Erasure: A Novel

Written by Percival Everett

Narrated by Sean Crisden

Percival Everett's blistering satire about race and publishing, now as the Oscar-nominated film, American Fiction, directed by Cord Jefferson and starring Jeffrey Wright and Tracee Ellis Ross.



Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies—his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer's, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father's suicide seven years before.



In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins's bestseller. He doesn't intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is—under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh—and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Dec 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350860405

Percival Everett

Percival Everett is the author of over thirty books, including Telephone, Dr No, The Trees, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and won the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, and Erasure, which was adapted into the major Oscar-winning film American Fiction. He has received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. An instant New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller in hardback, James was a finalist for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Fiction, was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and was named the Winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Percival Everett lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for Erasure

[Ron Brewington · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I felt that I knew Van but in the end I'm not sure what Thelonious really felt. Perhaps the author wanted me to wonder. Great narration.

[Gretchen Grace Harrison · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A little hard to follow (for me) but the story brings to question the very core of being true to yourself—professionally and personally—-in a way that leaves you longing to look into the mirror of Monk’s self-revelatory evaluations just a little long. The author’s characters and plot weave their way into your very life for the time spent within their company. It’s an excellent book in every way—including ding the narrator whose voice it just doesn’t sublime.

[Kathleen Zimmerman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Read the book for the first time, around the time it came out, the audiobook enhances the story itself.

The book within the book is read by a male, then later - a female, a fine example of how, one sees a narrative, dependent upon who, delivers the narrative.

[Ibrahim Williams · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Truly amazing book! Great audio recording too! Fabulous! Love it!

[Fred · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Stunning. The saddest part of my spring was finishing this book.

[Mindy Clark · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Classic Percival Everett. Great characters and story, but the ending doesn’t tie all the loose ends up, which is what happens in real life.

[kyndra · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An awesome book! The story was amazingly told. The narrator did an awesome job!

[cutecandles2019 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely loved this book it is a great read! I love how Everett was able to write a book within a book and make me believe I was reading from two different authors.

[PMinoofar · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a brilliant, competent, clear and entertaining narration of the book. Like many, I was inspired to listen to this book after watching its movie adaptation, American Fiction. It is that rare case that the movie stands as a superb adaptation of a terrific book in both the ways in which it is faithful to the book and the ways in which it strays from it. The book, as is typical of the medium, is much more contemplative and deeper than the movie. This is a wonderful audio book, and non one will regret listening to it through.

[jscape2000 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fine satire, though the joke runs a little thin. I was wishing for a second big reveal to spend my expectation for the third act, but instead it chugged to its conclusion.

[browner56 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Percival Everett's Erasure tells the story of Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a brilliant but exasperated Black writer and academic whose literary works, steeped in complex classical narratives, are consistently overlooked by the mainstream. Monk’s frustration boils over as publishers reject his latest manuscript, deeming it "not Black enough." Meanwhile, a crudely stereotypical novel by a first-time author reaches the top of the bestseller lists and is lauded by critics for its authenticity. As Monk grapples with personal upheaval—his sister’s sudden death, his mother’s declining health, and his brother’s estrangement—he channels his exasperation into producing a biting parody of the “ghetto literature” genre, intending it as a scathing critique of the publishing industry's narrow expectations for Black writers. Under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, he writes My Pafology (later retitled Fuck to make sure people get the point), a deliberately hackneyed novel that becomes a literary sensation, forcing Monk to confront uncomfortable truths about his own intellectual elitism and the racial expectations imposed by both the publishing industry and society at large.

Erasure is a highly intelligent, fiercely satirical, and darkly funny indictment of the cultural forces that reduce Black experience into a collection of marketable clichés. Throughout the story, Everett’s prose is razor-sharp, teeming with wit and righteous anger, yet also layered with emotional subtlety and philosophical depth. The novel’s metafictional structure, including the full inclusion of My Pafology/Fuck in a clever book-within-a-book construction, demonstrates the author’s technical mastery and reinforces the book’s central message. Everett skewers not only the publishing industry’s commodification of Blackness but also the broader societal desire for reductive narratives, all while rendering Monk’s family relationships with genuine warmth and complexity. In fact, it is in the first part of the book where Monk’s connections to his siblings and his parents are established that the author’s compassionate voice really comes through. By contrast, the ending of the story felt quite rushed and a little unsatisfying, particularly given the painstaking buildup that preceded it. Nevertheless, I found this to be a thought-provoking and highly rewarding book to read and one that is very easy to recommend.

[kalliegrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the most real-feeling characters I've followed in a book despite having little in common. The stories within this are funny and excellent satire, while the main narrative is touching and grounded.

[brianinbuffalo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Everett casts a glaring spotlight on a dilemma many artistic people encounter. If “success” is defined by huge audiences, widespread public acclaim and wealth, is it worth compromising one’s principles and delivering a product that plays into society’s stereotypes and expectations?

“Erasure” was published in 2001 and inspired the 2023 Oscar-winning film “American Fiction.” It’s an engrossing story of an author who is tortured by the treatment of his works that are largely shunned for being too academic and not “stereotypically black enough.”

In a recent interview, Everett discussed the genesis of his book, noting that as a kid who visited bookstores, he would only encounter Black characters who were from the inner city (think “ghetto lit”) or the Antebellum south. “I was a middle-class Black kid. That was my family. My father was a doctor. My grandfather was a doctor. We didn’t exist in print or on screen.”

“Erasure” is thought-provoking and generally engaging. For my tastes, the middle section that veers into a lengthy parody the disgruntled author writes as a condemnation of poverty porn could have been streamlined. Having said that, the book is a brilliantly written satire.

[huntersun9 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I think I've ruined my attention span and ability to read literary fiction critically. I liked this book, but on a fairly superficial level, feeling like I missed some deeper meaning. The writing is great and I'm thinking of reading 'James'...
The narrator, Thelonius "Monk" Ellison is a disillusioned writer whose books generally don't sell well. He seethes as a work of fiction called "We's Lives in Da Ghetto" becomes a huge best-seller, seeing it as a stereotype-filled, poorly written depiction of the life of poor black people. He decides, under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, to write his own pop novel and to his and his agent's amazement, it takes the literary world by storm and even wins an award. The money he gains he can use to care for his dementia-stricken mother, but the lies he has to maintain eventually leave him feeling more isolated and depressed.

[jamesmikealhill · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoy the off kilter visions of Everett. It’s all a setup. You’ll get it in reflecting on the title.

[technodiabla · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this is audiobook format.

This novel is about a highly educated black novelist fed up with expectations that he write a "black" novel. Faced with his own family's tragedies and financial woes he finally writes what he sees as a parody of such a novel, but it ends up being lauded by critics and the public alike as raw truth. The film American Fiction is based on this novel (with a number of plot modifications.) I found the book to be intelligent, and hilariously satyrical, though the novel within the novel was quite gross, as intended. Even if you've seen the movie already I recommend reading this book as it has a different focus and mood.

[stahl2ricco · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“But those faces, washed with hate and fear, wanting so badly to control others, their potato eyes so vacant, their mouths near frothing.” - A description of abortion protesters in this book, a description of some voters in the presidential election last week.

Strange parody story within the story. Actually, for me, lots of strangeness within this book that I simply didn't understand. It's beautifully written, I just didn't connect with the academia and latin parts of the story. And I totally did not understand the ending. The quote below is kind of how reading this book made me feel:

“For all the aggravation a trout can cause, it cannot think and does not consider you. A trout is very much like truth; it does what it wants, what it has to.”

[bell7_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Thelonious "Monk" Ellison is an author of literary fiction whose works are often considered not "black" enough. When family circumstances bring him unexpectedly caring for his aging mother, he decides to pen an urban fiction title and ultimately publishes "My Pafology" under a pseudonym. But things begin to spin out of control when the novel - meant as a joke and a parody, and not something Monk is proud of in the least - becomes a best seller.

