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"Things We’ll Need for the Coming Difficulties is one of the best short story collections I’ve read in years. There’s so much humor, sympathy, and flat-out honesty directed toward these characters . . . that you’ll swear you know these folks. To experience such kinship through prose that wouldn’t tolerate a flabby sentence or admit a lazy line of dialogue, is nothing less than sheer joy.”


--Anthony Varallo, author of The Lines

 

 

“Valerie Vogrin’s first full-length story collection is populated with characters who are lost, characters who are wounded, characters rendered with precision and the unflinching eye of an expert storyteller at the top of her craft . . . Vogrin’s prose is clear and confident and often grimly humorous, but in the end, she is an artist of the unstated, deftly seeding clues that blossom into stories rich in detail and imagination.”


 --Dorene O’Brien, author of What It Might Feel Like to Hope

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"A whiz-bang romp through one crazy summer in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This book's as funny as its title suggests, its humor sharp as a stitch in the side. But Vogrin knows that the funniest moments arise from heartache, and she understands the connection. A warm, big-hearted, comic novel, a great debut."

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 --Brad Watson, author of Miss Jane & The Last  Days of the Dog-Men  

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"This lyrical and generous book is suffused with a particularly American postmodern wisdom: only the makeshift families we assemble around ourselves have the power to heal the wounds inflicted by the families into which we are born."

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  --Tony Earley, author of Mr. Tall & Jim the Boy  

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