Dispatches from the Drownings

B. J. Hollars is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. His most recent book is Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa.

B. J. Hollars dispatches death and dying and time and place in this new Spoon River Anthology, in this reboot of Wisconsin Death Trip. His Dispatches from the Drownings is new news. Reading, you will hold your breath. You will surface and sound again and again. You will be resuscitated and come back on now sublimely dry land transformed.--Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Four for a Quarter Hollars's book is rich with the magic dust of history, and full of strange characters, accidents, and miracles.--Drunken Boat In this fascinating blend of fact, fiction, and photography, B. J. Hollars offers a chilling exploration of death by drowning in the waters of Wisconsin. Through historical collaboration and artistic collage, Hollars considers how the facts we're left with after unexpected (and unbearable) loss shape shadows from what will never be known. This book is at once a commentary on the limitations of journalism and the slipperiness of storytelling. Hollars has created a mesmerizing experience for the reader, an experiment that re-creates the way our minds piece together stories from the murky depths of what is there and what is imagined. I read this in one sitting, and I'll read it again.--Jill Talbot, editor of Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction This book is at once a commentary on the limitations of journalism and the slipperiness of storytelling. Hollars has created a mesmerizing experience for the reader, an experiment that re-creates the way our minds piece together stories from the murky depths of what is there and what is imagined. I read this in one sitting, and I'll read it again.--Jill Talbot, editor of Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction