"The book is TERRIFIC – I just loved it and will recommend it all over the place to teen and adult readers. You have a unique ability to convey deep and complicated feeling through simple, funny and sweet prose." -- Rachel Cohn, author of Gingerbread, Shrimp, The Steps, and Two Steps Forward

"I wanted to tell you how much I liked It's Kind of a Funny Story. Your descriptions of depression are so accurate and heartbreaking. One of my favorite metaphors was on the first page when you describe trying to talk like words coming out in chunks from a crushed-ice dispenser. So true." -- Ariel Schrag, creator of the graphic novels Awkward, Definition, Potential, and Likewise

It's Kind of a Funny Story is my third book. It's the story of Craig Gilner, a kid in high school who gets freaked out, wants to kill himself, and checks into the psych hospital. The book details the week he spends there and how he gets his life... well, not together. But alive.

It's based, not too loosely, on my own experience on the good ol' adult psychiatric floor of Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, which I entered when I wanted to kill myself in November 2004. Yay! I've managed to stay out since then, although I've wanted to go back many a time.

• There is a Myspace for the book at myspace.com/ikoafs.


• Hear me read the first chapter on YouTube FREE (I am not responsible for the content of YouTube's ads).


• here it is on Facebook

Press for the book is posted as it appears right here.

Published by Free Spirit Publishing. THIS VERSION ONLY is out of print as of 2007.

One of the things that people asked for on this site site was more attention paid to Teen Angst? Naaah.... I hope this satisfies:

1. Teen Angst? Naaah... is my first book.

2. When it came out, I learned quickly that if I described it as "a bunch of funny, stupid stories about stuff that happened to me in high school", they got the point. For more refined people who only enjoyed art that pushed the envelope, I would say it was "a bunch of funny, stupid stories about SHIT that happened to me in high school." Those remain good descriptions.

3. The stories in the book span 1990-1999.

4. I wrote the stories between 1996 and 1999, inclusive.

5. A majority of the book originally appeared in the New York Press, a local alternative weekly, sometimes edited differently or in a wildly divergent form.

6. Teen Angst? Naaah... didn't work for TV, but we tried. Soon after the book came out, a man named John Schultz came to New York and we talked about a TA?N movie. (He bought me a good burger, too; thanks, John.) I left feeling enthusiastic. Then, a few weeks later, Jane startz Productions, who had a first-look deal with Miramax Films (this just meant I could say "Miramax" in conjunction with my book), offered to take out an option on the book. (Or maybe Miramax did; honestly, I forget.) An option means that a company pays for the right to try and make a television show (or movie) out of your product within a certain period of time. We had 18 months. Jane Startz Productions brought in a wonderful gentleman named Ken Lipman; he had helmed the mid-90s cable show The Secret World of Alex Mack. Unfortunately the project didn't get off the ground and the option expired. Some years later (2005), Ken decided to take another shot and sell the show to The N cable network, which, in an entirely unrelated venture, I had tried to create music for. This, too, failed. John Schultz went on to direct Like Mike. Right now the best chance of a Teen Angst television show or movie getting made is if you make one yourself. I'll host it, I'm serious. (Host as in, host the files.)

7. Any general questions that you have about the book, the characters, whether it's true, etc. should be in the Wormwhole lives!

The Italian version of the book has a really beautiful cover that I love.