Sean Ennis is a Philadelphia native, now living in Water Valley, MS. His fiction has appeared in Tin House, Crazyhorse, Diagram, Hobart, The Mississippi Review, Wigleaf, and Pithead Chapel. A recipient of a Mississippi Arts Commission literary grant, he is the author of the story collections, Cunning, Baffling, Powerful (Thirty West) and Chase Us: Stories (Little A/New Harvest).
“The first time I met Sean, we were splitting cigs by these repainted McDonald’s coil spring rockers at this writing residency. I was awed by his writing in those workshops then and I’m equally awed by his writing now. Cunning, Baffling, Powerful is a wild, but equally empathetic collection of seven stories of hard luck people in treatment gritting through the process, buoyed by their behind-each-other’s-backs backstories and whisper-thin relationships based on what they know about one another’s drug of choice, hard stuff or candy-coated. The experience of reading this collection is not unlike smoking a cigarette. Sean’s writing sends a jolt to the pleasure center of your brain, although you also know there’s a good chance you’ll hurt in the end. But you can’t wait to sneak the next one, the disagreeing faces of passersby judging you for waving it around in public like that.”
—Gene Kwak, author of Go Home, Ricky!
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