Charles Rafferty is a poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in such places as The New Yorker, O, Oprah Magazine, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. His many books include The Smoke of Horses (prose poems) and Somebody Who Knows Somebody (flash fiction). He has won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, as well as the 2016 NANO Fiction Prize. Currently, he co-directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College and teaches at the Westport Writers' Workshop. He lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
Moscodelphia is extraordinary. Terrifyingly spare in its language and pace, this debut novel by one of our best poets unfolds into a tale that holds dystopic caution and the hunger of love in two steady hands. Readers of Rafferty's poetry will know he is a master of the dramatic monologue and the prose poem, and here he has brought those talents to bear on a narrative that depicts a nightmarish future with irony-laced realism. J.C. Ballard would be proud, and a little scared. -- Andrew Krivak, author of The Sojourn and The Bear Moscodelphia is a weird and wonderful book, a vivid tightrope walk between surprise and inevitability . While immersed in its pages I felt like I was reading a nineteenth century Russian novel, set in a dystopian future yet written in sparkling contemporary prose. How can that all be true? Reader, do yourself a favor and find out. -- Tom Hazuka, editor of Flash Fiction Funny, co-editor of Flash Nonfiction Funny and Flash Nonfiction