"Joshua Kornreich’s THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS (Marick Press, September 2007) is simply the best debut novel I’ve read during the era of its debut. What is remarkable about this book is not that it is told from the perspective, and in the broken language, of an eight-year-old murderer, nor that its relentless narrative propels us to its illuminating and tragic end like the best of genre mysteries. No. What Kornreich does with unyielding force is build language... Kornreich will try a word and then try another word next to another as his childhood narrator is trying to piece together whom he’s murdered. And while his childhood narrator is trying to remember what he’s done, and why, we learn his language. Actually, what Kornreich does to us is what only Peter Handke has done, in KASPAR (another rendition of another wild child): we are as thrilled by learning his language as we are horrified by the story his language finally tells us."
--Hotel St. George Press (review by Aaron Petrovich, author of THE SESSION and editor at Akashic Books, July 2008)

"THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS teaches us how to see afresh how sentences look and function on the page, isolating their sparse beauty, floating each in a small sea of white space, making each tentative, always ready to try a new version of itself, making each as obsessive about itself as the unhinged oedipal narrator is about himself, about his universe of childhood secrets, fears, trespasses, violence, voyeurism, a frightening father, an ineffectual mother, a bevy of bullying boys, a houseful of haunting revelations. Tight, clean, spare, this is the real deal."
--Lance Olsen, recipient of the Pushcart Prize and Chairman of FC2

"THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS is very much its own creature, and the reader who chooses to follow the story of Kornreich's Boy will not regret the decision. Much of the pleasure in reading THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS does indeed come from the use of the language itself; once adjusted to the rhythm and flow of Kornreich's isolated sentences, the reader may find it difficult to imagine the Boy's story told any other way. Yet beneath his public image as a linguistic trailblazer, Kornreich proves himself to be a fine storyteller: outrageous and bizarre, certainly, but also subtle, perceptive and sensitive enough to win the reader’s heart."
--Meridian (Issue 20, January 2008)

"THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS is one of the most refreshing novels I have read all year. The story of one afternoon in an eight year-old boy's life is told poetically through the voice of the child. Joshua Kornreich's stream of consciousness style captures the innocence and vulnerability of its subject well, and his spare sentences and paragraphs add to the book's undeniable charm."
--Largehearted Boy (November 14, 2007)

"Kornreich is able to solidly get in the head of a young boy and force the reader to see EVERYthing through his eyes.  [THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS is] a fascinating work.  5.0 [out of 5.0] stars."
--Emerging Writers Network (review by Dan Wickett, Executive Director and Publisher at Dzanc Books, December 18, 2007)

"In a language all his own, a language driven by stutterance and repetition, Joshua Kornreich evokes and seduces the reader into a boyhood mythography where things are not what they always seem to be. At the center of this world stands Kornreich’s boy, a hypersensitive kid whose eyes and ears are struggling to make sense of a world fissured by his parents' marital unrest and his own invisible place in that familial world. What Kornreich’s boy-narrator is fascinated with most compulsively – the household dustbuster, the backyard tree, the bushes that separate one backyard from another, not to mention the mysterious brown residue that resides at the bottom of the deep end of the family’s backyard pool – is also the source of his most startling revelations. A first novel unlike any other, THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS is a book of lingual daring and domestic disturbance that belongs on the shelf next to Gordon Lish’s PERU, not only for the singular way that it deals with the subject matter of childhood violence, but also for the sheer force and torque of its sentences."
--Peter Markus, author of WE MAKE MUD and BOB, OR MAN ON BOAT

"THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS is a stunning original – a tour-de-force in language as well as a moving story of a shattered childhood. Joshua Kornreich is immensely talented. Keep your eye on this author!"
--Masha Hamilton, author of 31 HOURS and THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE

"[THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS] seriously made me feel dirty in a way unlike any book ever, I don't know why...really disconcerting in its aura in a way I can't explain...totally bizarre."
--Blake Butler, author of THERE IS NO YEAR and co-founder/head editor at HTMLGIANT

"...[THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS] was fantastic. Rhythmic, spilling, thoughtfully honest."
--J.A. Tyler, author of INCONCEIVABLE WILSON and Founding Editor at Mud Luscious Press

"Some of the books I loved [reading] the most [in 2009 included]...Joshua Kornreich's THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS."
--Matt Bell, winner of the 2008 StorySouth Million Writers Award and Editor at Dzanc Books and The Collagist

KNOTTY, KNOTTY, KNOTTY (completed in 2010; second novel; offbeat literary)

-Description: KNOTTY, KNOTTY, KNOTTY (222 pp.; 51,000 words) is narrated in the eccentric, stylized prose of a cape-wearing, orally-obsessed philanderer, who, despite his aching mouth, endeavors to find meaning in his brother’s bullying-induced suicide, as well as in the “knotty” inner “conflicts” derived from his own motherless upbringing. Through his colloquial, candid, and often comedic delivery, this “swamped” soul weaves a tale of growing up “not rich” in a “small house” with his “avant-garde” drum-playing brother, his dysfunctional, ticket-scalping father, and his overbearing, “native” nanny whose fatherless, deaf-mute daughter is his closest companion. His reflections are interspersed with humorous, yet sometimes heartbreaking, vignettes involving – but not limited to – a cantankerous wife, a shadowing dog, an omniscient man in black, an analog cable box, an in-house hair salon, a beloved plunger, a vibrating “metal comb,” a call girl service, a square dancing obsession, an apartment ledge, and 9/11. The sum of these revelations is a profound portrayal of a man struggling to descramble a scrambled-up universe in which the haves are those with Channel 1 and the have-nots are those without it. With this warped black-and-white view of the world, a world in which patience is a virtue and intimacy a burden, the only sensible way to go about living is to persevere and make your mark.

THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS (Marick Press, 2007; debut novel; 160 pp.)

-Description: An eight-year-old boy with a case of head lice kills and narrates, withholding the identity of his victim until the end of the novel. In the process, he discovers the reason behind his parents' divorce and unknowingly unravels the mystery surrounding the nickname of his sadistic father.

WE MAKE (Unsaid: Issue #4, 2009; short-short fiction)

THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS (Marick Press, 2007; debut novel; 160 pp.)

*Author, KNOTTY, KNOTTY, KNOTTY (completed in 2010; second novel)
*Author, THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS (Marick Press, 2007; debut novel)
*Student, Gordon Lish Writing Class, The Center for Fiction (2009)
*Vice President, Sandler Capital Management (1999-2008)
*Industry Analyst, Merrill Lynch (1997-1998)
*Marketing Associate, Comcast Cable Communications (1996-1997)
*BA in Communication, University of Pennsylvania (1993-1997)
*Member, Authors Guild (2009-present)
*Executive Member, Women's National Book Association - NYC Chapter (2005-present)

-agent representation, publishing rights, and film rights for KNOTTY, KNOTTY, KNOTTY (completed in 2010; second novel; 222 pp., 51,000 words)
-film rights and foreign publishing rights (excl. Canada) for THE BOY WHO KILLED CATERPILLARS (Marick Press, 2007; debut novel; 160 pp., 26,000 words)