Kerry Howley

Publisher's description.  A genre-bending work of literary reportage. The profound and the absurd come face to face in this extraordinary auto-fiction exposé, as a bookish young woman stumbles across the bizarre underworld of professional cage fighting. Unexpectedly hooked on the spectacle, she befriends fighters and chases fights, becoming ever more entangled in the macabre, blackly comic and ultimately heart-breaking drama of the octagon.

An exciting brand of nonfiction depicting the darker side of the American dream. An intimate, front-row look at two stories of hope, glory, and violence

Nothing else felt as strong and smart and fresh and honest this year - nothing else whipped my head around the way something great and truly new does

An intelligent, funny, and utterly captivating look at a surprising subculture

Thrown does what all literature aspires to do - to bring us into a community, a universe, we did not know we cared about and in the end leave us shattered and revealed

The most fascinating book I've read this year. The precision of Howley's prose reminds me of Joan Didion or David Foster Wallace

The fight book of our generation has landed. Thrown is a fantastic debut

A poetic portrait of a bloody American subculture, and a knockout of a nonfiction debut

As dark and funny as anything I have read this year

Kerry Howley embarks on a quest for ecstasy delivered in an unexpected forum: MMA fights. This transfixing nonfiction narrative combines bloody play-by-play with philosophical inquiry, delivering serious punches. Welcome to the Octagon

In this darkly funny work of literary reportage, narrated by an excitable, semi-fictionalized graduate student named Kit, a bookish young woman insinuates herself into the lives of two cage fighters - one a young prodigy, the other an ageing journeyman. Kerry Howley follows these men for three years through the bloody world of mixed martial arts as they starve themselves, break bones, fail their families and form new ones in the quest to rise from remote Midwestern fairgrounds to packed Vegas arenas. With penetrating intelligence and wry humor, Howley exposes the profundities and absurdities of this American subculture.

Kerry Howley

Praise for Thrown

Publisher's description. A genre-bending work of literary reportage. The profound and the absurd come face to face in this extraordinary auto-fiction exposé, as a bookish young woman stumbles across the bizarre und ...

Compulsively readable

Truly gripping, stunning

Publisher's description. A genre-bending work of literary reportage. The profound and the absurd come face to face in this extraordinary auto-fiction exposé, as a bookish young woman stumbles across the bizarre und ...

Compulsively readable

Truly gripping, stunning

Publisher's description. A genre-bending work of literary reportage. The profound and the absurd come face to face in this extraordinary auto-fiction exposé, as a bookish young woman stumbles across the bizarre und ...

Compulsively readable

Truly gripping, stunning

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