Advanced praise
Becca Yenser’s The Ms. Pac Man Chronicles: Eating All the Ghosts reminded me of A Fan’s Notes (Exley). The obsession, the beer, the whiskey, the dark bars’ interiors, the sticky bartenders and fellow barflies, the heartache and humor, the ensuing breakdown. But with the narrator’s obsessive focus being Ms. Pac-Man rather than football (the New York Giants). Ms. Pac-Man is as good a reason as any to drink. Becca Yenser’s writing is full of darkness and self-deprecation, two qualities I most value in a book or person. Also, a little braggadocio.
–Elizabeth Ellen, author of Person/a and Her Lesser Work
“The Ms. Pac-man Chronicles: Eating All the Ghosts recounts grief through a single line, with searing prose that aims true like an arrow. It cycles through existential pain with immediate verve.”
–Elle Nash, author of NUDES
“Like a famous actor who transforms into the role of an enigmatic historical figure, Becca Yenser somehow takes the fast, furious, and fun goddess, Ms. Pac-Man, and turns all the game’s levels, songs, storylines, fruits, and ghosts into the noir-like backdrop of one human’s visceral adventures. Instead of mazes, tunnels, and dots, Yenser is surrounded by Portland’s bars, suicide bridges, shitty joysticks, late-night bike rides, and beer-numbed men. Reading this dazzling story is like watching Becca notch high score after high score until smoke rises from the coin slots and the ghosts succumb.”
–Kevin Sampsell, author of This Is Between Us
“Becca Yenser is brilliant. Eating All the Ghosts is strange and personal, the way I wish all stories could be.”
–Bud Smith, author of Teenager
Becca Yenser was born in Iowa and raised in Oregon. They are the author of the poetry collection Too High and Too Blue In New Mexico (Dancing Girl Press) and the creative nonfiction flash collection, The Grief Lottery, forthcoming from ELJ Editions in December 2021. Their work appears in Hobart, Heavy Feather Review, Madcap Review, Fanzine, and elsewhere.