{"product_id":"9781889330068","title":"Sparkman in the Sky \u0026 Other Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Brian Griffin's first work of fiction, \u003ci\u003eSparkman in the Sky\u003c\/i\u003e, is like Hemingway's \u003ci\u003eIn Our Time\u003c\/i\u003e in that it can be read either as a collection of short stories or as a discontinuous novel. From story to story, themes gather meaning until in the last one they are resolved or transposed into a new key. The first-person narrator may be named Hal or Ian or Victor, but by the end all these narrators have fused into a collective exemplar of how things go in a certain place in our time. . . . It's no knock on Brian Griffin to say that he has learned from Hemingway, among others. After all, Miles Davis was no less gifted a musician, no less original, for having learned from Dizzy Gillespie. And Griffin has his own original qualities, his own subtleties, his own sly humor-even a gift for farce. . . . This book is way beyond promising.\"-\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eBrian Griffin\u003c\/b\u003e grew up in the country near Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, in a family he describes as \"infested by preachers, all Southern Baptists of the fundamentalist sort.\" He earned his B.A. in English from Middle Tennessee State University and his M.F.A. from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Griffin teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee. He lives with his wife and children in Knoxville and works closely with a group there to promote interracial harmony in the inner city. Griffin's stories and poems have been well published in journals including \u003ci\u003eShenandoah, New Delta Review, Clockwatch Review, Snake Nation Review\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eSouthern Poetry Review.\u003c\/i\u003e In addition to various short stories and poems, Griffin is currently at work on a novel.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sarabande Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47060884390128,"sku":"9781889330068","price":13.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781889330068_p0.jpg?v=1763607664","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781889330068","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}