Ernest Hemingway’s Lost Pickup Lines—published in Slackjaw

Posted by Caleb Coy on

“We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. If you give me your number.”

Hey readers. Ever wanted to read Ernest Hemingway’s lost pickup lines? Well now you can.

I just published the list in Slackjaw. Check it out here.

The Relevant Sting of John Grisham’s The Appeal—Book Review

Posted by Caleb Coy on

There’s good beach reading and there’s bad beach reading. I found a copy of John Grisham’s The Appeal at a beach condo this year and elected to read it, having never heard about it before. While Grisham’s legal thrillers aren’t the most literary around, you can always count on them to be well researched and executed. This is no less true of his sprawling 2008 novel.

Continue reading →

New Story in The Coachella Review

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Hey readers, do you like murder mysteries? Well, I was totally into them before they were big.

Here’s a murder mystery that’s so obscure you’ve probably never heard of it.

You should check out “It Was The Hipster Who Done It,” my latest short story appearing in The Coachella Review. I mean, come on, it’s the perfect place for such a story to appear.

You can find it here.

See if you can solve the mystery. Not that I wanna dragoon you into it.

Ozark is a Rural, Modern Gatsby

Posted by Caleb Coy on

I think the creators of the Netflix hit show Ozark borrowed from a famous hundred-year-old novel.

I realized this as I came to the last episode of Ozark. The story is sort of a rural, modern Gatsby tale. I mean, if you always understood Fitzgerald’s masterpiece to be about the American Dream and not just a love story.

Continue reading →

There’s An Empty Desk Today—a poem from my youth

Posted by Caleb Coy on

[The following is a poem I wrote in high school in reflection on the suicide of a classmate]


There’s an empty desk today
And yet the textbooks are still open
The chalk is still in motion
The class is still in session,
The space cannot be filled
For the presence is forgotten
A parent’s own begotten
A youth’s demise is rotten,
Was he more a ghost
In the present or the past
A living outcast
Life ceases way too fast,
The others shrug their shoulders
There goes another one
It cannot be undone
Bless the little son,
Sadness will fade slowly
Nothing will be the same way
The kids will always say
There’s an empty desk today.