Kevin Wilson (1) (1978–)
Author of Nothing to See Here
For other authors named Kevin Wilson, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Image credit: www.wilsonkevin.com/
Works by Kevin Wilson
Associated Works
Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts (2012) — Contributor — 84 copies, 4 reviews
Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone's First Decade (2014) — Contributor — 13 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Wilson, Kevin
- Birthdate
- 1978
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Florida (MFA)
- Organizations
- University of the South
- Relationships
- Leigh Anne Couch (wife)
- Short biography
- Kevin Wilson is the author of the New York Times best-selling novel The Family Fang (Ecco, 2012), Perfect Little World (Ecco, 2017), and Nothing to See Here (Ecco, 2019) as well as the collections, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009), which received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award, and Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine (Ecco, 2018). His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, A Public Space, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Rivendell, and the KHN Center for the Arts. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his sons, Griff and Patch. He is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of the South.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Sewanee, Tennessee, USA
- Places of residence
- Sewanee, Tennessee, USA
- Map Location
- USA
Members
Reviews
Lillian is living in her unpleasant mother's attic working dead-end jobs at grocery stores when she gets a call from her best friend from high school, a woman with whom she has a very complicated history. Madison is now married to a senator and lives in a big, fancy mansion, and she has a job offer for Lillian: looking after her husband's two kids from his previous marriage. The kids, it turns out, are a bit of a handful, kind of wild and weird. But that's okay, maybe, because so is Lillian. show more Oh, and also, when they get emotional, they tend to catch on fire.
I'm a little amazed by how well this works. It's zippy and readable, with situations and characters that feel wonderfully, realistically messy and some entertaining, slightly dark humor. And the catching-on-fire thing, somehow, feels like the most natural and easy-to-accept thing in the world. Yeah, sure, the kids catch on fire sometimes. Of course they do. Hell, my suspension of disbelief was a lot more tested by the presence of a character named Madison who would have been born in the 1960s -- the story is set in 1995 -- when that basically didn't exist as a girls' name until 1984. Everything else, I was completely on board for. show less
I'm a little amazed by how well this works. It's zippy and readable, with situations and characters that feel wonderfully, realistically messy and some entertaining, slightly dark humor. And the catching-on-fire thing, somehow, feels like the most natural and easy-to-accept thing in the world. Yeah, sure, the kids catch on fire sometimes. Of course they do. Hell, my suspension of disbelief was a lot more tested by the presence of a character named Madison who would have been born in the 1960s -- the story is set in 1995 -- when that basically didn't exist as a girls' name until 1984. Everything else, I was completely on board for. show less
“Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief.”
Meet the Fang family! Caleb and Camille and their children, Annie and Buster, known simply as Child A and Child B. The parents are performance artists, spending their lives, creating art out of bizarre everyday situations. The kids play along, mostly because they have no choice, setting them on a disturbing road to adulthood, mined with many psychological pitfalls.
This is a fresh and funny novel, but does contain a show more healthy share of dark and unsettling moments. It will not be for every reader, there is child abuse, but if you lock in, there is much pleasure to be had.
“Your in a weird place right now?’ Buster said, his voice rising. ‘Right now, right this very minute, I’m sitting on my childhood bed, drinking Percocet-laced orange soda out of a straw that I’m holding in the gap where my tooth used to be, before it was shattered by a potato. Mom and Dad are in the living room listening to La Monte Young’s Black Record at a ridiculously loud volume. They’re wearing Lone Ranger masks, which seems to be a recurring thing for them.” show less
Meet the Fang family! Caleb and Camille and their children, Annie and Buster, known simply as Child A and Child B. The parents are performance artists, spending their lives, creating art out of bizarre everyday situations. The kids play along, mostly because they have no choice, setting them on a disturbing road to adulthood, mined with many psychological pitfalls.
This is a fresh and funny novel, but does contain a show more healthy share of dark and unsettling moments. It will not be for every reader, there is child abuse, but if you lock in, there is much pleasure to be had.
“Your in a weird place right now?’ Buster said, his voice rising. ‘Right now, right this very minute, I’m sitting on my childhood bed, drinking Percocet-laced orange soda out of a straw that I’m holding in the gap where my tooth used to be, before it was shattered by a potato. Mom and Dad are in the living room listening to La Monte Young’s Black Record at a ridiculously loud volume. They’re wearing Lone Ranger masks, which seems to be a recurring thing for them.” show less
"Three hours after she graduated from high school, Izzy sat on a park bench next to her art teacher, Mr. Jackson, and told him that she was pregnant. Despite the awkwardness of the confession, she felt a buzzing excitement that kept pushing against her dread. She had graduated from high school, had hated almost every minute of it; now she was on the other side and free, those four years simply a scar that would add character in the long run. She was wearing the best dress she owned, a thin show more summer dress from the Target in Murfreesboro, green and white, like the flag for some exotic African nation."
