The Copywriter (Scribner, 2026)
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"I can barely remember the last time I read a book from beginning to end, but I tore right through The Copywriter. What a delight! A novel written with a poet’s economy—a surprise, a joke, and/or an Idea in every line. Great value! Highly recommended." ELIF BATUMAN, AUTHOR OF THE IDIOT
"In this hilarious and utterly original novel of ideas, Daniel Poppick wrests words out of their day jobs and puts them back where they belong, in the realm of poetry. The Copywriter is a tour de force, drilling right through the feelings of horror and doom that attend life in our contemporary hellscape to reveal the meaning still pulsing underneath it all—like a dream waiting to be dreamt, or a bell asking to be tolled." MAGGIE MILLNER, AUTHOR OF COUPLETS "The Copywriter is brilliant—a novel that reads at the pace of the thriller, with the thickness of meaning I expect from poetry. Its protagonist is a writer who is paid to make words feel dead, but who knows—even in the midst of the churning monotony of his task—that they will always find a way to live. Poppick's language is so playful, his attention to language so serious. I hung onto each clause, each clause propelled me into the next, and I emerged with a great deal of hope and inspiration, a desire to see the world with renewed curiosity, and to act in light of that curiosity, too." MAYA BINYAM, AUTHOR OF HANGMAN |
"Tune[s] in to the metaphysical dimension of everyday suffering, articulating it with a metrical precision... genuinely transcendent." Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
"Poppick stages an argument about how our political and personal consciousnesses inform each other, and about the emotional whiplash of modern life." Jonathan Russell Clark, The New York Times
"Very funny...There is a Seinfeldian quality to the novel, in its close attention to the small indignities and inconsistencies of daily life. …Poppick’s writing is nutritious, dense with ideas and references and questions." Lora Kelley, Kismet Magazine
"By reclaiming language from its day job and returning it to the realm of poetry, D__ does more than just survive; he stages a quiet, persistent revolution." Brock Kingsley, Chicago Review of Books
"Poppick stages an argument about how our political and personal consciousnesses inform each other, and about the emotional whiplash of modern life." Jonathan Russell Clark, The New York Times
"Very funny...There is a Seinfeldian quality to the novel, in its close attention to the small indignities and inconsistencies of daily life. …Poppick’s writing is nutritious, dense with ideas and references and questions." Lora Kelley, Kismet Magazine
"By reclaiming language from its day job and returning it to the realm of poetry, D__ does more than just survive; he stages a quiet, persistent revolution." Brock Kingsley, Chicago Review of Books