Captive Audience

“Captive Audience is wonderful. These stories—understated, honest and always touching—limn the many small perils that await a young man today on his way to settling in the world. This is an immensely rewarding book.”—Scott Turow

“Dave Reidy’s stories remind us that even when we’re composing our Song of Everyone Else, we’re creating a distinctive Song of Ourselves, and continually gathering others into us, in a way that Walt Whitman would recognize, and celebrate.”—Jim Shepard

“Dave Reidy’s matchless reports from the heart of twenty-first century America, a landscape of technological obsession and performance anxiety (in many forms), are elegant, precise, cool, and funny. Here is a young writer from whom we can expect much in the future.”—David Leavitt

Bob Newhart, REM, and Abe Vigoda are just a few of the many characters—both real and imagined—who populate the world of Captive Audience, Dave Reidy’s paean to the highs, lows, and everything in-between of being a performer. From the opening story, the award-winning “The Regular,” where two music fans bond over karaoke, to the final tale, where a humiliated musician gets a very odd moment in the sun with REM, this bittersweet and humorous collection gives voice to those who are driven to perform, no matter the size of the audience.

Dave Reidy received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Florida. His fiction has appeared in Pindeldyboz, The MacGuffin, and The Frostproof Review. In 2007, Charles D’Ambrosio chose the lead story of Captive Audience, “The Regular,” as the winner of the Emerging Writers Network Short Story Competition.