Itch

by  Gary Percesepe

88 pages – published November 2013

paperback ISBN: 978-1-925101-21-8

eBook ISBN:  978-1-925101-22-5   /   Kindle ISBN: 978-1-925101-23-2

to purchase, click here for  paperback  /  ePub  /  Amazon Kindle  /  B & N NOOKbook  /  Kobobooks  /  iBookstore

click here for a taste of itch

 

what people are saying about Itch

Gary Percesepe drops you into an ambiguous world and pulls you back again, still reeling. He does it so deftly, you don’t even realize you’re bleeding until it’s over.

Heather Cox, author of California King

 

These rapid and arresting short stories will keep you on your toes. Gary Percesepe is a master of sharp turns, and, oh, how greatly I admire the stuff he notices, all of life’s “brilliant surprises,” and his concern with how people who bust up stay apart, because what can we do with the delayed understanding that happens after the leaving? This collection is a tender rush.

Pia Ehrhardt, author of Famous Fathers & Other Stories

 

An absolutely entrancing collection. These are the stories of women and girls remembered, longed for, and lost. The girlfriends and wives and lovers and crushes and the singular gestures that crack open the hearts of men. This collection unearths what lies just beneath the surface, what cannot be ignored. The itch that demands your attention. When Percesepe opens with: “A woman I knew died decades before her burial,” well, you pull up a chair, knowing you are in the hands of a master storyteller. That he does what he does in the space of a page or two and with such precision and grace is its own small miracle.

Kathy Fish, author of Together We Can Bury It and Wild Life

 

Where is it that our days go? Into the big dark American night, and they take with them their secrets. Gary Percesepe’s stories have made the return trip: they pulse, they tremble and radiate with a life we might have thought we had lost. Keep itch close. Have it near for your quiet hours, your spells of wayward dreamtime.

Scott Garson, author of Is That You, John Wayne?

 

Gary Percesepe writes beautiful, vivid stories with the intensity and brevity of a man on the run. His fiction lights up the page with incredible bursts of poetry, passion, and pain channeled through characters whose names we rarely catch. In just a few short pages, Percesepe captures entire worlds of emotion – all of it so true and real, it’s impossible to look away.

Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Wonder Bread Summer

 

Itch is a shrewd, swift-moving collection about urges, obsessions, and the energy of desire. Gary Percesepe’s stories work together to expose and examine a curious cycle – the way our reality drives our fantasies and our fantasies influence our reality.

Jen Knox, author of Don’t Tease the Elephants

 

Itch is a book of love and heartbreak. Its characters move through the world with passion. Each line is filled with grace and longing: tender and yet bold. Refreshingly told, Gary Percesepe has written a book of gold and magic.

Kim Chinquee, author of Pretty and Oh Baby: Flash Fictions and Prose Poetry

 

find a review of Itch and Falling by Len Kuntz by clicking here, then scrolling down the page