Buxton Books is proud to host Scott Gould in the bookstore to celebrate his latest title, Idiot Men. Scott will be in conversation with fellow author Bret Lott! This is a free, in-store event. Please email rsvp@buxtonbooks.com to reserve your space!
About Idiot Men:
"Like the best country song you have ever heard." Jane Stern, author of Ambulance Girl
With Strangers to Temptation, Things that Crash, Things that Fly, and The Hammerhead Chronicles, Scott Gould cemented his reputation as one of the most inventive, distinctive voices of Southern literature. In his latest collection, Idiot Men, he once again gathers a cast of unforgettable characters in eleven stories chock full of exceptional storylines and hilarious writing.
You'll meet a trucker driver whose wife flees to Jamaica with her lover, leaving him to babysit her hairless tomcat, Princess Di; a male nurse who discovers a trailer full of counterfeit NASCAR paraphernalia during a home health visit; an amateur arsonist sentenced to a year in a Smokey the Bear suit; a disgruntled roofer with a bad back and a meth-dealing twin brother... these are just a few of the idiot men you'll encounter in a collection of stories that will appeal to readers who relish literature with a Southern flavor.
Gould's Idiot Men provides the stage for wayward characters who make poor choices in life and love against a backdrop of elegant prose. These tales recalibrate morality and convention as readers will grow to love the characters despite-and perhaps because of-their flaws. These diverse, rich stories are ultimately connected by the spellbinding voice of a true Southern storyteller.
About Scott Gould:
Scott Gould is the author of five books, including The Hammerhead Chronicles, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction, and Things That Crash, Things That Fly, which won a 2022 Memoir Prize for Books. His other honors include a Next Generation Indie Book Award, an IPPY Award for Fiction, the Larry Brown Short Story Award and the S.C. Arts Commission Artist Fellowship in Prose. His work has appeared in a number of publications, including Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, Pangyrus, Crazyhorse, Pithead Chapel, Garden & Gun, and New Stories from the South, among others. He lives in Sans Souci, South Carolina and teaches at the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities.
About Bret Lott:
Bret Lott is the bestselling author of eight novels, three story collections and three nonfiction books; his fifteenth book, a nonfiction collection titled Cherries on the Golan, Olives in Jerusalem, will be out in 2023. His first novel, The Man Who Owned Vermont, was read in nationwide broadcasts on public radio. and his novel Jewel was both an Oprah Book Club selection and made into a film. His work has been translated into eight languages. He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1984, studying under Jay Neugeboren and James Baldwin.
He has spoken on Flannery O'Connor at the White House, and served as Fulbright Senior American Scholar to Bar-llan University in Tel Aviv, Israel. From 2006 to 2013 he served as a member of the National Council on the Arts, and from 2010 to 2022 he directed the Spoleto Summer Study Abroad program in English at the College.