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Kevin Brockmeier

Author of The Brief History of the Dead

26+ Works 4,032 Members 241 Reviews 13 Favorited

About the Author

Kevin Brockmeier won an O. Henry Award in 2001 for "These Hands". He has published stories in the Georgia Review. The Carolina Quarterly, The Chicago Tribune (as a Nelson Algren award recipient) & Writing on the Edge (as an Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award Winner). He is a 1999-2000 recipient of a show more James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship. Kevin lives in Little Rock, Arkansas where he teaches Creative Writing. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: © Benjamin Krain

Works by Kevin Brockmeier

Associated Works

The Best American Short Stories 2008 (2008) — Contributor — 568 copies
State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America (2008) — Contributor — 515 copies
The Best American Short Stories 2003 (2003) — Contributor — 467 copies
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012 (2012) — Contributor — 199 copies
Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2 (2007) — Contributor — 196 copies
McSweeney's Issue 7 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern) (2001) — Contributor — 177 copies
The Best of McSweeney's {complete} (1800) — Contributor — 143 copies
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 (2006) — Contributor — 125 copies
Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Stories of Horror (2020) — Contributor — 118 copies
Best American Fantasy (2007) — Contributor — 106 copies
New Stories from the South 2008: The Year's Best (2008) — Contributor — 51 copies
Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan, Volume 07 (2017) — Contributor — 8 copies

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The Brief History of the Dead (SPOILER ALERT) in Someone explain it to me... (January 2008)

Reviews

I can't explain why, but I love Kevin Brockmeier's writing. It's sad and beautiful and oddly soothing.

The story is strange - about a world where pain glows with light - and his characters are all troubled and riddled with pain. Their stories are loosely intertwined in a way that reminded me that the world is smaller than we think.

I wish I knew what happened to all these people after the book ended.
 
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hmonkeyreads | 32 other reviews | Jan 25, 2024 |
Enjoyed this one quite a lot and I'm looking forward to reading more Brockmeier.

I thought the concept was fantastic and I found it to be a page turner even though I can't say a whole lot actually happens in book.

Wasn't thrilled with the ending because it got so muddled but I think that was intentional.
 
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hmonkeyreads | 175 other reviews | Jan 25, 2024 |
An odd but well-written set of short stories that usually weren't really to my taste. I appreciated the skill at work but rarely found them satisfying, perhaps because I'm just not familiar enough with the modern literate short story. Many of them seem to end hanging on a moment of quiet that can come off as ambivalent but is probably really intended to be subtlety.

I did enjoy a few stories, notably "Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth" and "A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets."… (more)
 
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saroz | 10 other reviews | Dec 28, 2023 |

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Statistics

Works
26
Also by
18
Members
4,032
Popularity
#6,246
Rating
½ 3.7
Reviews
241
ISBNs
68
Languages
7
Favorited
13

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