In There Are No False Alarms, Samuel Snoek-Brown invites us to bear witness to his and his students’ experience in Winter 2018, when reports of gunfire at Highline College triggered a campus lockdown. With the same nuance and empathy he’s known for in his previous works, Snoek-Brown relays the day’s events and the emotional toll the situation took on everyone involved. The narrative brings to light deep-rooted anxieties surrounding school shootings – and their increasing occurrence in the U.S. – that many people carry with them on a daily basis.
Samuel Snoek-Brown teaches and writes in the Pacific Northwest. He’s the author of the novels There Is No Other Way to Worship Them and Hagridden, and the flash-fiction chapbooks Box Cutters and Where There Is Ruin. He also works as a production editor for Jersey Devil Press, and he lives online at snoekbrown.com. His work has appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Bartleby Snopes, Eunoia Review, Fiction Circus, Red Fez and Timberline Review. He’s the recipient of a 2013 Oregon Literary Fellowship and has been shortlisted in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition, twice for short fiction and once for his novella. He was also a finalist in the 2013 storySouth Million Writers Award. In 2015, he was a contributor to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. For more about Sam, his previous works and literary musings, visit his website Samuel Snoek-Brown.
Published by Blue Cactus Press