Having just finished reading Corey Mesler’s As a Child, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do right now than start reading it all over again. The first time, I was smiling all the way through. I felt like the guy in one story who self-medicates by eating a dime and finds his world transformed. These are stories filled with wit and surprise, with heart-busting sadness and romping joy. -Josephine Humphreys Corey Mesler has unhinged my brain and filled it with words so artfully arranged that they make me want to weep. He blurs the lines between prose and song so that the writer becomes the singer. -Laura Benedict Wise, raucous, straight-shooting, poignant, funny as all hell, and, at times, brutal and uplifting, the eclectic and electric collection of stories in Corey Mesler’s As a Child sucked me in and carried me away from the very first page. The vibrant, real-as-can-be characters and Mesler’s economic, evocative prose (my favorite kind) bring to mind that master of the gothic short story, Flannery O'Connor. I would have followed his characters into full-length novels. I certainly plan to follow Mesler into the pages of all his books to come. -Jennifer Niven