Contemporary Authors

• Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton ( novel) Burrow Press (Orlando, FL), 2018

• Ben Gwin - https://bengwin.com/

  Ben Gwin is the author of the novel Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton (Burrow Press). His writing has appeared in Belt Magazine, The Normal School, Gulf Stream and others, and anthologized in The Pittsburgh Anthology (Belt Publishing) and Voices of the Rust Belt (Picador). Ben grew up in Titusville, New Jersey. He lives in Pittsburgh with his daughter, and is currently working on a nonfiction book about parenting and the opioid crisis. Please give him a grant.

• Linked In - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-gwin-45048110a/

  Ben Gwin
  Ben Gwin

  --
  Greater Pittsburgh Area
  Thermo Fisher Scientific
  Chatham University Chatham University
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  Experience

  Thermo Fisher Scientific
  Digital Product Content Specialist - Contractor
  Company Name Thermo Fisher Scientific
  Dates Employed Apr 2015 – Present Employment Duration 3 yrs 4 mos
  Location Greater Pittsburgh Area

  Collaborate with internal marketing stakeholders and external content resources to harvest product specifications and relevant data/metadata to synthesize into highly structured product descriptions
  •Evaluate content for compliance with brand guidelines, corporate style, and data structure to support translation
  •Write new structured and unstructured content or revise existing content according to corporate specifications
  •Validate taxonomy categories for products and ensure corresponding attributes are fully populated
  •Apply tags and metadata to content and support the customer-facing presentation of complex scientific symbols
  •Acquire product images, brochures and other assets and oversee their import into the content database
  •Reviewing audit reports run against content and ensure content is compliant
  Creative Concepts
  Technical Administrator, Copy Editor, Writer
  Company Name Creative Concepts
  Dates Employed Jan 2008 – Present Employment Duration 10 yrs 7 mos

  Upload and edit web content, including videos, images and text for Creative Concepts and clients
  •Design blog layout and perform administrative duties for Children’s Aid Society, Bigelow Tea, and others.
  •Contribute content to Creative Concepts blogs and websites, writing in unique, client-specific voice
  •Write and edit content with the aim of maximizing web traffic via SEO keywords
  •Create metadata for multiple high traffic websites and blogs
  •Developed working knowledge of Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, Hootsuite, Youtube and other social
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  Writing
  Writer
  Company Name Writing
  Dates Employed Apr 2016 – Present Employment Duration 2 yrs 4 mos

  Novels

  Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton, (forthcoming) Burrow Press, 2018

  Short Stories and Creative Nonfiction
  “RBHC,” Voices of The Rust Belt Anthology, Picador, Spring 2018
  “Scheduled Unstructured Clean Time,” Gulf Stream, Fall 2017
  “Birds,” The Normal School, Summer 2016
  “Captain America,” Thin Noon, Winter 2016
  “Ashes,” Bridge Eight: Vol. 2, Winter 2016
  “Rust Belt Heroin Chic,” Belt Magazine: Pittsburgh Anthology, September 2015
  “Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton,” Word Riot, Novel Excerpts, April 2015
  “I Love Dogs,” The New Yinzer, Fall 2014
  “Jacky with a y,” IDK Magazine, Summer 2014
  “Basement,” Despumation Press, Summer 2014
  “Five Favorite Things About Writing: A List,” The Journal of Compressed Arts, Summer 2013
  “The Show,” Burrow Press Review, Summer 2013
  “Unicorn,” Mary: A Journal of New Writing, Spring 2013
  “South Bound,” 971 Menu, Fiction Awards Issue, Summer 2012
  “Inpatient,” Dark Sky Magazine, Issue 12, September 2011
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  Dates Employed Feb 2015 – Aug 2015 Employment Duration 7 mos

  Revised proofs for Dick’s Sporting Goods newspaper inserts prior to publishing
  •Collaborated with Page Builders, QC team and vendors to create clean, concise, error-free copy
  •Reviewed grammar, spelling and layout for adherence to brand guidelines and corporate standards
  Thermo Fisher Scientific
  Content Coordinator - Contractor
  Company Name Thermo Fisher Scientific
  Dates Employed Mar 2012 – May 2013 Employment Duration 1 yr 3 mos
  Location Greater Pittsburgh Area

