Join lauded author Michael Nye for the launch of his debut novel, All The Castles Burned (Turner Publishing, February 13), a compelling coming-of age-story that takes place in Ohio.
All The Castles Burned has been compared to The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Marlena by Julie Buntin, and Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash. When Owen Webb, the son of working-class parents, receives a scholarship to the prestigious Rockcastle Preparatory Academy, the mysterious and enigmatic Carson Bly, an upperclassman from a wealthy and powerful family, befriends him. Their friendship, deepened through a love of basketball, becomes an obsession for Owen who is desperate to avoid the growing trouble at home between his parents. When Owen's father is arrested for a shocking and unexpected crime, his family is torn apart, and Owen's anger and fear are carefully manipulated by Carson's mercurial and increasingly dangerous personality. Owen, who has fallen in love with Carson's beautiful but troubled sister, quickly finds himself caught up in a complex web of lies that threatens his once-promising future.
Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, an alum of The Ohio State University (BA in English Literature) and the University of Missouri-St. Louis (MFA in Creative Writing), Nye’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in American Literary Review, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Crab Orchard Review, Epoch, Kenyon Review, New South, Normal School, Sou'wester, and South Dakota Review, among many others. He is the author of the story collection Strategies Against Extinction (Queen's Ferry Press, 2012). His work has been a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in fiction and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Nye recently moved to Clintonville, OH from Washington D.C.
