The Dark Eclipse

Barnes brilliantly understands the memoirist’s spiritual prerogative—we are able to bring the dead back to life in our prose. We can take the pictures off the wall and make them dance; we can take the facts of dry documents and make them into vivid stories. The Dark Eclipse is a beautiful example of this. 

~Susan Cheever, author of Home Before Dark and Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker

"Powerful, often devastating, and proof if proof were needed that personal essays can be immensely intelligent and profoundly moving."

~Peter Trachtenberg, author of The Book of Calamities and Another Insane Devotion

"Hard-won knowledge is the kind that matters most. In The Dark Eclipse, Andrew Barnes tracks the reverberations of his brother’s suicide through the long decades of aftermath. This is honest work—the bubble in the spirit-level rides at dead center."

~Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age

A.W. Barnes radio interview with KMA Land (Iowa)

~KMA Land

KUCI 'Get the Funk Out Show' interview with A.W. Barnes

~KUCI "Get the Funk Out Show"

Interview on WRKF's "Talk Louisiana" interview with A.W. Barnes

~WRKF "Talk Louisiana"

"The story Barnes weaves in this memoir—a story of suicidal desires and success, of what drives siblings apart and could, at turns, bring them back together—is a lyric noir of family instability, personal revelation, and queer inheritance both genealogical and literary....Our job, as Barnes beautifully demonstrates here, is to take the ashes of our lives—not only our lived lives, but our lives as readers, too—and sculpt them into a new art."

~Lambda Literary

"Barnes' unencumbered language make this shortish book a breezy read. The subject matter, however--the exploration of death, family history, and the discovery of self--are not so easy; bu they are necessary." 

~Gay & Lesbian Review