Flying south for his father's funeral, the author recalls his family's experiences with alcoholism and his own impressions of the man's aggressive, drunken ways (view table of contents)

Product Description: Drama. Irish American Studies. A one-act play that originally ran off-broadway for five years, OUR FATHER is about sons lamenting the death of their father at an Irish wake in a New York City bar. "The script is intellectual, brilliant and irreverently caustic...read more

Product Description: In Michael Stephens's words, "the net these pieces fall into is that world of the Irish American, the mick, the monkey face, the potato picker, the bog man." More to the point, it is the Irish of Stephens's youth, of Brooklyn's working-poor slums, under whose influence he composed these essays...read more

The sixteen Coole children return to Brooklyn for their father's funeral and reminisce about the past

Relates the author's experiences while staying with his wife's family in South Korea, focusing on the power of this vital social unit

Product Description: One of America’s best young writers pre­sents a critical appreciation of voice in short fiction, using drama and poetry to frame his discussion. Discussing contemporary voice in American fiction, Stephens says: “There is a cadence which the writer steals from the actual, shaping this rhythm into the voice of fiction...read more

Product Description: Coole"" is a country, a madhouse, cloud-cuckooland. . . a family. An incredible, disgusting, glorious family of Long Island Irish psychotic drunken dreamers, natural communists and slobs. And this book, a love-hate song to them, becomes an upside-down accordion riff on the whole idea of family or tribe, ethnic and American...read more