Our introduction to Izzy, after a weird little prologue that belongs chronologically in the middle of the book and is more distracting than anything, is instantly captivating. Izzy is a misfit, an old soul, extremely intelligent but seemingly unmotivated. Her illicit relationship with Hal Jackson began when she asked him to give her a failing grade to save her from having to give the valedictorian's speech. She finds herself unable to not do her best in her classes, but she has no intentions of going to college. Her alcoholic father barely notices she's around. Her morbidly obese mother, who tried to live vicariously through Izzy, died when she was 13. The closest thing to a parental figure or friend that Izzy has is Mr. Tannehill, the old man who runs the smoker at The Whole Hog, the barbecue restaurant where Izzy has worked since she was fourteen.
Tormented by his own demons, Hal quickly disappears from the picture, and Izzy finds herself on her own -- no family support, no financial support, and no idea how to raise a baby that she is, nevertheless, determined to keep. In steps Dr. Preston Grind, "an awkwardly charming child psychologist," who is putting together an experiment in communal parenting. If she accepts his offer, she and her baby will live in a compound with 9 other couples, many equally unmoored, their infants, Dr. Grind, and three post doc researchers (and various non-resident support staff). While this will solve all of Izzy's financial concerns, this experiment goes against her solitary, independent nature. (Of course, she accepts, but not without a few second thoughts.)
Dr. Grind is semi-famous for being raised using the "constant friction" childrearing method that his psychologist parents pioneered. Under the premise that the world is unpredictable and unfair, they purposely put their own child into circumstances that would unsettle him. The one that sticks in my mind is young Preston, an only child, being given a puppy. After two weeks of constant companionship, the puppy disappears. When he asks his parents if he'll ever see the puppy again, they are noncommital. He never sees it again. As a result of this unconventional childhood, Dr. Grind is unflappably self-controlled, even when conflicts arises in the compound. (The ways he internally processes conflicts are not always so healthy.)
The cast of characters is understandably large: 18 other parents, 10 children, four doctors, various other support staff, along with others outside "The Infinite Family Project." While Wilson provides a handy little "family tree" at the beginning of the novel, and we get a brief synopsis of the parents and their educational/occupational situation as the experiment begins (pages 136-138 in my hardback copy, which I referred back to throughout the rest of the novel), not all of them are main characters. Those closest to Izzy appear the most, along with those who cause drama (in general or with Izzy), while others remain mostly in the background. Wilson's characters are sympathetic, but complex, and all a little broken.
The premise itself was fascinating to me -- a little like The Real World: The Parenting Years -- indulging my voyeuristic nature, while tugging at my heartstrings. Izzy and Dr. Grind in particular are odd, but sweet characters that left me fearing for the worst, but hoping for the best. If you need to know the overall mood of the ending,it's happy, but in a realistic way.
Wilson's first novel, [b:The Family Fang|10149142|The Family Fang|Kevin Wilson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1444101399s/10149142.jpg|15047462], was captivating, but too disturbing for my taste. I was traumatized by the careless way the Fang parents raised their children, making them part of their "performance art" that often seemed more like psychological torture. Dr. Grind's childhood is similarly scarring, although his parents did their damage for the sake of science, which feels a little less narcissistic than the Fangs' art. (Wilson's focus on the many ways parents screw up their children makes me wonder what his own childhood was like.) Perfect Little World was much easier to stomach, with the level of obsurdity kept to a tolerable level. I'm really glad that I gave Wilson a second chance. show less
Our introduction to Izzy, after a weird little prologue that belongs chronologically in the middle of the book and is more distracting than anything, is instantly captivating. Izzy is a misfit, an old soul, extremely intelligent but seemingly unmotivated. Her illicit relationship with Hal Jackson began when she asked him to give her a failing grade to save her from having to give the valedictorian's speech. She finds herself unable to not do her best in her classes, but she has no intentions of going to college. Her alcoholic father barely notices she's around. Her morbidly obese mother, who tried to live vicariously through Izzy, died when she was 13. The closest thing to a parental figure or friend that Izzy has is Mr. Tannehill, the old man who runs the smoker at The Whole Hog, the barbecue restaurant where Izzy has worked since she was fourteen.
