All Screwed Up [Paperback]

Steve Fellner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 8, 2009

Murder attempts... missing umbilical cords... haunted quarries... fat camps... These darkly comic stories fill the pages of All Screwed Up. Young, gay, and poor, Steve Fellner attempts to shed his trailer park past and seize a better life for himself. But coming from the sticks offers a certain kind of freedom: no one expects anything from you, so you can be as wild and ridiculous as you want. Fellner s humorous and touching memoir centers on his odd relationship with his mother, a woman who was once a championship trampolinist and is now a champion of the unpredictable. Who could blame her for demanding her son attend her high school reunion? Or suggesting the family team up to do some shoplifting? Told with shocking humor and startling honestly, All Screwed Up manages to reinvent the comingout story and describes one of the strangest mother-son relationships in recent memory. Winner of the 2008 Benu Press Social Justice and Equity Award in Creative Non-Fiction

Editorial Reviews

Review

Wry, edgy, simultaneously vulnerable and aggressive, these delicious vignettes of a warped childhood will surely appeal to connoisseurs of the new nonfiction, of which Steve Fellner is assuredly one of the young masters. --Robin Hemley Author of Do-Over! And Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness

Something is All Screwed Up in Steve Fellner s comic and heart-tugging memoir, but it is not Fellner s ability to see clearly and write crisply about his quirky, impoverished childhood. Fellner s deadpan chronicle of his painful attempts to fit into a world that wasn t having any of it is fresh, compelling, off-kilter, and full of heart. --Dinty W. Moore Author of The Accidental Buddhist and Between Panic and Desire

By turns laugh-out-loud funny and gut wrenching, All Screwed Up might make you wish you d never been normal. This book is not simply a memoir of family dysfunction but instead a roaring, unflinching celebration of a boy s life a complicated, bizarre, poverty-stricken, heroic and sometimes tragic one in the margins of Midwestern America. --Steven Church, author of The Guinness Book of Me: a Memoir of Record

About the Author

Steve Fellner s first book of poems Blind Date with Cavafy was released by Marsh Hawk Press. It won the Thom Gunn Gay Male Poetry Award. His non-fiction has appeared in The Sun, North American Review, Western Humanities Review, among others. He currently lives in Brockport, New York with his partner Phil.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Benu Press; First edition (June 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0981516335
• ISBN-13: 978-0981516332
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #645,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The story of one Steve Fellner and his mother... who proves quite unmortherly at times, October 11, 2009

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Screwed Up (Paperback)

Some sons hate their mothers, some have simple caring relationships. Steve Fellner has neither. "All Screwed Up" is the story of one Steve Fellner and his mother... who proves quite unmortherly at times. From strange requests of her family to the encouraging family thievery, Fellner delivers an offbeat story that reads like something off a sitcom, but is oddly true. "All Screwed Up" is something to be considered for those looking for something outside the typical motivational memoir.