In today’s episode, we meet Joseph Mills, author of Bleachers: fifty-four linked fictions, stories about what happens in and around youth sports.

Shaindel Beers, author of Secure Your Own Mask, Winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize, says “in Bleachers, Joe Mills pulls back the curtain on an oft-ridiculed segment of society, the ‘soccer mom’ (or dad!) and reveals the deeper recesses of the human psyche. The realization that to have a child is ‘the death of the self,’ that some days the best you can do as a parent is ‘just be there,’ and myriad other epiphanies. From Pre-Game to Post-Game, from ‘Aging’ to ‘Zidane,’ there are life lessons for player and parent.”

Joe starts the show reading one of the stories titled “Broncos,” where one mother wonders why teams couldn’t be more honest about what they call themselves.