Tormented by his own demons, Hal quickly disappears from the picture, and Izzy finds herself on her own -- no family support, no financial support, and no idea how to raise a baby that she is, nevertheless, determined to keep. In steps Dr. Preston Grind, "an awkwardly charming child psychologist," who is putting together an experiment in communal parenting. If she accepts his offer, she and her baby will live in a compound with 9 other couples, many equally unmoored, their infants, Dr. Grind, and three post doc researchers (and various non-resident support staff). While this will solve all of Izzy's financial concerns, this experiment goes against her solitary, independent nature. (Of course, she accepts, but not without a few second thoughts.)
Dr. Grind is semi-famous for being raised using the "constant friction" childrearing method that his psychologist parents pioneered. Under the premise that the world is unpredictable and unfair, they purposely put their own child into circumstances that would unsettle him. The one that sticks in my mind is young Preston, an only child, being given a puppy. After two weeks of constant companionship, the puppy disappears. When he asks his parents if he'll ever see the puppy again, they are noncommital. He never sees it again. As a result of this unconventional childhood, Dr. Grind is unflappably self-controlled, even when conflicts arises in the compound. (The ways he internally processes conflicts are not always so healthy.)
The cast of characters is understandably large: 18 other parents, 10 children, four doctors, various other support staff, along with others outside "The Infinite Family Project." While Wilson provides a handy little "family tree" at the beginning of the novel, and we get a brief synopsis of the parents and their educational/occupational situation as the experiment begins (pages 136-138 in my hardback copy, which I referred back to throughout the rest of the novel), not all of them are main characters. Those closest to Izzy appear the most, along with those who cause drama (in general or with Izzy), while others remain mostly in the background. Wilson's characters are sympathetic, but complex, and all a little broken.
The premise itself was fascinating to me -- a little like The Real World: The Parenting Years -- indulging my voyeuristic nature, while tugging at my heartstrings. Izzy and Dr. Grind in particular are odd, but sweet characters that left me fearing for the worst, but hoping for the best. If you need to know the overall mood of the ending,
Wilson's first novel, [b:The Family Fang|10149142|The Family Fang|Kevin Wilson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1444101399s/10149142.jpg|15047462], was captivating, but too disturbing for my taste. I was traumatized by the careless way the Fang parents raised their children, making them part of their "performance art" that often seemed more like psychological torture. Dr. Grind's childhood is similarly scarring, although his parents did their damage for the sake of science, which feels a little less narcissistic than the Fangs' art. (Wilson's focus on the many ways parents screw up their children makes me wonder what his own childhood was like.) Perfect Little World was much easier to stomach, with the level of obsurdity kept to a tolerable level. I'm really glad that I gave Wilson a second chance. show less
Real Rating: 4.75* of five, rounded up
The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here comes an exuberant, bighearted novel about two teenage misfits who spectacularly collide one fateful summer, and the art they make that changes their lives forever.
Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge—aspiring writer, indifferent student, offbeat loner—is determined to make it through yet another sad summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, when she meets Zeke, a talented artist show more who has just moved into his grandmother’s unhappy house and who is as lonely and awkward as Frankie is. Romantic and creative sparks begin to fly, and when the two jointly make an unsigned poster, shot through with an enigmatic phrase, it becomes unforgettable to anyone who sees it. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.
The posters begin appearing everywhere, and people wonder who is behind them. Satanists, kidnappers—the rumors won’t stop, and soon the mystery has dangerous repercussions that spread far beyond the town. The art that brought Frankie and Zeke together now threatens to tear them apart.
Twenty years later, Frances Eleanor Budge—famous author, mom to a wonderful daughter, wife to a loving husband—gets a call that threatens to upend everything: a journalist named Mazzy Brower is writing a story about the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Might Frances know something about that? And will what she knows destroy the life she’s so carefully built?
A bold coming-of-age story, written with Kevin Wilson’s trademark wit and blazing prose, Now Is Not The Time to Panic is a nuanced exploration of young love, identity, and the power of art. It’s also about the secrets that haunt us—and, ultimately, what the truth will set free.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Nothing to See Here was a solid 3.5-star read for me. It was entertaining and I got a few moments of real emotional involvement. I didn't think I'd go looking for more of Author Wilson's work but the Universe had other ideas...Ecco offered me the DRC and, being game as well as greedy, I hopped on it like a hen on a junebug.
Frankie Budge is a teenaged girl with a serious boredom problem. She's a Coalfield, Tennessee, girl who's smart enough to be a novelist in training and bored enough to do anything to stave off the screaming meemees. She's got triplet brothers whose lives will clearly end in tears, prison sentences, and severe emotional damage. Her father's left his family for another woman, and her mother...cruises...she lets Frankie be her own weird self because, well, triplet boys on the way to prison require more than a single working mother actually has to give. Yay for Frankie! Then she meets Zeke, a new kid with no friends.
