Support for New Novel by Curtis Dawkins

About the project:

My name is Curtis Dawkins, author of the critically acclaimed short story collection The Graybar Hotel (Scribner 2017). I've written a new novel called Nixxville, and I am seeking $10,000 to hire the esteemed “book doctor” Zoe Rosenfeld to professionally review it before publishing.

About Nixxville:

Houdini claimed that if anyone could escape death, it would be him--death was just another chamber to escape, but he would always come back, possibly immortal. In a Texas prison's death row, Stanza Blu can move in and out of his cell seemingly at will. In the next cell over, his unnamed neighbor is enlisted to become Stanza's reluctant chronicler. Nixxville is an intermingling of two stories: one man intent on escaping his appointment with death, the other learning how to live before his scheduled end. The reluctant narrator becomes a writer without a name, simultaneously setting in ink Stanza's secretive existence, and the surrounding life, death, and haunting wait for the day when each has to settle their eternal debt.

This is a 400 page, darkly funny farrago, a touching and humanizing portrait of an unexpected artist. The novel is partly set outside Nixxville during Stanza Blu's strange origin story, circa 1970, Mattoon, IL. It is the story of a man intent on escaping everyone's natural destiny, while also becoming an account, and actual physical manifestation, of the power of art to overcome darkness.

Author Bio:

I am currently serving a natural life prison sentence, but I have always known that writing is my only way out. All profits that I receive from my books go to support my family.

Excerpt from Nixxville:

The Condemned Unit is not connected, does not physically touch, the remaining 95% of Nixxville Penitentiary, not even the adjoining roof and walls to the 14 cells. Or the floor: you step over about a one-inch gap between the end of B Unit and Da-Ro, as if the 95% wants to make the fact perfectly clear--it has no intention of touching this terminal one hundred foot add-on world.

When rain occasionally, rarely, falls in southern texas, as it does this day, some of us would generally bet shots of coffee on whether that inch-wide gap will fill with rainwater, and if it does will the flood start a slow creep down the wide hall toward the back door? And we'd usually bet on the number of the cell where the sleepy water would stop.

That cool and rainy day in mid-march 2012, no one is yet ready to place bets, after Ernie and Rico.

Harry in 4, opposite my cell of 11, keeps a sign leaning from the floor against the bars of his cell, bulbous letters in happy blue acrylic on white paper glued to a square of cardboard from the box the prison's toilet paper comes in: '(______) Days Since Anyone Here Has Died.' A 5 is stuck to the paper with one drop of Colgate because SEPK (Something Every Prisoner Knows): Only basic white toothpaste has adhesive properties.

Five days prior Rico and Ernie were driven together six hours to the Death House in Huntsville, where all Texas executions are carried out.

Select praise for The Graybar Hotel:

"Almost every one of the 14 short stories in the collection seems to have originated from something Dawkins experienced or witnessed in jail or prison, and almost every one reflects with devastating compassion on the guilt and regrets of the criminals inside ... [The Graybar Hotel is] well-written and worth reading for Dawkins' craft and insight, but it's also an occasion to consider an industry that has little to do with rehabilitation, and that makes it nearly impossible for its participants to recuperate their lives."

—Chicago Tribune

“Dawkins is a wickedly skilled storyteller . . . Despite its subject matter, The Graybar Hotel is ultimately uplifting . . . toughly courageous, unflinching, and unapologetic.”

—O, the Oprah Magazine

"[A] book that is remarkable for its modesty, realism and humanity ... Dawkins has a genius for bringing characters to life and making mundane situations compelling, if only because they feel so real ... [Dawkins] has produced a book that is not only moving and genuine, but genuinely important; one that, without resorting to shock tactics, powerfully conveys the perverse inhumanity of mass incarceration."

—The Guardian

"This short story collection explores the life of prisoners with both intoxicating and unparalleled insight and surprising humor."

—Time Out

"A well-turned and surprising addition to prison literature."

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Dawkins’s tales impress with the authenticity of real-life experience, and his prose is rich in metaphor and imagery ... His often wryly amusing observations about the routines of prison life make him a striking guide for navigating the terrain."

—Publishers Weekly

“The stories in The Graybar Hotel are astonishing, clever and true. It’s the best collection I’ve read in a long, long time.”

—Roddy Doyle, author of The Barrytown Trilogy and the Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha