Communications instructor and polymath John Vigna will launch his short story collection Bull Head (published by Arsenal Pulp Press) at The Bourbon in Vancouver on September 19. Come help John celebrate and, if you’re up for it, ride the Mechanical Bull. The party gets underway at 7:30 PM.
From the blurb: “A line-dancing aficionado visits his brother in jail in hopes of mending their relationship, and instead discovers his own unwitting role in his brother’s failed life. After the death of his wife and children, a logger tries to survive the Thanksgiving weekend on his own. A delinquent teen’s life is changed forever by a work-camp placement with a violent older boy. A truck driver seeks sanctuary from his abusive wife in a fantasy world of strip clubs and personal ads. Bristling with restlessness and brutality, the eight linked stories in Bull Head catapult readers into the gritty lives of rural male characters lost in purgatories of their own making. Vigna tempers raw and at times cruel rural masculinity with graceful prose and breathtaking tenderness to illuminate the plight of men who belong neither to history nor the future. A startling homage to the great Southern Gothic tradition, Bull Head is a dazzling debut that heralds a powerful and exciting new literary voice.”