Books and Chapbooks
I am the author of six full-length books.
A company that rents out ghosts. A woman who can answer any question posed to her. A world in which dogs have disappeared. A boy made of stone. This Year’s Ghost (JackLeg Press, forthcoming in 2025) is a short story collection that explores personal identity and relationships in an ever-changing world through the lens of speculative stories.
Stories Wrestling Can Tell (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2023) recognizes that professional wrestling is a spectacle. Beyond that, though, it can be a source of emotion, an inspiration, and an evocation of nostalgia. Wrestling can be a love story. And wrestling, too, can tell stories of immigration, advancement, and inheritances passed amongst family. These are the stories this essay collection shares, with forays into the absurd, the speculative, and the lines between four generations of men from the author’s family.
You can read a review of Stories Wrestling Can Tell from The Pro Wrestling Studies Association here.
The book is available now on Amazon.
In My Grandfather’s an Immigrant, and So Is Yours (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2021) Billy Chen grows up half-Chinese in a conservative small town in Upstate New York. The times are changing as relationships transform, the town’s history is uncovered, and the 2016 presidential election looms. My Grandfather’s an Immigrant and So is Yours probes the personal and the worldly, the timely and the timeless in a fragmented coming of age tale. This my debut novel.
The Long Way Home (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2020) tells stories of grapplers and ghosts, a cowboy and a tigress, devoted fans, family, lovers, and Andre the Giant’s bastard daughter. This full-length collection explores stories from the world of professional wrestling that walk a razor’s edge between fact and fiction, the world we know and its underbelly. Featuring work originally published in Passages North, Shenandoah, Gravel, Cherry Tree, Miracle Monocle, and others, the collection approaches a world of violence with a sensitive, but incisive eye toward what makes us all human.
You can read a review of The Long Way Home from Another Chicago Magazine here, and a review from Sundress here.
Circus Folk (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle, 2019) includes linked stories about a self-trained lion tamer, a trapeze artist who falls to her death every night, conjoined twins and the lost love of their lives, and three bearded ladies who converge on the same traveling show. This full-length collection explores the inner lives and origins of circus performers, including forays into the speculative and surreal in work originally published with Sequestum, Flapperhouse, Spry Literary Journal, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, Five 2 One Magazine, and others.
Read what Kirkus Reviews has to say about the book here, and read a review from Heavy Feather Review here.
You can read an interview about the book at Twist in Time Literary Magazine.
The book is available now, direct from the publisher, via bookshop.org, from Small Press Distribution, and on Amazon.
You Might Forget the Sky was Ever Blue (Duck Lake Books, 2019) includes stories about a third grade teacher in Baltimore trying to make sense of the 2016 election campaign to students, a teenage sexual assault survivor making his way through a changed world, and a boy is raised to believe he’s Hulk Hogan’s little brother. This book includes experiments in form with a social conscience, including work originally published in Hobart, Iron Horse Literary Review, Bayou Magazine, Front Porch, Waccamaw, Prime Number Magazine, and elsewhere.
You can read my guest blog post about the book at Orson’s Review as well as interviews centered on it at Cease, Cows and Longridge Review.
Read what Kirkus Reviews has to say about the book here, read a review from Heavy Feather Review here, read a review from Cease Cows here, and read a review from Linden Avenue Literary Journal here.
The book is available from the publisher, bookshop.org, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
I am the author of three chapbooks.
Autopsy and Everything After (Florida Review, 2019) is a collection of flash fiction chronicling the journeys of a professional wrestler, with the occasional foray into the supernatural. This chapbook won The Florida Review's Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Contest (2017-2018).
It is available from The Florida Review at their online store, as well as at conferences and events. While my stock lasts, I’m also selling signed copies for $12 (via PayPal only)—use the info on my contact page to reach out if you’d like to buy a signed copy directly from me.
Distance Traveled (Bent Window Books, 2018) is a hybrid chapbook in which prose poems ostensibly centered on basketball craft a novella about aging, divorce, friendship, and a cross-country road trip.
The publisher, Bent Window Books, is no longer in operation. I am happy to provide a free digital (PDF) copy of the chapbook to interested parties upon request. Please use the information from the Bio and Contact page to reach out if you are interested.
The Leo Burke Finish (Gimmick Press, 2017) is a hybrid chapbook, featuring twenty-three prose poems and a lyric essay that explore professional wrestling and its intersections with my own life and our larger contemporary culture.
The work is published alongside writings from Frankie Metro and Brian Rosenberger for a project called The Three-Way Dance from Gimmick Press.
It's available now via The Gimmick Press Store and Amazon.