The OK End of Funny Town
Winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize One of BuzzFeed's Fifteen Small Press Books To Kick Off Your 2020 Reading Season A fastidious pet robot with a knack for knitting. A soporific giant pitching camp in the middle of a city. A mysterious mime whose upcoming performance has the whole town on edge. The stories in Mark Polanzak's BOA Short Fiction Prize-winning The OK End of Funny Town stitch fantastic situations into the drab fabric of everyday life. Polanzak delights in stretching every boundary he encounters, from the new focus on practical learning at the New Community School, to the ever-changing tastes of diners in search of the next big trend in local cuisine. Wondrous yet familiar, The OK End of Funny Town excavates the layers between our collective obsession with passing fads and our secret yearning for lasting connection. "Polanzak's collection is rich and packed with visionary tales that are sure to entertain speculative fiction readers." -Booklist
Mark Polanzak is author of the hybrid fiction/memoir POP! (Stillhouse, 2016). His stories have appeared in The Southern Review and The American Scholar, and anthologized in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017. He is a founding editor of draft: the journal of process and a contributor to the podcast, The Fail Safe. A graduate of the University of Arizona’s MFA program in fiction, Mark teaches writing and literature at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He lives in Salem, Massachusetts.
