The Box in Which We Live
University of Iowa Press; Fall 2026; Winner of the 2026 John Simmons Short Fiction Award
"I alternated laughter and admiration reading the darkly comic, metafictional pieces in Samuel Rafael Barber’s The Box in Which We Live, even as I tried to locate the source of its absurdist charm and off-kilter wisdom. Are these stories Beckettian? Borgesian? Barthelmeic? Am I getting hints of Steven Millhauser, or Robert Coover, or Lydia Davis? Or, someday, might such original linguistic and thematic playfulness be described as Barberian." - Jess Walter
Thousands of Shredded Scraps of Paper Located across Five Landfills, That if Pieced Together Form a Message
The Cupboard; 2019
“Use in the classroom to discuss: segmented narratives; internal structures; furtive performances of the personal; speech acts; codes; trickster figures; paper as material object; first-person narrative strategies; the weight of witness; (state of) being down and out; observation and surveillance; political critique; conspiracy theories; living in late-stage capitalism; automation; relay races; place as repository of memory; place studies; regionalism; literature of the mountainous West; Tuba City; “America”; basements; factories; daiquiris; tubas.” - “Teaching Notes”
Interview with Jon Riccio at Sonora Review
[Interested in a copy? Email me.]