HEARSAY


“What a richly imagined world Kirby Gann has wrought in Ghosting. A frightful world of drug-running and addiction, but beneath that a story of family and the desire for safety and peace. This novel is full of grit and the yearnings of the human heart. Its carefully drawn characters latched onto me and wouldn’t let me go.”
—Lee Martin, author of Break the Skin and The Bright Forever


“I finished your novel last night and, damn, you nailed it. . . .  Mister Greuel! What a creation. I had a hard time with this because the book is much, much more than can be described in one or two sentences. But here’s what I’ve got: ‘With a plot as full of twists and turns as an ancient Greek tragedy, Kirby Gann’s Ghosting is one of the most beautifully worded and superbly crafted novels about the fateful consequences of being caught up in the criminal life that I have ever read.’ And I’m speaking truth.”
—Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff

Ghosting

"In Ghosting, Kirby Gann has created an utterly compelling ode to the fearsome and contradictory desires of his unforgettable characters. Writing in brilliantly sustained licks of prose, Gann gives us flesh-and-blood human beings who cannot escape what they cannot help wanting. Their fate is true, the ride beautiful and dark."
—John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road and Northwest Corner


Gann's First Novel in Seven Years

“I finished your novel last night and, damn, my friend, you nailed it. . . . Mister Greuel! What a creation. I had a hard time with this because the book is much, much more than can be described in one or two sentences. But here's what I've got: ‘With a plot as full of twists and turns as an ancient Greek tragedy, Kirby Gann's Ghosting is one of the most beautifully worded and superbly crafted novels about the fateful consequences of being caught up in the criminal life that I have ever read.’ And I’m speaking truth.”
—Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff

A dying drug kingpin enslaved to the memory of his dead wife; a young woman torn between her promising future and the hardscrabble world she grew up in; a mother willing to do anything to fuel her addiction to pills; and her youngest son, searching for an answer behind his brother’s disappearance—these are just some of the unforgettable characters that populate Ghosting, Kirby Gann’s lush and lyrical novel of family, community, and the ties that can both bond and betray.

Fleece Skaggs has disappeared along with Lawrence Gruel’s reefer harvest. Convinced that the best way to discover the fate of his older brother is to take his place as a drug runner for Greuel, James Cole plunges into a dark underworld of drugs, violence, and long hidden family secrets, where discovering what happened to his brother could cost him his life.

A genre-subverting literary thriller explored through the alternating viewpoints of different characters, Ghosting is both a simple quest for the solution to a mystery, and a complex consideration of human frailty and equivocation.

INDUSTRY

Fiction
Ghosting
New novel forthcoming in April 2012.
Our Napoleon in Rags
"It wouldn’t be surprising if Our Napoleon in Rags winds up attracting a cult following. Gann’s writing is dense and interesting; he seems to be conducting a one-man campaign to stamp out the cliché, that withered figure of speech which is such a mercenary part of the thin landscape of contemporary fiction...."
—Sonya Jones
The Barbarian Parade
“Gann has a great story to tell, one that is by turns sensuous, carnal, tender, and often brutal. With its original theme and beautiful, yet effortlessly composed language, Parade makes a striking debut for a novelist of daring creativity and passion.”
—Edmund White
Anthology
A Fine Excess: Contemporary Literature at Play
An award-winning anthology of poetry and prose, coedited with Kristin Herbert.

Places Worth a Visit

Sarabande Books
Ig Publishing
Carmichaels Bookstore
Visit KG on Facebook
The Lumberyard
Unique art/text magazine of great worth
The Reading Experience
Brief-Residency MFA in Writing Program @​ Spalding University
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