Bradley Bazzle’s second story collection, In the Shadow of the Architect, is available for pre-order from the University of Wisconsin Press and will be published on September 15, 2026. If you live in Athens, he'll be at Rec Room Books on Monday, September 14, at 6pm. If you live in the DC area, he'll be at People's Book in Takoma Park on Saturday, September 26, at 6pm. If you live in DFW, he'll be at Interabang Books on Sunday, October 18th, at 4pm. And if you live in the Bay Area, he'll be in conversation with Maceo Montoya at Fireside Books & More in Redwood City on a November date TBD. In the meantime, you can hear an interview with Bradley about his book on WUGA. About the Book Coalescing around themes of family and belonging, the past’s influence on the present, and the ways we define ourselves, these stories show us people forced to grapple with who they are—and who they could become. A closeted teenager learns from the nude model in his life-drawing class what it might mean to be a gay man in Fort Worth. A lifestyle blogger looking to expand her influence hires a photographer whose work destabilizes her family. A boy finds friendship in the precocious daughter of a recently deceased architect whose fame and force of personality continue to dominate their lives. In Bradley Bazzle’s deft hands, these characters—on the cusp of change, willingly or not—discover truths about themselves, some of which they might regret learning.
Praise “Bazzle leads the reader on a treasure hunt of the secret corners, angles, scaffolding, and foundations that make a life a life. These stories reveal the imprints of the past on the present, as Bazzle’s always-searching characters excavate memories, longings, regrets, and wonder through the trajectory of their messy and fascinating lives.” — Joanna Luloff, author of The Beach at Galle Road: Stories from Sri Lanka
“I love these stories, though I have to confess that short fiction is my great love—especially when, like Bradley Bazzle’s stories, they are capacious yet stylistically fleet, when they ripple with tension from the first sentence or two, and wherein ghosts and memories and desires flit around like the shadows of birds. If Bazzle were an architect and these stories were buildings, you’d find yourself in one of those dream houses with endless rooms, some revealing glorious surprises, some with doors you wish you hadn’t opened, and some, you discover, you hadn’t really left.” — Reginald McKnight, author of The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas His first collection, Fathers of Cambodian Time-Travel Science, won the C&R Press Fiction Award and was published in 2020. It's available online from C&R Press and at independent bookstores like Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia. Reviews can be found at Flagpole, Phoebe and Library Journal. And an interview with Bradley can be found atThe Red & Black. About the Book In a desolate near future, an unemployed trucker gets paid to chauffeur a simulacrum of Benjamin Franklin on a speaking tour across the America. A lonely realtor takes in a long-lost uncle who claims to come from the future and blogs accordingly. And the translator aboard a Portuguese carrack must decide whether to follow his deranged captain, Ferdinand Magellan, or end his reign of terror by killing him. The stories in Fathers of Cambodian Time-Travel Science blend past, future and fantasy for a delightful, alchemical mixture of realism and complete bullshit.
Praise “Bradley Bazzle’s Fathers of Cambodian Time-Travel Science is an unforgettable collection of fever-dreams. These hilarious near-future episodes read as both prophecy of a time to come and a satire of our current moment. Bazzle’s gifts as a writer are tremendous: his stories delight and horrify—often simultaneously.” – Nick White, author of How to Survive a Summer
“Filled with time travelers, Ben Franklin peddlers, and deeply problematic milkmen, Bazzle has gathered a fantastic collection of absurdist tales, full of humor and heart, for the 21st Century.” – Alexander Weinstein, author of Children of the New World.
