Wells Tower’s Book

Published to Acclaim

Wells Tower’s (CFS ’91) first literary foray was during Lower School at Carolina Friends School where he wrote a play about dental hygiene. He’s been writing ever since.

After college, he published numerous non-fiction articles, winning two Pushcart Prizes. His work appeared in many publications including “Outside,” “Washington Post Magazine,” “Paris Review,” and “Harper’s.” His short stories have been published in “The New Yorker” and “The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. “ His new collection of stories, “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned,” was published in March by Farrar, Strauss, Giroux and has received glowing reviews in the “New York Times” and virtually every major literary review. (Excerpts of reviews are below.)

Wells was recently interviewed on WUNC radio’s “The State of Things,” during which he talked about his days at CFS (where his mother taught Latin for several years), becoming an author, and read excerpts from several of the stories in his new book. To hear the interview, click here….

To read one of the stories in the collection, “Leopard,” initially published in “The New Yorker,” click here……

To read Wells’ non-fiction pieces, click here….. for “Restoration,” or click here…. for “The Thing with Feathers.”

“This arresting debut collection of stories decisively establishes Mr. Tower—a magazine journalist who has also won two Pushcart Prizes—as a writer of uncommon talent..... Mr. Tower has an instinctive gift for creating characters with finely calibrated interior lives and an almost Dickensian physical immediacy.” Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times”“ [An] incredible talent . . . It sometimes feels as if there’s nothing Tower can’t render in arresting fashion . . . Tower writes with spellbinding virtuosity . . . One suspects we’ll be hearing his name—which invokes prose that is both soaring and deep—for a long time to come.” Jim Ruland, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“In his debut collection, Tower writes about raggedy men, neglected boys, and quarrelsome Vikings who are down on their luck (if they ever had any). But the stories are very funny, and surprising, and possess a rugged beauty.” Vendela Vida, Vanity Fair

“[Tower’s] syntax, though always easy to follow, is supple enough to wrap itself around several shades of meaning in the same sentence….. Every one of the stories in Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is polished and distinctive.” Edmund White, The New York Times Book Review