Praise for Elegant Punk

“Just as the title Elegant Punk promises, this is a collection full of contrasts, surprises, and strange revelations. Embedded in the gritty realism, there is poetry of the highest order, and grace is splashed all over the commonplace. High passion, silliness, cosmic shifts, and acute psychological insights are rendered up in Darlin’ Neal’s prose so seamlessly and intensely she makes it look easy. You won’t forget these characters, and there’s not a story here you won’t want to finish after you’ve read its first sentence.” 

  — Laura Kasischke, author of The Raising: A Novel

“Darlin' Neal's stories mostly come to us in pieces—shards and splinters: people angry, dispossessed, struggling in the badlands and swampy climes at the margins of an America gone soulless and mean. Yet hers is a prose both lyrical and smart, no small triumph given what's galvanized her attention. Do yourself a favor: You'll be better off for having these tales between your ears.”

  — Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once: New and Selected Stories

“If Raymond Carver had lived to write flash fiction, he might have written something a lot like Elegant Punk. Neal's stories are little starbursts of ferocity and heartache. Just when you think you have to look away, they make you laugh a bit, make you cock your head with intrigue, and draw you right back in. Taken together, these tales, like much of Carver's work, convince the reader there's no amount of punishment that the human spirit, plucky thing, cannot withstand. 

  — Ron Currie author of Everything Matters!: A Novel

About the Author

DARLIN’ NEAL is a native Mississippian who spent her childhood traveling New Mexico and attending 13 different grade schools. After completing degrees in Psychology, Journalism and English at New Mexico State, she left Las Cruces and headed for Tucson. Upon finishing her MFA at the University of Arizona, she returned to Mississippi in search of her roots. In 2001 she completed a PhD at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers.

   Among her awards are a fiction fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a Henfield Transatlantic Award, New Mexico State University’s Frank Waters Fiction Fellowship, and the Joan Johnson Award from the Center for Writers. Her work has appeared in The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Puerto del Sol, Smokelong Quarterly, Eleven Eleven, The Rio Grande Review, and dozens of other magazines. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous anthologies including the Best of The Web 2009 and Online Writing: The Best of The First Ten Years. She holds an assistant professorship in the MFA program at The University of Central Florida. 

   In the past, she taught writing at The University of Arizona, The University of Southern Mississippi, Ole Miss, James Madison University, Clemson, Mississippi Valley State, at Half Moon Bay, and in Holly Springs and Grenada, Mississippi, the last two as a writer in residence for the Mississippi Arts Commission and NEA’s All Write program for literacy, a program begun by the late poet Aleda Shirley. 

   She lives in Orlando and Jensen Beach, Florida with a calico named Maggie, her guy and a dog named Catfish.

Other Books by this Author