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RECENT ACTIVITY
• ATTICUS REVIEW, December 2011, “The Bequest” (online)
• VERDAD, A Journal of Literature and Art, Winter 2011, “The Window Harp” (online)
• Eclectica Magazine, Summer Issue, July 2011, “The Gentleman Caller” (online)
• Midway Journal, 2011, Volume 5, Issue 6, “Lookout Hill” (online)
• Red Cedar Review, Michigan State University, 2011 Retrospective Issue, “Queen Esther”
• LITnIMAGE, Winter Issue, January 2011, “Little Men” (online)
• The World’s Smallest Bible, Forthcoming novel by Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, CA
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• Member Authors Guild and Pen, USA.
• Listed in A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers.
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 My father was a potter who fired cups, saucers, and dinner plates out of clay lifted from the banks of the Shenango, a river that runs through our hometown. To demonstrate their toughness he'd drop them on the floor. I mold stories from the same source—except they are more fragile.
Welcome to my site; it introduces you to some of my work, past and current, including this brief biography.
Throughout this Web site images of John Hawkins’ play studies span our four productions, the final one, NIGHTMOTHS, performed at Westbeth Theatre, Bank Street, Greenwich Village, New York, 1974.
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copyright© 2004-2012 Dennis Must.
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OH DON’T ASK WHY
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“Often it seems the sacred can only be defined by and in the presence of the profane—think of Kafka, Flannery O'Connor, Nathaniel West, Hawthorne. This is a darkly funny book that provokes the sort of laughter that dies in your throat as you realize that, as Brecht put it, ‘He who laughs has not yet been told the terrible news’…This collection will haunt the reader for a long, long time; as a Fitzgerald notebook entry goes, ‘Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I'll tell you a story.’”
—Geoffrey Clark , author of WEDDING IN OCTOBER and JACKDOG SUMMER.
—More about Oh Don’t Ask Why
Jack Smith review of “Oh Don’t Ask Why,” The Texas Review
• Read the New Pages review
• Read the Salem Gazette article about Dennis and Oh Don’t Ask Why
PLAYS
In the late ’60s and early ’70s John Hawkins, a graphic artist, and I collaborated to direct and produce several of my plays Off Off Broadway. Circus Family, our company, was one of many influenced by the work of Antonin Artaud and Jerzy Grotowski, participating in a period of intense experimentation in the American theatre.
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BANJO GREASE
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“Dennis Must’s first collection of short stories is no ordinary debut, but the mature work of a fully accomplished literary artist. Moreover, his originality, his deep irreverence, and his compassion for working-class men and women, parents and children, strivers and seekers of dreams, signal him as an inspired author in a new American grain—a visionary, poet, and realist… —Tom Jenks, editor (with Raymond Carver) of AMERICAN SHORT STORY MASTERPIECES.
—More about Banjo Grease
 –click to enlarge–
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Death’s Balloon
Play Study
Artist: John Hawkins
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