Poetry. Loosely or not so loosely based on the iconic computer game The Oregon Trail, THE OREGON TRAIL IS THE OREGON TRAIL chronicles the journey of a family on their way out West. Along the way, they fight dysentery, a racist Mel Gibson, syphilis, and consumption while learning that letting go is sometimes easier than starting over. Read the book, play the game, and never welcome the small pox welcome wagon. We have done bad things, and we will pay for them.

The Oregon Trail Is the Oregon Trail

Literature & Fiction

Sherl, Gregory

Genre Fiction

Mud Luscious Press

Fiction. Winner of DARK SKY MAGAZINE's 2010 chapbook contest, Gregory Sherl's I HAVE TOUCHED YOU is a debut collection of linked stories exploring the hurt, drive, remorse and pleasure of fleeting relationships and casual sex. Through rapt, often kinky language and quick-fire observations, Sherl's stories linger and provoke, presenting the reader with a series of swollen hearts, unmade beds, and potent narratives. "If Tao Lin put the heart back into his writing, exchanged the bored neutrality for a sense of hope or lust or longing, we would have Gregory Sherl's I HAVE TOUCHED YOU. As with Lin, there are the musical references, the mapping of movements, and a diary of food and drink and drug ingestion, but instead of trapping them inside a forever monotonous plain, Sherl elongates them into beauty and rifle-fires them from a language-musket, something at once wonderfully matured and yet able to open gaping holes in our chests"&#8212;J. A. Tyler.

I Have Touched You

Poetry

Dark Sky Books

“Comic and Exuberant . . . A fine and tender tale for anyone who has tried to let go of the past and envision the future while falling in love.” —Rhonda Riley, author of The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope What if you could know your romantic future? What if an envisionist could enter the name of your prospective mate into a computer that would show you a film of your future life together? In The Future for Curious People, a young librarian named Evelyn becomes obsessed with this new technology: she can’t stop visiting Dr. Chin’s office because she needs to know that she’ll meet someone and be happy one day. Godfrey, another client, ends up at the envisionist’s office only because his fiancée insisted they know their fate before taking the plunge. But when Godfrey meets Evelyn in the waiting room, true love may be right in front of them, but they are too preoccupied—and too burdened by their pasts—to recognize it. This smart, fresh love story, with its quirky twists and turns, ponders life’s big questions—about happiness, fate, and our very existence—as it follows Evelyn and Godfrey’s quest for the elusive answers. “A love story about love stories . . . The pages burst with laugh-out-loud scenes and crisply original set-ups. I loved it!” —Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine “Somewhere between Jorge Luis Borge’s ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind you will find Gregory Sherl’s warm, intelligent debut novel.” —Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State “Enormously appealing . . . Evelyn and Godfrey are two unforgettable characters you’ll root for and remember long after you’ve read the last page of this wildly original, deeply moving novel.” —Mindy Friddle, author of Secret Keepers

The Future for Curious People: A Novel

United States

Algonquin Books

Meet Evelyn and Godfrey. Evelyn is breaking up with her boyfriend, who's passing out advertisements for his band on a snowy street corner in Baltimore. She's seen their dismal future together at Dr. Chin's office: she and her boyfriend, both many years older, singing “Happy Birthday” to a Chihuahua and arguing about cheese. She hopes for more. Meanwhile, Godfrey is proposing to his girlfriend, Madge, who's not quite willing to take that leap; she wants to see their future together first-just to be sure they're meant for each other.The Future for Curious People follows Evelyn and Godfrey's soon-to-be-entwined lives, set in motion by the fabulist premise of a world with envisionists like Dr. Chin. In struggling with their pasts and possible futures, the characters encounter the mysteries of sorrow, love, death, and fate. It's a story that will capture you with its brightness, its hopefulness, its anxious twists and turns. It is a love story that is ultimately a statement about happiness and how to accept our fleeting existence.

The Future for Curious People

HighBridge Audio

Poetry. "HEAVY PETTING is a hell of a sexy book. A sexy and generous book. A book where thighs are 'spread like warm apple butter,' where one eye is so close to another there is no sight, where we don't 'feel clean unless...burning,' where the not forgotten magic of the Mississippi River, 'giant but quiet' makes lovers fall asleep inside each other, where when it is 'too cold to sunbathe' the speaker writes letters to skin—the whole thing a kind of 'relationship porn.' Or maybe this book is feeling porn... So, let's do it. Let's live a burning life. Read this book. Be touched and burned and be happy about it. We don't feel clean until we are burning anyway."—Dorothea Lasky "If you wake up tomorrow early and Frank O'Hara is a Sony Walkman, Xanax is the new Surgeon General, and someone you're not sure you recognize as your beloved is writing his/her name on the inside of your lip, don't be alarmed, you're reading HEAVY PETTING by Gregory Sherl."—Matt Hart

Heavy Petting

YesYes Books

Loosely based on the iconic computer game The Oregon Trail, THE OREGON TRAIL IS THE OREGON TRAIL, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Believer Poetry Award, chronicles the journey of a family on their way out West. Along the way, they fight dysentery, a more racist Mel Gibson, syphilis, and consumption while learning that letting go is sometimes easier than starting over. Read the book, play the book as a choose your own adventure game, and never welcome the small pox welcome wagon. We have done bad things, and we will pay for them. New version now with illustrations.

The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail

Write Bloody Publishing

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