Regret
by Ryan Spooner
"Spooner navigates the landscape of boyhood and genderization, domesticity and class relations, slowly turning the mirror onto his audience, asking them to consider societal norms without overt authorial direction. He writes, "I was this boy. I considered the bravado, the gestalt of shit-talk part of the male bonding experience, grander than the momentary sting of any one phrase. Though, maybe that grandeur was a delusion on my part."
- Kelly Forsythe in Huffington Post
"Through the triptych form and a mash up of themes, Spooner attempts to pull back skin—back to dissect himself. And he invites the reader to look in, to see his body, the ecology of his organs; beating, pulsing and working together. Here, gender, performance, class, expectations, anger, desire, gaze, and regret all work at once, together, to form a dynamic culmination of a well-realized self."
- Kyle Butler in Ghost Proposal
"Regret by Ryan Spooner is a standout debut collection of essays, if you could so easily box them in a genre; for they have the lyricism of poetry, the brutal introspection of the best creative nonfiction, and the razor sharp thinking of criticism."
2014 | 96 pp