Please join the MWPA and Belleflower Brewing as we celebrate the launch of Judson' Merrill’s debut novel PARANOID STORYTELLING.
Our body politic is not just figuratively ill--it's been poisoned. When writer Judson Merrill started researching the new field of cultural immunology because he believed it could diagnose the cause of America's dissolution, he didn’t realize the most prominent researcher in the field would vanish, and that the possible diagnosis would vanish with her. A novel that reads as narrative nonfiction, PARANOID STORYTELLING chronicles the explosive story of Merrill's travels across Europe as he pieces together a trail of research that uncovers a radical explanation for our collective sickness: Paranoia. Rogue information has infected the stories that bind our culture. But the closer Merrill gets to definitive proof, the more enemies he makes and the less certain he becomes that the truth will set us free. In fact, it might just make us sicker.
Judson Merrill's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Chicago Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Southampton Review, Unstuck, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and other publications. He has been an Artist in Residence at Millay Colony, Ox-Bow, Lighthouse Works, and Guild Hall. He has taught at Brooklyn College, the University of Southern Maine, and for a number of workshops and private clients.
Chelsea Conaboy is a writer and editor focused on health and science. Her work has been published by The New York Times, The Guardian, Mother Jones, Politico, The Boston Globe, WBUR, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and others. Her book, Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood (Holt 2022), has been called "a game-changer" and is set to be published in 20 languages. She is creative director of the media production company Strewn Wonder. She lives in South Portland with her husband, their two children, and her own changing parental brain.