Join author John Brandon in person in celebration of his new novel Penalties of June, out now from McSweeney’s.
The millennium is drawing to a close. Pratt, a young Floridian who’s just finished a prison sentence he both did and didn’t deserve, is looking to start a new life. But will he be able to shake his shady past?
Brimming with tension, action, wry dialogue, and unexpected pathos, Penalties of June is John Brandon’s sixth book published by McSweeney’s. With his distinct feel for the underbelly of his home state of Florida, Brandon takes readers into the forbidding corners of the Tampa Bay area—unsavory motels, secondhand shops, no-frills diners, and dubious used-car lots. Pratt navigates crime bosses and drug dealers on a perilous mission, his steed a trusty (if creaky) Chrysler LeBaron. Faced with an impossible choice, and the prospect of finally finding love after years behind bars, Pratt risks it all for a chance at making things right.
“Bursts with sharp descriptions of the Sunshine State. This noirish romp hits all the right notes.”
—Publishers Weekly
John Brandon is associate professor of creative writing at Hamline University and the author of five novels, Arkansas, Citrus County, A Million Heavens, and Ivory Shoals and a short story collection, Further Joy, and, Penalities of June, all with McSweeney’s. His novels have been translated into several languages. Additionally, Brandon’s debut novel, Arkansas, was adapted into a motion picture in 2020, starring Vince Vaughn, Liam Hemsworth, Clark Duke, John Malkovich, Michael K. Williams, Eden Brolin, and Vivica A. Fox. His shorter work has appeared in Oxford American, The Believer, ESPN the Magazine, GQ, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The New York Times Magazine, and numerous university journals. For two seasons, he wrote about college football for Grantland.com. He holds an undergraduate degree from University of Florida and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. He’s recently spent time as the Grisham Fellow in Creative Writing at University of Mississippi, and as the Tickner Writing Fellow at Gilman School, in Baltimore, and is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Fellowship.
