Swallowing the Past:

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Swallowing the Past is a prose collection about ordinary lives in the ever-changing, postmodern South. A teenage killer ends up a smiling adult bridesmaid. A conservative Christian couple tells the story of a hate crime. A parable about a stolen bike illuminates how lying can be a survival technique. Meeting an old friend at an ATM turns into a meditation on how some people should die. The book closes with “Grace Street,” a dream-like, genre-defying novella about the author’s encounters with the locals on a poor city block in Richmond, Virginia, which becomes an eye-opening look at the old wounds of class, race, religious intolerance, and our particularly American brand of alienation.

About the Author

GREG BOTTOMS is the author of four books, including the critically acclaimed collections Sentimental, Heartbroken Rednecks: Stories from the New South and Fight Scenes. His essays, memoirs, and stories have appeared in Esquire, Oxford American, Agni, Creative Nonfiction, North American Review, Texas Review, Witness, and elsewhere. He is a Professor of English at the University of Vermont.

Praise

“Bottoms writes like a poet, he writes as if he were on fire.”
—Esquire

“Bottoms’ prose is sparse and direct, imbued with a passion to write honestly and with sympathy for a people who might not otherwise have a voice in contemporary fiction.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Bottoms writes like a poet, creating characters who make his readers feel compelled to read more just so they can be a part of this dark intimacy.”
—Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

"Everything matters, is what [Bottoms] means to tell us, and yet we can never understand what it all means."
--Los Angeles Time

Published by Texas Review Press