SILAS  DENT  ZOBAL

LitHub has titled my essay: "A History of My Violence to the Ones I Love: Silas Dent Zobal On Learning to Be Hit and Hitting Others." Originally, I'd titled it, "On the Side of Dissonance." Which is a lyric stolen from Run the Jewels. Read More!

Short essay titled "On the Impoverished World." It's about growing up poor. Read more here!

Jeremy Schraffenberger asks really good questions here. I answer fitfully. Like so: "Sometimes I think that existing is an act of ungodly egotism. Sometimes I can feel the strain of it, the constant effort of defending myself so that I hold distinct from the laurels and the dew, from which I am not, in any sense beyond my own insistence, really distinct at all." Read more!

The People of the Broken Neck in A Year in Reading. "A searing debut novel: terse sentences juxtaposed with ambiguous, surreal descriptions of violence and the after-effects of trauma." Read more!

The People of the Broken Neck in Bookriot's guide to wonderful books of 2016 from Indie presses! Read more!

A review of The People of the Broken Neck in the North American Review: "In a 1978 debate on fiction between William Gass and John Gardner at the University of Cincinnati, later printed in The New Republic, Gardner points out the difference between the two of them as writers: 'Our definitions of beauty are different,' he says. 'I think language exists to make a beautiful and powerful apparition. He thinks you can make pretty colored walls....' It’s hard not to think of beauty and language while immersing oneself in the pages of Silas Dent Zobal’s remarkable novel The People of the Broken Neck, but would one would call his writing Gassian or Gardnerian?" Read more!

I've written a short essay for the Missouri Review blog. It's an essay about growing up poor, and about my many misapprehensions: "Driving on the highway at dusk in Pennsylvania, I see a fire on the side of the road. There is this billowing smoke. It’s a grand thing, both gorgeous and threatening. But as I get closer, one apprehension gives way to another. The fire becomes a yellow-flowered shrub in the golden hour. The billowing smoke becomes an oddly-shaped cloud." Read More!

"Unbridled Press has nurtured the early careers of many talented authors including one of my favorites, Emily St. John Mandel. In Zobal, they have another winner. His clipped and poetic prose is saturated with the weight of its storytelling obligations and delivers handsomely." Read more!

“A fantastic debut novel, which is a hybrid of mystery, thriller, noir fiction and travelogue. The poetic style of this story paints vivid imagery in each short chapter where we follow three main characters, a father and his two adolescent kids as we follow their lives and learn their paths. This is a story of how a war hero deals with reintegration back into civilian lives.” Read more!

A nice, short review. "Silas Dent Zobal...beautifully brings still mountains and hushed woods to life in a way that seems inextricably connected to the Sawyer family's heartbeat and lifeline." Read More!

"When I’m writing I happily believe that I’m perfecting as I go. But when I’m done, and after I’ve let the draft sit for a bit, I find that what I have is messy. I curse a lot. Then I do a lot of drafting and editing." Read More!

I guess this means I've written a mystery? Omnimystery News asks, What would your lead character ask if they were interviewing you. I write: "Dominick isn't the kind of guy you'd find interviewing me. He doesn't talk all that much (at least compared to how much I talk). He doesn't read or have any aspiration to begin. If he was to interview me, he'd ask, with a great deal of skepticism, 'Why would anybody want to write a book?'" Read More!

"When the light catches my life at just the right angle, I sense that the right words, if we could find them, could stop our daughters from falling out the windows, in this moment and forever after, too." Read More!

A starred review from Publishers Weekly!: "Powered by rich imagery, darkly lyrical prose, and a deeply philosophical undertone, this novel explores the nature of family—particularly when those familial bonds begin breaking—with profoundly moving conclusions." Read more!

Kirkus calls The People of the Broken Neck, "A powerful, moving allegory that reflects how post–9/11 missteps scarred the American soul." Read more!

A short piece of mine in Entropy to celebrate the publication of Melissa Goodrich's book, Daughters of Monsters. "Of the urban afternoon: the electrical velvet hum of neon, the swish of knee-length skirts, the low insouciant chirp and spit of wayward crickets; the glycerin shine of shaven heads, the low growl and bark of engines, the vertiginous wheel of pickpockets. Tires on hot pavement; running water; breaking glass. The bay of dogs." Read more! 

"At the outset, what inspires me is life’s continual and unwavering bafflement. There are the unanswerable questions; the intermittent surprises; the astoundments, both pleasant and unpleasant." Read more!

Inconvenience of the Wings named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2015!  Read more.

Kirkus gave my collection a starred review.  Read more!

A short essay featured on Jane Friedman's website. Read more!

It felt odd and good to see the sale of People of the Broken Neck listed in Publisher's Lunch. Here's the quote: "Silas Dent Zobal's THE PEOPLE OF THE BROKEN NECK, in which a Special Forces veteran making a run to disappear with his complicated teenage son and young daughter is tracked by an FBI agent who knows about the protective love of a damaged man for his own children, to Fred Ramey at Unbridled Books, for publication in 2016, (World)."

"The truth is this: I don't know if I'll be able to publish the books that I've written or those that I've yet to write.  But there are other truths. I've spent much of the last years writing at the small oak desk that my grandfather gave my father, and that my father gave to me. I sat at this desk doing high school English assignments; and, in college, taking notes in Anna Karenina's margins; and making poor attempts to write a first novel; and in the between times; and again a few years later, when my mother- forty-nine years old - had a series of strokes, fell into a coma for fifty-four days, and then died...."  Read more!