John Belushi, Walter Payton, Richard J. Daley, and Nelson Algren are some of the Chicagoans who inhabit and haunt this new collection of stories from a lauded American writer. In this first story collection since the award-winning Troublemakers, many of the stories deftly resurrect deceased Chicagoans or artifacts of Chicago pop culture, creating an impressionistic portrait of the city. Gene Siskel, impatient with the movie he’s watching, taunts Roger Ebert; Miss Betsy, the host of Romper Room, experiences her own awakening during the sexual revolution; railroad mogul George Pullman remembers his greatest triumph as he draws his last breath. Other stories tell of everyday people who must confront their own private ghosts—an accountant who falls in love with a woman who is in love with a man on death row; a boy whose fascination with movie monsters grows stronger as his mother’s pregnancy comes to term; a memoirist whose dark night of the soul leads him on a journey from which he may not return. Praised by writers as diverse as Richard Russo, Irvine Welsh, Elizabeth McCracken, T. C. Boyle, and Mitch Albom, John McNally is a voice to be savored.
John McNally is the author of three novels, After the Workshop, America's Report Card, and The Book of Ralph; and two story collections, Ghosts of Chicago and Troublemakers. He has edited six anthologies, including Who Can Save Us Now: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories (co-edited with Owen King). John's short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in over ninety magazines, newspapers, and anthologies, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Washington Post, The Sun, Open City, Chicago Tribune, New Sudden Fiction (Norton), and Long Story Short (University of North Carolina Press). His work has appeared in the textbooks Winding Roads: Exercises in Writing Creative Nonfiction and Behind the Short Story: From First Draft to Final Draft, both published by Longman. John has been the recipient of numerous awards for his writing, including a Chesterfield Writer's Film Project for screenwriting (sponsored by Paramount Pictures), the Jenny McKean Moore fellowship for fiction (sponsored by George Washington University), and the Carl Djerassi fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin. His short stories have been cited three times as an outstanding story of the year in the Best American Short Stories series (1991, 2007, and 2008). John has taught creative writing at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Western State College of Colorado, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of South Florida at Tampa, George Washington University, and Columbia College Chicago. He has given over a hundred readings all across the country, from New York City to Honolulu, from Bellingham, Washington, to Sanibel Island, Florida. A native of Chicago's southwest side, he is at present an associate professor of English at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife, Amy, and their many animals.
