Only Ride

Megan Volpert is a poet and critic from Chicago who has settled in Decatur, GA, with her wife, Mindy. Volpert holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University, and is a high school English teacher as well as a reviewer for Audible. She is the author of ONLY RIDE (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014), THIS ASSIGNMENT IS SO GAY (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013), SONICS IN WARHOLIA (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2011), THE DESENSE OF NONFENSE (BlazeVOX [books], 2008), FACE BLINDNESS (BlazeVOX [books], 2007), and Domestic Transmission (MetroMania Press, 2007). This self- proclaimed love child of Joan Jett and Roland Barthes has performed with a wide range of poets, from Christian Bok and Andrei Codrescu to Laura Mullen and Daphne Gottlieb. Volpert has been in competition at the National Poetry Slam, is a board member of Poetry Atlanta and is Co-Director of the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival with Collin Kelley. Rooted in confessionalism and surrealism, her work has a strong interest in the performative and is also influenced by second-generation New York School poetry. Volpert is a theory junky and cannot resist rock and roll. She drives a scooter.

If Denis Johnson had written Tuesdays with Morrie, it'd feel like Megan Volpert's book of prose poems. Clawing its way out through this minimalist checklist of suburban malaise is an emphatically optimistic approach to growing up. These tiny essays carefully detail how to avoid becoming one's parents, how to manage a body addled by disease, and how to keep having the best possible time in life. After all: this is the only ride there is, and we can only ride it. Volpert's is a story of Springsteenian proportions, a gentleman's guide to rebellion complete with iron horses and the church of rock & roll.