Fiction reader and rising MFA program assistant director Christopher Arnold pointed me to this review in the NY Times. Donald Ray Pollack's "Knockemstiff" is a collection of linked stories about Knockemstiff, Ohio, a real town south of Columbus, and has "a concentrated focus on the lonely, the depraved, the neglected." The reviewer compares Pollack, who spent thirty years working in a paper mill before attending Ohio State's MFA program, to Pat Conroy (for the bad fathers), Harry Crews (for the gritty characters), and Chuck Palahniuk (for the attitude).