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Reviews & Interviews

• Review · The Advocate
  New book ‘compassionately captures’ 1980s AIDS crisis in New Orleans throughout 18 stories

  “A short-story cycle that compassionately captures the 1980s AIDS crisis in New Orleans.”— Rien Fertel, The Advocate

Praise for Skylark

• “At turns hilarious and tragic, but never dour. Smith masterfully weaves tales that blend heartache with humor and humanity, creating touching narratives that resonate deeply.”— Elisa M. Speranza, author of The Italian Prisoner
• “I found it difficult to stop reading because of how this marvelous, caring community is gradually built and sustained. Yet that encouraging story is mirrored against the awful tragedy of the AIDS epidemic, with the knowledge that each of the characters, or most, won’t live past either the edges of the book or their small, little era at the end of the 1980s.”— Patrick Earl Ryan, author of If We Were Electric, winner of the 2019 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
• “Chris Smith has written a remarkable collection of stories dealing with the peak years of the AIDS crisis. . . . creating a world full of people meeting adversity with warmth, humor, community, and creativity.”— Clay Delery, author of The Up Stairs Lounge Arson
• “Smith shifts from wickedly funny to heartbreaking and back again. Beston Barnett and the characters he encounters, witnesses, befriends, and loves have left an enduring impression on me. These stories will make you laugh and feel deeply.”— Katie Bowler Young, author of Enrique Alferez, Sculptor
• “Skylark is joyous proof that comedy is tragedy plus time. In these stories, the agony of Kushner’s Angels in America meets the comic grotesque of Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces.”— James Nolan, author of Higher Ground and Between Dying and Not Dying, I Chose the Guitar