About the Author

Gary Walton is the author of six books of poetry: Eschatology Escadrille: Elegies and Other Memorabilia (Finishing Line Press, 2013), Full Moon: the Melissa Moon Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2007), The Millennium Reel (Finishing Line Press, 2003), Effervescent Softsell (Red Dancefloor Press, 1997), Cobwebs and Chimeras (Red Dancefloor Press, 1995), The Sweetest Song (Peapod Press, 1988), and one book of short fiction and humor: The Newk Phillips Papers (Red Dancefloor Press, 1995). His comic novel Prince of Sin City (Finishing Line Press, 2009) (which is based in part on a conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination) is set in Newport, Kentucky during its heyday as a gambling Mecca: "Sin City." His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice and the Kentucky Literary Award for Full Moon: the Melissa Moon Poems in 2008. In 2010, he was voted Third Place: "Best Local Author" Best of Cincinnati 2010 issue in City Beat magazine. Walton is an associate professor in the department of English at Northern Kentucky University. His areas of interest include Modernism, Postmoderism, and the Irish Literary Renaissance. Walton received a Ph.D. from the George Washington University. (His thesis was a poststructuralist comparison of James Joyce's Ulysses and the work of Donald Barthelme.) He is currently Editor of the Journal of Kentucky Studies. For more information and a representative sample of reviews, visit Dr. Walton's website at www.nku.edu/ waltong or email him at waltong@nku.edu.

Reviews

"The deep-going yet often rib-tickling poems of Gary Walton and his fictive Melissa Moon are unlike anyone else's. Plunge in. You'll be challenged and regaled." -X. J. Kennedy, award winning poet and editor of An Introduction to Poetry "This amazing book is ironic and witty, confronting us with the 'carnival' of life, of ordinary people in their daily lives, who combine wonderings with the clutter of everyday and chores, as well as sudden insights, that sent tiny sparks in the growing dusk. Brief moments of joy arise in the most gloomy settings. These wonderful and highly original poems are also meditations on politics, on the fate of our planet, the stars, and on the complexity and strangeness of our lives. The book makes fun of so many aspects of our time such as the digital world as well as hope, yet hope is interwoven with our many faults. Waiting for Insanity Clause is filled with humor about our lives, yet is very philosophical, a most unusual accomplishment." -Marguerite G. Bouvard, author of The Unpredictability of Light and The Invisible Wounds of War: Coming Home from Iraq and Afghanistan