Save the Date!
Sunday, April 12th – 7PM @ Maison Canal
Join us at Maison Canal at 7PM to hear Jill Hoffman read favorite selections from her novel Stoned.
Maison Canal
288 W Broadway
New York, NY 10013
More Praise for Topless!
“Because Topless, a new novel by Jill Hoffman, is written by a cancer survivor, one knows from the start that survival will be an option. Because it’s written by someone who is a master of the tricks of prose– I mean smooth shadings, quick movements, gambling with the readers, mint observations, love and fear, etc.– one knows from the start to expect absurdity and irony, strong love, and angry impatience. This is a book which daylights one of the darkest torments available to a woman. Because this woman is smart and funny and serious, we can witness how such a woman orders her days around this schedule of violent and tedious therapies.
Help comes from her family (who carry and impatience beneath their sympathies, though their sympathies are profound). She does it with help from her garrulous friends (who listen intelligently but also demand to be heard). She takes advantage of what strength there is in her little dog– and even the dog occasionally has other concerns. And she’s unquestionably defended and embraced by New York itself– its billion clothing stores and restaurants, its peaceful hairdressers and pedicure parlors, icy streets and interesting strangers. ‘Are you allergic to any medications?’ ‘Just cats.’
A second tension or charge the book carries is the narrator’s desperation at the absence of sex from her life. There are a multitude of internet-arranged dates, none of which provoke real desire and to which there are no follow-ups. Sexual frustration is as daily as, and oddly balances, the innumerable hospitals and clinics with which the narrator gains an unwilling familiarity. One waits for the resolution of both crises. One reads along the nerve of a woman’s desires and fears. And not incidentally but frankly and deliberately the value of marijuana is described with gratitude as a safe route through pain.
Home in Tribeca with her dog, she dreads the outcome of what seems like dozens of reconstructive surgeries. She imagines terrible asymmetries and recalls a beauty she may have lost. She wants her breasts to resemble each other again, to fit her, easily and calmly. And Jill Hoffman, who has guided her readers through, and helped them survive, her manifold, life-altering injuries, can fill any reassure them. There is even, for her and for us, an interesting stranger.”
– Bob Clinton, All These Things I Will Give to You
Coming May 31st, 2026
Advance Praise for Dear Dog!
“Sharp, reflective, Paul Wuensche’s voice is not self-deprecating in a false way, but is the voice of someone not afraid to look into the mirror long enough for it to be uncomfortable. These are poems I look forward to re-reading.”
– Aileen La Tourette, winner of the Live Canon International Poetry Award
The Winners of the 19th Mudfish Poetry Prize
Judged by Billy Collins!
Winner:
Allen Brafman, NY, “together on the uptown 6“
Honorable Mentions:
Arthur Solway, CA, “Tango“
William Snyder, FL “Side by Side“
Finalists:
Robert Clinton – Dedham, MA
Mark Elber – Fall River, MA
Sandra Vrana – Mechanicsburg, PA
Kate Aver Avraham – Aptos, CA
Seanse Lynch Ducken – Ellensburg, WA
Kenneth David White – Santa Fe, NM
Robert Grant – Albuquerque, NM
Charles Spruance – Weed, CA
Paul Wuensche – Barnes, London
Matthew J. Spireng – Kingston, NY
Kevin Arnold – Paolo Alto, CA
Ann Robinson – Novato, CA
Ted Gilley – Bennington, VT
Advance Praise for Topless!
“I just read the first 40 pages of Topless! If the rest of it is this good, I’ll move to Tribeca, buy a red Indian motorcycle with a sidecar (for the dog), sit on the motorcycle reading left-wing newspapers and, when you’re ready, take you shopping. Every day.”
“read another 40 pages — no complaints — did you really live through all that?”
“It’s not like anything I’ve ever read. If I were you, I’d wake up in the morning very proud. Then I’d be proud all day….It’s so good, in fact, that I’m in some dread of analyzing, putting my words over yours in an attempt at appreciation.”
– Robert Clinton, All These Things I Will Give To You
“‘They’re just right. Soft and expressive,’ says Bliss Barnes when asked to describe her breasts to a personal ad suitor. So opens Jill Hoffman’s Topless, the funniest. poignant, most beautifully written, pleasurable saga of a woman’s journey through breast cancer and the exhilarating disappointments of online dating. She nudges aside the medical mores of technicians, nurses, doctors, oncologists, and the Gilda’s Club support group, as few have met anyone like Bliss, with her charm and allure which she refuses to leave in the waiting room. Her verbal stink bombs explode as she courageously marches on in her long-pointed boots undergoing chemo (making it a picnic), multiple surgeries, radiation, and match.com dates. Delightful and inspiring, harrowing and breathtakingly funny, yet always a bittersweet undertow at the vulnerabilities of the flesh.”
– Stephanie Emily Dickinson, Harlow/Smith Postcards: Icons in Black & White