PRESS

For anthologies press, see the pages for Tiny Nightmares, Tiny Crimes, and Gigantic Worlds.

The Body Scout Press

“Timeless and original…a wild ride, sad and funny, surreal and intelligent.”—The New York Times

“Fun, thoughtful, and strange…A refreshing and assuredly unique work.”—BOMB Magazine

“A spectacularly successful debut.”—Booklist

“The Body Scout is the kind of wild, inventive adventure that I’d been searching for. Lincoln Michel is a wildly talented author and this novel is something special indeed.” —Victor LaValle

“A fizzy and brilliant confabulation. I devoured it.”—Jonathan Lethem

“This novel is delightful in its brio and sharp as a tack in its inventiveness—and yet its greatest, most poignant gift is in asking: What does it mean to inhabit a body? A superb read.”―Esmé Weijun Wang

“Lincoln Michel has the restless brain of Philip K. Dick, the bloodshot eyes of David Cronenberg, the tongue of William Gibson, and a beating heart ripped straight from Raymond Chandler’s chest.”―Tony Tulathimutte

“Readers won’t need to be baseball fans to enjoy this gripping ride.”—Publishers Weekly

“Holy cats, I don’t even know where to start with this amazing book! …This is a wild, inventive sci-fi thriller with a lot of heart and a lot of humor, and it also addresses a lot of philosophical questions about cloning and body modification.”—Book Riot

Orbit announcement.

Publisher’s Weekly deals of the week (August 31st).

Upright Beasts Press

“Weird, darkly funny stories…Michel ably handles modes from lyrical to ironic.” —New York Times

“[Upright Beasts] reminded me of the absolute wonder great fiction creates”—Roxane Gay

“If you were taking the pulse of American short fiction circa now, you might begin with Lincoln Michel’s Upright Beasts” —BOMB Magazine

“Deadpan and life affirming, the stories in this genre-bending debut veer from an apartment complex for the suicidal to a ghostly artists’ colony to the innards of wild things.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

“Michel, one of the country’s most respected literary journalists, is also well known for his short stories that defy easy classification”—Men’s Journal

“The stories are full of monstrous surprises and eerie silences. But who is the real beast? Michel quietly, but unequivocally, leads readers to the answer as he navigates weird tragicomedy of daily life. With zombies.”—Vanity Fair

“Stories [that] are strikingly assured in their strange, sublime originality…a megadose of bonafide classics”—Fiction Advocate

“Lincoln Michel…stakes out his place in the contemporary fiction landscape. It’s a hip spot, an updated hometown where John Cheever, Karen Russell and maybe even Ben Marcus all live comfortably together in slightly surreal suburban sadness, striving for something a little better.”—Minnesota Star Tribune

“Some of the stories are remarkable . . . A strong debut.”—Kirkus

“Dark, surreal, and imaginative, Lincoln Michel’s short story collection Upright Beasts is full of surprises at every turn.” —Buzzfeed’s Best Fiction Books of 2015

“If you like Twin Peaks, you’ll love this book”—Huffington Post

“Sometimes hysterically funny and sometimes quietly disturbing, Michel’s visions will appeal to readers looking for a few hours of purposefully unorthodox but refreshingly creative entertainment.”—Booklist

“The world presented in Michel’s admirable debut collection is similar to our own, yet twisted just enough to feel strange. . . Michel frequently knocks his brief bursts of prose out of the park.”—Publishers Weekly

“Lincoln Michel has brought off a worthy debut in Upright Beasts, a rowdy klatch of stories with a number of winners.” —The Brooklyn Rail

Best Genre-Bending Stories —Brooklyn Magazine‘s Best of Brooklyn 2015

“The twenty-five stories in this vibrant, bold and often funny book are full of such confusions of time and place. Characters stumble around in the dark, seeking a sense of community, deciding to wrestle with or else secretly indulge their own most beastly instincts. There are stories within stories within stories, and grizzly bears swallowed by sharks that are then swallowed by sperm whales. Upright beasts don’t stay upright for long.” —Guernica

“Lincoln Michel’s short story collection Upright Beasts enthralls with its tales of the surreal and the absurd.”—Largehearted Boy

“Michel’s stories are often an uncanny combination of sinister and funny, tender and sad. Laura van den Berg calls them ‘mighty surrealist wonders, mordantly funny and fiercely intelligent,’ and many of them will soon be released together in Michel’s first story collection Upright Beasts.”—The Millions

“Some of these stories will ignite your imagination, while others will force you to retreat from the real world temporarily. . . For all of the elements in this collection that make this fiction, there is an absolutely stunning image of what it’s like to be human, to live life and allow it to slip away.”—Heavy Feather Review

“Lincoln Michel’s fiction defies genre in often-inventive ways. His first collection involves alien presences, mysterious schools, humans devoured by animals, and much more. If you like your short stories with a heady dose of the surreal and unpredictable, look no further.”—Volume 1 Brooklyn

“Lincoln Michel’s debut collection, Upright Beasts, has been highly anticipated and greatly praised, and for good reason: it’s a dark, dreamy spiral into a world mostly like ours, but a few degrees off, and this distance is more than compelling.” —The Rumpus

“To do this once in your life—write a killer short story—is a total miracle. But if you’re some kind deranged monster like Lincoln Michel, you can churn these puppies out in your sleep. And in Upright Beasts (his first collection) he mashes up every genre imaginable and packs his stories into a book that feels pregnant with other books.” —Tor

“Written with plentiful humor and imagination, Michel’s dark, surreal collection is a wry exploration of the strangeness of ordinary and extraordinary human experience, and the ways in which we are all truly upright beasts.” —Buzzfeed’s Best Literary Debuts of 2015

“No matter the story, subject, or section, Michel offers a consistently high quality of sentence.” – Green Mountains Review

“Upright Beasts is an immersive and original book, and Michel’s stories often have a “one more bite” quality. They’re swift, fun to read, and urge readers to compulsively turn the page….the collection surely marks the arrival of an exciting new voice.” —Full Stop

“I was delighted, and still am, at the fact that Michel is so aware of expectations and rules that he is able to break them with such aplomb, and without apology. Upright Beasts is a lovely, finally genreless, collection, and one that is sure to continue finding an eager audience.” – The Collagist

“In their omnivorous approach to genre and form, these twenty-four stories testify to literary fiction’s continued shift into the strange…. It is rare, and refreshing, to see such range in a collection. And Upright Beast’s best stories serve as a necessary reminder, amid frequent discussions about the death of literature, that in order for fiction to survive it must embrace its protean nature.” —Kenyon Review

“There is a bold, unpremeditated feel to Upright Beasts, a debut whose great strength is a changeability that keeps the pages turning as it veers from lucidity to madness and back again.” —Colorado Review

“Michel’s not the first to apply the surreal to the monotony of the suburbs ― if you’re a fan of David Lynch, you’ll probably like his stories, too ― but his ability to write a range of tones, from stark and allegorical to tender and humanizing, makes the book a standout.”—Huffington Post