Beat It To Fit,
Paint It To Match
Short Stories
Brendan-Brown’s collection of short stories reveals the passions, the fears, the loves, and the disappointments of people, who–even after it becomes obvious that even little dreams won’t come true–find beauty and hope.
“Beat It To Fit, Paint It To Match” also features the National Endowment of the Arts award winning story “Nowhere When It Burns.”
“I understood then what Paul was talking about when he said ridiculous. I understood then what Susan means when she says, as she often does, that my brother is beneath me. I understood why Marisol stayed, and why Bobby was stuck too. I think I knew then as well as I ever will just how lonely a man can be when his body is bloomed from bitterness and nurtured by want–the day’s collated acid, the posture of hate we attain when we’ve given up.”
From “Brother Dionysus”
“Brendan-Brown tries to save us from a society that increases isolation by showing us our human need for interaction, face-to-face, breath-to-breath, voice-to-voice.”
About the Author
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Sean Brendan-Brown has been published in the Notre Dame Review, Wisconsin Review, Indiana Review, Texas Review, Poetry East, Southampton Review, and elsewhere. He received a 1997 NEA Poetry Fellowship and a 2010 NEA Fiction Fellowship.