Kids Without Horses, a collection of creative nonfiction pieces, is out now! New in January 2025.

This is a collection of weird creative nonfiction pieces. In this personal pet-project of sorts, gathered and shaped when COVID hit through mid-2024, Jennifer Spiegel brings together some previously published pieces, an “Ode to David Sedaris,” and a little Gen X-obsessing. The topics are diverse: philosophizing over Pulp Fiction or recalling Spiegel’s failure to pass the Foreign Service Exam often gives way to thoughts on creative writing and Art (uppercase “A”). Frankly, this is a myopic, personal, and eclectic collection. It’s okay to repeat that: a myopic, personal, and eclectic collection. From Red Square and Dublin to Oklahoma and Brooklyn, from Nelson Mandela and Michael Scott to Donald Trump and Larry David, from Rick Springfield and Ethan Hawke to U2 and Elena Ferrante, Spiegel writes with, well, gusto on religion and race and rock ‘n’ roll. This is, at the end of the day, unorthodox orthodoxy.

Trauma Mom, a sequel to Spiegel’s Love Slave, is a novel-in-progress.

Cancer, I'll Give You One Year: A Non-Informative Guide To Breast Cancer, A Writer's Memoir In Almost Real Time is here!

Spiegel’s fourth book and first memoir is not about eating kale. It’s for writers, women, and Spiegel’s kids. She wrote it for them, in case she died. #truth

Jennifer Spiegel is mostly a fiction writer with three books and a miscellany of short publications, though she also teaches English and creative writing. She is part of Snotty Literati, a book-reviewing gig, with Lara Smith. She lives with her family in Arizona. 

Love Slave, with its slightly deceptive title, is a New York novel full of acerbic, witty, and heartbreaking moments--not to mention quite a bit of cultural critique and Gen X woe. 

The Freak Chronicles is a short story collection with two kinds of stories. There are Domestic Freaks, and there are Freaks Abroad. Stories are set in the U.S., South Africa, Cuba, China, and Russia. 

And So We Die, Having First Slept, a second novel, is about marriage, youth, middle-age, Gen X, and fidelity. Brett is older than Cash by a decade; both are world-weary--one from negotiating brain trauma and rehab and the absence of pretty boys, the other from addiction and road trips and even a Billy Graham crusade. Bath salts and babies work on their ten-year relationship, forcing them to begin again one way or another. AND SO WE DIE, HAVING FIRST SLEPT is the debut publication of Bosco’s Going Down Press LLC, an independently-operated publishing company of literary prose.. 

There are a ton of book reviews available at Snotty Literati's site.

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