Winner of the 2021 Monadnock Essay Collection Prize Whiskey Boys: And Other Meditations from the Abyss at the End of Youth is a lively collection of literary essays about bars, booze, and traveling the American West. The book follows the author from small-town Illinois to the West Coast after he abandons a legal career to pursue writing. Much of the narrative concerns growing up and what’s gained and lost with maturity, while considering the challenges of living as a writer in a culture that’s skeptical of the creative arts. Other threads include travel, wanderlust, the psychological effect of place, and mortality.
Phillip Hurst’s writing has appeared in publications such as The Missouri Review, River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, Reed Magazine, Cimarron Review, and The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. His book of narrative nonfiction, The Land of Ale and Gloom: Discovering the Pacific Northwest, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. A novel, Regent’s of Paris, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing. He lives in Oregon.
"Whiskey Boys is beautifully written, a joyous, heartbreaking, and in the end serious book. "
~Steve Harvey, judge, 2021 Monadnock Essay Collection Contest, and author of Folly Beach
"Warning: you will want to read these seventeen essays straight, as though they were shots lined up on the bar waiting to be slammed. But whatever your pace and tolerance, Whiskey Boys, like a fine bourbon, should be savored."
~Andrew Malan Milward, author of Jayhawker: On History, Home, and Basketball
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