About the Author

Amber Sparks is the author of May We Shed These Human Bodies, released by Curbside Splendor in 2012. The Atlantic called May We Shed These Human Bodies the Best Small Press Debut of 2012. Her work has been widely published in print and online and you can find it at ambernoellesparks.com or follow her on Twitter @ambernoelle.

Robert Kloss is the author of The Alligators of Abraham. His short fiction has been found in Crazyhorse, Gargoyle, Unsaid, and elsewhere. He is found online at robert-kloss.com.

Matt Kish is a self-taught artist & author of Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page.

Reviews

Is there no salvation in The Desert Places' world? Light barely glimmers in all the time we track, from the universe's creation until the extinction of the earth; even the best fruits of human civilization are created as if some god would cease its slaughter to revel in such a fantasy. [...] The book ends in annihilation, but no note of triumph sounds for its protagonist. It's a pyrrhic victory death gains for itself: in sating its eternal hunger, it gets forever lonelier.
-- Daphne Sidor, Gaper's Block The collaborative guts of The Desert Places confirms the massiveness of these authors' talents, and the production of the book itself, with Matt Kish's brilliant illustrations, makes this a horrific beauty you'll want to hold against your skin.
-- J. A. Tyler, author of Colony Collapse The book gets inside your head in the best possible way. It can shift your perspective. In the same way that reading Blindness by José Saramago makes you re-appreciate the gift of sight, The Desert Places can make even the smallest act of kindness seem extraordinary. I can think of no better reason to pick up a copy than that.
-- Matt Weinkam, Passages North Hip readers already know that much of the best new fiction comes from indie presses. It shouldn't be a surprise that innovative small presses, such as Chicago's Curbside Splendor, also have some of the best designs. This pocket-size, illustrated book is a read you'll remember. --BuzzFeed The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, with its illustrations by Matt Kish, is one of the most intriguing, best looking, and overall best releases from an indie press that I've read this year. In this case, Curbside Splendor should be loaded up with heaps of praise (but I'm sure they'd settle for just taking your money if you wanted to give it to them) for putting out this little book that takes its cues from the Bible, amplifies the Good Book's violence and darkness, and then smashes it together with modern times.
-- Jason Diamond, Literary Editor, Flavorwire Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss carve a shifting visage of evil in a gore of vignettes that span ancient history and the star-searching future [...] Evil tells his own tale in ten numbered chapters, slipping through time and mass crimes against humanity [and articulating] the absorption of human culture from myth to philosophy, the gobbling indiscrimination of something worse than a hellhound at his dinner.
-- Anna Wilson, New Delta Review The prose is lyrically bestial, crimes of harmonic diction by Sparks and Kloss channeled into elegiac carnage [...] Both authors deftly handle religion, myth, and philosophy, juggling them, then ripping apart the old layers, constructing new cities on the corpses of dead ones.
-- The Blog of Tieryas Sparks's story collection swirls with a Tim Burton-like whimsy [...] Modern fables in which epiphanies replace moral lessons and tales unfold with Grimm-like wickedness.
-- Publishers Weekly, on May We Shed These Human Bodies by Amber Sparks Kloss peers inside, like some kind of mad historian, and records all the best and the worst of us with a passion and sometimes prophetic fervor.
-- The McNeese Review, on The Alligators of Abraham by Robert Kloss Don't mistake this gorgeous and wholly original book for a blow-by-blow comic-book-style retelling of Moby-Dick...Let it sit on your coffee table as testament to what all of us human beings can do if we stick with it.
-- Oprah.com, on Moby-Dick in Pictures by Matt Kish



Is there no salvation in The Desert Places' world? Light barely glimmers in all the time we track, from the universe's creation until the extinction of the earth; even the best fruits of human civilization are created as if some god would cease its slaughter to revel in such a fantasy. [...] The book ends in annihilation, but no note of triumph sounds for its protagonist. It's a pyrrhic victory death gains for itself: in sating its eternal hunger, it gets forever lonelier.
-- Daphne Sidor, Gaper's Block The collaborative guts of The Desert Places confirms the massiveness of these authors' talents, and the production of the book itself, with Matt Kish's brilliant illustrations, makes this a horrific beauty you'll want to hold against your skin.
-- J. A. Tyler, author of Colony Collapse The book gets inside your head in the best possible way. It can shift your perspective. In the same way that reading Blindness by José Saramago makes you re-appreciate the gift of sight, The Desert Places can make even the smallest act of kindness seem extraordinary. I can think of no better reason to pick up a copy than that.
-- Matt Weinkam, Passages North Hip readers already know that much of the best new fiction comes from indie presses. It shouldn't be a surprise that innovative small presses, such as Chicago's Curbside Splendor, also have some of the best designs. This pocket-size, illustrated book is a read you'll remember. --BuzzFeed The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, with its illustrations by Matt Kish, is one of the most intriguing, best looking, and overall best releases from an indie press that I've read this year. In this case, Curbside Splendor should be loaded up with heaps of praise (but I'm sure they'd settle for just taking your money if you wanted to give it to them) for putting out this little book that takes its cues from the Bible, amplifies the Good Book's violence and darkness, and then smashes it together with modern times.
-- Jason Diamond, Literary Editor, Flavorwire Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss carve a shifting visage of evil in a gore of vignettes that span ancient history and the star-searching future [...] Evil tells his own tale in ten numbered chapters, slipping through time and mass crimes against humanity [and articulating] the absorption of human culture from myth to philosophy, the gobbling indiscrimination of something worse than a hellhound at his dinner.
-- Anna Wilson, New Delta Review The prose is lyrically bestial, crimes of harmonic diction by Sparks and Kloss channeled into elegiac carnage [...] Both authors deftly handle religion, myth, and philosophy, juggling them, then ripping apart the old layers, constructing new cities on the corpses of dead ones.
-- The Blog of Tieryas Sparks's story collection swirls with a Tim Burton-like whimsy [...] Modern fables in which epiphanies replace moral lessons and tales unfold with Grimm-like wickedness.
-- Publishers Weekly, on May We Shed These Human Bodies by Amber Sparks Kloss peers inside, like some kind of mad historian, and records all the best and the worst of us with a passion and sometimes prophetic fervor.
-- The McNeese Review, on The Alligators of Abraham by Robert Kloss Don't mistake this gorgeous and wholly original book for a blow-by-blow comic-book-style retelling of Moby-Dick...Let it sit on your coffee table as testament to what all of us human beings can do if we stick with it.
-- Oprah.com, on Moby-Dick in Pictures by Matt Kish