“I’ve been a fan of Kathe Burkhart’s writing since before West Virginia was even a state, when it was nothing but a mountainous region of hard drugs from which wild women emerged like they’d already escaped a lot of dumb dumb guys. Her writing says the things we all want to say but don’t even know that we know, the horror and beauty and comedy of human life, the banal complicity of desire. She shows how the art world is like the bedroom is like the work of the memoir-cum-essay, at least the guys in each. Kathe Burkhart is one of the makers and shapers of a new American literature. The way I see it, she’s the gold standard of both showing and telling. Dudes is a remarkable achievement.” – Kevin Killian, author of Impossible Princess, Little Men