Back to WORK

"We are thrilled & honored to be bringing this cult classic back into print."

My memoir WORK has been given a fresh body and soul, as they say, “With more than 60 pages of new material, this book has been lovingly refurbished, restructured, and reimagined.” I am thrilled to be putting out WORK with Perfect Day. It’s been one of the greatest joys of my life to work with Michael Heald, to get this memoir back out.

The book is coming back in late July of 2026. It’s at the printers right now (June 26th) and will ship from Portland Oregon hot and ready off the press. It won’t be on Amazon—hooray for that. It can be begotten direct from Perfect Day. To knock a couple dollars off the cover price, please pre-ordered here.

The cover was designed by the great Aaron Miller, a scan taken from a welding coat (to pay homage to the original cover I made back in 2017).

But wait, you might wonder, what is this book? Oh, I don’t know. It’s just my entire life. It’s my story of growing up, making art, having a job in the trades, all these dumb things that constitute living. One of the pieces “My Truck Desk” is here at The Paris Review and another one “There’s a Future in Plastics” is here at The Baffler. This book is what I have to say about what I assume is the first half of my time here on earth. It’s the kind of book I always wanted to read, and couldn’t quite find—an ordinary person explaining where they thought the division line should be between labor and dreaming.

Of course, after I wrote it the first time, I did find a few books that were like it, such as On Fire by Larry Brown and One More for the People by Martha Grover, and they were influential to complete it. Over the years, since Work fell out of print, I’ve gotten emails, nearly weekly, from people all over America who’d heard about the book but who were bummed to see copies of it only available online, used, for way too much money. They couldn’t read it. What was I to do? Read it to them over the telephone? Sometimes I did. But lucky for me, now Work is on its way again.

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It was nice—while I was down at the Convent Fellowship in Cape May, NJ, the final proofing of Work happened to happen. I’ve never done a residency before … leave behind the day-to-day and go and work with other artists for a week somewhere beautiful. While I was (gratefully) away from my normal day job, and posted up in the Science Center there, just steps away from the Atlantic, the ocean was surging and singing outside the window of the office I was given on the third floor. The Mother Superior room, I was told it used to be. I got some other good work done there at the fellowship, retyped half of my new novel (won’t be out for a couple years, if ever) and fielded a round of copyedits on my next novel, Mighty, coming along April 2027 from Knopf. But the big win was finalizing the proofing of Work. It brings me great joy to see the book coming back into a new form, its best form. Feel blessed to have been able to do this work and have it all come together like this. Maybe it was a blessing from Mother Superior herself, I don’t know. I’m thankful to Mother Superior (and Daniel Magariel, director of the Convent fellwoship). All that is to say, if you’re an artist or know one, keep an eye out for applications for next year’s fellowship at Convent. Or if you’re anywhere near Cape May, New Jersey, attend the many newly scheduled writing-talks they organize at the science center’s space, and galleries around town. They’ve been bringing authors/professors there to speak on things you’d usually have to dip into a university to witness and hey, it’s free to go to these talks. It’s a great thing they are doing there, for the regular person (who I count myself among) at the very bottom, of my beloved home state.

photo by Livia Blum

photo Livia Livia Blum

Thank you for reading and looking,
Hope you’re doing well today and tomorrow too

<3 Bud