BRYAN ALLEN FIERRO READS FROM HIS COLLECTION OF STORIES DODGER BLUE WILL FILL YOUR SOUL

Dodger Blue Will Fill Your Soul (University of Arizona Press)

Two brothers bury a statue of Saint Jude for their grieving nana. A Griffith Park astronomer makes his own discovery at an East L.A. wedding. A young man springs his Cherokee-obsessed grandfather from the confines of senility. The common thread? Each is weaving their way through the challenging field of play that is living and loving in Los Angeles.

In Dodger Blue Will Fill Your Soul, Bryan Allen Fierro brings to life the people and places that form the fragile heart of the East Los Angeles community. In the title story, a father’s love of Dodger baseball is matched only by the disconnect he must bridge with his young son. In another story, a young widower remembers his wedding day with his father-in- law. The boys and men in this collection challenge masculine stereotypes, while the girls and women defy gender roles. Hope and faith in their own community defines the characters, and propels them toward an awareness of their own personal responsibility to themselves and to their families, even as they eschew those closest to them in pursuit of a different future.

Dodger Blue Will Fill Your Soul is a tour de force—the first collection of an authentic new voice examining community with humor, hope, and brutal honesty. 

Praise for Dodger Blue Will Fill Your Soul

“Beautifully written and charged with vitality”—Kirkus Reviews

“Bryan Allen Fierro is the real deal. This stunning collection is the harbinger of a bright-shining writing career beginning its run. Highly recommended.”—Luis Alberto Urrea

“Bryan Fierro writes with startling insight and a gifted comic’s instincts about love, family ties, desire, masculinity, poverty, and privilege. His voice is affecting and sincere, alternately elegiac and contemplative, edgy and ironic. These are powerful, memorable stories from a writer who I am certain has many more books to offer us.”—Christine Sneed

"With great charge, Fierro writes the lives of those waiting for their genuine longings to be unearthed and brought to light. Whether funny or nervy or surprisingly affectionate, these stories hit pay dirt every time.”—Manuel Muñoz

“Fierro displays the prowess of a master storyteller. A powerful and evocative debut.”—Don Rearden

Bryan Allen Fierro holds an MFA from Pacific University in Oregon. He grew up in Los Angeles and now splits his time between L.A. and Anchorage, Alaska, where he works as a firefighter and paramedic. Fierro is the recipient of the Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award in Fiction.