Erasure is a satire with a unique format, written as Monk's journal, in which he includes story ideas and the ten-chapter "My Pafology" as a whole. It skewers publishing for both dictating what stories authors of a particular genre can write, and which ones get celebrated and by whom. Monk is struggling to be a good son and brother as his mother's cognitive decline becomes worse and worse, and he ponders his own identity and feeling different than the person he was expected by society to be.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

College professor Thelonius “Monk” Ellison has written a string of experimental postmodern novels reworking themes from angling, woodworking and Greek drama, largely unread except by other professors who write experimental novels. His agent keeps urging him to “write something more Black,” but Monk comes from a family of doctors in Washington DC and can’t even play basketball.

Eventually, though, he gets so riled up by the success of a cheesy Black-suffering-novel that he is provoked into writing a savage parody of the kind of racist ghetto-fiction middle-class white readers expect from African-American writers, a dreadful and foul-mouthed first-person narrative that drags in every negative stereotype about self-destructive young Black men. Of course, when he gets his agent to send it off to a few publishers as a joke to see what will happen (under a nom-de-plume), they miss the point entirely and turn it into the next big bestseller. Monk needs the money to support his ageing mother, so the runaway success comes at a good moment for him, but it becomes increasingly hard to live with the artistic betrayal of pretending to be the ex-con novelist Stagg R Leigh, author of Fuck: a novel, a book that is being hailed on all sides for its “authenticity”.

The parodies, mercilessly sustained long beyond the point at which they would be merely funny, are brilliant and very telling, as are the bizarre interposed dialogues between Great Modernists, and there are some hilariously awful sex scenes, but this is also a tender and sensitive novel about families and identity and the pain of watching a parent being taken from you (and from themselves) by the cruel work of dementia.

[tytania-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book had me hooked in the first paragraph. I was sampling various "top books of the century" as per the NYT, and I had just sampled about four in a row where the narrator was a writer. One of my peeves. If the narrator isn't a writer, s/he's an artist, i.e. a thinly veiled writer. This book opens with, "I am writer of fiction. This admission pains me only at the thought of my story being found and read, as I have always been severely put off by any story which had as its main character a writer."

This book is very odd, as is its narrator. I'd call it 'experimental.' Enough to scare me at little at first. But it was so worth the ride. It's going to be the best novel I read this year, I can predict. But I'm afraid of its being too politically incorrect to recommend to a lot of the people I know.

"Now a major motion picture!" Which I definitely will not go see.

Main thread: Thelonious Ellison is a writer of abstruse mostly unread books. He is black but uninterested in the fact. He becomes incensed when an atrocious book of denigrating black stereotypes becomes a runaway best-seller and decides to write his own awful book of denigrating black stereotypes, making it a broad parody. But it's taken seriously and makes him millions.

Another thread: violent deaths of his father and sister, and slow loss of his mother to Alzheimer's. I can relate to the difficulties of parental decline, simultaneous genuine grief coupled with genuine selfish thoughts.

Thelonious would probably be called "on the spectrum" or "neurodivergent." Also "brilliant." The writing is all of the above and I adored it.

[novelcommentary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

drama.

My name is Thelonious Ellison. And I am a writer of fiction.

I haven't read Percival Everett before but kept seeing his name after the success of James and the best picture movie American Fiction. That movie, based on this novel, prompted my exploration. The novel, written in 2001, is immediately accessible and funny, written in the first person narrative of Thelonious Ellison, who goes by the name Monk. The author is confessing his sins to an audience who will find this after he dies. Monk is an esoteric writer, professor at Berkeley, youngest of three siblings who are both doctors and son to an aging mother. He’s also a fisherman and woodworker. The story explores each of these facets as the youngest sibling is called back home to Washington DC, to help navigate the future care of his mother, who suffers from Alzheimers. We get snippets of his childhood, his relationship with his father and his obvious intelligence. As a fiction writer he explores the retellings of various Greek mythologies and though they are recognized for their scholarship, they do not sell. His publisher insists the world is looking for a more realistic story of black experience. So when Monk dashes off a parody of a story, written under the name Stagg R Leigh, he is amazed when it becomes an award winning best seller. Things get complicated and amusing when the publishing world and movie industry want to meet this amazing new voice.
I enjoyed the novel and will look forward to seeing the movie and exploring his other works.

