To celebrate the publication of Benjamin Parzybok‘s Couch today, publisher Small Beer Press is sponsoring a photo contest to win a copy of Couch “along with a handful more of Small Beer Press books.”
As publisher Gavin Grant writes, “Couches comfort and fascinate us and can sometimes be found in the strangest places… and that’s what we’re looking for. We wish to prove that couches aren’t just for sitting and whiling away the day on: they’re engines of adventure, of escape! Did you see a couch on the beach, dump yours into a volcano, attach wings to it and fly to your summer house, or snap a shot of it spontaneously combusting? Or maybe you just saw a couch in a weird place and took a photo on the fly?” To enter the contest, take a picture of such a couch and either e-mail it info at lcrw dot net, or send them a link to the photo posted online.
Small Beer already has a gallery of couches available here. Deadline is 30 November.
Small Beer offers this description of the book:
“Couch. A novel. An odyssey. An epic furniture removal. A road trip. An exuberant and hilarious debut in which an episode of furniture moving gone awry becomes an impromptu quest of self-discovery, secret histories, and unexpected revelations. Couch is the first debut novel Small Beer has plucked from the slush pile.
“Thom is a computer geek whose hacking of a certain Washington-based software giant has won him a little fame but few job prospects. Erik is a smalltime con man, a fast-talker who is never quite quick enough on his feet. Their roommate, Tree, is a confused clairvoyant whose dreams and prophecies may not be completely off base.
“After a freak accident floods their apartment, the three are evicted—but they have to take their couch with them. The real problem? The couch—huge and orange—won’t let them put it down. Soon the roommates are off on a cross-country trek along back roads, byways, and rail lines, heading far out of Portland and deep into one very weird corner of the American dream.”