Joe Meno

Over the course of five novels and two short-story collections, Joe Meno has embraced offbeat storylines without letting postmodern quirks define his writing. Meno’s three most recent books—Demons In The Spring, The Boy Detective Fails, and the current The Great Perhaps—have garnered multiple national and regional awards. Perhaps is set against a backdrop of the Iraq war, with a family stretched thin by its members’ odd desires: a scientist father on an Ahab-like quest for a prehistoric squid; his scientist wife who studies violent lab pigeons; and their two daughters struggling with no shortage of problems of their own. Perhaps also includes more of Meno’s convention-bucking elements: embedded drawings, transcripts of radio serials, and declassified government documents.

Updated 04/29/2010