Lines:
I have dark brown skin, curly hair, a broad nose, some of my ancestors were slaves and I have been detained by pasty white policemen in New Hampshire, Arizona and Georgia and so the society in which I live tells me I am black; that is my race.

She was a tall, knock-kneed, rather shapeless-however-thin woman with a weak chin and a sharp wit, a sharp wit when men and sex weren’t involved at any rate. She zeroed in on male attention like a Rottweiler on a porkchop and it became all she could see.

Tamika Jones actually has two children. The little boy with her today is named Mystery.” “Mystery?” “That’s right. And her daughter’s name is Fantasy.” “Mystery and Fantasy.” “Named after their fathers. One was a mystery and the other a fantasy.”

There’s no virtue in living too long. Living shouldn’t become a habit.”

[yarb_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Brainy novel that's all about the slipperiness of identity (Alzheimers, closetedness, general fish-out-of-waterhood), self-identification vs attribution, the identity or otherwise of the author with his/her work, the double-edged nature of parody — how the parodist also wounds himself, and, can something be accidentally parodic? — but with its braininess (mostly) tethered to lived, emotional, experience. It ends with the author being subsumed into or consumed by his hideous, lurching, all-conquering creation, a tale as old as Frankenstein.

I was thinking, can a parody be any good if its parodic intent is universally missed? And not only that, but it's taken as a prime example of the thing it parodies? Is there a kind of circular continuum of parody, where a parody can be too good for its own good and "flip over" into or be consumed by its target? And, of more relevance now than when this was published, if you're rich and stupid enough (today's super-rich as parodied unsuccessfully in stuff like Triangle of Sadness), or just stupid enough (Monk's fellow prize judges) for parody to be beyond you, can you in fact be beyond parody? Doesn't parody depend on a shared understanding of art, and aren't we in danger of losing that?

As someone who dislikes the identification of author and work, of the author with the work, I sympathized with Monk Ellison. But you can't have it both ways. Write novels about fly fishing and carpentry if you like, indulge in poststructuralist tosspottery if you like, but don't expect to get rich doing so. Unhip, pretentious Monk is a realistically, endearingly awkward individual who feels guiltier than he ought to. Refreshing to read a satirical novel that is actually funny.

[vive_livre · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing novel.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thelonius ‘Monk’ Ellison is a writer. Unfortunately he is a writer of high-brow serious experimental fiction. Which, in America, means that, unless you see his author photo on the dust jacket, you will assume that he is white. Not that Monk really minds since he doesn’t think in those terms. However, when an educated middle-class female black writer gains acclaim and substantial remuneration for a so-called “ghetto” novel, Monk is envious. Well, not envious, really. He is dismissive of such a crass exploitation that gets mistaken for “truth”. Plus all the money. Okay, maybe he is a bit envious. But when he pens an equally phoney true story, under a pseudonym, his goal is merely to show up the literary establishment for the fools that they are. But the money… It’s both tempting and, given his mother’s need for immediate long term care, actually necessary. Surely he won’t have to perpetrate this charade for long.

There is a lot going on in this novel. The surface drama set in the world of literary fiction may be a kind of red herring. The real drama, I think, is the one taking place in Ellison’s family of achievers. His doctor brother and doctor sister were slighted by his doctor father who felt only Monk had something special. The father was a very curious and, it turns out, secretive person. Other characters move in and out of Monk’s sphere of influence. But increasingly even Monk begins to worry that there may be no centre to his sphere, no there there. Has he ended up erasing himself?

As with everything I’ve read by Percival Everett, this novel is easy to recommend.

[mahsdad · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Read this on audio. This was a very interesting book in both premise and writing style. The premise is that Thelonious Ellison, an African American Professor of English Literature and novelist, is struggling with his career, and his family (especially with his Mother, who is starting to succumb to dementia. He writes "literature" and can't get his books published anymore because he isn't "black enough". After a first time author writes a stereotypical urban novel and it gains wide success, he sort of snaps and writes what in his mind is a satirical response to her book, pretending to be a black convict writing about his experiences. He calls it My Pafology and after publishers climb all over themselves to get it, he renames it Fuck. And its still an unexpected/amazing (to him) runaway success. The interesting stylistic take is that its a book within a book. The middle part is the reading of My Pafology. Such an interesting wide shift in tone and dialog, as expected. A really good read. Its been made into a movie called American Fiction staring Jeffrey Wright.

