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Aaron Burch

@aaronburch.bsky.social

2.9K followers 720 following 3.9K posts

Author: A KIND OF IN-BETWEEN; YEAR OF THE BUFFALO; STEPHEN KING'S THE BODY; BACKSWING Editor: HAD; Short Story, Long (on Substack) https://linktr.ee/aaronburch

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · Nov 9

I completed a new short story collection, so have been thinking about my first, BACKSWING, lately.

I say this every now and then over on Twitter and so am taking the opportunity to post here: it's out of print, but I'm happy to send a PDF to anyone who wants one! dm me, reply here, email me, etc.

cover of BACKSWING by Aaron Burch, showing a closeup of a yellow line on a road

back cover of BACKSWING, with blurbs:

Throughout Aaron Burch’s debut full-length collection of fiction nearly everyone is seeking some kind of perfection. Despite their attempts falling short, going stray, or sometimes not even making it off the ground, they keep swinging—at latent nightmares and glaring domestic lives, at severed limbs and redemptive baptisms, at the awe of what has been taken and the bewilderment over what remains. Nevertheless, in these stories ranging from the magical to realism, from Biblical allegory to everyday relationships, the characters of Backswing, faithful that forward motion will someday strike, keep driving toward grace.

"Reading Backswing, you find yourself laughing, no–waying, reaching out to give bro–hugs and clappy high–fives to an author you swear must be standing beside you, so present is his voice. Burch is the bard of the American dude."
—Adam Levin, author of The Instructions and Hot Pink

"Aaron Burch’s Backswing is a terrific debut, fast, funny, at times fantastical, a diverse, deft collection of stories about becoming a man and other unsolvable mysteries."
—Jess Walter, author of We Live in Water and Beautiful Ruins

"In his new collection, Aaron Burch’s achievement isn’t only in the masterful storytelling, it’s how through each character’s yearning and loneliness he succeeds in making us readers feel less alone. Even in the surreal, the creepy, the sad, the lusting, we recognize ourselves. Backswing is full of characters trying to find themselves, journeys you’ll feel privileged to join."
—Lindsay Hunter, author of Daddy’s and Don’t Kiss Me

"At the driving range of American fiction, Aaron Burch crushes his stories deep into the haunted night. Backswing is brave and odd and very human."
—Sam Lipsyte, author of The Subject Steve and The Fun Parts

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 2h

RIP Mitch Hedburg

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 5h

I read this in grad school, in 2009/10, and loved it, and just picked it up again, and only two pages in and holy shit it is already the funniest, most contemporary seeming, best book I’ve read this year.

MOUNTAIN R by Jacques Jouet, translated by Brian Evenson

photo of first page of Mountain R:

SPEAKER OF THe HOUsE - The floor belongs to the
president of the Republican Council.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLICAN COUNCIL - We must do something. We must. Something must be done, something must be accomplished. It must not be said that we have not done anything. We must do more, and do it better than anyone has ever done. And moreover, this extraordinary something, we will do it. We have already conceived it, and are here to make it official. This something even has a name, and its name is The Mountain.. Republic Mountain ... it is Mountain R! Now there's a name that says it all. Mountain with a capital R. We shall call it henceforth Mountain R. The Republic is magnificent-long live the Republic! — but it looks like a flat-chested girl. Too bad!
But we are going to alter her, the Republic... we are here to act... to give her what we can: a womanly figure. The most beautiful girl in the world can afford to give all she has and more, if that beautiful girl is the Republic... the Republic of exceptional self-improvement! Is there anything more beautiful than a mountain? Anything health-ier? We shall build a mountain. Among us let it be said, we…

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 12h

plane reading

photo of printed out paper in a 3-ring binder sitting on folded out place seat table. paper reads: TACOMA (title of my novella, forthcoming from Autofocus Books in February)

Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 15h

“It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” a super fun song… but maybe not what you most wanna hear at the airport.

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 16h

man, I fell asleep watching it on my phone in my hand, in inning 13, I think it was

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Reposted by Aaron Burch

Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

when you open the email and it's an acceptance

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 16h

I normally write SSL story introductions the morning of, then hit publish, but going to be out of town on Tuesday so I scheduled the post, and thinking about what I love about the story, I remembered Jac Jemc's amazing The Grip of It & Jim Ruland's great story “The House on Dead Confederate Street”

I can be a real sucker for a great haunted house story! See: Jim Ruland’s “The House on Dead Confederate Street,” published a couple years ago here on SSL; see, too: one of my favorite novels of the last few years, The Grip of It, by SSL contributor Jac Jemc.

