Bear County, Michigan! Out now from Northwestern University Press!
Order it right now straight from the publisher!
Following desperate characters in desperate circumstances in the rural Midwest
In these colorful, darkly comic stories, veteran journalist and crime reporter John Counts takes readers to an often-ignored part of the country: a fictional Great Lakes coastal town in northern Michigan defined by beauty and bleakness. The cast of characters in these connected stories ranges from addicts to backwoods misfits to ruined lumber families, all bound together by their desire to obtain something just out of reach. Big Frank breaks out of a rehab facility trying to outrun grief. The women in the village of Brotherhood grapple with sterility resulting from an environmental calamity. A local politician must convince her mother to leave a nudist colony. And in the final, sweeping story, a splinter group from the local tribe attempts to reclaim its ancestral land by force. The people of Bear County and their predicaments encompass the wildly original and yet totally ordinary truths about American life off the beaten track.
EVENTS:
MUSIC:
The songs on this album are not just inspired or based on the stories in my book “Bear County, Michigan,” but were written in conjunction with the stories themselves – refined and changed as the stories themselves took shape over the course of many years, created in the same floating writing and musical workshop of my life. The album was recorded in two sessions at Rancho Recordo, a beautiful, book-filled studio in the woods between Detroit and Flint with the wonderful Marc Jacob Hudson. The first session was in December 2023, the second session in April 2024. Brian Galindo provided all percussions. The stories and the songs are meant to stand on their own and complement each other at the same time. I hope they both help bring the other to life. ___ John Counts
MEDIA:
Grand Rapids magazine: Author tells tales from ‘Bear County’
John Counts knows Michigan’s small towns—he’s lived in them, visited for outdoor activities, and reported on the people and events of those small towns so often that they have become part of him. And are now the impetus behind his book of stories titled Bear County, Michigan, published by Northwestern University Press.
Traverse City Record-Eagle: From blotter to book: Fictional northern Lower Michigan sets short story collection
“It’s an easy read, with a dozen interconnected short stories set in a fictional northern Michigan county. The locale was in no small part inspired by the several years Counts spent as a police and court reporter for the Manistee News Advocate.”
9/10 News Good Day Northern Michigan:
Chicago Review of Books: 12 Must-Read Books of February 2025 in Chicago Review of Books
Bear County, Michigan is simultaneously familiar and utterly new in its sharp execution. In these darkly funny and deeply felt stories, John Counts takes readers to an unforgettable fictional Great Lakes coastal town in northern Michigan and introduces us to a cast of characters who are desperate to make a life out of what little has been offered to them. It has long been an open secret that the Michigan literary scene is filled with undeniable literary talent, and with Bear County, Michigan, John Counts announces it from the rooftops. Counts is a prime example of Michigan’s modern literary renaissance.
Away From the “Centers of Ambition”: An Interview with John Counts on “Bear County, Michigan”
Detroit News: Q&A: Journalist and musician John Counts on his new book ‘Bear County, Michigan’
“… the page-turner gives glimpses into the lives of his Michigan-based characters: the brave, the misunderstood and the criminal.”
City Pulse (Lansing): Michigan police reporter turns stories into darkly comic fiction
From the story: Before “rural noir” became a popular literary term, there were writers like Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner and Raymond Carver who plumbed those depths. More recently, Michigan’s own Bonnie Jo Campbell has helped fill that void.
Now, John Counts’ new book, “Bear County, Michigan: Stories,” grabs you by the throat and shakes you with the collection of interconnected short stories.
It’s not all you need to know about his new book, but the opening line from the story “Compensation” provides a directional sign: “Jimmy Blizzard ran out of pills.” And he’s not talking about vitamins or ibuprofen here but Oxy.
Concentrate: Former Ann Arbor journalist explores darkness, beauty of northern Michigan in short story anthology
Current: John Counts’ “Bear County, Michigan”: A Story of Struggle and Hope
BIOGRAPHIA
John Counts is a journalist and writer who lives in Michigan.
He riffs on books over at Slow Reader.
His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in the Chicago Reader’s Pure Fiction issue, the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal, Joyland, Midwestern Gothic, Wayne Literary Review, Hypertext, Anthology of Chicago and “A Detroit Anthology.”
He is the investigations editor at MLive.com, the largest news site in Michigan.
He is the singer and guitarist for the hardcore punk band Suburban Delinquents, circa 1994-1999. The band was reactivated in 2015 and currently plays shows throughout the Midwest.
He was born in Bay City, Michigan, but moved to the Detroit area when he was young. He earned his BA in English from Wayne State University and an MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago.
He lives in Whitmore Lake, Michigan.
He likes to fly fish and bird hunt in Northern Michigan.
He has two daughters, June and Anna, with wife Meredith Counts.
If you’d like to contact him, email johncounts138@gmail.com.
John Counts On The Internet 