“By turns wistful, instructive, funny, and unabashedly candid…always revealing…Gigmentia is a call to understanding the creative life, and ought to serve as an inspiration to anyone seeking to live fully and mindfully.”

“Gigmentia is a heart-felt view of life from behind the drum kit and the writer’s desk, a winning story of art, music, and, especially, life.”

“I love this book! [Gigmentia] needs to be required reading for anyone who is willing to take on the life of a drummer.” 

“As an accomplished musician, poet, and novelist, Michael B. Koep is a modern day renaissance man, whose writing echoes his musical vocation: he writes with lyrical intensity in the pulsing rhythm of a drumbeat. In his new memoir, Gigmentia, this literary gift flourishes. Gigmentia takes the reader on a riveting journey through band and musician life, fathering and marriage, caring for a mother who has acute dementia, and ultimately saying goodbye. I highly recommend this book.”

“This is a thoroughly original and deeply engaging exploration of the sometimes bizarre, often touching, but always fascinating public and private experience of working musicians—and a moving depiction of friendship, parenthood, biological and created families, and the losses and gains that constitute life lived intentionally and well.” 

“Fall under the spell of Michael Koep’s Gigmentia. This is a uniquely powerful depiction of a lifestyle that few understand. Koep skillfully weaves the threads of his life across one watershed summer, creating a hilarious, touching and frequently surprising story. Do I suffer from Gigmentia? Hell no, I enjoy every second of it!”

“Koep captivates with spellbinding, lyrical prose. Gigmentia is a moving exploration of artistic process, of friendship and family, of memory, of grief and loss—joyful, nuanced, and heartbreaking.”