About Dave King, Author of the Novel The Ha-Ha - Dave King holds a BFA in painting and film from Cooper Union and an MFA in writing from Columbia University. He has been published in The Paris Review and Big City Lit, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. An unforgettable first novel about silence, family, and the imperative of love. Howard Kapostash has not spoken in thirty years. Ever since a severe blow to the head during his days in the Army, words unravel in his mouth and letters on the page make no sense at all. Because of his extremely limited communication abilities--a small repertory of gestures and simple sounds--most people see him as disturbed. No one understands that Howard is still the same man he was before enlisting, still awed by the beauty of a landscape, still pining for his high school sweetheart, Sylvia. Now Sylvia is a single mom with troubles of her own, and she needs Howard's help. She is being hauled into a drug rehab program and she asks Howard to care for her 9 year-old son, Ryan. The presence of this nervous, resourceful boy in Howard's life transforms him utterly. With a child's happiness at stake, communication takes on a fresh urgency, and the routine that Howard has evolved over the years--designed specifically to minimize the agony of human contact--suddenly feels restrictive and even dangerous. Forced out of his groove, Howard finds unexpected delights (in baseball, in work, in meals with his housemates). His home comes alive with the joy, sorrows, and love of a real family. But these changes also open Howard to the risks of loss--and to the rage he has spent a lifetime suppressing. Written with a luminous simplicity and grace, The Ha-Ha follows Howard down his difficult path to a new life. It is a deeply moving story about the cost of war and the infinite worth of human connection. A stunning debut novel.

Author photo © 2001 Stephen Barker
	“A writer to watch.”
	–Kirkus Reviews
	“Everyone who reads this book will have a different moment when Howie becomes that irresistible force, a narrator you’d follow anywhere….Howie’s desire to do whatever’s right, his ambivalence, his blunt way of seeing things—these qualities make him a wonderful companion….It’s a rare pleasure to spend time with someone so utterly incapable of being a hypocrite.”
	–Claire Dederer, Newsday
	"In this brave and graceful novel, Dave King vividly connects us to a character whose own connections to the outside world are almost nonexistent. As readers, we get to see inside this man, flawed and funny and complex and tragic as he is, in a way no one around him can, and we are grateful to Dave King for that privilege."
	–Carolyn Parkhurst

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	Dave King	holds a BFA in painting
	and film from Cooper Union and an MFA in writing from Columbia University. King's debut novel, The Ha-Ha, was named one of the best books of 2005 by The Christian Science Monitor and The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and was among eighteen books inluded on The Washington Post list of the season's best novels. The Ha-Ha was a finalist for Book-of-the-Month Club's "Best Literary Fiction" award and the Quills Foundation "Best Debut Author" award and won King a 2006-07 Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. King's poetry has been published in The Paris Review, among other venues, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has taught English at Baruch College and cultural studies and poetry at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and he divides his time between Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley of New York. The Ha-Ha is currently in development from Warner Brothers Pictures, with Tod Williams slated to direct. The book has also found success in several foreign language editions, with more forthcoming.
	If you'd like to learn more about Dave or The Ha-Ha, download this extended fact sheet (requires Abobe PDF reader).