How I Got to Cleveland Hardcover – February 11, 2026

Five short stories of Americana: An 18-year-old's eye-opening road trip in the early 70's. An artist stuck in a low-wage job at a movie house as the punk rock era kicks off in San Francisco. A New York City high school teacher gets to know a FDNY fireman post 9/11. A Midwest Boomer coming-of-age diary. And a comic monolog about death. Memoir-like stories of fear, vulnerability, sexism, moral ambivalence, illusion & delusion-life experiences of contemporary women."Jack Kerouac's On the Road was a bible... How I Got to Cleveland makes the same journey through the eyes of a young woman. Although the story may be about one person, we can imagine many women to have traveled a similar road." --Gregg Wilson, Back StageHow I Got to Cleveland, follows a circuitous and emotionally desolate path that covers ground from Little Rock to Cleveland... from affection, hopelessness to embarrassment." -David Lyman, Seattle Post-Intelligencer "I loved Cleveland ...a contribution to the literature of bizarre journals." -Eric Bogosian"Writer Karen Williams takes us down two dazzling different roads: one illuminated by stark experience and a dead-end road of blunted emotion ... intimate performances that flash and burn like sparks from a blowtorch." -David Fischer, The Seattle Fringe FestivalAdult Fiction, Memoir-like adventures of women of various generations Read more