The Poor Man’s Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide
Southern Stories
by Schuler Benson
PAPERBACK $17.99
EBOOK $7.99
HARDCOVER $29.99
PDF (PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN)
Twelve stories, fraught with an unapologetic voice of firsthand experience, that pry the lock off of the addiction, fanaticism, violence, and fear of characters whose lives are mired in the darkness of isolation and the horror and the hilarity of the mundane. This is the Deep South: the dark territory of brine, pine, gravel, and red clay, where pavement still fears to tread.
Illustrated throughout by artists Ryan Murray and Patrick Traylor.
Content Warning: suicide, drug use, domestic violence
Luminaire Prose Winner
• “A Hindershot of Calion”: Second-place winner of the 2015 Luminaire Prose Award
• “The Poor Man’s Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide”: Fifth-place winner of the 2015 Luminaire Prose Award
• “Ole Hazel”: Finalist in the 2015 Luminaire Prose Award
Praise
“Schuler Benson has a playwright’s ear for dialogue, a poet’s eye for scene, and a comic’s sense for when the sane is actually crazy, the crazy actually sane. The Poor Man’s Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide announces Benson’s place in the tradition of Wells Tower, Barry Hannah, and Mark Twain: here comes another great documentarian of the agonized and hilarious souls who inhabit Rural America.”
—Brian Ted Jones,
Electric Literature
“Schuler Benson writes like the spawn of Chuck Palahniuk and Barry Hannah. While approaching his subjects with empathy, humor, and a keen eye for detail, he creates a world of snake-charming preachers, meth heads, and spurned lovers. This collection will make you laugh, make you anxious, and keep you turning the pages. Read this damn book.”
—Kody Ford,
Editor-in-Chief of The Idle Class
“A Breece D’J Pancake of the plains, Benson writes with a hell of a knack for dialect. His characters are dirty, flawed, and all-too familiar. There are no heroes here. Yet in these stories, Benson manages to lift his people to another plane; someplace where they might achieve a little redemption.”
—Eric Shonkwiler,
Author of Above All Men, Moon Up, Past Full, and 8th Street Power & Light
“Schuler Benson’s writing is a record scratch, a fat marker graffiti-squeaking across a perfectly clean bathroom wall, a porcupine in a studded leather jacket. The Poor Man’s Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide is a violent, bloody heartbeat of a collection—a flashing red siren of words—a hot, stinging slap of stories.”
—Leesa Cross-Smith,
author of Every Kiss a War
“The Poor Man’s Guide is a portrait of people contending with death, the possibility of death, and, ultimately, the lives they’ve made for themselves. Each story opens intimately—every landscape, every character becomes familiar. Reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor at her best, this is a collection that is at once beautiful and uncomfortable, pushing the reader from one page to the next and deeper still into each of the lives encapsulated here. Benson opens a window. Benson opens a door. A killer read.”
—Kat Dixon,
Author of Here/Other
“Schuler Benson’s debut hits the reader like a blow to the chest by a large stone. The Poor Man’s Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide is full of longing characters who wield knives and raise hell. Benson’s world is packed with grit, with pain, with prose that cuts to the bone.”
—Keith Rebec,
Editor at Pithead Chapel
“Schuler Benson understands tone. Like a Coen brothers script, his stories are a little serious, a little funny, and a little underwritten; his prose wants you to feel clever when you pick up on the other half of what it implies. The Poor Man’s Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide should be a delight for smart readers, especially those who cope with the South through a sardonic sense of humor.”
—Kevin Snow,
Author of Matul Remrit and The Domovoi
Also by Schuler Benson
You Might Also Like:
• Fiction | Short Stories | Deep South Grit Lit
• 5” x 8” Perfectbound Trade Paperback
• Cream Paper, 146 Pages
• Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0692251195
• Paperback ISBN-10: 0692251197
• Hardcover ISBN-13: Coming Soon
• Hardcover ISBN-10: Coming Soon
• Ebook ISBN-13: Coming Soon
• Ebook ISBN-10: Coming Soon
• LCCN: Not Registered
• First Edition: July 29, 2014
• Short URL: acpbook.link/guide
• Permalink
• Read Excerpt Sample
• Download Press Release
• Book Club Reading & Discussion Guide
• Request Review Copy
• Get DRC on Edelweiss+
Cover design by Leah Angstman with back cover and front cover artwork by Ryan Murray. Fully illustrated interior by Ryan Murray and Patrick Traylor.
About the Author
SCHULER BENSON’s fiction and poetry have appeared in Kudzu Review, Hobart, The Idle Class, The Pinch, Little Fiction, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for a Best of the Net Award, a Million Writers Award, and three Pushcart Prizes, and he placed second in The Fallen Sky Review’s 2013 Speculative Fiction Launch Contest. He completed his undergraduate studies at University of Arkansas and received his MA from Coastal Carolina University. The Poor Man’s Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide is his first book.
Media & Images
Distribution & Sales
Booksellers can order this book through their Ingram ordering catalogs for 50% discount with free returns or through Asterism Books for 50% discount with no returns (we will accept free returns of Asterism purchases back to us directly; please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com if you need this return service option).
Booksellers ordering direct from us can get a 50% discount, no shipping costs, free returns accepted. Enter quantity here. If you prefer to be invoiced or need to use a purchase order number, please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com.
Booksellers who’d like shelf talkers, point-of-sale signage, bookmarks, or author signing/reading posters, you can download the book’s sales kit here.
Contributing authors ordering direct from us can enter quantity here. If you prefer to be invoiced, please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com.
For reviewers, promotional outlets, or desk copies, please request a copy. Booksellers and book industry professionals can read or download a DRC at Edelweiss+.