Men You Don't Know You Know by Chase Burke

Chase Burke is the author of a fiction chapbook, Lecture (Paper Nautilus, 2020), and his short stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Salt Hill, Western Humanities Review, the Tiny Nightmares anthology (Catapult, 2020), and elsewhere. He is the recipient of Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Award, the Key West Literary Seminar’s Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award, and a Pushcart Prize Special Mention. A former fiction editor of Black Warrior Review, he lives in Northeast Florida.

The quirkiness and wit make Men You Don't Know You Know a winner. Along with its depth, originality and meaning. Marvelously crafted and powerfully told. A wonderful collection!

 —Kim Chinquee, author of Shot Girls and Wetsuit 

 

Tender and bold, Chase Burke’s Men You Don’t Know You Know draws a complex portrait of idols revered and disgraced. Beneath the men we can’t shake and the men we want to forgive is Burke’s true subject: the children, the friends, the lovers, the frauds, the wounded people we become as we strive to make sense of our lives.

—Alex McElroy, author of The Atmospherians and Daddy Issues

 

This little pamphlet contains a cornucopia of Americana. Whether it's Richard Nixon on a road trip or Brett Favre at the country-rap night, Burke conjures surprising stories with humor, empathy, and wit.

—Lincoln Michel, author of The Body Scout

 

With inventive forms and pitch-perfect humor, Burke's stories cohere into a haunting rumination on American masculinity, fame as seen in the rearview mirror, and the slippery nature of memory. This is bold, thrilling storytelling that cultivates intimacy with enigmatic figures from our collective history. It was a joy to read.

---Kate Folk, author of Out There

 

Men You Don't Know You Know by Chase Burke cleverly and daringly takes our larger-than-life masculine figures from pop culture and politics and shrinks them down to chapbook size. But in their reduced incarnations, these men seem somehow more vividly alive and empathetically, compellingly great than they ever have been, whether you’re staring at the ocean on Daytona Beach with Richard Nixon or watching Bob Dylan eat a waffle heaped with cranberries. I was delighted by this collection.

–Mary South, author of You Will Never Be Forgotten

 

Reading Men You Don't Know You Know is like walking through the downtown of an unfamiliar city—strange and exciting, a pulsing curiosity and tension building at the thought of what might be waiting at the turn of every corner; this collection is full of gem-like sentences, ready to surprise you. From Florida to Nebraska to LA, no matter where these stories lead you, be prepared to confront your own humanity on the page.

–Dantiel W. Moniz, author of Milk Blood Heat