[datrappert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There is so much going on here that not every plot thread seems to get the attention it deserves, but the overall effect is both hilarious and sad. The protagonist and narrator is an African-American author of what seem to be almost unreadable novels who, upset at the praise for a semi-literate best seller about ghetto life, writes his own book in response, then publishes it under another name. It's easy to guess what's going to end up happening, although I wish the book had just a few more pages at the end. The book he writes, which he insists be published as "Fuck" is included in its entirety, and it is hysterically funny in its excess of expletives and sordid tale of a teenager who has already fathered four babies by four women and isn't done yet. Besides that main thread, Everett also focuses on the relationships of the author with his aging mother, who is succumbing to Alzheimer's, her long-time live-in housekeeper, his deceased doctor father, his doctor sister--who is beset by pro-life demonstrators and death threats at her clinic in Washington, DC--and his brother, now a plastic surgeon in Arizona, who is going through a life crisis of his own. Oh yes, there are also secrets to discover, relationships to have and sever, and all sorts of satire about the literary world as the author is chose to serve on a prestigious panel to select the year's best book. Throughout, Everett intersperses conversations between noteworthy historical figures, some of which are pretty funny. All in all, this is a book unlike any other you've ever read in its weird combination of things. Almost as if the author didn't know if he'd get another chance and put all his ideas into this one book. But despite coming up short here and there (the thread about the sister, for instance, doesn't really get as much attention as it should), I'm glad Everett aimed high. (And who would want to miss the reality TV scene in the novel within the novel!) I will definitely check out more of his work.

I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator is superb. Audiobook narrators usually are, but this one is even more superb than that.

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel is crammed with ancillary literary ephemera that makes me feel dumb. My fault, not the author's. After the movie American Fiction, I had to read my first Everett writing, and it is clear that the filmmakers made a much softer story than the book tells. Thelonious Monk is a much unhappier person than Jeffrey Wright was scripted in the movie. And a much more learned and erudite man. And his family situation is even more painful - not sure why the film chose to avoid the real cause of sister Lisa's death. Brother Bill's character is also softened and expanded in the film. All of this because this is a hard, sad, hopeless novel, but brimming with incredibly creative flourishes. The most joyous parts are when various historical figures of artists, filmmakers, and writers join up for italicized rap battles - Oscar Wilde vs James Joyce, Mark Rothko vs Alain Renais, DW Griffith vs Richard Wright. The text also includes Stagg R. Leigh's novel My Pafology, a/k/a/ Fuck, and a deliberately miserable read, for dialect and contents. Summary: I know a bit more about this man, smartass and hardass.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This might be one of those books that cleverer than I am. Felt like there's a moral hiding in here, I'm just not sure what it is. Monk Ellison is a writer, not a commercially successful one. In frustration at the state of literature that seems to think that the only black voice is written in dialect, he writes such a book. It turns into a runaway success and Monk isn't exactly happy about that. He wants to point out the erroneous assumptions being made about the author and the book's contents, only that would reveal himself as the author. He;s dug himself into a hole and there's not obvious way out. Along side this, we deal with the family, a Dr father who is dead, doctor siblings having various degrees of success in their lives and mother with dementia. Monk is forced out of his academic comfort zone in two directions at once. I;m not sure he;ll ever be the same again.
I suspect that it's a telling critique of race in America, I'm just not sure what lesson I'm supposed to be reading into this. My take is that each person is an individual and that to expect any one voice to represent any group of people is superficial and lazy. Treat each person on their own merits and each book ditto.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set up your Thelonius Monk music and enjoy the many challenges here!

Still a question: why didn't he respond to the possible attack by the man he twice saw
- and likely had been already stalking her - following his sister?

A favorite quote: "It is incredible that a sentence is ever understood."

(Re: italics men - why didn't everyone leave Germany after their art was being burned?)