  • Edited web content for compliance with brand guidelines and corporate style guide
  • Compiled and composed content for Thermo Fisher websites
  • Built and maintained web pages for company websites via content management systems
  • Collaborated with different facets of the business to repurpose existing content for use on chromatography website
  • Applied SEO tags and metadata to content, assisted with CMS administration
  • Assigned relations within content management systems to associate product and non-product content
  • Wrote articles for Fisher Scientific’s online magazine, Headline Discoveries
  • Developed knowledge of Adobe, Teamsite, Mediabin, Hybris and Microsoft Office
  • Created instruction manuals on website scraping and technical writing for international employees
  • Trained and supervised a team of nine contractors to assist with content development and maintenance
  • Gained understanding of product taxonomy, html, CMS functionality and PIMs

  Education

  Chatham University
  Chatham University

  Degree Name Master's degree

  Field Of Study Creative Writing

  Dates attended or expected graduation 2009 – 2011
  University of Pittsburgh
  University of Pittsburgh

  Degree Name Bachelor of Arts - BA

  Field Of Study Creative Writing

  Dates attended or expected graduation 2002 – 2006

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Gwin, Ben: CLEAN TIME
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 15, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Gwin, Ben CLEAN TIME Burrow Press (Adult Fiction) $17.00 5, 29 ISBN: 978-1-941681-70-1
An acerbic and multilayered debut novel satirizing reality television, drug-rehab memoirs, and academia.
Framed as a memoir written by the drug-addicted reality TV protagonist Ronald Reagan Middleton--as annotated by a Ph.D. candidate named Harold Swanger--Gwin's novel follows Ronald after his wealthy New Jersey family disowns him out of frustration with his abusive behavior. He gets caught up in the underworld of the Southern drug trade and is eventually arrested and imprisoned for the murder of another addict. Encouraged by an MFA student named Sophia, he begins to write the story of his life but is suddenly released from prison in return for an agreement to enter a rehabilitation facility in New Jersey called Rose-Thorn Recovery Center. The center's ominous name ends up being prescient: Rose-Thorn is not just a rehab clinic, but the site of a reality television experiment called Clean Time, in which drug addicts "compete for the right to stay in treatment based on their popularity." What follows is a bizarre, gonzo exploration of America's obsession with reality TV and redemption narratives. Pieced together via fragments of Ronald's memoir, excerpts from the Clean Time script, interviews with Sophia and the villainous television producer Margaret Turner, and commentary by Swanger, the novel is dizzying in its formal experimentation. Unfortunately, the novel's logic is opaque and mostly results in a number of characters and storylines disappearing in the middle. The unconventional form also highlights the novel's lack of a plot. It doesn't help that the satire--especially when it targets academic writing programs--is less biting than bitter. Characters like "White Reggie," a poet and self-proclaimed feminist conducting ethnographic research on the working class so he can write about them, after having inherited "a couple million bucks from his dead uncle," just about sum up the novel's disdain for MFA culture when he says, "Honestly, bro, I try to avoid MFA students. Bunch of suburban kids trying to sound edgy." It's too bad the humor doesn't comment on such hypocrisy so much as merely observe its existence.
1 of 4 7/10/18, 11:34 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
An ambitious and unorthodox novel whose humor misses the mark.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Gwin, Ben: CLEAN TIME." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375136/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=f660accb. Accessed 11 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534375136
2 of 4 7/10/18, 11:34 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Clean Time; The True Story of
Ronald Reagan Middleton
Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers
ForeWord.
(Apr. 27, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 ForeWord http://www.forewordmagazine.com
Full Text:
Ben Gwin; CLEAN TIME; Burrow Press (Fiction: General) 17.00 ISBN: 9781941681701 Byline: Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers
Ben Gwin's complex debut novel is based around a fictional reality television sensation, Clean Time, that has catapulted various interested parties -- from pharmaceutical corporations to rehab centers -- to unimaginable wealth. For a handful of addicts, time spent on Clean Time has resulted in exceptional fame, but none more so than Ronald Reagan Middleton. But now he's missing. Gwin's novel is set up as a record of two men's search for the man behind the man Middleton has become.
Provocative and barbed, Clean Time uses hybrid structures to deconstruct reality entertainment and drug culture, both legal and illegal. From Middleton's writing, critical academic research, and media footage, a picture emerges of a man who's both a cipher and the culture's pinnacle creation.
There's further play in the novel's objectivity and distance toward its subject. Insights into Middleton's origins and motivations are largely obscured, and his ability to tell his own story is variously limited, threatened, and undermined. As his story is constructed and reconstructed, any sympathy is modulated by an equivalent suspicion. The underlying sense of emotional manipulation comes to fruition in the novel's final revelation where even Middleton's slight redemption seems dubiously placed.
Nonetheless, the novel's foundations are inseparable from the reality media it critiques, and straddling that tension causes some strain. In its send-up of "reality" entertainment, the novel also appropriates a certain grittiness. It too benefits from trafficking in the fictionalized "real" experiences of addiction, drug crime, and upper-class dysfunction, even as it interrogates these tensions by telling Middleton's story.
A deeply flawed hero who's strung up and strung out, Middleton experiences a destructive spiral that puts him at the center of an unwelcome reality media blitzkrieg. Clean Time attempts to understand the making of these cultural devils and heroes in one person: Ronald Reagan Middleton, a modern Ulysses lost down the rabbit hole of American cultural privilege.
3 of 4 7/10/18, 11:34 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Montgomery-Rodgers, Letitia. "Clean Time; The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton."
ForeWord, 27 Apr. 2018. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A536784588/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=df3f0822. Accessed 11 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536784588
4 of 4 7/10/18, 11:34 PM