Zeke's dad was a horndog, too. (Is this something Author Wilson knows about from personal experience, one must ask oneself.) Zeke apparently decompensated all over the guy in the middle of his office. Well, that's what his mom says...he can't remember any of it. Oh, and this is important: He's so freaked about the whole nightmare that he's decided to rename himself "Zeke" short for his middle name, Ezekiel. He and his mom are staying in Coalfield, where she was from. And that's how the match met the gas....
Y'all remember the 1980s Satanic Panic era? All that horror, all those lives ruined...well, in her gawky attempt to connect with this boy she likes, Frankie made the error to end all errors...she showed him a Xerox machine her brothers had stolen from the high school's shed. With toner and paper and everything...and she lets Zeke fix it, using the loveliest phrase for a paper jam I've ever heard: "like the machine had done origami"...so thus begins one of the major Satanic panics moved all the way up in time to 1996.
Their use for the photocopier is to make an art project (after Frankie uses it as an excuse to cop her first-ever kiss from a boy who's never kissed a girl either) of a poster—a drawing Zeke does after she writes “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us” on a piece of paper. Then the Xerox comes into play...she comments in her narrative about them being kids from Nowheresville and never having heard of Andy Warhol so they were inventing this new thing together...and, after making a bunch of them, Frankie puts them up all over Coalfield.
Hijinks quite horribly ensue.
The inspiration of some older teens to play off this mysterious and compelling artwork, using it for their own ends, and the horrors that any powerful thing can call forth when it's anonymous and unclaimed, break the entire town. Frankie and Zeke are kids. They're way too scared to face up to the consequences (some truly terrifying) of their innocent actions. And that is where I realized I was a lot more involved with this story than I ever was with the first book of his I read. I circled back and read "On Writing Now Is Not The Time to Panic", Author Wilson's introductory story of how this book has been moving inside him for a long time. He spoke directly from his heart, revealed his genuine grief that finally summoned this book into the world after the decades of growing, and I was utterly changed. A story I'd thought was pretty good became a moving, honest act of love for a past and a life he was no longer living. And that made my pleasure multiply many-fold.
What it means to my old-man self to see someone as young as Author Wilson contend with the doomed promise of nostalgia, to confront the power of a past one can never reach but must always reach for...well, that spoke to me. That made me feel I was heard and understood by a complete stranger who couldn't pick me out in a line-up of Boomers. I am validated by this evidence of my sad, wistful knowledge of the ghost-hand of the past clutching with steel talons in someone young enough to be my child.
Then what the hell happened to that fifth star, it's fair to ask. Welllll...I'm really not sure it's fair to say, he said, glancing at the ever-present truncheons of the Spoiler Stasi. I'm not a big fan of the way the pressure to dredge up her past with Zeke, now going by his first name again, entered Frankie's life, and the things it led her to do were understandable but frankly disturbing to me. I felt she was violating boundaries for selfish reasons. It's not like she needed to do something she did the way she did it...the knowledge could've been gained less invasively...but here we are. I've only docked a quarter-star and I'm pretty sure the sales won't suffer because one no-name blogger was squicked out at some stuff that most of y'all (who never had your boundaries utterly disregarded by a woman) won't notice.
I'm still glad I read the book, you can see. I'm especially delighted by a piece of mother-daughter healing that spoke loudly to me. And you know, that is more than enough of a gift to take the slight sting of imperfection off my eyes. show less
The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here comes an exuberant, bighearted novel about two teenage misfits who spectacularly collide one fateful summer, and the art they make that changes their lives forever.
Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge—aspiring writer, indifferent student, offbeat loner—is determined to make it through yet another sad summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, when she meets Zeke, a talented artist show more who has just moved into his grandmother’s unhappy house and who is as lonely and awkward as Frankie is. Romantic and creative sparks begin to fly, and when the two jointly make an unsigned poster, shot through with an enigmatic phrase, it becomes unforgettable to anyone who sees it. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.
The posters begin appearing everywhere, and people wonder who is behind them. Satanists, kidnappers—the rumors won’t stop, and soon the mystery has dangerous repercussions that spread far beyond the town. The art that brought Frankie and Zeke together now threatens to tear them apart.
Twenty years later, Frances Eleanor Budge—famous author, mom to a wonderful daughter, wife to a loving husband—gets a call that threatens to upend everything: a journalist named Mazzy Brower is writing a story about the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Might Frances know something about that? And will what she knows destroy the life she’s so carefully built?
