Central Casting

The Story collection, Central Casting, follows the acclaimed story collections, Overland and A Third Bridge. Central Casting is a wide-ranging collection of short and longer stories that were written before and after the questions of who can write and whose story can be told emerged. These stories addressed and ignored this challenge. For example, a writer's big hair changes in a series of photos chronicling her difficulties with identity. A violent designer uses a calculated violence as part of a renovation. A feckless salesman of sunglasses becomes a gangster and realtor. Others wanting their stories told are a mother and adapted daughter kidnapped by an Oligarch for a party, a preacher wielding a cleaver in a motel complex, tea wallahs working (not as linguists) in the Tower of Babel, Nephilim challenging Noah's progeny for a place in the race and a dying Buddhist monk speaking irreverently out of delirium. And there are others, too many to name. Reviews for I Shot The Hairdresser. "The deadpan tone of I Shot The Hairdresser resonates profoundly with the shell-shocked pre- & post-Generation Xers. Each short story is highly filmable. Brilliant work, impossible to stop reading." Susan Smith Nash. TAPROOT "Kafka came to mind right away because of Gilbert's little Piece called "Penal Colony." If I were an English teacher, I would anthologize it right next to its famous namesake." Gerald Burns, Another Chicago Magazine (28) Reviews for Five Happiness "The language is truly consciousness-expanding, and it plays with the way perception is framed by syntax and the unexpectedness of words." Susan Smith Nash TAPROOT