Dust Short Stories. This item is unavailable.Dust Short Stories

In this debut collection, Amy Dupcak dives headfirst into the rocky waters of youth. Exploring themes of alienation, longing, self-destruction and ultimately self-awareness, characters attempt to find meaning and form connections via sex, art, drugs, bathtubs, apple seeds, a cardboard dreamachine, and an aloe vera plant.

In “Ten Days,” a pothead bike messenger squats in the hip downtown apartment of a girl he doesn’t know, which begins a strange affair with her diary. During “The Test,” a backpacker couple visits The Church of Scientology as a rainy day experiment, which ends up testing more than they’d anticipated.

“May Day” takes place in a Staten Island backyard, where eccentric outcasts perform an ancient ceremony. The Batman-loving tween of “Anything to Save Her” attempts to rescue his sister from a ‘dangerous’ boyfriend, while the shy child of “In Limbo” is kidnapped by an artistic loner.

Sparkling with songs, secrets, subculture, and a touch of the surreal, the fourteen stories in Dust shed light on the harsh realities of growing up and making decisions in our modern world.

Amy Dupcak has published fiction and creative nonfiction in Litro, Fringe, Sonora Review, Hypertext, Phoebe, Chicago Literati, Runaway Parade, Broken Pencil, The Dirty Napkin, Slush Pile, and other publications. She earned her MFA in Fiction from the New School and teaches creative writing workshops to adolescents and teens at Writopia Lab. Dust is her first book.