The Patron Saint of Making Curfew

Description

Tim Stafford's work lives in the buffer zone between Chicago and the American Dream - far from the suburbs with white picket fences and country clubs but still too far to be of the city proper. Like a carefully curated mixtape, Stafford's work navigates the side streets and highways in between, linking those worlds in an effort to create his own.

Tim Stafford is a public school teacher, poet, and storyteller from Lyons, IL. He is the editor of the Learn Then Burn anthology series.

"Blunt, hilarious, and heartfelt, Tim Stafford's debut collection is a knock-out-a sweet, sober, and hard-won lesson on staying authentic." -Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, author of Dr. Mutter's Marvels "This collection riots with narrative and coming of age in a laugh and music-filled tour of Chicago." -Peter Kahn, author of Little Kings "Tim Stafford's poems hit you like a punch in the arm from a best friend, simultaneously violent and funny." -Joaquin Zihuatanejo, author of Arsonist "While I was never a young punk growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, reading Tim Stafford's Patron Saint brought many smiles to my face, returning me to the sweetness of the open-heartedness of it all, of what the world can offer us, small as we may have been." -Anis Mojgani, Oregon Poet Laureate