Teaching Notes for Surviving in Drought:
Use in the classroom to discuss: segmented narratives; reverse chronology; quick character development; characters who are unrealistic/surreal yet believable/knowable; stories less-driven by (traditional) plot; poetic/economical language; brevity; final sentences/lines; fiction/prose poetry; individual humans and the environment; hopeful dystopia; climate change; gender (roles); people shoved into family or gender situations that don't fit; masculinity; sexual orientation; social conversations about gender, orientation, and marriage; love in times of change; humor; imagination; (sur)realism; "America"; cake mix.

Pairs well with Prehistoric, Mother Tongues, Suburban Folktales (forthcoming).

Surviving In Drought by Brad Aaron Modlin

$10.00

39 pages. Perfect-bound.

Fresh water ebbs in the flat lands of the Midwestern near-future, giving way to dried-out clouds and a rolled flood of saltwater seas. What is a house in the face of scarcity and sea rise? How can it contain every love token—every apron, goosefeather, mason jar of earth—and all the hopes they represent? How can mothers and fathers, husbands and wives keep alive their domestic chemistries? Winner of the Cupboard Pamphlet’s Sixth Ever Annual Contest, Brad Aaron Modlin’s Surviving in Drought suggests that even when all is lost to a rising tide, we will still argue in our underwater kitchens, shaking clean our stirring spoons.
Brad Aaron Modlin is the author of the book Everyone at This Party Has Two Names, which won the Cowles Poetry Prize. His fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Threadcount, The Pinch, DIAGRAM, and others. He earned his MFA from Bowling Green State University and his PhD from Ohio University. He teaches creative writing and gets chalk all over himself.
Of Modlin’s prose, Judge Alexandra Kleeman writes, “With elements of Donald Barthelme's intelligent absurdity and Stanley Crawford's surreal intimacies, Surviving in Drought is an elegant investigation of the secret language hidden within domesticity. In these stunning pages, order topples over to reveal deep strangeness, precision gives way to aporia, and the end of the world comes with more tenderness than anyone might expect. An unusual and striking book that you will devour whole.”

"Brad Aaron Modlin is a magician of fiction. Every sentence in Surviving in Drought flings a new flash of wonder. He transforms domestic mundanity into surreal miracles, impossibly won. The happy family life modeled from sitcoms is flipped, submerged, cast in a sea of glittering bubbles. But Modlin’s drowning world isn’t only doom and apocalypse. There is indeed survival and perhaps rebirth, as he reacquaints us with a world we’ve always known for the lie it is and the truth it can become. This gorgeously ornate book of stories offers hope after the world is drowned. Modlin promises us humor, awe, kindness, and so much love lost and gained. This book will teach you how to breathe underwater."

-Dustin M. Hoffman, author of One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist

"In Surviving the Drought, Brad Aaron Modlin capsizes our kitchens with floods, our aprons with stars, shaking up every expectation of our modern lives with the unexpected and surreal. Through humor and striking prose, Modlin offers readers a refreshingly disorienting view of the world. I loved every word of this dense, gorgeous collection."

-Anne Valente, author of Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

Surviving In Drought by Brad Aaron Modlin

Volume Twenty-Eight

About the Author

Praise for Surviving in Drought