The Skin Team

Fiction. LGBT Studies. There’s been a fire at the Power Company Building. A vomit of lightbulbs. A compass recovered from the stomach, pointing to True North. Teams of boys in the woods get lost and forget their colors. Girls gather in the park, trying to remember what songs to sing. But the horses are too sick to bet on and a map is not the territory. Three skins convulse, three bodies converge. A sickness is shared between a girl and a boy and a boy and a river. Jordaan Mason’s debut novel, THE SKIN TEAM, is a story of mesmerized violence and the shape shifting between love and sex and the singing that happens when the power goes out.

“Reading THE SKIN TEAM, you would never suspect how difficult it is to write even fairly about such things, much less with Jordaan Mason’s radiant emotional grace and super-deft detailing and flawless style. This novel is something very rare, and it’s about as beautiful as fiction can ever be.” Dennis Cooper”