| God Says No—Still Out There! |
God Says No
Buy it!
Gary Gray: a young black man struggling with his appetites--for friendship and love, for religious experience, for corndogs, for illicit gay sex in Waffle House bathrooms, for acceptance. He tries everything to change himself: exorcism, marriage, escape, reparative therapy, avant-garde silent theater, and many other things. He just wants you to like him. He just wants to be normal.
"A tender, funny tour of a mind struggling to do the right thing. A revelatory and sympathetic guide to a misunderstood world."
--Steve Martin, author of Shopgirl and Born Standing Up
"A groundbreaking new American voice...topical and ambitious, disturbing and hilarious."
--Jennifer Egan, author of Look at Me and The Keep
"This novel is an absolute original."
--Martha Southgate, author of The Fall of Rome and Third Girl From the Left
"A truly daring first novel."
--Jim Lewis, author of Why the Tree Loves the Ax and The King is Dead
Press
The New York Times
Village Voice
An exceptionally nice review from The Defenders Online
Time Out
Out
Largehearted Boy - The God Says No playlist
Advocate.com
The Corresponding Society
Bookslut
Weekly Dig
Barnes & Noble Review
B&N Book Club
The Stranger - See? Even Camus' murderous existentialist likes this book. You have no excuse not to buy it now, you, who are surely more well-adjusted than that guy.
Salon.com - My old job interviews me. If you need a character reference, Voilá!
Jackson (Mississippi) Free Press - My new favorite newspaper!
Austin Chronicle
Austinist
Hipster Book Club
"...[A] fantastic first novel." "James Hannaham will be
an exciting author to follow."
Pop Damage
"Gary Gray is a wholly American character unlike many we meet in
literary fiction, written in a clear, contemporary style that has a
good chuckle at our taboos. God Says No takes our cultural
anxiety about homosexuality and spins it into prose that breathes,
capturing a human moment with all the sadness and humor that it
deserves." --Alicia Kennedy
Booktalkin'
Reading Local Seattle
Shelf Monkey - "Hannaham provides a sometimes
hilarious, always insightful, and surprisingly even-handed look at a
man struggling with his innate desires." --Corey Redekop
Band of Thebes
How I spent my summer.
--from TimeOut New York
Eisa Ulen
Electric Literature
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| Click here to engorge the cover art. |
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James Hannaham, writer. Of what? Well, his stories have appeared in The Literary Review, Open City and Nerve, Significant Objects, and One Story.
He has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Blue
Mountain Center, Chateau de Lavigny, and Fundacion Valparaiso. He
teaches creative writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and lives
near there. His first novel, God Says No, came out through McSweeney's Books in late May of 2009. An excerpt from the book appears in McSweeney's 31, which looks a lot like a yearbook, binding-wise.
He has also written reviews and profiles for The Village Voice, Spin, Blender, Out, Us, New York, The Barnes & Noble Review, and once, circa 1997, a tiny sidebar in the front section of The New York Times Magazine. He was on staff in the culture department of Salon
for most of 2008. Then the crash came, and with it, layoffs. He's been
okay since then--thanks for asking. Starting work on several new projects, applying for grants and fellowships and jobs, etc.
He is a founder and former member of this group.
If you have something to say to him, say it to his face.
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| Remember: Money makes black people happy! |
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| Approved by people who suck the blood of babies |
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| Shamelessly pandering to your autonomic nervous system |
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| Still selling subprime! |
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| Quietly applying harsh judgment |
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| We stand against the trafficking of Caucasian businessmen |
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