Assistant English professor Dick Reavis’ collection of on-the-job tales, Catching Out: Life in a Day Labor Hall, will be published in February by Simon & Schuster. The stories are based on Reavis’ experiences working out of labor halls in the summers 2007 and 2008. The publisher’s catalog describes the collection as “a gritty, hard-time evocation of the sometimes colorful men and women on the bottom rung of the workforce. It is partly a guide to performing hard, physical tasks, partly a celebration of strength, and partly a venting of ire at stingy and stern overseers.”