hairs appeared on Dennis Cooper’s end-of-the-year list for 2023! Thank you!

Perfect Bound // 4×6, 50pgs

As a writer, I tend to write three words and delete two and a half. I leaned into this impulse with my latest collection hairs. Trying to create the leanest, most unnerving stories that I could think of.

“Six insidious stories, as small and upsetting as an eyelash comprise Ira Rat’s Hairs. Each uncomfortable experience leaves the reader squirming for more. To quote from the opening story at the base of a crucifixion,
“(A)nxiety is still the highest form of art.” — Joe Koch (author, The Wingspan of Severed Hands, and The Couvade)

“An intricate and unforgettable atrocity exhibition, rendered in elusive prose and propelled into being by a furious young artist we should all be recognising as modern Kafka.” — Chris Kelso (author, The Dregs Trilogy)

” Ira Rat peels layers of spectacle away from the perception we would like to have to reveal the insidiously grotesque reality beneath. Everything he writes feels like he has something to show us or to make us understand, if only for the small comfort of sharing tragedies.” — Charlene Elsby (author, The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty and Violent Faculties)