Greg Hewett

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courtesy Coffee House Press

A close-up of Greg Hewett.

Greg Hewett

Minneapolis-based poet Greg Hewett’s debut novel, No Names, was inspired by the iconic punk scene of the late 1970s and is billed as a tale of queer desire and haunting loss. Told from multiple viewpoints in varying timelines, the story focuses on Mike (an underground musician from the Me Decade who by 1993 is a washed-up, island-living hermit) and Issac (a lonely teenager who discovers the only album Mike and his band ever recorded and becomes obsessed with it). Hewett ­— whose poetry pervades this compelling narrative — will be joined in conversation by Susanna Daniel, co-founder of the Madison Writers’ Studio.

media release: A Room of One's Own is thrilled to host author Greg Hewett for his fiction debut, No Names (Out April 8th, 2025). 

This is an In-Person Event at A Room of One's Own Bookstore.

About the book

Inspired by the iconic punk scene of the late ‘70s, No Names blurs the lines of affection and sexuality in a haunting tale of desire, hope, and loss.

Mike and Pete were "no names," two working-class boys lost in the shuffle of their stratified town, brought together by their love of music. By 1978, their punk band was blazing across the underground scene. Now, in 1993, Mike is a hermit living alone on a dot of an island in the North Atlantic. When a mysterious letter from an unlikely fan named Isaac arrives, he's pulled right back into the pain he’s spent over a decade running from.

Isaac longs for an escape from his lonely teenage life. A chance discovery of the No Names’ only album catapults him into an obsession with the godlike rockers and the tantalizing possibility of connection.

As their stories collide, mistakes breed consequences that echo through the decades like the furious reverberations of a power chord.  

Greg Hewett is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Blindsight (Coffee House Press, 2016). The recipient of Fulbright fellowships to Denmark and Norway, he has also been a fellow at the Camargo Foundation in France, and is professor of English at Carleton College. No Names is his first novel. He lives with his husband in Minneapolis.