Sparkle Street Press
Mike DeCapite
Photo by June Hony
Mike DeCapite grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and started writing his first novel, Through the Windshield—“a Whitmanesque hymn” to that city (Jocko Weyland, Rain Taxi) — after moving to London in 1985. DeCapite finished Through the Windshield in New York in 1990. The book circulated widely in manuscript and had picked up a cult following by the time DeCapite published it in 1998 with his own Sparkle Street Books. In his review of Through the Windshield for the Austin Chronicle, Harvey Pekar called it “one of the better American novels of the past several years.” From 1993 to 2005, DeCapite lived in San Francisco, where he worked on a second novel, Ruined for Life! Excerpts appeared in 3:AM Magazine and Sensitive Skin, but the book remains unpublished. DeCapite’s short story “Sitting Pretty” appeared as a CUZ Edition in 1999, and was then included in The Italian American Reader (William Morrow 2003; HarperCollins 2005). In 2005, DeCapite returned to New York. In 2012, he published the chapbook Creamsicle Blue (“a 27-page piece of nonfiction with the scope of a novel and the depth of a meditation”—Karen Lillis). He followed it in 2013 with Radiant Fog, a collection of personal essays. In 2021, DeCapite’s novel Jacket Weather was published by Soft Skull Press (“I don’t think there exists another novel like [it]. . . . an almost unbearably tender love story for adults. The days and weeks and seasons and every quotidian detail vibrate with newness and suspense” —Mimi Lipson).
OTHER WRITINGS
Mike DeCapite on His Jacket Weather Playlist at Largehearted Boy
Christmas Eve
Meeting Lincoln
What’s Good: Elegy for Lou Reed
Listening Party: Elegy for Jim Jones
Doc’s Clock
Love
INTERVIEWS
Brooklyn Rail
Cleveland Review of Books
Please Kill Me
Karen Lillis Interview with Mike DeCapite
PRESS
Sensitive Skin
Our Town/The Spirit/Chelsea News
Los Angeles Review of Books
Ordinary Times
Karen the Small Press Librarian
Rain Taxi Review of Books
Northern Ohio Live
Cleveland Free Times
San Francisco Chronicle
Austin Chronicle
READINGS
Backroom Broadsides, Fox & Crow, Jersey City, New Jersey, July 2, 2019
Guide to Kulchur, Cleveland, Ohio, November 26, 2013
The Literary, Cleveland, Ohio, March 9, 2012
Video courtesy of Andy Timithy.
WORKS
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Jacket WeatherAvailable in print, for Kindle, and as an audiobook at Amazon. |
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Through the Windshield2014 reprint edition from Red Giant Books, available at Amazon.com |
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Available at Amazon.com as a Kindle book
Available for iPad from iTunes Available for Nook at Barnes & Noble Available for Kobo e-readers at Kobo |
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1998 print edition available used at Amazon.com |
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Radiant FogOrder here, $12 postpaid
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Creamsicle BlueOrder here, $10 postpaid Also available as a Kindle book ($5) |
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Sitting PrettyAvailable at Amazon.com |
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The Italian American ReaderEdited by Bill Tonelli |