June 23, 2026
PAPERBACK | 4 x 6 | 56 PAGES | $15.00
978-1-954992-29-0
FICTION | SHORT STORY | CHAPBOOK
A sly, melancholy reimagining of the astronaut history forgot.
The first three men on the moon return to parades, book deals, and instant mythmaking. But the fourth? He steps onto the lunar surface only minutes later and finds himself erased before he even gets home. What follows is a wry, unsettling portrait of a man watching his own legacy evaporate in real time.
Bryan Hurt turns the machinery of fame inside out, exposing how quickly collective memory calcifies—and how arbitrary the line is between the celebrated and the invisible. Part satire, part elegy, The Fourth Man lingers with its quiet ache, reminding us that history is less a record than a spotlight, and someone is always standing just outside its beam.
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Bryan Hurt is the author of Everyone Wants to Be Ambassador to France (Red Hen, 2018), winner of the 10th Annual Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. He is the editor of Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest (OR Books/Catapult, 2016) and former Editor in Chief of The Arkansas International, and former Midwest editor at Joyland. His work has appeared in places like McSweeney’s, Guernica, and Kenyon Review Online.
June 23, 2026
PAPERBACK | 4 x 6 | 56 PAGES | $15.00
978-1-954992-29-0
FICTION | SHORT STORY | CHAPBOOK
A sly, melancholy reimagining of the astronaut history forgot.
The first three men on the moon return to parades, book deals, and instant mythmaking. But the fourth? He steps onto the lunar surface only minutes later and finds himself erased before he even gets home. What follows is a wry, unsettling portrait of a man watching his own legacy evaporate in real time.
Bryan Hurt turns the machinery of fame inside out, exposing how quickly collective memory calcifies—and how arbitrary the line is between the celebrated and the invisible. Part satire, part elegy, The Fourth Man lingers with its quiet ache, reminding us that history is less a record than a spotlight, and someone is always standing just outside its beam.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Bryan Hurt is the author of Everyone Wants to Be Ambassador to France (Red Hen, 2018), winner of the 10th Annual Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. He is the editor of Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest (OR Books/Catapult, 2016) and former Editor in Chief of The Arkansas International, and former Midwest editor at Joyland. His work has appeared in places like McSweeney’s, Guernica, and Kenyon Review Online.
