In 2011, Shubaly began publishing a series of wildly successful mini-memoirs via Amazon Kindle Singles (six #1 bestsellers, more than 200,000 copies sold in five different languages). Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote the foreword for his collection of Singles. His account of getting shipwrecked for The Moth was broadcast nationally on NPR and around the world. Shubaly’s full-length memoir I Swear I’ll Make it Up to You (Hachette) was published March 8th and has garnered praise from The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly, GQ, Men’s Journal, and Brooklyn Magazine among others. His recent roadwork— 50 shows in 60 days in 3 countries— has won him accolades from Portland, OR to New York. His writing workshop at Yale has been hailed by students as ‘transformative.’ He appeared on Warped Tour in conversation with Keith Buckley (Every Time I Die). He is a regular guest on and provides the theme music for the Doug Stanhope Podcast which goes out to 1.5 million listeners worldwide.
“We all have heroes. I would never want to imagine Tom Waits going to therapy or Bukowski running a 10k. In my heart, Mishka Shubaly will always be spilled over the bar next to me and playing on the jukebox of my soul.”
– Doug Stanhope
“Here is a young writer fully in possession of an immense talent.”
– Caitlin Flanagan, the ATLANTIC
“There’s no storyteller like Mishka Shubaly—hardcore on every emotional level, he scares the bejezus out of me, especially when he’s cracking me up. I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You is a brilliantly toxic confession awash in booze, bodily fluids, and the shock of accidentally turning into a human being, against your will.”
– Rob Sheffield, ROLLING STONE
“Shubaly’s writing grabs you by your neck, his thumb fingering the delicate pulse by your throat. He’s going to tell you about himself, whether you can stand it or not, and the reason you can’t stop reading? It’s because he also seems to know a thing or two about your inner life. Picture Charles Bukowski with a greater understanding of women, holding a bass guitar. You laugh out loud in a crowded Coffee Bean, glancing around to make sure that no one’s heard you, and then a moment later he tells you something you know to be so painfully true that before you’ve even stopped laughing, you bleed for a moment, internally.”
– Huffington Post
“The Kindle Singles bestseller list has anointed new stars like Mishka Shubaly…”
– The New York Times
“The gruff and rough-voiced Shubaly is a chronicler of mankind’s darkest impulses and failures, a guy with a ticket to hell and back”
– Time Out New York
“A beaming ray of jet-black sunshine…”
– The Village Voice