A tense, layered story of misguided allegiances and sheer desperation, One Simple Thing is the kind of "grit lit" that belongs with such writers as Per Petterson, Richard Ford (Canada) and Charles Portis.
Warren Read is the author of a 2008 memoir, The Lyncher in Me, about his discovery that his great-grandfather had incited a lynching in 1920, and the 2017 novel, Ash Falls, which was called "a moody, haunting foray into rural Americana in the mold of Daniel Woodrell and Christian Kiefer," by Kirkus. His fiction has been published in Hot Metal Bridge, Mud Season Review, Sliver of Stone, Inklette, Switchback and The Drowning Gull. In addition, he has had two short plays directed and produced by Tony winner Dinah Manoff. Warren earned his MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.