Paul Griner’s previous works (Collectors, The German Woman, and Follow Me) have been lauded in the likes of The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, People, The Boston Globe, LA Times, Vogue, and many others. His first book was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and his following titles were publishing in half a dozen languages. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Tin House, Narrative, and Zoetrope. He is currently a professor at the University of Louisville.

PRAISE FOR HURRY PLEASE I WANT TO KNOW:

“Twenty-two stories ranging in length from a few paragraphs to 20 or so pages and in style from the freakishly absurd to the heartbreakingly realistic. Griner excels in his longer stories, one of which—’On Board the SS Irresponsible’—borders on being a masterpiece… Griner’s stories shine a glaring light on the complexities of human personality and family relationships.”
—Kirkus, starred review

“What stands out most in Paul Griner’s short-story collection, Hurry Please I Want to Know, is the author’s comfort and skill with stories that range from seemingly normal circumstances to outlandish situations he masterfully conveys in real terms.”
—Foreword Review

“Griner overlays tales of family, artistry, and parent-child relationships with elements of the surreal, in order to create, in the words of one character, ‘an undercurrent of mournfulness.’ The collection’s best stories . . . offer just enough detail to produce strong emotions while remaining cryptically open-ended.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Griner’s stories often begin with a moment of realism, slowly revealing the miraculous and the terrifying….Like the ever-shifting landscapes encountered by Griner’s characters, these stories channel unpredictability in a variety of ways, memorably showcasing the literal and figurative dangers around us.”
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"This eclectic yet wonderfully coherent collection proves once again Griner’s acute grasp of the complex and slippery emotions leading from gladness to mourning…. [T]he one constant in Griner’s stories is that the pain of loss is inevitable and unfathomably difficult to deal with. This is not to say that the stories, with their deadpan narrators, impossible ethical dilemmas, and often bizarre and dream-like internal laws, do not also manage to be hysterically funny. Griner understands that, at their core, emotions are physiological noise, and he expertly evokes situations in which the reader is invited to indulge in almost medical self-observation before responding to the stories’ absurdities and profundities with the same narrow embodied repertoire—laughter, sadness, confusion—as Griner’s protagonists and narrators."
—The Carolina Quarterly

“Paul Griner is a daredevil of a storyteller, fearless but always in control, equally adept at wild satire and sharp-edged domestic drama. Anyone who cares about the short story—or just loves good writing—should make a beeline for this remarkable collection.” 
—Tom Perrotta 

“Paul Griner finds surprising and inventive ways to write about a wide range of sometimes uncomfortable--but always interesting--situations. The writing is careful, precise, shocking--stylistically brilliant. The stories are sometimes surreal, but convincing all the same. They take your breath away!”
—Bobbie Ann Mason, author of The Girl in the Blue Beret

"Paul Griner's Hurry Please I Want to Know takes the reader on a sweeping tour of America–from Iraqi soldiers to prison telemarketers, from famous cartoonists to bone procurers, from missing persons to the resurrected dead–the real, the surreal and everything in-between. Griner seems to know everybody's secrets, and this astonishing collection sets out to reveal them.
—Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply and Stay Awake