Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Today our guest is Josh Barkan author of Mexico:Stories, published by Hogarth just last week.

Josh teaches at NYU and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Hollings University.

He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. His first published work was Before Hiroshima and his next work was the novel Blind Speed.

Much of Josh’s work is informed by the place he lives and he has traveled a lot.

Mexico is a collection of twelve short stories that deal exclusively with Mexico, and for reasons will delve into, also exclusively deal with violence in Mexico.

Each of the stories contains an element of unnecessary human cruelly, but usually couple with and counterpointed by, and equal element of humor or human compassion or redemption.

It’s hart to decide whether a thorough reading of this book would encourage you to take your next vacation in Mexico or to avoid the country like the plague for the rest of your life.

Because of this election cycle, the stories are somewhat polarizing because of what our new and moronic President has chosen to do with Mexico in his thoughts (such as they are) his words, and his actions.

So it will be interesting to get Josh’s take on all of these issues.