This image is the cover for the book Zig Zag Wanderer

Zig Zag Wanderer

A story collection spanning New York to Haiti and beyond from the National Book Award–finalist and author of Barking Man.

Spanning twenty years, Bell’s third collection of stories showcases his phenomenal literary range and his unwavering focus on characters looking in from the outside. Punks, hustlers, and lost souls of all ages and backgrounds are drawn with an exquisite eye for detail and astonishing compassion.

As in the title story, many of these pieces refer to popular songs like “Fall on Me” and “Summertime,” or are centered around music (“Leadbelly in Paris”), and the settings travel the globe from New York to Paris to Haiti to London.

Bell, a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for the best book of the year dealing with matters of race, once again affirms his status as one of our best writers, one “with an ear for the seemingly inaudible emotions of life” (Los Angeles Times).

Madison Smartt Bell

Madison Smartt Bell (b. 1957) is a critically acclaimed novelist. Over the last two decades he has produced more than a dozen novels and story collections, as well as numerous essays and reviews. His books have been finalists for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award among other honors. Born and raised outside of Nashville, Bell’s fiction is often set in the South, or in New York where he lived as a young writer. Bell and his wife, poet Elizabeth Spires, currently live in Baltimore, Maryland, where they are the codirectors of the writing program at Goucher College.

Open Road Integrated Media