Tuesday, May 19, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
 **_Headshot_ meets John Cheever in this darkly funny, deeply moving portrait of what happens when a “sad dad” reconnects with a passion from his past.** When Ned finds his old Slazenger tennis racquet buried in the garage, he unearths a part of his former self. Having recently lost his job, his sole duty is to watch over their six-year-old son while his wife works. On a whim--and without his wife's knowledge--Ned joins his childhood tennis club with a secret credit card, where he finds life outside the realm of “sad dad” domesticity. He becomes the captain of a local men’s rec league team, reconnects with his old hitting partner and former tennis prodigy, Roland, and commits his whole sad self to building a winning team. But when Roland disappears, Ned’s search for his friend threatens to consume the path to glory, the relationship with his son, his marriage, and his mind. A meditation on fathers and sons, male friendship, and the psychic pressures of an individual sport, Politanoff’s novel sits beautifully alongside the dark comedy of Iris Murdoch and the masculine angst of John Cheever, with a style all its own. Funny, poignant, and deeply relatable, _Dad Had a Bad Day_ explores our desire for structure, the emotional limits of domestic life, and the unbelievably potent, powerful, intoxicating feeling of winning. **Ashton Politanoff** is a frequent contributor to Noon. His writing has also appeared in Southwest Review, Conjunctions, NY Tyrant, Egress, and elsewhere. He is a former Division I tennis player and his childhood coach was Robert Lansdorp, who is credited with coaching Pete Sampras, Tracy Austin, and Maria Sharapova. Politanoff’s first novel, You’ll Like It Here, was published by Dalkey Archive. He is an English professor at Cypress College. **J. Ryan Stradal** is the author of New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest, which won the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award for fiction, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Award for fiction, and the American Booksellers Association Indie's Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year. His second novel, the national bestseller The Lager Queen of Minnesota, won the WILLA Literary Award and was a finalist for the Heartland Booksellers Award, as was his third novel, the instant national bestseller Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club. His next book, Next Week When Things Calm Down, about the adventures of an extremely generous elementary school lunch lady, is coming from Atria Books in 2027. His shorter writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Granta, The Rumpus, and The Guardian, among other places.