Description His fabulist inventions, biblical retellings, lyrical improvisations, and contemporary mini tales brilliantly depict the deep sorrows and absurd tragedies of these dark times. In Ashes in Paradise, a monster who looks like everyone else says to a monster hunter, “If you believe in monsters, perhaps you are a monster.” The cops shoot a boy so many times that he vanishes, and “All they can see are the holes.” A married couple purchases a tube of orgasms from Amazon only to watch the orgasms turn into bubbles popping above them. And a woman gives birth to herself and tells her husband she needs “a break and some new clothes.” Surreal and darkly humorous, the prose poems and stories in this collection glow with the intensity of heaven—and hell. Jeff Friedman is the author of ten collections of poetry and prose, including Ashes in Paradise (Madhat Press, 2023), The Marksman (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020), and Floating Tales (Plume Editions/Madhat Press, 2017. His poems, mini stories and translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New Republic, New England Review, Flash Fiction Funny, Flash Nonfiction Funny, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, and Best Microfiction 2021, 2022 and 2023. Cowritten by Meg Pokrass and Friedman, House of Grana Padano, a collection of fabulist microfiction, was published by Pelekinesis Press in 2022, He has also cowritten and published two books of translations, Memorials (with Dzvinia Orlowsky) and Two Gardens (with Nati Zohar). He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, two individual artist grants from the New Hampshire Arts Council, and numerous other awards. Friedman is married to the painter Colleen Randall, and they live with their dog Ruby, a mini Aussie, in West Lebanon, New Hampshire.