Jonathon Bender had something to say, but the world wouldn’t listen. That’s why he writes letters to everybody he has ever known—including his mother and father, his brother and other relatives,
his childhood friends and neighbors, the Tooth Fairy, his classmates and teachers, his psychiatrists, his ex-girlfriends and his ex-wife,
the state of Michigan, a television station, and a weather satellite. Taken together, these unsent letters tell the remarkable story of Jonathon’s life.

Dear Everybody, the book trailer

"In addition to writing stunning prose, Kimball evocatively hints at entire physical and emotional worlds lying just behind his story’s surface. In many cases, the author’s verbal compression both amplifies and dampens the tragic clamor of Jonathon’s letters ... they harbor such a strange emotional power that you’ll find them hard to forget."

-- Michael Miller, Time Out New York

"There is a whole life contained in this slim novel, a life as funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking as any other, rendered with honest complexity and freshness by Kimball's sharp writing."

-- Matt Bell, Los Angeles Times

"In this intimate epistolary novel, a mentally ill weather man radiates crystalline awareness and luminous delusion while his family and others who knew him try to make sense of his tragic life. Both gloomy and amusing, Kimball's flurry of short short stories remind us of the necessity of communicating and the daunting difficulty of truly connecting."

-- Apostrophe Cast

"very affecting, warm" and "wry and funny and sweet"

-- Simon Appleby, Bookgeeks

5 stars (out of 5): "beautifully heartbreaking" and "a genuine discovery"

--Kathleen Wächter, The Junction

"fantastic"

--Dan Wickett, EWN

"one of the hottest, most innovative books of the year"

--HTMLGIANT

"Dear Everybody is about a weatherman who commits suicide, and it is heart-achingly good."

--Matthew Simmons, Hobart

"Kimball does a superb job. ... The picture that is drawn, though, is unutterably sad. It’s a difficult read in places, but moving, more real and heartfelt than many stories where authors cover up their discomfort by giving their characters extravagant eccentricities."

-- Bruce Dennill, The Citizen

a "grim, gripping book for fall": "oddly profound and at times profoundly banal"

--The Rundown

"Human Destiny Starkly Illuminated"

-- Rupert Wondolowski, City Paper

"I’m giving this novel five out of five, it was so dark (though not disturbing) yet touching, I loved reading this novel and would recommend it to anyone."

--Just Listen Book Reviews

"Dear Everybody is a book both intricate and new, painful and engaging, tapping on the clearest rendering of what is human, on the importance of the rhythm of each word. Dear Everybody is so many things--a collage, a hypnosis, an invention, a thing of awe, perhaps a warning--a work of new that will no doubt linger in your mind and in your stomach and in your aging skin for quite some time."

-- Blake Butler, Keyhole Magazine

"Kimball has written a book of beauty. It's a sad book and a wonderful one, and one that made me cry."

-- Joseph Young, JMWW

"Lightning has struck again with this Baltimorean's book ... Kimball's protagonist possesses an emotional clarity that makes his eventual suicide all the more believable and tragic. ... You feel his pain."

-- John Lewis, Baltimore Magazine

"Each fragment drifts across the page like a cumulous cloud and the cumulative effect of Kimball's book is melancholy and elegiac and amusing."

-- Susan McCallum-Smith, WYPR

Kimball's "latest book could be a breakout for him. ...his work is about death, and it has been stripped down in the stark way it deserves."

-- Bill Castanier, City Pulse

"Dear Everybody is a cleverly constructed book that balances pathos and humor exquisitely, and proves Michael Kimball to be a master storyteller."

-- David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy

“quite a literary feat … the character of Jonathon Bender is stripped down to his emotional core.”

-- Gregg Wilhelm, WYPR

"Kimball writes with such deep emotion and crafts his sentences with such mastery that he sweeps away his own footprints and allows the reader unhindered access to the story. The fragmented nature of the book makes it an addictive read, giving the reader regular breaks while at the same time drawing them along. I often found myself thinking, 'Just one more letter. One more diary entry. One more interview,' until it was time to go back to the beginning and start over. With Dear Everybody, Michael Kimball achieves the perfect balance of form and content, comedy and tragedy – all without sliding into melodrama or sentimentality, instead evoking genuine emotion that will remain with readers far beyond the last page."

-- Josh Maday, New Pages

"Dear Everybody is a quick read, yet very interesting and true to life. This book tells the tale of infidelity, mental illness, and the fact that life is often hard to manage."

-- Shooting Stars Mag

"Quirky, and idiosyncratic, this is a very amusing novel that is oddly endearing, and conceals a warm heart beneath its wit."

-- BooksQuarterly

Dear Everybody is "inventive and often extremely funny, but it will also break your heart. Michael Kimball is one of the most talented and original writers in America today. You should read his books."

-- The Greenpoint Gazette

“One of the best reads ever” -- R., Hey Josh

“A masterly written work of art” -- Ane Steenkamp, Life After School

Advance Praise for Dear Everybody

“In Bender’s unsent letters of apology or thanks, Michael Kimball transforms the familiar into the strange again and the simplest confessions are made moments of sublime wonder. Hold on to this book.”

-- Christine Schutt, author of Florida

“Dear Everybody has the page-turning urgency of a mystery and the thrilling formal inventiveness of the great epistolary novels. Jonathon Bender's magical letters to the world that never wrote to him are at once whimsical, anguished, funny, utterly engaging and, finally, unforgettable.”

-- Maud Casey, author of Genealogy

“Michael Kimball's wise-hearted epistolary portrait of an endearingly honest, suicidal depressive is by turns hilarious and haunting--and always thrillingly deep, surprising, and pitch-perfect. Dear Everybody confirms Kimball's reputation as one of our most supremely gifted and virtuosic renderers of the human predicament. It's as moving a novel as I have read in years.”

-- Gary Lutz, author of Stories in the Worst Way

“I love this book, love the strangely detailed world that accumulates through letters, lists, yearbook quotes, and psychological evaluations.
And I love the character of Jonathon Bender, the way he makes me so sad and also makes me laugh so hard. He will stay with me forever.”

-- Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties

“Dear Michael Kimball: Thank you for this book. What Jonathon Bender writes in his unsent letters are what each of us longs to say, what all of us have been saying our whole lives, just not out loud.”

-- Stephen Graham Jones, author of Demon Theory

“In his third novel, Kimball gives us the singular life of Jonathon Bender through a collage of different voices and sources and in beautifully rendered sentences. He mercilessly gives us a sense of the man and his trajectory, bringing us painfully close to Bender himself. This is a compassionate and compelling account of the quiet ways in which a life goes wrong.”

-- Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain