M. randal O’Wain
M. Randal O’Wain is the author of Meander Belt: family, loss, and coming of age in the working-class south (Nebraska, 2019) and the story collection Hallelujah Station (Autumn House, 2020). He is co-editor of Hub City Shorts, an anthology series of stories from the American South. His essays and stories have appeared in Masters Review, Zone 3, Hotel Amerika, Guernica, and Oxford American. He holds an MFA from Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and teaches at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Praise for meander belt
“Although the memoir is full of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, it never feels frivolous. A love letter to Memphis, it is also a send off. In sentence after taut sentence, O’Wain aims for the heart while also deploying humor.”
—Drew Bratcher, LA Review of Books
"I have yet to read a book on this subject more important and honest than Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, and this seems like the perfect book to challenge that."
—Gabino Iglesias, Lit Reactor
"O'Wain deftly parses the larger cultural forces that shaped his youth—the heavy thumb that is family, class, place, and tradition. The result is something that straddles the line between the intimacy and immediacy of someone simply telling their story, and the perspicacity of the best cultural criticism. It’s a tender, funny book with a clear vision and a true heart—I cried three times."
—Juliet Escoria, Electric Literature
"Subtitled Family, Loss, and Coming of Age in the Working Class South, O'Wain's book is a mediation on the blue collar world that engulfed his adolescence. It studies, with tremendous intimacy, the actions of his family and the effects they had on shaping the man he would become. Beyond that, it is a window into a world often overlooked by media. A section of America described by stereotypical labels that might be true sometimes, but are often a mischaracterization."
—Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful
"[Meander Belt] is a book about taking the path less traveled, about taking the hard way out, and about choosing the gloriousness of experience over the ease of tradition. It is a gritty city book about death, drugs, sleezy propositions in sticky alleyways, and the shadow of Leonard Cohen. It is a book about the inevitable heartbreak suffered between a father and son when the son is ready to become a man and the father is not ready to let him go.In the end, Meander Belt is a revelation. M. Randal O'Wain is signaling his presence to the pantheon of great North Carolina writers."
—Jason Jefferies, WRAL.com
"Richly textured, defiantly honest, Meander Belt plumbs lives chained to the other side of the tracks, the perils of the working poor. O’Wain is a talent to watch."
—Hamilton Cain, Chapter 16
"William Zinsser's description of what a memoir does has always resonated with me: 'Memoir isn't the summary of a life; it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition.' And that's what O'Wain provides—a deliberate construction of salient moments, when read, that trigger our memories, produce their own, and linger like lived experience."
—Chansi Long, Brevity
"This is a quintessential American story of overcoming a life of hardship through perseverance and self-reclamation and coming out changed without really knowing where home is, but understanding the story continues."
—Anthony Clemons, Hippocampus Magazine
Praise for hallelujah station
The fine line between sinners and saints is an evergreen theme of Southern fiction, but O’Wain strikes me as a writer on the move, increasingly assured of his talent and slant mode of storytelling, firing off gorgeous sentence after gorgeous sentence. The South is quickening with fresh literary blood, shifting toward an emerging generation. M. Randal O’Wain leads the charge, invigorating our tradition and carrying it forward.
—Hamilton Cain, Chapter 16/Commercial Appeal
From start to finish, the characters of Hallelujah Station and Other Stories grapple with overwhelming circumstances, refusing to let go. […]some emerge from their struggles victorious, some wandering, and, all of them, changed.
—Southern Review of Books
“Hallelujah Station is “impressive…disarming. O’Wain’s writing is energised and confident without tipping into sententiousness.”
—Frank Brinkley, Literary Review
Hallelujah Station introduces us to a world populated by indelible misfits, rendered through M. Randal O’Wain’s piercing talent. Every story in this collection is frenetic, big-hearted, and ferocious.
— Juliet Escoria, author of Juliet the Maniac
What I admire about the stories in this collection is the way O’Wain writes about love—all kinds of love, between all kinds of people. He knows so much about the wear and tear the heart endures. These tales are riveting, and some of them are dark and sad, but in the end, there’s always a light to follow. O’Wain is an honest writer. He tells the truth.
—Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish
HUB city shorts
Hub City Shorts is a series of publications edited by Gabriel Bump, Mesha Maren, and M. Randal O’Wain, coming in 2027 from Hub City Press. This design-forward, collectible series of small-format books celebrates short forms from new, established, and rediscovered Southern writers. Hub City Shorts will feature roughly six stories from six writers, collated by state. Our first two editions will feature South Carolina and Mississippi writers. Both editions will be published together in 2027.
With a distinctive design and collectible format, Hub City Shorts offers readers an elegant, portable way to experience the South’s most compelling stories—both new and rediscovered. The books will be slim and elegant–ideal for travel, gifting, or dipping into between longer reads. Beyond this initial states project, Hub City Shorts will enable Hub City Press to accommodate hybrid forms, novellas, book-length essays, and other works outside of the standard format.