IN BRIEF
Nathan Deuel reviews books for The Los Angeles Times and is the author of Friday Was the Bomb: Five Years in the Middle East, an Amazon Best Book of the Month. He has written essays, reviews, and short fiction for The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, GQ, and The Paris Review, among others. He lives in Los Angeles and is on faculty at UCLA's Writing Programs.
AT LENGTH
Nathan Deuel is the author of Friday Was the Bomb: Five Years in the Middle East (Dzanc 2014), an Amazon Best Book of the Month. He has written essays, reviews, and short fiction for The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, GQ, and The Paris Review, among others. An essay of his was selected as Notable for each ofthe 2015 and 2014 editions of Best American Travel Writing. He is a contributing editor at Los Angeles Review of Books and writes occasional reviews for The Los Angeles Times and Times Literary Supplement. He lives in Los Angeles, and is on faculty at UCLA's Writing Programs. Previously he was an editor at Rolling Stone and The Village Voice and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tampa and a B.A. from Brown University. He attended Deep Springs College (1997-99) and returned as visiting professor in 2013. He has earned fellowships from Word Riot, Skidmore, Brown University, and the University of Tampa, among others. He judged Dzanc's first Nonfiction Book Prize and was a judge for UCLA Extension's 2015 Memoir Prize. In 2013, he was named first runner-up in Ploughshares' annual Emerging Writer contest and he is a finalist for a 2015 Southern California Journalism Award.
ABOUT FRIDAY WAS THE BOMB
> Amazon names Friday Was the Bomb a Best Book of the Month for May, and on the Amazon books blog, Kevin Nguyen writes: “As much as Friday is about living in the Middle East, it’s also a moving autobiographical tale of isolation and fatherhood. Here, Deuel has penned a book about fragility with the robustness of an empathetic essayist and the careful eye of a seasoned journalist.”
> Ignoring its many flaws, Los Angeles Review of Books calls Friday "an intimate portrait" by "a keen observer" who "masterfully captures the subtlety of life."
> Library Journal calls Friday "[b]eautifully written...not a journalist’s accounting of conflict but a moving contemplation of life in the face of grief and fears."
> Flavorwire calls it "one of the most fascinating accounts we’ve read of an American in the Middle East."
> Buy the book on Amazon, or better yet, call your local bookstore
> Read excerpts at Longreads, Gawker, Vice, and The Nervous Breakdown, a self-interview at TNB, a click-bait masterpiece at HuffPo, and a Lives piece at The New York Times Magazine
> More excerpts or companion pieces from Large-Hearted Boy, Brown Alumni Magazine, Massachusetts Review, and more
> Interviews with The Los Angeles Times, NPR's Weekend All Things Considered, The Times-Picayune, The Rumpus (with original drawings!), Amazon.com, The Writer's Job, Heavy Feather Review, and more
> Reviews from Library Journal, Kirkus, Monkeybicycle, American Book Review, Los Angeles Review of Books
PRAISE FOR FRIDAY WAS THE BOMB
"Nathan Deuel is alive to the myriad contradictions of being a sentient being at this moment in history—the painful, necessary awareness that one's presence carries an entire empire in its shadow. Friday Was the Bomb is about the tension between how much we want and how small we are—some will make war, the world will makes storm, and the rest of us will try to hold onto some fragile connection with each other. This is a book for the rest of us." —Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
"In these flares of imagery and reportage, of introspection and observation, Nathan Deuel pulls off the considerable feat of looking both inward and outward at once. Friday Was the Bomb gives you an unforgettably and, at times, almost intolerably vivid sense of what age-old troubles like grief, politics, and love feel like at the fragile outset of the 21stcentury." — Benjamin Kunkel, author of Indecision and Utopia or Bust
IN BRIEF
Nathan Deuel reviews books for The Los Angeles Times and is the author of Friday Was the Bomb: Five Years in the Middle East, an Amazon Best Book of the Month. He has written essays, reviews, and short fiction for The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, GQ, and The Paris Review, among others. He lives in Los Angeles and is on faculty at UCLA's Writing Programs.
AT LENGTH
Nathan Deuel is the author of Friday Was the Bomb: Five Years in the Middle East (Dzanc 2014), an Amazon Best Book of the Month. He has written essays, reviews, and short fiction for The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, GQ, and The Paris Review, among others. An essay of his was selected as Notable for each ofthe 2015 and 2014 editions of Best American Travel Writing. He is a contributing editor at Los Angeles Review of Books and writes occasional reviews for The Los Angeles Times and Times Literary Supplement. He lives in Los Angeles, and is on faculty at UCLA's Writing Programs. Previously he was an editor at Rolling Stone and The Village Voice and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tampa and a B.A. from Brown University. He attended Deep Springs College (1997-99) and returned as visiting professor in 2013. He has earned fellowships from Word Riot, Skidmore, Brown University, and the University of Tampa, among others. He judged Dzanc's first Nonfiction Book Prize and was a judge for UCLA Extension's 2015 Memoir Prize. In 2013, he was named first runner-up in Ploughshares' annual Emerging Writer contest and he is a finalist for a 2015 Southern California Journalism Award.
ABOUT FRIDAY WAS THE BOMB
> Amazon names Friday Was the Bomb a Best Book of the Month for May, and on the Amazon books blog, Kevin Nguyen writes: “As much as Friday is about living in the Middle East, it’s also a moving autobiographical tale of isolation and fatherhood. Here, Deuel has penned a book about fragility with the robustness of an empathetic essayist and the careful eye of a seasoned journalist.”
> Ignoring its many flaws, Los Angeles Review of Books calls Friday "an intimate portrait" by "a keen observer" who "masterfully captures the subtlety of life."
> Library Journal calls Friday "[b]eautifully written...not a journalist’s accounting of conflict but a moving contemplation of life in the face of grief and fears."
> Flavorwire calls it "one of the most fascinating accounts we’ve read of an American in the Middle East."
> Buy the book on Amazon, or better yet, call your local bookstore
> Read excerpts at Longreads, Gawker, Vice, and The Nervous Breakdown, a self-interview at TNB, a click-bait masterpiece at HuffPo, and a Lives piece at The New York Times Magazine
> More excerpts or companion pieces from Large-Hearted Boy, Brown Alumni Magazine, Massachusetts Review, and more
> Interviews with The Los Angeles Times, NPR's Weekend All Things Considered, The Times-Picayune, The Rumpus (with original drawings!), Amazon.com, The Writer's Job, Heavy Feather Review, and more
> Reviews from Library Journal, Kirkus, Monkeybicycle, American Book Review, Los Angeles Review of Books
PRAISE FOR FRIDAY WAS THE BOMB
"Nathan Deuel is alive to the myriad contradictions of being a sentient being at this moment in history—the painful, necessary awareness that one's presence carries an entire empire in its shadow. Friday Was the Bomb is about the tension between how much we want and how small we are—some will make war, the world will makes storm, and the rest of us will try to hold onto some fragile connection with each other. This is a book for the rest of us." —Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
"In these flares of imagery and reportage, of introspection and observation, Nathan Deuel pulls off the considerable feat of looking both inward and outward at once. Friday Was the Bomb gives you an unforgettably and, at times, almost intolerably vivid sense of what age-old troubles like grief, politics, and love feel like at the fragile outset of the 21stcentury." — Benjamin Kunkel, author of Indecision and Utopia or Bust