PRAISE​

​

"Sport may be a dependable touchstone for the stories in Hang Time, but beware, there’s LSD in the Gatorade. The nostalgia is spiked. Jesus Was a Cross Maker is a batter’s walk-up music, and Enya plays at the monster truck rally. A former ace pitcher tests his beliefs about fate by courting a bear attack. Skulls are unearthed by clumsy golf swings. These tense, urgent tales explore the past-your-prime turbulence of adulthood with the lush sentence-writing of Barry Hannah and the stop-short eeriness of Raymond Carver. In these pages, magic isn’t just possible—it’s necessary."
— John Brandon, author of Penalties of June (McSweeney’s Press)

 

"An exploration of athletics and spectacle through the lives of little-leaguers, professionals, bachelorettes with machine guns, and a tiny advertising icon, Brendan Gillen’s work is filled with tenderness and violence, both in subject and in his tight, masterful prose; he unpacks the allure of competition to reveal a core brimming with humanity—its hope and desire for connection, its physical and soul-level pain, and its infectious nostalgia. Hang Time is a knockout."

— Emily Costa, author of Girl on Girl

 

 

"There are too many stories out there about writers and college professors. Bring on the athletes, the down-and-out family men, the working class folks doing their best to get by. Gillen’s prose focuses on the grittier parts of these characters’ lives, but there’s poetry in here, along with the heartbreak. You’ll find hope, too, of last-second buzzer beaters, happier marriages, recovering deadbeat dads, and a taste of the glory only hard-fought competition can bestow."

— Eric Rasmussen, Fiction Editor, Sundog Lit