• The Rumpus
  http://therumpus.net/2018/05/the-rumpus-interview-with-ben-gwin/
  Word count: 2659

  Discomfort, Desire, and Drugs: Talking with Ben Gwin

  By Christine Stroud

  May 21st, 2018

  Ben Gwin’s debut novel, Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Regan Middleton, is a sharp satire. The story follows (you guessed it) Ronald Regan Middleton through strung-out days, parties, a writing class in jail, a televised rehab facility, strip clubs, AA meetings, parking lots, etc. Readers are introduced to recovered and not-so-recovered addicts, evil pharmaceutical companies, corrupt jail programs, and academics. The book is fast-paced and funny, but not haha funny—more like nervous-giggles-as-you-scan-the-room funny. Ben’s first book is ambitious in narrative and structure while remaining a complete pleasure to read.

  I spoke with Ben in April about the novel, which is forthcoming from Burrow Press on May 29.

  ***

  The Rumpus: Let’s start with the title. Clean Time—what does the phrase mean? What does it mean to you?

  Ben Gwin: It’s a loaded phrase for me, certainly as it applies to the book. I focused on negative aspects of recovery culture in the book for the sake of the story, but I think it’s awesome that clean time is celebrated and acknowledged.

  Quitting drugs is hard, and most people can’t quit. But I also think there is an over-emphasis placed on consecutive days without using mind- or mood-altering substances and that can lead to ostracizing people who can’t get it. Also, there’s nothing preventing someone from just lying about how long they have clean, or what someone in recovery considers clean. There is something off to me about counting clean time and treating it as the be-all and end-all of what it means to recover, instead of a means to be a better human being.

  Rumpus: Something I noticed immediately about your book is the structure. In addition to being a satire, the form is completely unconventional, which is ambitious for a first book. Did you start Clean Time knowing that you wanted to play with form?

  Gwin: Books like Pale Fire and A Visit from the Goon Squad inspired the aesthetic. I didn’t really know what I was doing when I first incorporated the different mediums, but I wanted to figure it out.

  The very first drafts I wrote in undergrad had a screen-written commercial for the fictitious drug Nedvedol that we recently turned into a book trailer. Eventually, I figured out how to use the different elements with a purpose.

  I had to either really commit to it and give Swanger more of an arc and have him do more work for the story overall, or I had to just go with the first-person narrative. I almost scrapped it a couple times when I was in the midst of a ton of rejections, but I’m glad I stuck with it. I think the payoff is there. I really wanted to avoid coming off as self-important, a look-what-I-can-do sort of thing. I wanted the work to be a kind of commentary on the form itself. I tried to make it engaging and not have the structure get in the way of the story, but instead work to propel it forward. I think a lot of postmodern stuff can be overly dense, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking the reader to do some work, but I wanted to take those structural risks with a book that was otherwise pretty direct in its main narrative.

  I think it works to break up the story and to give it another layer or two. It can be read with or without the endnotes. The form also gives Harold Swanger, the narrator and curator of the work, more of an arc. He is the type of person who would put the book together like this. I’m happy with how his character turned out.

