Hi.


I am author of the novel Walls (2014) and the story collection A Very Small Forest Fire (2018). You can read reviews or excerpts in Vice, Vogue, Canton RepositoryThe FanzinePeach MagHobart and more.





I teach composition and humanities. I'm a union member. Some of my public writing on schools and labor can be found at New PoliticsJacobin, New York Daily Newsand The Chief Leader

This used to be a blog, but now it is just links to things. You can follow my social media if you can find them





Here are my books:



A VERY SMALL FOREST FIRE (stories, 2018)
Buy a signed copy now directly from the author (me)
Email me at andrewworthington87 [at] gmail [dot] com  




reviews/coverage: Be About It, Beach Sloth, Maudlin House, Newfound Press, Peach Mag, Hobart, Barzakh, AmazonGoodreads


From the publisher:

"The twelve pieces in A Very Small Forest Fire demonstrate the stylistic diversity of Worthington's prose and depict the anxieties and conflicts of contemporary capitalism, the timeless depths of individual despair, the everyday disasters that we often forget, and the general societal obsession with artifice and entertainment. Worthington takes the reader into worlds that are bizarre and realistic, and both at the same time; we enter the fearful future of mass revolts and repressions across America, the surreal and symbolic journeys of heroes and antiheroes, and the landscapes of postindustrial wastelands of Middle America. We see the greatest amusement park ever, a new American civil war, an abnormal adult-size baby, a college hiring committee, a high school reunion, and the newest advancements in genetically simulated reincarnation. We see our current world, our past, our future, our dreams."

Additional commentary: 


"This is just a note to say I finished your book last night and I think it's terrific." 

-Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket


"Equal parts weird and profound and disturbing and funny, I really wish I had written A Very Small Forest Fire. These stories by Andrew Duncan Worthington show us families at their best and worst, when a son deals with his drug-addled history, or when another son disappears in a dystopic future, even through the strange straining of staying with your parents when you're an adult, when you smoke and you know that they don't like it. The stories in this book are wildly inventive, and they are always at heart about us, humans seeking out their lives in sadness and triumph." 


-Jamie Iredell, author of THE BOOK OF FREAKS






WALLS (novel, 2014)

Buy now: grab a copy on Amazon.



















reviews/coverage: Vogue, Vice, HTMLGiant, Beach SlothPhiladelphia Review of Books, Banango Lit, Canton Repository, The FanzineShabby Doll House, I Am Alt LitGoodreads



blurbs:
This is the debut of a major new talent. Straightforwardly brilliant writing. This book is so honest, so American, so true to what it is like to be young in America today. At moments, Worthington reminds me of Fitzgerald, at other times of Salinger, and then, at other times, of Beckett. One more big name: If Knut Hamsun were a young American writing Hunger today, this is the book he would write. The subjectivity of the contemporary experience of our crazy, drug, text and PlayStation-fueled culture is perfectly described. If Worthington can continue to write as well as he does in this novel, he will be one of the greats of the start of the twenty-first century. 

-Clancy Martin, author of HOW TO SELL


What we like about his writing is that it feels honest. He doesn't ham it up, or try to capitalize on his idiosyncrasies. He also has some weird affects that would have been beaten out of him in a creative writing class, or by a New York City book editor, if he'd been in contact with one. He uses big words and is occasionally unguarded. In short, he's a natural writer, telling a story because he has to--he's not somebody reading the latest so-and-so and seeing a reflection of his own life, and then copying the so-and-so's shape.


-Vice



Filled with things that make young life in the 21st century weird, like home-from-college trips to Applebee's with friends who never left your hometown, Worthington's debut novel Walls feels like a modern response to the original YA book, The Catcher in the Rye. Published with the support of alternative press Civil Coping Mechanisms, Worthington is part of a new group of writers, like Spencer Madsen and Mira Gonzalez, whose honest, youthful take on literature has flourished in the Internet age.


-Vogue



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