recent publications

Oh, hi there.

In the mail recently: my two copies of New York Tyrant. I have slowly been reading it. I am the only goofy jackass in the back with a picture of me smiling. Jody Barton's pic is hilarious.

Justin Taylor's story: god, read it if you can. I kept waiting for the bat to happen. I cringed the whole time. Good stuff.

*

Updated recently is Lamination Colony. The blue issue has big list of writers. Really amazing issue. An entry from my alternative/revised field guide to north american weather is in it: 'Funnel as Paranormal Conduit.' It is the first thing from the field guide to be published. Hopefully I can send a few more out soon.

thanks and No Colony

Thank you everyone who emailed me or commented with good thoughts my way during the hurricane thing. Thank you.

Today, the postal service delivered to me my mail, including my copy of No Colony. My life is complete.

I admit that I have not begun reading it yet. I thought I would as soon as I got it, but I cannot. The issue is a small size and the outside paper is nice under my fingers, so I cannot stop touching it. And the cover art. I haven't gotten past staring at the cover. Julie Speed did the cover art. Go here to see what else Julie Speed has done.

So yes, one day I will read it, just not today or tomorrow. Sorry.

Also:

"Soon we will eat face."

NO COLONY preview

Blake Butler just posted the tracklist for the first issue of NO COLONY, a 'collaborative' journal that he and Ken Bauman have put together.

Preorder the journal for $11 including shipping. If you do that, Blake Butler and Ken Bauman will ship it to you as soon as they get it from the printer in September sometime.

This list of people is good. I am excited.

You can read an excerpt from "The Shuffler" by Miranda Mellis here.

Since this post over at the Guardian blog first appeared, people have had a few things to say about the subject it addresses: indie publishing. I have read many of these posts and liked what was said:

Blake Butler

Scott Esposito

Matt Bell

Josh Maday

Shane Jones (I) and (II)

Adam Robinson
(also read what Joe Young wrote in the comments section of Adam's post)

Have I missed any?

Somewhat related to this - check out the latest issue(pdf) of the Mississippi Review. It's a special issue that focuses on the 'literary magazine' after 100 years. What I've read so far has been interesting: they have a section of quotations by various literary people who have been involved with literary magazines over the years; an interview with Robert Fogarty of the Antioch Review; a discussion among various editors about the future of literary magazines. I haven't read everything (yet), and I also believe most of the articles/interviews have been shortened for the online version - the print issue will have more stuff.

Here is a quotation from 'The Future is a Magazine: A Roundtable...':

"The one thing that makes me unhappy about literary magazines is that I don’t know thatthey’re really trying to find an audience, to really be unique, and to live in a world where things are so brand-oriented and people are so busy. In the modern era I think we really have to sort of compete with [these] other things, and I think literary magazines tend towards just hanging low. I think that’s a very high risk position. I still love what’s happening in literary magazines, but I also grew up on them, so I’m curious what’s going to happen. I want them to change and evolve, and I’m not certain that they are evolving."
~Todd Zuniga

I like that Todd said this, I think. It makes sense, sort of? Hold up any print issue of Opium and compare it against, say, another standard print journal and it's not hard to guess which magazine is 'evolving' easily and which is still trying to figure stuff out. This is not to say that many of the standards haven't initiated some sort of interactive features (podcasts, featured print content, exclusive web content, whatever), but that these additions don't feel as strongly integrated as they could be. Later in that roundtable, Aaron Burch talks a little bit about how web content at Hobart both supplements some of the print issues (the 'travel issue' is a good example of this) and also goes in its own direction (the yearly online baseball issue).

I meant to add more things here, but I forgot what I was going to say.

Avery #3

Okay, so I will say this quickly - if you go and buy a copy of Avery #3, the editors of Avery will email me your mailing address so that I can send you a free copy of the newest Phoebe. This is a limited time offer. This special deal will end on the last day of July. This once in a lifetime opportunity will exist for two months. 

Send $ to Avery. I will send you a Phoebe.

So, I just finished reading Avery #3. I read it quickly, all in one sitting. It is 55 pages long (the shortest of the 3 issues Avery House Press, Inc. has released so far) and consists of 5 stories by Sherrill Alesiak, Malcolm Dixon, Tom Whalen, Rob Roensch, and Blake Butler. The cover is really really good. Doug Mack did a good job with the cover. I am jealous of the cover, actually. The little yellow leaves, the crisscrossing wires, the mail truck are very nice to look at.

This issue of Avery is disorienting. I mean this in a good way. This also may have been due to my laziness as a reader, but maybe not. When I read Alesiak's story, "Birds of Paradise/Birds of Prey," I did not understand at all what was going on until the third page. Perhaps my inexperience with leper colonies added to my confusion? Well, I feel a little more knowledgeable about leper colonies now.

And Malcolm Dixon's story, the language of it, disoriented me with its odd rhythms, the odd meanings of each word, how the characters spoke to one another. I could have read that story for another ten pages. Thank you, Dixon.

I resisted most Tom Whalen's story, "Faculty Meeting." I felt mean towards the story. I wanted to beat up the story. I felt as though I did not want the narrator to survive the faculty meeting. I cannot explain my urges here. I apologize.

Rob Roensch's story has dogs in it. I liked it. There is some vague, sad matter that happened in the spring before the dogs appear in the story. But the story only mentions the dogs. All kinds of dogs.

Blake Butler's story is ________.

Also, changes are happening over at Avery. Andrew Palmer and Doug Mack are leaving. Emma Straub and Mike Fusco are taking their places.

Emma Straub was Stephin Merritt's assistant? That sounds fun.

I am tired. I'm sorry. This was a lazy post.

last issue of Phoebe

This is the last issue of Phoebe that I worked on. I will never work on Phoebe again. I am sad to go. But I am happy with the two issues I worked on. They go together, I think.

This issue (Fall08) has work by the following people:

Fiction

John Yunker

Mike Young

Kevin Wilson

Girija Tropp

Dan Pinkerton

Josh Maday

Caitlin Horrocks

KA Hays

Chris Gavaler

Avital Gad-Cykman

Poetry

Nora Almeida

Anselm Berrigan

Trina Burke

Ben Doller

Dan Ford

Eryn Green

Henry Hart

Marci Johnson

Kimberly Lojek

Mel Nichols

Drew Nolte

The Pines

Caren Scott

Ryan Walker

Laurie E. White

The cover art is by Marisa Purcell. This is my favorite cover ever. Also, there are doodles on the pages by John Kieltyka. They are funny and neat to look at.

Fiction contributors, I sent out copies for you today and will send more tomorrow.

Luna Park Review

Issue #2 of Luna Park Review is live and has good things in it. Editor Travis Kurowski says nice things about Hobart #8, and he also types my name in a sentence with other authors from the issue. In the previous Luna Park, there was a good article about Ninth Letter, and an interview with Benjamin Percy, and a neat thing on Fence.

leave me alone

On my run today, I saw a man cross the road in a cross walk and someone in an enormous pickup truck honked at him for trying to cross in the cross walk. I was in a bad mood, so I yelled, "It's a fucking crosswalk!" but the driver did not hear me, because he was in his huge pickup truck, so I felt really dumb for yelling something. Then I finished the run and my heart rate was higher than what I wanted for the run: 168 beats per minute.

Also, Bradley Sands, who runs the journal Bust Down The Door And Eat All The Chickens, of which my sister is a fan, has announced a new e-anthology called Bradley Sands Is A Dick. See his blog for details. It sounds really funny; I don't know Bradley, but I will submit something anyhow at some point.

And then there is this thing I found at New Art: the leave me alone box?

I watched it for a long time and I laughed.