Order here: RANTING OUT LOUD: LIFE, POP CULTURE & HOW WE SOMETIMES DON’T GET ALONG. Hits stores December, 2016.
PRAISE:
“David Foster Wallace meets Hunter S. Thompson in this ode to the triumphs and defeats of pop culture. Belardes might be the most informed, intelligent and hilariously iconoclastic guide we’ll ever have to help us bridge the digital divide. Who else dares talk about Dostoevsky in the same breath as Winona Ryder? In Belardes’s nimble mental meanderings, we find Rilke alongside Sam the Mattress Man, Knossos alongside Las Vegas. Even as he is telling us everything we always wanted to know about Holden Caulfield and Luke Skywalker but were afraid to ask, Belardes’s underlying message becomes increasingly clear: art has been dumbed down, artifice is everywhere, and we no longer know what “real” is. “We. Can’t. Feel.” Belardes says, but he’s no misanthrope, and in these essays, we find ourselves in the astute and tender company of someone who loves the world.” —Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men
“Nicholas Belardes has incisively given the world a stellar debut collection of essays.” —Caroline Leavitt, NYT best-selling author of Cruel Beautiful World, This is Tomorrow, and Pictures of You
Nicholas Belardes writes fiction, essays and poetry. A ghostwriter for popular fiction, his debut essay collection is Ranting Out Loud: Life, Pop Culture & How We Sometimes Don’t Get Along. His work has appeared in Carve Magazine, Pithead Chapel, the Acentos Review, the Island Review, Memoir Journal, 826 Seattle’s What to Read in the Rain, Barrelhouse, Mission at Tenth, the Nervous Breakdown, Latino Rebels, the Weeklings, and others. He illustrated the New York Times best-selling novel West of Here, and is the author of the first original twitterature, Small Places, which has been talked about in the U.K. Guardian, Telegraph, Reuters, Christian Science Monitor, Wired, The Bohemian, and more. He’s contributed to CNN and other news sites, and once talked about red-haired witches on Coast to Coast A.M. with George Noory.
Son of a truck driver, father of musicians, he’s lectured at UCLA, Regis University, Memoir Journal, BARD College, CSU Bakersfield, Bakersfield College, Cerro Coso College, Yosemite Writers Conference, River Center, Art Institute of Las Vegas, Random Writers Workshop and more.
Nicholas currently lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his partner, writer Jane Hawley. Interviews and other requests: nickbelardes@gmail.com. He tweets from @nickbelardes.