“Bradley Bazzle’s stories are fraught with mystery and strangeness—they will also make you laugh out loud. His prose is propulsive and his poetic attention to minutia and gesture brings his characters to life and makes his richly imagined worlds feel wholly familiar. Comparisons to other masters of comic humanism are inevitable—George Saunders and Kurt Vonnegut come to mind—but Bazzle’s voice is unlike any I’ve ever read.” – Maceo Montoya, author of The Deportation of Wopper Barraza
“Bazzle pushes the unexpected, striving for something new and unique, reaching for innovation within the guts of his fiction… Bazzle writes characters that are both in awe of their world and perplexed by it, a combination that leads to eccentricity in the best or insanity in the worst, but always, Bazzle takes full advantage of that paradigm.” – Phoebe “Bazzle's stories reflect sort of the underbelly of our modern world…There’s a lot of humor, too… from the garishness and weird juxtapositions that confront somebody trying to make sense of it all.” — Flagpole Magazine “The stories here are offbeat and dark, skewing either horror (“The Milkman,” “The Mask of Cajolo,” “Magellan”) or postapocalyptic dystopian (“The Franklin Thesis”). Readers with a penchant for the weird and feverish will enjoy…” — Library Journal
Bradley Bazzle’s first novel, Trash Mountain, won the Red Hen Press Fiction Award, judged by Steve Almond, and was published in 2018. It’s available online from Powell’s and at independent bookstores like Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia. Reviews can be found at Flagpole, Full Stop, Kirkus, Library Journal, and the Center for Literary Publishing. And an interview of Bradley by the poet Ryan Teitman can be found at Tin House. About the Book Ben Shippers doesn’t have much use for school, friends, or any members of his family except his smartass sister, but he has a secret passion: Trash Mountain, the central feature of the noxious landfill next to his house. After a botched attempt to destroy Trash Mountain with a homemade firebomb, Ben begins a years-long infiltration that finds him dropping out of school to work alongside homeless trash-pickers and then interning at the very place he meant to destroy. Ben’s boss there, a charismatic would-be titan of sanitation, forces Ben to choose between providing for his family and sticking to his terroristic principles. With dark humor, Trash Mountain reflects on life in small southern cities in decline, and on the search for meaning among young people without adult examples.
Praise "Imagine Holden Caulfield growing up in a small Southern city, in the shadow of a toxic Everest - that’s the small miracle Bradley Bazzle conjures in Trash Mountain. It’s a debut novel of the most astonishing sort, one that appears to have sprung fully formed from the capacious mind of its creator. Ben Shippers is a hero of humble means and epic proportions, a young man torn between the outsized idealism of childhood and the cruel compromises of adulthood. The story he tells us is sad, funny, beautiful, and thrilling. I read the thing in one long, greedy gulp, and did so with my heart ablaze." – Steve Almond, author of Candyfreak and co-host of the New York Times podcast "Dear Sugars" with Cheryl Strayed
“Trash Mountain invites a nuanced conversation about the demonization of the “other” which can (and does) arise out of economic disenfranchisement. Bazzle is not out to apologize for Trump’s America; in telling the story of Ben Shippers – this bright, curious and sometimes naïve observer – he is walking us through an awful landscape in order to show us the way out.” – Full Stop
"This is a fine, fun, highly original book. Even though its author is from around here, it’s not an Athens book in subject matter. Rather, it is universal in its reach into the human heart and in its effort to find treasure amid the trash." – Pete McCommons, Publisher and Editor of Flagpole Magazine
"Bradley Bazzle is as funny as any novelist writing today. In this vivid coming-of-age romp about a noble arsonist, small-town grifters, and high school satanists, Bazzle picks through the rubble of our rotting civilization to reveal eternal truths about honor and shame. Trash Mountain is a mournful, bonkers portrait of a society made of trash." – Nathaniel Rich, author of King Zeno and Odds Against Tomorrow
"In Trash Mountain, Bradley Bazzle has created a perfect protagonist in Ben Shippers: peculiar yet endearing, curiouser than a cat, and ready to take on the (trashy) challenges his young life throws at him. The novel is funny and engaging, and Bradley's concise and vivid prose guides us masterfully to its insightful conclusion. What a fine debut!" – Samrat Upadhyay, author of Arresting God in Kathmandu