  Rumpus: One of the scenes that stuck with me is from part of the television transcripts: the section when Althea, Ronald Regan’s “pretend” girlfriend, sets the flamingoes on fire. The moment captures so much of the addicts’ hopelessness and the absurdity of their situation. Where did you come up with the idea?

  Gwin: I was researching fancy rehabs. I found this one in Malibu that kept animals on the grounds, which was a perfect model for the ridiculous nature of the institution and show. I decided, in this world, it would read as funny and absurd instead of just gross and sad that the flamingos were burned alive.

  Althea’s a pretty cerebral character who has been stuffing a lot of emotions, and I thought her frustration with the TV-rehab situation would manifest itself in desperate, violent actions. She loses it for a variety of reasons and justifies it as an attempt to get kicked off the show and leave rehab.

  I don’t have a problem with flamingos, personally.

  Rumpus: I know that Clean Time has moved through a lot of iterations. You began writing the book in 2006 and really finished the first draft in 2011. The world has changed so much in that time. How did this affect your story?

  Gwin: During revision, I made a few allusions of varying directness to our current president, but the story is fundamentally the same. The pills and the protests and reality TV shows were there in 2011. I think it probably reads differently than it would if we hadn’t elected a B-list celebrity, or if there weren’t millions of pills dumped in small towns in West Virginia, etc. I basically guessed right on a few terrible events that actually happened. I didn’t try to make it more overtly political after the election—the main character was already named Ronald Reagan—but I think a lot cultural stuff seeped in during revisions, especially in relation to the book’s critique of privilege and class and to a lesser extent deregulation, for-profit rehabs, etc. I definitely wrote with more urgency. Hopefully, there’s a sense of that energy in the story.

  Rumpus: There’s definitely energy, and I’m curious where the initial energy came from; that is, what made you want to write this book? The character of Ronald Regan Middleton?

  Gwin: The energy is probably proportionate to the anxiety in my life. I had gotten into some trouble as a kid, I had quit drinking and been to rehab as a teenager, and I think a lot of the book was me trying to figure out that anxiety, and why I couldn’t just take advantage of the head start I was given as a kid who lived in the suburbs with a loving, middle-class family.

  I made RR’s parents much richer, mostly terrible, and largely absent because that made sense story-wise, but, like RR, I really have never been very comfortable in my own skin, and I think that’s where the desire to write comes from, that discomfort. Also, the book is not at all based on my life on a micro-level, just the big picture ideas. I tried to take things that bother me about America and American culture that I feel qualified to discuss and use them in the book.

  Rumpus: Clean Time is a bit different from your short stories in its hyperbolic and satirical criticisms. What was it like to work on a project so different from your typical work? Do you think you’ll continue writing satire?

  Gwin: With Clean Time, I felt that the criticism and hyperbole worked with the content of the story. The subject matter is pretty heavy, and I felt that using humor and form to balance that subject matter was necessary. Otherwise, it would have just been a rip-off combination of Jesus’ Son and Traffic. So, I felt there was room to write about addiction in a different way. It was fun. I also didn’t feel as constrained by reality, which helped.

  I worked hard on having it function as a story, and not just blindly attacking things and then saying, “Yeah well it’s satire! You just don’t get me!” Which, I think that defense is mostly used by writers who’ve failed to write effective satire and an engaging story, not because their audience is wrong. Though I am sure there are exceptions. If I’ve failed as a writer, it’s my fault. But everything that’s in the book is in it because I think it serves the story. Ryan Rivas, my editor, was a huge help in focusing the humor and satire in a way that wasn’t static. I’d been looking at the manuscript for so long; it was hard for me to be objective about what was only funny to me, and what was necessary for the book.

  I think I’m little burned out on satire, but I’ll probably write more when I have an idea that lends itself to it. It’s also harder to satirize right-wing nut jobs now because it just reads like InfoWars.

  I’ve also thought a lot about what I have to add to the bigger conversation, lately, and nonfiction is the only thing I can come up with that feels like it has even the smallest impact. I’ve been writing a memoir. I think if I do it well, the book could be helpful to other single parents and other people who have dealt with addiction. It’s not as fun though.

  Rumpus: Not as fun, that’s an interesting way to put it. Fun isn’t something I hear authors often say about their writing process. What about writing Clean Time was fun?

