7/23 Triple Book Launch: Ally Malinenko, Jason Irwin, & John Grochalski @ EEBX

7PM THIS SATURDAY…

Low Ghost Press & Six Gallery Press are hosting a sizzling summer book party! Join us for a triple launch for Ally Malinenko’s ‘Better Luck Next Year’ (Low Ghost Press), Jason Irwin’s ‘A Blister of Stars’ (Low Ghost Press), and John Grochalski’s ‘Wine Clerk’ (Six Gallery Press).

East End Book Exchange
Saturday, July 23
7pm
BYOB
A brief q&a will follow the reading

Yes, THREE books will be released on this historic day! If you don’t know Low Ghost, learn all about it from the man himself, Kris Collins, recently interviewed by the indispensable Littsburgh. Thanks to them for getting the word out about this, & to Joan Bauer, who boosted it on her mailing list too.

Ally’s book you can read about on her blog. It’s great.

Jason’s book you can read about on his blog. It’s also great.

Which brings us to John Grochalski & his new novel Wine Clerk, which is also great as well.

Check out these blurbs, particularly the last sentence of Dave Newman’s.

Rand Wyndham knows it’s all a sham. He knows the game is rigged. Like all of us, Grochalski’s character is stealing crumbs in the spiritual and cultural void of modern America. Read this book and admit your dreams are a painful lie we’re better off without. —Jason Baldinger, author of The Lady Pittsburgh

Rand Wyndham returns in Wine Clerk, John Grochalski’s follow-up to his 2013 novel The Librarian. This time, Wyndam is working in a wine emporium, slugging it out with a motley crew familiar to anyone who’s worked on the lower rungs of the service industry. Grochalski serves up his peculiar vision of the American nightmare with a heady mix of wit and pathos, delivering a bitter dose of the everyday in all its quotidian absurdity. It’s engaging. It’s frightening. It’s funny. It’s the pitch-perfect reflection of the current inebriated state of the American monster. —Larry Duncan, author of Drunk on Ophelia

My best advice to the reading public is to buy or steal John Grochalski’s bottle of a book Wine Clerk, pop its cork, savor its fast food bouquet, hold it up in the light of a Labatt Blue sign to appreciate its bile-brown color, then guzzle the shit down like vintage Thunderbird and prepare to croak as you puke to death from disgust or wild laughter, or your brain rots and runs out your ears like zombie snot. Gentle readers, if you drink this bottle of a book you will not get into heaven. Quite simply, if you read this book and die from disgust or laughter, you are fucked. —Chuck Kinder, author of The Silver Ghost

John Grochalski’s is a line that extends back to Steinbeck and Sinclair and up through Fante and Bukowski. Wine Clerk is another brilliant evocation of how miserable the world can be and how surviving with a drink in a dive bar is our only shot at victory. Drop all the boxes in the warehouse. Run from the temp agency. If you want to understand what it means to be working poor in the richest country in the world, read Grochalski’s excellent new novel. Read everything he’s written and everything he’s going to write. —Dave Newman, author of Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children

Check out Grochalski’s poem “The Wine Clerk” on his blog. Check out his Twitter, where he’s been posting lil bits of the novel. & most definitely check out East End Book Exchange next Saturday to hear John, Ally, & Jason read from their newborn works.