective for the misinformed as to what Punk is and what it just never can be. These stories are no mere Pop tunes that harass the memory like salad bar gnats. This is the bona fide stuff, real Punk, unchained, full-throated, and smoking."
—Reginald McKnight