barrett bowlin

So I wrote an itty bitty teeny weeny CNF piece about how I got started in judo, and now I owe Mike Nagel some flowers for sending out the submission call and for selecting the piece, and I definitely owe Aaron Burch (editor extraordinaire) some bourbon for formatting and posting the work on HAD.

Last year, the good folks at Atlas + Alice were awesome enough to publish an essay of mine called “Out for Blood (or Air, or Whatever).” It’s about my first night taking a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class and how my face got just a teency, weency bit fucked up from the experience. This year, Benjamin Woodard (Atlas + Alice’s Editor-in-Chief) and Lindsey Danis (their CNF editor) were even more awesome, and they nominated the essay for inclusion in the Best of the Net anthology, for which I’ll be forever grateful.

I can’t thank outgoing managing editor Joshua Bohnsack and his team enough for featuring the story in issue #164. You can check out the work here, along with amazing stories by folks like Ben Loory, Ruth Joffre, and more.

A few weeks ago, Rita Chang-Eppig was awesome enough to let me interview her about her kick-ass, debut novel, DEEP AS THE SKY, RED AS THE SEA, for The Rumpus. We got the chance to talk about sex, pirates, and good, ol’ fashioned violence. Click here to read the interview!

One year ago, the good folks at Bridge Eight Press were awesome enough to publish my short story collection, Ghosts Caught on Film. It’s a weird, little bastard of a book, featuring lightning apocalypses, orgies, nuclear fallout, and, of course, gummi bears. Thanks to everyone who made its existence possible, and thanks especially to everyone who’s read it, reviewed it, loved it, or hated it. Y’all rock!

So my extremely kind colleagues at Suffolk University’s English Department wanted me to read from Ghosts Caught on Film, for this semester’s Faculty Lecture, on Tuesday, November 8th, 2022, right at 12:30pm EST. Come join us in person if you’re in the Boston area, and, if you’re not, come join us on Zoom! [Update: Elizabeth Finnen, the department’s administrator extraordinaire, recorded & cut the video of the reading, and it’s available here if you want to see me get really awkward in the Q&A.]

I wrote a piece about getting strangled by sweaty dudes (albeit not in the fun way), and the good folks at Alice & Atlas Magazine were awesome enough to edit & publish it. Thanks be unto Lindsey Danis & Benjamin Woodward for their hard work!

Way back in July, I had the chance to talk with Jonathan Escoffery about his debut linked-story collection, If I Survive You (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux). It’s an outstanding book about a Jamaican-American family whose lives fall apart in and around Miami, and you should definitely check it out. You can read my interview with Escoffery here, care of The Rumpus.

Eric McDowell, the awesome editor of Fiction Writers Review, invited me up to Jamaica Plain to talk with him about Ghosts Caught on Film. It was outstanding getting to meet him in person after emailing him back & forth for years as a FWR contributor, and I can’t thank him enough for the conversation. Check it out here!

Dan Chaon, author of the forthcoming novel, Sleepwalk (among other amazing works of literature), was wonderful enough to mention Ghosts Caught on Film in a recent recommendation list in The Week. So, yeah, lots of beers.