Part of our socialization is the urge-to-perform. We perform images of ourselves for others. If we are successful, we are called on to perform. For some, the urge is so great and the talent sufficient, that we become performers. Performance Art us a book about performers and performances which are extreme. Most of these stories and their performers and performances are at the edge of dream.

David Kranes is the author of eight novels and three volumes of short stories, including Abracadabra, Keno Runner: A Dark Romance. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah and is professor emeritus of English at University of Utah. Kranes writes about magicians, gamblers, hit men, painters, casino workers. His characters are frequently displaced seekers with volatile emotions—but always human. He writes about the West. And his characters struggle and love in its surreal landscapes of Las Vegas casinos, Utah deserts, and Montana towns. He exposes the magic in the mundane, the surreal in the simple, and the bizarre in the banal. His work superbly balances the fantastical with the raw

"In these 13 refreshingly unconventional stories, he [Kranes] examines the differences between individual performers and the distinction, such as it may be, between performers and so-called real life. . . . Writing, of course, is also a performance, and David Kranes knows how to effortlessly make reading him become compulsive.”
—Geoff Wichert, 15 Bytes: Utah’s Art Magazine