  Gwin: Don’t get me wrong, it’s mostly an agonizing exercise in self-doubt. But I enjoyed the surprises that happened with world building and the process of figuring out characters as I wrote. I also had fun with the satire, especially the poetry reading. That was silly, a little self-indulgent, but fun. Once I got going, there were enjoyable moments, or at least moments of relief when I figured out how to solve a problem I’d created. Those solutions would sometimes open up other avenues and it would kind of build on itself in a way that was unexpected. That process was fun at times. It also leads to a ton of work having to make sure there weren’t any contingency problems and that the solution I posed worked retroactively in earlier parts of the text that had been written to set up a different payoff.

  I don’t have an extensive background with nonfiction, so I’m hardly an expert, but when I write narrative nonfiction, I am basically just trying to remember events and arrange them in the most engaging way to present a compelling story. I don’t enjoy solving those problems as much. I think it’s less enjoyable because I place different, unfair expectations on myself and the work because I don’t have to create the stories from scratch. When I get it right, I feel like I haven’t really done anything but transcribe some ridiculous thing I’ve had to deal with, instead of bringing new characters to life. This isn’t a good way to look at it, I’m sure, and it’s not a conscious thing.

  Rumpus: You mentioned your editor being a big help earlier. Can you speak more to that relationship and about doing such extensive revisions?

  Gwin: Ryan [Rivas] was awesome. After the manuscript was accepted by Burrow Press, we spent almost two years editing. I was willing to change pretty much anything accept the protagonist’s name and the overall concept of the found documents and the meta-narrative. There was no contention with any changes he suggested. We went from macro to micro, then the end notes. Then we did a round of edits just for continuity and timeline.

  We cut about 20,000 words, and I wrote about 10,000 more. It was really liberating to cut so much. Huge swaths. Hopefully the world still benefits from having all those settings and characters that exist off the page.

  We expanded the world and made the characters respond to events in ways that were more consistent with their personalities and that worked better for the overall narrative. With such a complex structure, we did a lot to simplify the plot and clarify the various threads as much as possible. This helped the pacing quite a bit. It was a grind, but I enjoyed the opportunity to write new scenes.

  The other challenge was to make the plot move ahead organically and have RR make decisions that would propel the action forward in interesting ways. An addict is always going to go for the drugs, so to write over three-hundred pages with an addict protagonist we had to stay true to RR’s addiction in a way that wasn’t too repetitive. The revision process helped in this regard.

  I’m incredibly grateful and fortunate that Ryan was willing to take on the project knowing that it would entail this kind of effort.

  Rumpus: Ronald Reagan is a lovable fuck-up. How did he develop over time?

  Gwin: I’m glad you found him lovable!

  At first, he was really just a shitty drunk guy who had been to jail and rehab and thought he could write a memoir and get famous. Basically, a caricature, which can work in satire, but not as the protagonist, I don’t think. I didn’t give him enough of an inner life at first. I had just gotten sober myself, and I was too concerned with making fun of the idea of writers needing to drink to write, and that whole persona of the writer as alcoholic/addict.

  I felt that there wasn’t enough happening in the earliest drafts. I wanted to be as simple as possible in creating physical objects for him to want and attempt to attain, and to have him want things that were in opposition to each other. Like wanting to leave home but also wanting the comforts that he found in his old life. I feel like I’m veering into weird writer conversations about characters coming alive, but I really didn’t care enough about him. I think a lot of the reason for that was not trusting myself as a writer and lacking confidence in my ability to create a “real” person even in the weird hyper-reality in which he operates.

  I had to have really over-the-top shit happen to him and get into his past in order to elicit any sympathy and figure out what I liked about him in order to have that come across better.

  Rumpus: What do you think Ronald Regan is up to now?

  Gwin: I think he’ll be the next head of the DEA.

  ***

  Author photograph © Jared Alan Smith.

  Christine Stroud is the author of two chapbooks, Sister Suite and The Buried Return, and her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Cimarron Review, Hobart, and many others. Stroud is the Editor-in-Chief of Autumn House Press. More from this author →

  Filed Under: Books, Rumpus Original
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• ForeWord Reviews
  https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/clean-time/
  Word count: 371

  CLEAN TIME
  THE TRUE STORY OF RONALD REAGAN MIDDLETON
  Ben Gwin
  Burrow Press (May 29, 2018)
  Softcover $17.00 (322pp)
  978-1-941681-70-1

  Ben Gwin’s complex debut novel is based around a fictional reality television sensation, Clean Time, that has catapulted various interested parties—from pharmaceutical corporations to rehab centers—to unimaginable wealth. For a handful of addicts, time spent on Clean Time has resulted in exceptional fame, but none more so than Ronald Reagan Middleton. But now he’s missing. Gwin’s novel is set up as a record of two men’s search for the man behind the man Middleton has become.

