Checked Out OK is a collection of over 300 actual police log items from several small towns in Western Massachusetts, compiled by Ericson, and indexed into such categories as “Puzzlement, Tremendous Social Events,” “Suspicion, Delusion, a Squirrel Acting Oddly,” and “Gone when Police Got There.”

“Corwin Ericson’s CHECKED OUT OK does far more than simply chronicle the kind of semi-urban mini-events that make your average police dispatcher spit coffee out all over the scanner. The operative  sensation is that of a ceaseless wholeness, a vision of community that rivals anything Frank Capra ever put up on the movie screen. The batshit run alongside the bankers, the students with the shirtless, and all is chronicled in full clarity and care, as the townships forever cycle – ceaselessly, wondrously – through the Wheel of Law.”  —Brandon Downing

From Checked Out OK:

“8:57 a.m. – A fox eating rabbits on Sunset Avenue checked out OK.”

“9:55 a.m. – A Rolling Green Drive resident told police that his girlfriend has been receiving poems at her Hadley workplace from a 60-year-old-man. Amherst police advised the man to contact Hadley police about the problem.”

“12:51 a.m. – Police assisted people who were observing the salamanders crossing Henry Street.”

Corwin Ericson is the author of the novel Swell (Dark Coast Press, 2011), which was an Amazon and Boston Globe bestseller. He lives in western Massachusetts where he works as a university lecturer. Work of his appears in a variety of publications, such as Fence, the Massachusetts Review, and Conduit. Checked Out OK was first published in jubilat and later reprinted in Harper’s Magazine and elsewhere. Ericson also built one of the stone walls outside of Flying Object.