Author of Ursula Lake and Sidebend World

Charles Harper Webb

Called “Southern California’s most inventive and accessible poet,” Charles Harper Webb is the nation’s foremost proponent of Stand Up Poetry. A former professional rock singer/guitarist and licensed psychotherapist, he is Professor of English at California State University, Long Beach. His latest of twelve collections of poetry is Sidebend World( University of Pittsburgh, 2018). Webb has published a collection of essays, A Million MFAs Are Not Enough(Red Hen, 2016), and edited Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology(University of Iowa, 2002), used as a text in many universities. His awards include a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Tufts Discovery Award, and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. An avid fly-fisherman, he lives in Los Angeles, CA.

The Elephant of Surprise

Listen. There’s a new collection out from one of America’s most gifted poets, whose work combines a rare and engaging blend of wit, imagination, and heart. Beneath the brilliantly comic surface is Webb’s celebration of humanity—our capacity for wonder in the throes of the mundane, our slapstick stubbornness in the face of lousy odds (henpecked Harold is now a baked potato). Need a dose of raucous sanity to help you juke through toil’s weekly gauntlet? Step right up. Hectored by those who insist the best poems must always be dour and difficult? As The Divine Miss M would observe, “Fuck em if they can’t take a joke.”
—William Trowbridge, author of Maintenance

Charles Harper Webb, who carried into new generations the humor of poet Ed Fields, the mischief of Monty Python, and the deranged and outrageous imaginings of the absurdist Russell Edson -- is Back. (And, further, he never left.) WARNING (not a trigger warning, the other kind): He or She (or They), or They, She or He, who disparages this collection will forthwith be set upon by the Guinea Pigs of Chagrin. Maybe.
—Suzanne Lummis, author of Crime Wave (2025)

Webb marries poetry and prose and we—lucky readers—get to go on the honeymoon. The Elephant of Surprise is full of sass and candor, gratifyingly off-kilter, and untimately heartening.
—Ron Koertge, author of Fever

Ursula Lake

In the fast-paced, sexy, and very scary literary thriller Ursula Lake, a husband and wife trying to save their marriage and a rock musician trying to get his career back on track find big trouble, natural and possibly supernatural, in the spellbinding wilds of British Columbia.

Ursula Lake is a rare novel that is equal parts lyrical and suspenseful. Charles Harper Webb uses his poet’s voice to weave a haunting tale that marries the latent horrors of the natural world to the dark heart of the humans who inhabit it.

—Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women

Nobody handles language like a poet. So whenever I see a novel written by a poet I admire, I know I'm in for a treat. Charles Harper Webb's Ursula Lake is scary, emotionally wrenching, sexy, tender, and full of natural beauty. It's also lively, fast-paced, and fun to read as it rips into the comforting lies that prop civilization up. In this novel, Webb shows why he's won so may writing awards. Take my advice, and plunge head-first into Ursula Lake.

—Ron Koertge, author of Yellow Moving Van