STEVEN SHERRILL, associate professor of English and integrative arts at Penn State, Altoona, is the author of The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, published in 2000 and translated into eight languages; Visits from the Drowned Girl; and The Locktender’s House. His collection of poems, Ersatz Anatomy, was published in 2010.

Praise for Joy, PA

“There’s compassion in [this book’s] hammering heart and poetry in its bleak, relentless prose.”—The Guardian (UK)

“Steven Sherrill writes like Cormac McCarthy on speed: beautiful short sentences create a breathless suspense, in which I as a reader, although a skeptic, experience the impending Apocalypse. The anticipation of the end drives several protagonists into a frenzy and acts of violence, rendered poetically into a wonderful and terrifying painting, Goya in the blood-rusted Bible Belt.”—Josip Novakovich, author of Infidelities and April Fool’s Day

“In phantasmagoric, almost delirious prose, Steven Sherrill writes from a distinctly southern perspective, from a landscape that is rendered credulous and incredulous at once, as parody and earnest rendering, a psychic road map of contemporary dystopic America. Happily, there’s still a place for skewed prophetic voices the likes of Sherrill in American letters. A singular voice; there’s no one else like him on the literary landscape.”—Robin Hemley, author of Reply All

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