A full glass lifted to Ron Mitchell and the rest of the staff at Southern Indiana Review for fitting two chunks of flash memoir into their Spring 2010 issue. “Houhai Lake in Winter” and “The Overnight Train from Xian Pulls Into Beijing” have superb company - Liam Rector and James Valvis, Randall Brown and Joe Meno, Laura Madeline Wiseman and Adam Johnson, bright lights all.
April 28, 2010, 7:35 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, China, Litmags, Nonfiction, Travel
You must believe me: I was as tired of all the Best of the Month/Year/Decade lists as everyone else. But then I found one with my name on it! Nate Brown over at The L Magazine decided that All Over was one of the 111 best books of the Aughts! Thank you, Nate and L, and Happy 2010 to you both.
December 30, 2009, 9:57 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, Fiction Collections
Huge gaping thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, which recently granted me one of their forty-odd 2010 Literature Fellowships in Creative Writing (Prose). It's pretty amazing company to be in--Barry Gifford and Adam Johnson and ZZ Packer also won this year, along with my friend and fellow Dzancer Mike Czyzniejewski. The book I pitched in my application will require more in the way of travel expenses than I could ever have afforded on my own, so again, thank you, NEA!
December 18, 2009, 9:20 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, History, Novels, Travel
Allow me to posit that it is fun to talk about things that don't yet exist, like flying cars and justice and Issue 6.2 of The Cincinnati Review.
Let me further suggest that we now take the advice of Christ and consider that last item first.
Fiction by Micah Riecker and Kevin Wilson. Poetry by Sherman Alexie and William Logan and Chase Twichell. Nonfiction by Khaled Mattawa, and poetry reviews by Norman Finkelstein, and then of course the other things. The fiction reviews. There are at least two of them: one by Keith Lee Morris and one by Erin McGraw.
The issue in question also claims to have a fiction review by me. I shall not cavil with the 'by' part of those last four words, or the 'me' part, or the 'fiction' part. As for the sole remaining cavilable word, well, feel free to make the call yourself.
One thing I know surely: it was as much fun to put to paper as anything I've ever done, and many thanks to Nicola Mason and Michael Griffith for letting me play on their field. Flying cars and justice have got nothing on these folks.
October 16, 2009, 3:40 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, Fiction Collections, Litmags, Review
I just now learned that McSweeney's is about to launch The Better of McSweeney's, Volume 2, with stories selected from Issues 11 through 20 of the Quarterly Concern, including work by most of my personal heroes: Stephen Millhauser, Chris Adrian, Stephen Elliott, Brian Evenson, Yannick Murphy, Tom Bissell and Tony D'Souza, among others.
The alley-oop you've been suspecting all along: it will also have a story of mine.
Asparagus spritzers for everyone!
September 26, 2009, 11:43 a.m.Category: Auto-trumpeting
Thanks to The Rome Review for tucking a poem of mine called "After Jazz" in amongst some really wonderful work by Blake Butler, George Singleton, Steve Almond and Kathleen Rooney, among others.
August 5, 2009, 7:22 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, Litmags, Poetry
It is of course a pleasure to be very nearly anywhere: that is, to be. But to be in an anthology compiled by Lee K. Abbott and featuring, among many others, Michael Martone, Stephen Dixon and Terese Svoboda: that is a splendid thing. "Krazy" was first published in the likewise awesome Hot Metal Bridge back in 2007; Best of the Web is one of Dzanc's yearly endeavors, captained through 2009 by Nathan Leslie, by Matt Bell from here on out, and I thank all involved.
July 8, 2009, 10:44 a.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, Nonfiction, Travel
"Opium Magazine's signature competitive reading series comes to Syracuse: the pilot episode of LDM University will double as a pre-launch party for the magazine’s eighth print issue. The event, hosted by Opium founder Todd Zuniga, will feature 8-minute-or-less readings by Roy Kesey, Dan Roche, Mi Ditmar and Alexander Yates, all judged by Phil LaMarche, Christopher Kennedy, and Elizabeth Koch. Venue: Ambrosia. Date: Friday, June 5. Time: 7:30 p.m."
It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is the most important event of any kind that has ever occurred, except possibly that one thing that happened with the tractor. Remember that? That was nuts.
June 3, 2009, 2:16 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, Litmags
An awfully nice thing: Darlin Neal and Scott Garson of Wigleaf have put together a list of their fifty favorite Very Short Fictions from the past year, and saw fit to include a piece of mine, "Flies," which originally appeared in Hobart. This tickles me, not in the bad sense where you can't breathe and then whiz down your own leg, but in the other sense, the good one.
Not that anyone has reason to care, but a thing about this story: it could just as well be called nonfiction. I mean that literally. Nothing in it didn't happen except the fantasy bits labeled truthfully as fantasy, plus also the fictional bits labeled truthfully within the story as fiction. That said, so much of the story is composed of those two elements that, sure, why not: fiction.
Or, no, hold on, how about:
Blobfiction, greenish, and transparent enough that inside it you can see the slowly dissolving hunks of nonfiction it just ate.
Yes, I like that just fine.
May 6, 2009, 3:09 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, Litmags, Short Stories
WAB! Not the sound a superhero's fist makes when she punches a jellyfish, but Writers and Books in Rochester, New York. I read there last night--good reading, good crowd, great acoustics, fun intro by Steve Huff, great lead-off by the delightful Sarah Freligh. But beyond the reading itself, I think WAB is an important place: the y in an important equation.
You know how every ten or fifteen minutes we hear about another landmark independent bookstore closing? And how also the chains are mostly in the shitter too? And how in six weeks, the Kindle is going to be as ubiquitous as the Ipod? How this coming September it will be as necessary a part of the going-to-college kit as a laptop and a 72-pack of strawberry flavored condoms? And once we're buying almost everything on line (like we do now, but more so) what chance will an actual book-selling-type-building have?
(Full disclosure: it's not that I think the Kindle will be bad for books, or writers, or readers--I think it will end up being, on balance, quite good for all those things and people. But it's really going to suck for bookstores. And I do worry a little about what happens when Amazon is the only place on earth to buy any text of any kind in any language, but hey, that's still years away. At least a year. Probably at least a year!) (And another disclosure: these thoughts were not developed in isolation, but in conversation, mainly with the good John Warner. So if any of them are crap, blame him.)
Well.
Maybe bookstores are going to survive to the extent that they become other things too. Lots already are, of course. Most, even. But maybe they will all need to be other things--a community space, a place of union, whether that means gallery and/or stage and/or mixing board and/or cafe and/or dunk tank. And then also sell books. (Which is why WAB is the y, not the x and the y: they don't actually sell books there, except ones related to visiting writers, writing classes, reading projects and the like.)
And even then the books sold will have to be the kind that bring something to the table beyond content--but I'm still thinking about that.
March 6, 2009, 8:43 a.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, Fiction Collections, Short Stories