  Provocative and barbed, Clean Time uses hybrid structures to deconstruct reality entertainment and drug culture, both legal and illegal. From Middleton’s writing, critical academic research, and media footage, a picture emerges of a man who’s both a cipher and the culture’s pinnacle creation.

  There’s further play in the novel’s objectivity and distance toward its subject. Insights into Middleton’s origins and motivations are largely obscured, and his ability to tell his own story is variously limited, threatened, and undermined. As his story is constructed and reconstructed, any sympathy is modulated by an equivalent suspicion. The underlying sense of emotional manipulation comes to fruition in the novel’s final revelation where even Middleton’s slight redemption seems dubiously placed.

  Nonetheless, the novel’s foundations are inseparable from the reality media it critiques, and straddling that tension causes some strain. In its send-up of “reality” entertainment, the novel also appropriates a certain grittiness. It too benefits from trafficking in the fictionalized “real” experiences of addiction, drug crime, and upper-class dysfunction, even as it interrogates these tensions by telling Middleton’s story.

  A deeply flawed hero who’s strung up and strung out, Middleton experiences a destructive spiral that puts him at the center of an unwelcome reality media blitzkrieg. Clean Time attempts to understand the making of these cultural devils and heroes in one person: Ronald Reagan Middleton, a modern Ulysses lost down the rabbit hole of American cultural privilege.

  Reviewed by Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers
  May/June 2018

• 
  http://www.wesa.fm/post/recovery-culture-and-reality-tv-satirized-local-authors-debut-novel#stream/0
  Word count: 544

  Recovery Culture And Reality TV Satirized In Local Author's Debut Novel
  By BILL O'DRISCOLL • JUN 15, 2018

  Recovery memoirs have become a big part of our culture, both literary and televisual.

  The controversy around James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, and the popularity of reality-TV shows like HBO’s Addiction and A&E’s Intervention, have fed into the idea that the road back from substance abuse should be lined with spectators.

  Ben Gwin knows a little about recovery himself. As a young adult, he had an alcohol problem. He quit drinking at 24. That was 13 years ago, but the recovery experience informs the Pittsburgh-based writer’s debut novel, Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton. It’s a satire in which the twentysomething protagonist, Middleton, goes to jail, and ends up on a reality-TV show in which contestants compete to stay in rehab.

  The book pokes fun at reality TV as well as recovery culture and the pharmaceutical industry. Most of it is narrated (not always reliably) by Middleton himself, but in a postmodern touch, the book incorporates scripts for the TV show, titled Clean Time, and even commentary by a scholar who is editing Middleton’s notes.

  “There are a lot of really good addiction memoirs,” said Gwin. But he was especially intrigued by A Million Little Pieces, which turned out to be heavily fictionalized. And to create the reality-TV aspect, he “combined Survivor and American Gladiators.”

  The postmodern influence, he said, came by way of touchstone novels like Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire and Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. “I wanted to incorporate those ideas and different modes of storytelling because I thought it sort of reflects the different views and the different perspectives of the different characters,” he added. “And I think it also kind of reflects the difficulties of trying to get clean, the sort of scattered mosaic of the thoughts, sort of coming and going, and how difficult that can be.”

  Gwin grew up in New Jersey, and studied at the University of Pittsburgh, then attended graduate school at Chatham University. He says that in early drafts of Clean Time, his anti-hero Middleton was a more “farcical” character, and he credits his editor at Burrow Press with suggesting he make his protagonist more empathetic.

  His main goal with Clean Time, Gwin said, is to send up how the general public views addiction memoirs and other artifacts of recovery culture.

  “That sort of like, rubbernecking, like staring-at-a-traffic-accident kind of idea,” he said. “Like, ‘Look at these people with their drug problems,’ and that sort of thing.”

  Empathy for addicts should be at the heart of how we deal with addiction, he said.

  “Within the recovery community, I think different ways of getting clean and getting help need to be sort of accepted, because I think what could work well for one person doesn't necessarily work for someone else, as far as things like Suboxone or methadone or whatever,” said Gwin. “You know there's a lot of different ways that people can quit drugs, and I think the more open we are the better.”