Homesick
Nino Cipri, Dzanc Books
Emerging Kansas-based writer and self-described weirdo mixes monsters, zombies, Super Little Dead Girls and poltergeists with screenplay, lists and good old-fashioned storytelling. The result: an excellent and entertaining collection, winner of the annual Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize. Messing with the format keeps things lively, but what really stands out in this first collection is the way Cipri approaches their characters’ quandaries. Take Jeremy, from the first story in the book. Failing out of art school, near broke and haunted by the literal ghost in his closet, he’s also in love with the gender-fluid badass Merion. Somehow, Cipri makes all this work, turning the potentially florid and over-obvious into a gentle, funny story of two people who don’t, and probably never will, fit into the conventions of society, finding each other, if only for a moment. Also, shout-out to Cipri’s snappy dialogue and devotion to offbeat rhetorical questions — “Do you think zombies can go through revolving doors?”