Stripping and Other Stories by Pagan Kennedy

had gone from a heavily leveraged first printing of a thousand hand-assembled copies-stored, at first in a colleague’s basement-to a cultural sensation. Co-created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, in 1974, D. The strip appeared during the height of the Reagan-era backlash against the fantasy role-playing game, which had become enormously popular very quickly. She is saved, ultimately, when Mike, a hunky Christian boy (“I’ve been praying and fasting for you”), takes her to see a pastor who has himself come “out of witchcraft.” Debbie meets the pastor and repents, accepting Jesus as her Savior: “I want You to be in charge of everything…not that lousy D. I think it’s time that you learn how to really cast spells.” But then Debbie’s friend Marcie commits suicide after her character dies in the game, and the new witch is wracked with guilt and doubt.

Frost, who says to Debbie, “Your cleric has been raised to the 8th level. The Mephistophelean figure in the strip is the Dungeon Master, a raven-haired woman named Ms. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.In 1984, the comic-strip artist Jack Chick, an evangelical Christian, published a tract called “ Dark Dungeons.” In it, a young woman named Debbie is seduced into witchcraft through her participation in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. She also has been the recipient of a Barnes and Noble Discover Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Smithsonian Fellowship for science writing. Pagan Kennedy is the author of 10 books in a variety of genres, including The Exes, The First Man-Made Man, Spinsters, Stripping, and Confessions of a Memory Eater, which was featured in Entertainment Weekly as an 'EW pick.' She is a regular contributor to the Boston Globe, and has published articles in The New York Times. All of the essays-most of which have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The Boston Globe Magazine-document the stories of visionaries bent on remaking the world, for better or for In the essays that follow, a retired chemist finds a way to turn a wasteland into paradise, an aspiring tyrant tries to become the emperor of America, and an artist rigs himself up to a “brain machine” made from parts he bought at Radio Shack. In the title piece, Alex Comfort, author of The Joy of Sex, reinvents himself as a sex guru in California and hatches a plan to destroy monogamy forever.

Nonfiction is the new black comedy in this hilarious collection of award-winning literary essays written by the inimitable Pagan Kennedy.

Stripping and Other Stories by Pagan Kennedy