As soon as I read “The Writing on the Walls” as a submission, it felt a part of that lineage. While doing something both familiar and a little unlike anything I’d read before. I don’t even want to say too much more.

I’m so excited to get to share this one today! In general, but maybe especially here in October. I hope it crawls inside you and lingers like it has with me.

—Aaron Burch

Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

How about: Thanks, boss!

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

when you open the email and it's an acceptance

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

(I've spent the last 25 years devoting my time and energy to getting really good at something that like 130 people care about 🙃)

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

I guess I did actually used to be married to something of a benefactor...

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

someone should pay me a living wage + benefits to edit literary journals & read for pleasure

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

go M's! ;)

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

that background painting is amazing

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

there were a series of animated shorts on the tracey ullman show about a crudely drawn, yellow family of five. no one ever seems to remember the tracey ullman show, but I dug those shorts. seemed like there was something there!

nai THEE corpse bride 🦋 @astoldbynai.blacksky.app · 2d

2. What is an obscure thing from your childhood that no one else seems to remember?

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

idk, man, I still say, "I'm the baby, gotta love me!" probably at least once a week

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

"who did all this sort of crazy evil science" is a pretty amazing phrase

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

I've worn my house slippers the last three mornings, and it is such a delight

Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 1d

Agreed!

(re short fiction maybe being the most perfect and beautiful form, but re loving everything from Stuber & Hunter, too!)

Something about a Short Story, Long story

Short Story, Long has been my favorite new Substack discovery of 2025! All my Substack subscriptions go to my yahoo email account so I end up being behind on them, but this one is a real treasure, and I look forward to digging through the archives. Short fiction might be (IMO) the most perfect and beautiful form, so I love what you do to shine a light on it and show case stories. One of my recent favorites was Amy Stuber's story (loved her debut collection), and of course I love to read anything Lindsay Hunter writes, so that was a favorite, too...but slowly, surely, I look forward to making some new discoveries!

Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 2d

this older @biblioracle.bsky.social post about using ROAS (react, observe, analyze, synthesize) to think about comedy and what's funny, specifically/especially in response to Roseanne Barr and Marc Maron, has become one of my best teaching tools

biblioracle.substack.com/p/whats-so-f...

What's So Funny?

Not Roseanne, not anymore, anyway.

biblioracle.substack.com

Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 2d

Quickly mapping out Matt Mitchell’s essay on Freaks and Geeks in preparation for my “art of the essay” class…

Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 2d

This quote pops up a few times a year, and usually that "I'd rather put a gun in my mouth" is what especially sticks with me, but man believing that artists think, "boy, I wish I had AI to solve the thorny problems of making art" feels so bonkers but also illuminating.

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 3d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 2d

Haha. Yes! And I guess I maybe regretted some at the time, when $10-$15 was all my money in the world. But I've grown pretty zen with old age and one of my core beliefs has become supporting art with money.

Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 2d

I've never regretted buying an album.

Marie Phillips @mariephillips.bsky.social · 2d

What albums does everyone regret buying? Loads for me, but the one that really sticks in my mind is K by Kula Shaker, which I forced myself to listen to joylessly several times in the desperate attempt to convince myself I hadn’t wasted my money, and still get cringes of regret about 29 years later.

Joe Scaramangaaaaarrrrrggghhh!🎃 @joescaramanga.co.uk · 2d

It's one of the few albums I regret buying.
I'll Manage Somehow and Stardust are fine. The rest is mostly forgettable.

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 2d

George Saunders: It’s changed a little. In some cases now I have a sort of pre-sense of what I need to make a story – usually just these broad action/escalation markers. If I can figure those out in advance, I can engage that improvisatory energy in figuring out how I get from one marker to the next. In Tenth of December, ‘Victory Lap’ and the title story were written like that – the rest were pretty much improvisations. I love that Gerald Stern quote: ‘If you start out to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking – then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking.’ Or, as Einstein said it, in his slightly more snooty manner: ‘No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.’ So the trick is to keep the conscious, conceptual mind at bay and thus stay open to mystery, revelation etc.