Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 7:00 pm
Black Dog Cafe
308 E Prince St, St Paul

Rain Taxi invites you to explore both the dark and light in humanity with Peter Stenson, author of the acclaimed novel Fiend and the new novel Thirty-Seven. This event is FREE and open to the public!

Peter Stenson’s Thirty-Seven (Dzanc Books) takes us into the world of The Survivors, whose members are known only by the order in which they joined. Mason Hues, formerly known as Thirty-Seven, is the group’s final member and the only one both alive and free. Eighteen years old and living in a spartan apartment after his release from a year of intensive mental health counseling, he comes to believe that there is still hope in the Survivor philosophy and begins the journey again—this time with himself as One. Part Fight Club, part The Girls, and entirely unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, Peter Stenson’s Thirty-Seven is an audacious and austere novel that explores our need to belong, our need to be loved, and our capacity for self-delusion.

Books will be available for purchase courtesy of SubText Books.

Pre-publication praise for Thirty-Seven:

“With his second novel, Stenson proves to be a more articulate, more empathic, and more intelligent version of Chuck Palahniuk. Stenson's sentences devastate, and his characters are nuanced and warm . . . A book that manages to break your heart, make you dizzy, and punch you in the gut all at once. You will be hard-pressed to find a novel as dark or intense in any bookstore."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Unnerving but spellbinding . . . Stenson's brilliantly vivid prose and striking characters deserve the widest possible audience."
—Booklist (starred)

PRAISE FOR FIEND

“Shambling, scabrous figures rotting from the inside out and driven by an insatiable hunger—there are more than a few similarities between meth heads and zombies. Stenson exploits all of them in Fiend.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Best read of the year. Best zombie book, ever. Masterful illustration about how painful and overwhelming addiction can be . . . I want every book I read to enthrall me as consistently and emotionally as Fiend did.”
—SF Signal

“Certain to invite comparisons to Hubert Selby and Cormac McCarthy . . . one scalding pressure cooker of a novel, and I advise you to buckle up and hold on tight because you’re in for one hell of a ride.”
— Donald Ray Pollock

“Shockingly personal . . . Shaun of the Dead meets Trainspotting.”
—MTV.com

PETER STENSON received his MFA from Colorado State University in 2012. His stories and essays have been published in The Bellevue Literary Review, The Greensboro Review, Confrontation, Blue Mesa Review, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and daughter in Denver, Colorado.