Dan - Softcover

"Joanna Ruocco's Dan is a tiny novel that packs a massive punch." Bustle"Ruocco's sentences send off sparks." Kirkus"Ruocco has an ear for sparkling absurdist dialogue and a sense of timing almost unmatched in contemporary American fiction... [Dan] is profoundly strange, but as readable and logical as the writing of Lewis Carroll." The Literary Review"Like a skeleton key Ruocco has found combinations to unlock more doors then we knew we had. If for nothing else, read Dan for the sentences, and the way the words rub up against each other, placed so perfectly that you know they could not have otherwise been arranged." HTMLGIANT"This outrageously hilarious book is also a warning against how others will happily use our hope, our empathy, and our imaginations against us... even while they are eating our hot pretzels." Drunken Boat"Joanna Ruocco is sort of like almost the best writer on planet earth." Queen Mob's Tea House"Dan is a wonderful addition to Ruocco's already accomplished body of work... compelling, artful, and entirely engaging." Tupelo Quarterly"Ruocco's amazing sentences in Dan remind me a lot of Flann O'Brien, both in terms of their humor and Ruocco's ability to write the hell out of any and everything." Forest Gospel"[Dan tells] the story of the hilarious and frightening town of Dan, a place where children are abducted, women disappear, and coydogs mate near the mountains. Maybe more than anything else, it is the story of sensemaking, the way memory, reality, and identity noodle out from between your fingers. All of this is rendered in Ruocco's electric prose, which has been compared to Donald Barthelme, Lydia Davis, and Thomas Pynchon." Heavy Feather Review"This is a book I haven't been able to get out of my mind. It's surreal and dream-like, vivid and compelling. Melba Zuzzo pedals her bicycle through the town of Dan, and we get lost in a strange world where we never know quite what will happen." Necessary Fiction"This novel is funny and smart but knows how to balance both deftly enough to create a genuine world out of the completely obtuse." Askmen

"Joanna Ruocco's Dan is a tiny novel that packs a massive punch." Bustle

"Ruocco's sentences send off sparks." Kirkus

"Ruocco has an ear for sparkling absurdist dialogue and a sense of timing almost unmatched in contemporary American fiction... [Dan] is profoundly strange, but as readable and logical as the writing of Lewis Carroll." The Literary Review

"Like a skeleton key Ruocco has found combinations to unlock more doors then we knew we had. If for nothing else, read Dan for the sentences, and the way the words rub up against each other, placed so perfectly that you know they could not have otherwise been arranged." HTMLGIANT

"This outrageously hilarious book is also a warning against how others will happily use our hope, our empathy, and our imaginations against us... even while they are eating our hot pretzels." Drunken Boat

"Joanna Ruocco is sort of like almost the best writer on planet earth." Queen Mob's Tea House

"Dan is a wonderful addition to Ruocco's already accomplished body of work... compelling, artful, and entirely engaging." Tupelo Quarterly

"Ruocco's amazing sentences in Dan remind me a lot of Flann O'Brien, both in terms of their humor and Ruocco's ability to write the hell out of any and everything." Forest Gospel

"[Dan tells] the story of the hilarious and frightening town of Dan, a place where children are abducted, women disappear, and coydogs mate near the mountains. Maybe more than anything else, it is the story of sensemaking, the way memory, reality, and identity noodle out from between your fingers. All of this is rendered in Ruocco's electric prose, which has been compared to Donald Barthelme, Lydia Davis, and Thomas Pynchon." Heavy Feather Review

"This is a book I haven't been able to get out of my mind. It's surreal and dream-like, vivid and compelling. Melba Zuzzo pedals her bicycle through the town of Dan, and we get lost in a strange world where we never know quite what will happen." Necessary Fiction

"This novel is funny and smart but knows how to balance both deftly enough to create a genuine world out of the completely obtuse." Askmen

JOANNA RUOCCO earned an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and a PhD in Fiction from the University of Denver. In addition to DAN (Dorothy, a publishing project, 2014), she's published several books: THE MOTHERING COVEN (Ellipsis Press), MAN'S COMPANIONS (Tarpaulin Sky Press), A COMPENDIUM OF DOMESTIC INCIDENTS (Noemi Press), and Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith: A Diptych (FC2). A COMPENDIUM OF DOMESTIC INCIDENTS won the 2009 Noemi Press Fiction Chapbook Contest (judged by Rikki Ducornet). Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith: A Diptych won the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize (judged by Ben Marcus). She also works pseudonymously as Alessandra Shahbaz (Ghazal in the Moonlight, Midnight Flame) and Toni Jones (No Secrets in Spandex). She co-edits Birkensnake, a fiction journal, with Brian Conn.