Chris Dennis holds an MFA in Fiction from Washington University in St. Louis, where he also received a postgraduate fellowship. His work has appeared in Granta, West Branch, and New Stories from the Midwest.
Praise for Here Is What You Do Chris Dennis has talent to burn and this book is a roaring bonfire. Here is an audacious, chaotic, indelible world of schemers, dreamers, grievers, and survivors--all possessed by that feral clarity that comes when you're about to take your last last chance. So here is what you do with Here Is What You Do take it home and let it drive 'a hot blade into the fat heart' of your boredom, your bookshelf, your life. --Justin Taylor, author of The Gospel of Anarchy and Flings Here Is What You Do is more than just a tremendous debut; it's a case study in ventriloquism. Staggering at the sentence level, Dennis's dark and disparate voices--subversive, brutal, tender, and funny--are so vivid and perfectly rendered they seeped into my dreams. --Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light In weathered prose and rusted experience that echo, humbly, the final stories of Denis Johnson, Here Is What You Do offers its readers a painful gift: it's always through love and the never-ending wish for it that we allow our bodies and selves to be policed, sometimes beyond repair. These stories will never leave you. --Patrick Nathan, author of Some Hell Raw, observant, distressing--to read Chris Dennis's Here Is What You Do is to walk through a bizarre museum where each diorama features subjects stripped down to their nerve endings. An unforgettable debut. --Daniel Magariel, author of One of the Boys Unquestionably artful. --Booklist