A bold coming-of-age story, written with Kevin Wilson’s trademark wit and blazing prose, Now Is Not The Time to Panic is a nuanced exploration of young love, identity, and the power of art. It’s also about the secrets that haunt us—and, ultimately, what the truth will set free.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Nothing to See Here was a solid 3.5-star read for me. It was entertaining and I got a few moments of real emotional involvement. I didn't think I'd go looking for more of Author Wilson's work but the Universe had other ideas...Ecco offered me the DRC and, being game as well as greedy, I hopped on it like a hen on a junebug.
Frankie Budge is a teenaged girl with a serious boredom problem. She's a Coalfield, Tennessee, girl who's smart enough to be a novelist in training and bored enough to do anything to stave off the screaming meemees. She's got triplet brothers whose lives will clearly end in tears, prison sentences, and severe emotional damage. Her father's left his family for another woman, and her mother...cruises...she lets Frankie be her own weird self because, well, triplet boys on the way to prison require more than a single working mother actually has to give. Yay for Frankie! Then she meets Zeke, a new kid with no friends.
Zeke's dad was a horndog, too. (Is this something Author Wilson knows about from personal experience, one must ask oneself.) Zeke apparently decompensated all over the guy in the middle of his office. Well, that's what his mom says...he can't remember any of it. Oh, and this is important: He's so freaked about the whole nightmare that he's decided to rename himself "Zeke" short for his middle name, Ezekiel. He and his mom are staying in Coalfield, where she was from. And that's how the match met the gas....
Y'all remember the 1980s Satanic Panic era? All that horror, all those lives ruined...well, in her gawky attempt to connect with this boy she likes, Frankie made the error to end all errors...she showed him a Xerox machine her brothers had stolen from the high school's shed. With toner and paper and everything...and she lets Zeke fix it, using the loveliest phrase for a paper jam I've ever heard: "like the machine had done origami"...so thus begins one of the major Satanic panics moved all the way up in time to 1996.
Their use for the photocopier is to make an art project (after Frankie uses it as an excuse to cop her first-ever kiss from a boy who's never kissed a girl either) of a poster—a drawing Zeke does after she writes “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us” on a piece of paper. Then the Xerox comes into play...she comments in her narrative about them being kids from Nowheresville and never having heard of Andy Warhol so they were inventing this new thing together...and, after making a bunch of them, Frankie puts them up all over Coalfield.
Hijinks quite horribly ensue.
The inspiration of some older teens to play off this mysterious and compelling artwork, using it for their own ends, and the horrors that any powerful thing can call forth when it's anonymous and unclaimed, break the entire town. Frankie and Zeke are kids. They're way too scared to face up to the consequences (some truly terrifying) of their innocent actions. And that is where I realized I was a lot more involved with this story than I ever was with the first book of his I read. I circled back and read "On Writing Now Is Not The Time to Panic", Author Wilson's introductory story of how this book has been moving inside him for a long time. He spoke directly from his heart, revealed his genuine grief that finally summoned this book into the world after the decades of growing, and I was utterly changed. A story I'd thought was pretty good became a moving, honest act of love for a past and a life he was no longer living. And that made my pleasure multiply many-fold.
What it means to my old-man self to see someone as young as Author Wilson contend with the doomed promise of nostalgia, to confront the power of a past one can never reach but must always reach for...well, that spoke to me. That made me feel I was heard and understood by a complete stranger who couldn't pick me out in a line-up of Boomers. I am validated by this evidence of my sad, wistful knowledge of the ghost-hand of the past clutching with steel talons in someone young enough to be my child.
Then what the hell happened to that fifth star, it's fair to ask. Welllll...I'm really not sure it's fair to say, he said, glancing at the ever-present truncheons of the Spoiler Stasi. I'm not a big fan of the way the pressure to dredge up her past with Zeke, now going by his first name again, entered Frankie's life, and the things it led her to do were understandable but frankly disturbing to me. I felt she was violating boundaries for selfish reasons. It's not like she needed to do something she did the way she did it...the knowledge could've been gained less invasively...but here we are. I've only docked a quarter-star and I'm pretty sure the sales won't suffer because one no-name blogger was squicked out at some stuff that most of y'all (who never had your boundaries utterly disregarded by a woman) won't notice.
I'm still glad I read the book, you can see. I'm especially delighted by a piece of mother-daughter healing that spoke loudly to me. And you know, that is more than enough of a gift to take the slight sting of imperfection off my eyes. show less
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