Phong Nguyen's Memory Sickness is a superb debut. These interwoven stories about characters living on the margins in Providence, Rhode Island, pulse with poetry, power, and grit. This is a truly memorable collection.
-- Don Lee, author of Yellow and Wrack and Ruin
Dead-on in its depiction of modern malaise, Memory Sickness will burn in your own memory forever, assuring you of the sickness we are. Phong Nguyen has crafted stories with zero at the bone, stories of how the child is father of the man, of what we do to one another in this world, and what we do to ourselves. His Providence, Rhode Island, seems borne into being by the bastard offspring of Denis Johnson and Mary Gaitskill: a place of danger, horror, and the dim hope necessary for our survival. This book will scar you.
-- William Giraldi, senior editor at Agni and author of Busy Monsters
Rhode Island might be our smallest state, but Phong Nguyen writes about it as the stage for big drama in these gritty, moving stories about race and class and sex and death that are as fractured as the neighborhoods of Providence.
-- Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh
Phong Nguyen is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Central Missouri, where he teaches fiction writing and edits the journal Pleiades. His stories have been published in various literary journals including Agni, Boulevard, Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, North American Review, and Massachusetts Review. He lives in Warrensburg with his wife--the artist Sarah Nguyen--and their three children.
-- Don Lee, author of Yellow and Wrack and Ruin
Dead-on in its depiction of modern malaise, Memory Sickness will burn in your own memory forever, assuring you of the sickness we are. Phong Nguyen has crafted stories with zero at the bone, stories of how the child is father of the man, of what we do to one another in this world, and what we do to ourselves. His Providence, Rhode Island, seems borne into being by the bastard offspring of Denis Johnson and Mary Gaitskill: a place of danger, horror, and the dim hope necessary for our survival. This book will scar you.
-- William Giraldi, senior editor at Agni and author of Busy Monsters
Rhode Island might be our smallest state, but Phong Nguyen writes about it as the stage for big drama in these gritty, moving stories about race and class and sex and death that are as fractured as the neighborhoods of Providence.
-- Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh
Phong Nguyen is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Central Missouri, where he teaches fiction writing and edits the journal Pleiades. His stories have been published in various literary journals including Agni, Boulevard, Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, North American Review, and Massachusetts Review. He lives in Warrensburg with his wife--the artist Sarah Nguyen--and their three children.
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