Poet, illustrator, and Creative Writing alumnus Zachary Schomburg's first novel was published this year by Featherproof Press and hits stores on September 26. The novel, a fabulist work of fiction entitled Mammother, is full of the same tender humor and surrealism that characterizes his poetry. On Friday, August 31, he will be returning to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and reading from his work at 6:00 pm in Bailey Library.
Schomburg is the author of four books of poetry: The Man Suit (2007), one of the New York Public Library’s 25 Books to Remember for 2007; Scary, No Scary (2009); Fjords Vol. I (2012); and The Book of Joshua (2014). He is also the founder of Octopus Books, a small poetry press that has operated out of Portland, OR for over a decade. There, he leads a team of editors and designers (including fellow alumnus Jeff Alessandrelli) committed to building a catalog of contemporary poetry.
In Mammother, the people of Pie Time are suffering from God’s Finger, a mysterious plague that leaves some thing inside a death hole in each victim's chest. Mano Medium, a grief-stricken young cigarette-factory worker in love, quits the factory to work double-time as Pie Time’s replacement barber and butcher and holds the things found in the holes of the newly dead. However, as more people die, the bigger Mano becomes. With a large cast of characters, each struggling with their own tangled relationships to death, money, and love, Mammother is a fabulist tale of holding on and letting go in a rapidly growing world.
