My friend, Ryan Wil­son, has offi­cially released his first novel, Spi­ral Bound Brother, and it’s ter­rific, lively, funny, and far deeper than any­thing I could ever write.

Ryan, who has a day job teach­ing cre­ative writ­ing to teenagers, work­shopped the book at our our writer’s lab over the past cou­ple of years. I always got jazzed up about my own writ­ing when­ever Ryan pre­sented one of the chap­ters to the group. Watch­ing some­one you like work through the process of mak­ing good art makes you want to rush out and work on your own art.

Any­way, what I like best about Ryan (aside from the fact that he’s a gen­uine good guy) is that he has a sharp ear for dia­logue and a thought­ful way of putting his char­ac­ters into hilar­i­ous and dif­fi­cult posi­tions. The open­ing scenes of Spi­ral Bound Brother are among the fun­ni­est things I’ve ever read, with­out being shal­low, or gra­tu­itous, or inci­den­tal to the plot. There’s a depth to Ryan’s writ­ing, and a poignancy that makes Spi­ral Bound Brother more than just another angsty/funny young adult novel, which should be rec­om­men­da­tion enough for you to go out and read it.