Twelve stories, fraught with an unapologetic voice of firsthand experience, that pry the lock off of the addiction, fanaticism, violence, and fear of characters whose lives are mired in the darkness of isolation and the horror and the hilarity of the mundane. This is the Deep South: the dark territory of brine, pine, gravel, and red clay, where pavement still fears to tread. Contains interior illustrations by Ryan Murray and Patrick Traylor. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “Schuler Benson writes like the spawn of Chuck Palahniuk and Barry Hannah. While approaching his subjects with empathy, humor, and a keen eye for detail, he creates a world of snake-charming preachers, meth heads, and spurned lovers. This collection will make you laugh, make you anxious, and keep you turning the pages. Read this damn book.” —Kody Ford, The Idle Class Magazine ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “A Breece D’J Pancake of the plains, Benson writes with a hell of a knack for dialect. His characters are dirty, flawed, and all-too familiar. There are no heroes here. Yet in these stories, Benson manages to lift his people to another plane; someplace where they might achieve a little redemption.” —Eric Shonkwiler, author of Above All Men ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “Schuler Benson has a playwright’s ear for dialogue, a poet’s eye for scene, and a comic’s sense for when the sane is actually crazy, the crazy actually sane. The Poor Man’s Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide announces Benson’s place in the tradition of Wells Tower, Barry Hannah, and Mark Twain: here comes another great documentarian of the agonized and hilarious souls who inhabit Rural America.” —Brian Ted Jones, Electric Literature ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Find out more about Alternating Current Press at http://www.press.alternatingcurrentarts.com.

The Poor Man's Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Current, Alternating

Benson, Schuler

Short Stories & Anthologies

Alternating Current

The first triennial collected volume of winners and top-five finalists of the Luminaire Awards for Best Prose and Best Poetry for the years 2014 through 2016. Features 13 gut-punching short stories and 15 heart-rending poems by various authors, each piece having won out over hundreds of others to be selected as the best work of its respective year through a blind judging process, conducted by Alternating Current Press and external judges. Walk with storytellers through tales of domestic violence, children disappearing on spaceships, a car-parts thief at the scene of an accident, a gravedigger pulling the plug on a childhood nightmare, attending Santa Claus school, telling your secrets to strangers, and a dangerous proposal for fertility. Explore Tennessee, chase bombmakers out of hostage situations, come of age, stand at the Alamo, walk down Birch Street, pick apples, and return to your roots in these stories and poems by some of the independent press’ finest contemporary writers.

The Sky Is a Free Country: The Luminaire Award Anthology Volume I

Shonkwiler, Eric

Catalano, Kevin

Wright, Amy

Guruianu, Andrei

Karas, Steve

Winn, Sarah Ann

Carnie, Jared A.

Buchinger, Mary

United States

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Benson, Schuler. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Benson, Schuler