Three Creative Writing Professors Publish Books This Fall at Graywolf Press

Ander Monson, Bojan Louis, and Manuel Muñoz, faculty members in the University of Arizona’s acclaimed Creative Writing MFA Program – which is celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year – have books published this fall by Graywolf Press, a leading independent publisher.

A deep dive into Predator and male American culture

First up is Ander Monson's book Predator: A Memoir, A Movie, an Obsession, which was released on September 6. Monson received a prestigious Guggenheim Award to write this book in 2017.

"In his first memoir, Ander Monson guides readers through a scene-by-scene exploration of the 1987 film Predator, which he has watched 146 times. He turns his obsession into a lens through which he poignantly examines his own life, formed by mainstream, White, male American culture," notes the book description.

Praise for the book includes: “An unlikely treatise on manhood with the charm of a late-night movie marathon” (Kirkus); “One of the more fascinating and eccentric books I’ve read this decade” (Jeff VanderMeer); and “This is a book filled with ideas and also an intensely personal book, one that only Ander Monson could have written—with his wit, honesty, and considerable powers of insight” (Charles Yu). You can read this wonderful review of the book by UArizona emeritus professor Alison Deming.

Also check out these Q&As with Monson published by Cleveland Review of Books, Brooklyn Rail, Salon, and The Lives of Writers.

“Violent collisions of love, cultures, and racism”

Bojan Louis’ book The Sinking Bell was released on September 27.

This collection of short stories is set in and around Flagstaff and depict "violent collisions of love, cultures, and racism,” the book description notes. “In his gritty and searching fiction debut, Bojan Louis draws empathetic portraits of day laborers, metalheads, motel managers, aspiring writers and musicians, construction workers, people passing through with the hope of something better somewhere else.”

Praise for the book includes: "Louis’s prose carries his poetic sensibility with a decided rhythm and resonant detail, and the narrators achingly convey their outsider status. The result is immersive and powerful” (Publishers Weekly). Deb Olin Unferth writes, "Now that I’ve read Bojan Louis’s first book of fiction, Sinking Bell, I feel certain I’ll read every book he writes — partly for his crushing, poetic voice, partly for his characters, with their wild hopes and entrenched disappointments, their visions of a better world. And partly I will read for the deep Navajo consciousness the stories inhabit: the language, the pride, the loss, the search, the spirits on the path."

Check out one of Louis' stories "A New Place to Hide" on Electric Lit.

"Shimmering stories set in California's Central Valley"

Manuel Muñoz's book The Consequences is out Oct. 18.

The book's description notes: "These exquisite stories are mostly set in the 1980s in the small towns that surround Fresno. With an unflinching hand, Muñoz depicts the Mexican and Mexican American farmworkers who put food on our tables but are regularly and ruthlessly rounded up by the migra, as well as the quotidian struggles and immense challenges faced by their families. The messy and sometimes violent realities navigated by his characters—straight and gay, immigrant and American-born, young and old—are tempered by moments of surprising, tender care."

Praise for the book includes: “Haunting, powerful, humble, precise, this collection shook my being. I wish I had written these stories” (Sandra Cisneros); and “These stories are evanescent, unforgettable, taking us deep into California’s Central Valley, the homeland Manuel Muñoz has for years given to the world as a place of glimmering mystery. Muñoz is one of the best writers working in America" (Susan Straight).

The book received a glowing review in The Los Angeles Times: "Lucid and elegantly written, “The Consequences” tells the stories of characters who ache for one another or for ephemeral moments of release; who ache — bodily — from a life spent harvesting the sweetness that will grace other tables."