Don't Mind Me

"Coughlan’s stories wake us into the half-sleep of the familiar unknown, a sense of being late for an appointed fate. A writer of prodigious gifts, Coughlan combines irony with elements of surrealism to create a distinctively mordant and troubling, and, for all that, not unhumorous vision of the world."

—Colum McCann



"In Don’t Mind Me, Brian Coughlan’s new story collection from Etruscan Press, narrators tell their straightforward, often calamitous, stories with great calm and control. But…there’s always an uneasy feeling that something’s coiled just beneath the surface. Like one of those fabric snakes compressed into a can labeled MIXED NUTS."

—Sara Pritchard, Help Wanted: Female



"Darkly humorous and absurdist, Don’t Mind Me entertains and enthralls throughout. Peculiar characters and situations populate these unexpected tales and with unique precision, Coughlan wittily reflects some of the disillusionment, disappointment and desperation of modern living."

—Elizabeth Reapy, Skin and Red Dirt



Brian Coughlan’s second collection of short stories, Don’t Mind Me, conjures surreal worlds and frequently hapless characters facing into a deluge of bizarre hurdles and catastrophes. By turns quirky and disquieting, with a dark, droll humor tempered with a humane perspective and insight throughout, these stories, intriguingly plotted and fiendishly envisaged, are consistently witty, surprising, and poignant in turn.


—Arnold Thomas Fanning, Mind On Fire