Bill Broun - Night of the Animals

Above all, I thank my wife, the poet and translator Annmarie Drury. She lifted me up from despair again and again, gave up so much, and inspired me to follow these animals and ghosts out from their cages and into the starry night.

BILL BROUNwas born in Los Angeles to an English father and an American mother. He was educated at University College London and Miami University (Ohio). He also holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston. He is associate professor of English at East Stroudsburg University.

While writing fiction in his spare time, Broun spent many years as a news reporter, music journalist, and news editor, including long stints as editor in chief at several weekly newspapers in Texas. In London, he was employed as a copyeditor at a host of British newspapers and magazines, with staff positions at the Guardian and Architects’ Journal . His own writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Times (London), the Times Literary Supplement , and more, as well as specialty publications such as the Architects’ Journal and Publishers Weekly . He was appointed a resident fellow at Yale University in 2002, where he lectured in fiction writing, advanced composition, and journalism for four years. His short fiction, which often explores the lives of the urban underclass and “working poor,” has appeared in journals such as the Indiana Review, the Kenyon Review, and Open City .

Broun lives in Hellertown, Pennsylvania, and Night of the Animals is his first novel.

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Cover design by Allison Saltzman

Cover art: “Reading Night Comes to the Cumberlands on the Back of the Bear,” 2015 © Sarah McRae Morton

*Welfare benefit

*A buttered bread roll stuffed with French fried potatoes, i.e., chips, often served with brown sauce or ketchup

*To obtain for free, often by trickery

*A form of public mass transport with bosonic particle-based engines

*Canals

*Missing or dead

*Using or being intoxicated by Flōt

*Can’t

*. you’re onto something

*Any way

*I didn’t

*Peculiar

*Mad man

*Doss houses

*Hands

*Kiss

*From “Brum,” i.e., Birmingham

*Can

*Insane

*Of weak character

*People from Shropshire

*Sinks for dirty water

*Beasts

*Flatlanders, i.e., people not of the Clee Hills

*Rendered giddy

*Beatings

*Angry about something

*A famous hill and landmark in east Shropshire

* “All the twinkling stars say, all through the night”

*Polish: “You pig!”

*From Ted Hughes, “Crow’s Fall”

*Good-bye

*London

*Awesome!

*Optical head-mounted display, e.g., Google Glass

*A person from the Black Country; can be contemptuous

*Nicknames for West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton football clubs

*Sorry

*How are you?

*Dead

*Annoyed by

*In this case, translator

*Breaking and entering

*An addictive and dangerous recreational drug of the future that causes a characteristic snicker

*Grievous bodily harm of the earhole, i.e., something painful to hear

*“Out there,” crazy, etc.

*Of poor quality

*All right

*Disrespect. Guyanese slang.

*Specialist firearms police units

*Yoruba term for an inner spiritual intuition or spark

*Generic name for a football-supporter organization, often associated with hooliganism

*Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

*The Revolutionary French raiders who landed in Wales in 1797

*Sikh turban

*MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service

*A large hold-all sack

*A Sufi chant: “God is truth”

*A full English breakfast, typically eggs, sausages, beans, bacon, black pudding, tomato, etc.

*Meal