Author Appearance: Richard Wirick

With a finesse that invigorates and then jars the reader, Wirick maneuvers between narratives of shimmering hallucinations and ecstatic mood-peaks. But Kicking In is not just another drug book. A gut punch to the notion that the drug war stems from society’s fringe element, Wirick shines a light on the ways presumably democratic governments use depressants and stimulants to keep selected segments of the population marginalized and disenfranchised. The result is a masterful collection—a vividly terrifying yet startlingly prosaic consideration of the varieties of drug users' experience with what Coleridge called “the milk of Paradise.”

About the author: Richard Wirick’s first book of linked stories, One Hundred Siberian Postcards, was released to wide acclaim in 2007. His other stories and articles have appeared in a number of publications, including The Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Fiction, Chicago Review, and PEN Quarterly. He lives in southern California.