Oh Lord, not the entire Stagger Lee story in the middle of this really good book...I skimmed a lot.

Plot also falters a bit when there is no explanation from the father for leaving those letters
where his wife would likely read them She did not deserve this and there were other ways to handle
getting the information to his most loved son.

As well, the constant self-hate for FUCK feels overdone when that is the only way to
take care of his mother, his sister's debts, gifts to other nerving people - and what he needs for a decent life...
as the author of exhaustive books and beautiful woodworks.

Plot moves forward with wonderfully predictable humor, except for finally sleeping with Linda - geez.

(Spare the lovely lonely trout.)

[burritapal · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5
Three stars, but an extra half a star for the cleverness.
A satire of publishing houses, pop fiction readers, and white people, the protagonist is a writer whose books are too intellectually challenging for popular readership.
A black author, Juanita Mae Jenkins, writes a book that uses stereotypes of blacks in the ghetto As her fodder. her book becomes a runaway bestseller, and is sold for a fortune in movie rights. The protagonist is so nauseated by this, and when his mother begins displaying signs of dementia, when he realizes he will need a lot of money to take care of her, he sits down in a rage and writes a book that challenges Juanita Mae's. It becomes even more of a runaway bestseller than Juanita's has. Moreover, he sells the movie rights for three million dollars, plenty of money to take care of his mother in a fancy retirement home. He hates himself for it, though.
A difficult book to review, so I turned to quotes from the book for help:
"Sitting in the attending physician's office, awaiting a report on mother's first night's stay, I was able to examine the small shelf of books behind the doctor's desk. There were books by John Grisham and Tom Clancy, a paperback of John McDonald and things like that. Those books didn't bother me. Though I had never read one completely through, I had Peeked at pages, and although I did not find any depth of artistic expression or any abundance of irony or play with language or ideas, I found them well enough written, the way a technical manual can be well enough written. Oh, so that's tab A. So, why did Juanita mae Jenkins send me running for the toilet? I imagine it was because Tom Clancy was not trying to sell his book to me by suggesting that the crew of his high-tech submarine was a representation of his race (however fitting a metaphor). Nor was his publisher marketing it in that way. If you didn't like Clancy's white people, you could go out and read about some others."

The protagonist is invited to sit on a panel of judges to evaluate newly published books, 300 of them, and pick a winner. He defines the judges, who are also authors, including himself:
"the judges
Wilson harnett (chair): author of six novels. His most recent book was a work of creative nonfiction called 'time is running out', about his wife who was diagnosed with cancer. As it turned out, his wife did not die and all the secrets of theirs that he revealed led her to divorce him and so the literary community eagerly awaited his forthcoming book titled 'my mistake'. A professor at the University of Alabama.
Aileen Hoover: author of two novels and a collection of short stories. Her book of stories, trivial pursuits, won the PEN / Faulkner award. Her novel, 'minutiae', reached four on the NY times bestseller list. a resident of upstate New York (apparently all of it).
Thomas tomad: author of five collections of stories. Among them, 'the night they came', 'a night in jail', 'the night has eyes'. His work was praised by the American association of incarcerated people who write. Also the senior editor of an imprint of Saint Martin's press, Living Cell Books, specializing in books by lifers. From San Francisco, California. Jon Paul sigmarsen: a minnesota-based writer. Author of three novels and three books of nature writing. Won several awards for his 'living with the muskellunge'. Host of a literary talk show aired on PBS in St Paul called with all this snow, why not read?
Thelonious Ellison[protagonist]: author of five books. Widely unread experimental stories and novels. Considered dense and often inaccessible. Best known for his novel 'the second failure'. A lonely man, seemingly having shed all his friends. Visits his mother daily though she cannot remember who he is. Cannot talk to his brother because he is a nut. Cannot speak to his sister because she is dead. Too mystified to actually be depressed. Likes to fish and work with wood. Looking for single women interested in same. Lives in nation's capital."

Though he does everything in his power as a judge to discard his sell-out book, which has been submitted, all the other judges choose it as number one. He is totally disgusted by this, but the book and his persona as its author (Staff R. Leigh), has become bigger than himself.