About
Anthony Tognazzini is the author of the fiction collection I Carry A Hammer in My Pocket for Occasions Such As These (BOA). His short stories have appeared in Electric Literature, Guernica, The Literary Review, and Crazyhorse among other journals. His work has been anthologized in the Norton Anthology of short fiction, New Micro. He received an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council in 2018 and has received fellowships from Yaddo, Millay, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. He teaches Creative Writing at Oberlin College in Ohio.
EXCERPT from “Meanie Guy”
We eat, and scan the canyon. I’ve seen Meanie Guy down there before, moving through sticker bushes, chewing plastic Army men. Once he sat on a rock with the sun on his face. Other kids swear they’ve seen him too. They call him retard and retrograde spazmo, but no one’s gotten close to him, not a single kid’s said a word to his face or looked in his ice-blue eyes but me.
—from “Meanie Guy”
EXCERPT from “Have You Heard Anything?”
The land here is flat. Once, in good weather, it reached far as the eye could see: blocks of dull bunch grass against dirt grids, green stalks. Now, in the haze, hills rise toward a slate-colored sky. The sun is big, and looks like a hole cut in air. The voice on the radio says the weather's done for, but don't worry.
—from “Have You Heard Anything?” in Guernica, Winter 2012