Hurry Please I Want to Know

"Paul Griner''s Hurry Please I Want to Know takes the reader on a sweeping tour of America—from Iraqi soldiers to prison telemarketers, from famous cartoonists to bone procurers, from missing persons to the resurrected dead—the real, the surreal, and everything in-between. Griner seems to know everybody''s secrets, and this astonishing collection sets out to reveal them."—Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply and Stay Awake

"Paul Griner finds surprising and inventive ways to write about a wide range of sometimes uncomfortable—but always interesting—situations. The writing is careful, precise, shocking—stylistically brilliant. The stories are sometimes surreal, but convincing all the same. They take your breath away!"—Bobbie Ann Mason, author of The Girl in the Blue Beret and In Country

A stylized and otherworldly short story collection filled with sidelined characters placed at center stage. A low-ranking soldier is forced to milk a cow within enemy range. A cartoonist''s daughter waits each morning to see how her father''s mood dictates how he will draw her face. Grieving siblings wait to inherit one of their father''s physical features after his death.

Paul Griner''s first book, the story collection Follow Me, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. His next two books, the novels Collectors and The German Woman, have been published in half a dozen languages. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Playboy, One Story, Tin House, Narrative, and Zoetrope, among others. He teaches at the University of Louisville.