A strongman grapples with his shrinking body; a couple recalls the metamorphic stages of their love; a deck salesman makes a long-winded sales pitch; a magician guards a deadly secret. These are the lives that populate the stories of Dustin M. Hoffman—a vibrant, eccentric dream of America, one that deconstructs the blue-collar experience, and expands the possibilities of short fiction itself. Satirical and heartfelt, poignant and loopily funny, NO GOOD FOR DIGGING cements the arrival of a singular literary talent.
Dustin M. Hoffman is the author of the story collection One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist and winner of the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. He spent ten years painting houses in Michigan before getting his MFA from Bowling Green State University and his PhD from Western Michigan University. His stories have recently appeared in Baltimore Review, The Adroit Journal, Washington Square Review, Witness, and The Threepenny Review. He is an associate professor of creative writing at Winthrop University in South Carolina. You can visit his site here: dustinmhoffman.com.
no good for digging
"Hoffman’s collection is at once humorous, poetic, poignant and wistful, and an ardent love letter to the Midwest.” — Anne Valente, author of The Desert Sky Before Us
"Few writers working today care as deeply for their characters as Dustin M. Hoffman. These stories are deeply human, keen to the everyday wonders of romance, family, and work." —Matt Bell, author of A Tree or a Person or a Wall
"These stories are brutal, beautiful, and full of heart. Hoffman feels like a Sherwood Anderson for our time, a writer who not only understands our secret sadnesses and longings but who brings them to the surface with an unwavering sense of compassion." -Seth Fried, author of The Municipalists