The Taxidermy of Short Fiction
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If You Need Me I’ll Be Over There
by Dave Madden
Indiana. 188 pages, $16.

“‘IT’S COOL you’re gay, man,’ Nathan said. ‘Sucks you have to come out in Lincoln, Nebraska.’” Thus goes the bar talk in Dave Madden’s eye-catching essay of a few years back, “Meme 12.” With his slim but powerful short story collection, If You Need Me I’ll Be Over There, Madden expands upon this theme, the geography of coming out, along with numerous other territories of family life and marriage, both gay and straight.

Madden, in his late thirties, holds a doctorate in creative writing and teaches at the University of San Francisco. His work to date has been nonfiction, and it has won critical acclaim.