josh axelrad (sorry)

bio
media
contact
book
gigs
online
repeat until rich
buy it from elliott bay
buy it from amazon
buy it
from an independent bookstore near you
buy it if you are a brit
buy it down under
buy it from walmart

signed copies
shoot me an email. you send a copy w/ postage, i send back.
readings/performances
lit fix at chop suey, seattle
auntmama's storytable, seattle
neptune theater, seattle
bloedel hall at st. mark's, seattle
fremont abbey, seattle
the players club, nyc
greenlight books, brooklyn
the roxy, nyc
crash mansion, nyc
nuyorican poets cafe, nyc
royce auditorium, grand rapids
the power center, ann arbor
barnes and noble, brooklyn
the quinnipiack club, new haven
pete's candy store, brooklyn
barnes and noble union square, nyc
the bitter end, nyc
cornelia street cafe, nyc
Here's my little sporadic commonplace book: http://axelrad.tumblr.com/

I feel the weird Facebook feelings about Facebook and don't have much public stuff on there (or non-public stuff for that matter).

I feel even worse about Twitter. My old Twitter handle's here. I used to try Tweeting conscientiously. You're supposed to sell yourself in this business and no one's going to do it for you. I judge no one whatsoever who's on Twitter. My dirty secret is that, despite having deleted my Twitter account due to pathologically incessant refreshing of Twitter for staggering numbers of consecutive minutes hours, I maintain a little cluster of Twitterers whose feeds I continue checking daily, or in bad phases hourly or more than hourly, by going directly to the Twitterers' handles' URLs. Which is a hamhanded, denial-rich addict's way of staying on the sauce while pretending he's all sauce-free. It's really loathsome of me, doing this. Christ. The point is that I'm not any better than active Twitterers and I'm making no claims otherwise. The point is clearly that I'm worse: I've decided the thing's bad for me but nurse my affinity for it anyway. I should surely reread these words again for the nth time. For me, the habits associated with scanning social media for new content are destructive to thinking and to imagination and to contentment and to psychic balance. On the one hand, an author/performer must tweet, to build her audience. On the other, in order to be capable of the sort of work I'd be proud to promote online, I need to keep myself off the internet.

My Medium page is: https://medium.com/@jjjooooossshhh
reviews
new york times
the plain dealer
connecticut post
the nervous breakdown
arnold snyder

interviews
new york times
the times [of london]
bbc radio 4
the leonard lopate show
marketplace
minnesota public radio
knpr
kuow's the conversation
gambling with an edge
smith magazine
the dennis prager show
I'm Josh. Holy crap. Hi!

I'm a writer and performer and father in Seattle, Washington. My memoir, Repeat Until Rich, was published by Penguin Press and recognized alongside work by Jennifer Egan and David Shields as a Best Book of 2010 by The Nervous Breakdown. I perform monologues and stories in front of anyone who gives me five bucks, I've been a host of The Moth StorySlam and featured on The Moth Radio Hour and I've appeared on stage at the Players Club in New York City, Seattle's Neptune Theater, the Royce Auditorium in Grand Rapids, the Power Center in Ann Arbor, and many other venues. I'm sometimes characterized as a former advantage gambler or retired professional card counter but I'm retired only in the sense of having to do other things now to get money. I'm a native of Southern California, was raised in part in rural Kansas, and went to college in New York.

josh [at] axelrad [dot] net