Books
Meet Hammerhead Hirsch, a charismatic middle-aged boho known in the 60s as “The Pugilist Poet” for his Golden Gloves boxing crown and Beat poetry chops. Thirty years later Head has become a first-time father, and his joy is immense—until the mom bolts. Can Head last fifteen rounds as a single dad with a paltry income, scanty prospects, biting demons, and a “ball-and-chain” kid? The tale is told by a worshipful youth who accompanies Head and his son every step of the way on a ten-year-long, three-way journey of struggles, missteps, love, and growth.
Learn more about the book on its dedicated page on this site.
Buy the paperback, ebook, or audiobook edition of The Pugilist Poets of Venice.
Family happiness—an elusive ideal. This 174-page story collection from Big Table Publishing explores the struggle to achieve and maintain happiness within family. Some stories are dark, some funny, and some both, but most serve a healthy helping of hope and redemption.
Available on Amazon in paperback or for Kindle, and on Barnes & Noble.
Fine authors say …
Family Happiness, the impressive follow-up to 2014’s sublime The Roadkill Collection, proves once again that Jon Sindell can craft entire universes out of thin air. This time, Sindell aims his lens at the American family, as he explores the knotty relationships within. With one ear to the streets and the other listening for a heartbeat in the spaces between parent and child, husband and wife, this collection of American domestics is as heartbreaking as it is witty. The next time someone suggests the short story is a dying form, give them Family Happiness to read. A revival awaits.
~ Christopher Bundy, Baby, You’re a Rich Man
Themes of family link the narratives, but what really knits them is the voice, with its appealing qualities of self-deflating humor, authenticity, vulnerability, imagination, and intelligence. Readers will appreciate Sindell’s poet’s ear and ambitious style that pulls off technical challenges like alternating perspectives or presenting from one perspective both sides of a two-person dialogue. But for his characters, they’ll feel a sympathy and delight that will keep them turning the page.
~ Rebecca Foust, author of Paradise Drive, winner of the 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry
“These wonderful stories by Jon Sindell show us that family happiness isn’t so much illusive, as mismanaged. These stories are funny and sad and brave and hopeful. They’re portraits of everything that goes on in families, whole lives managed realistically and deftly. The characters are more than their personal histories, more than ourselves reflected, but contain whole eras, cultural moods and national quirks in their speech, their manners, their ways—our times, our constituted selves that add special poignancy in the passing parade of botched and beautiful lives. You will be moved.”
~ Stephen D. Gutierrez, winner of the American Book Award and author of The Mexican Man in His Backyard, Stories & Essays
Available on Amazon in paperback or for Kindle.
The Roadkill Collection, from Big Table Publishing. 49 flash fictions that leave burning rubber all over the road.
This debut collection heralds Jon Sindell’s mastery of the flash fiction genre. His deft employment of satire and irony, remarkable for their choreographed brevity and bite, frequently provoke a compelling yet unwritten storyline that wit is accustomed to veiling. ~ Dennis Must, The World’s Smallest Bible
With charity, grace, and a biting sense of humor, Sindell realizes the promise inherent in flash fiction—that humanity can be effectively explored in an instant. These postcards from the underdogs and outcasts of the world chronicle our universal need for connection, to find a place in the world among others, to love and be loved. ~ Chris Bundy, Baby, You’re a Rich Man
The flash stories in this stellar collection, rich in voice and tone, resonate long after they are read. Jon Sindell has put together a book of sharp and original shorts. One that shows how a concise story, when nuanced and well-crafted, can be told in a very big way. ~ Robert Scotellaro, Measuring the Distance
Jon Sindell’s The Roadkill Collection centers on the chaos and confusion of life, and its various cruelties. The work left me thinking about what we can and can’t control in others, ourselves, and our world. ~ Ethel Rohan, Goodnight Nobody
The Mighty Roman Baseball Blast. A novel about baseball and the modern American man.
