small.spiral.notebook

our swan song...

2007-11-17T16:58:00.001-05:00

After six years of publication, articles in major newspapers and magazines, and solicitations from top agents and publishers, which have helped our writers score agents and book deals, I'm sad to announce that SSN will cease publication on 12.31.07. This was a very difficult decision for me to make, however, it was one that I felt was best for the journal. We will continue to publish reviews, interviews & features until the end of the year, and the site will remain online indefinitely. We will publish a final print issue in 2009. Subscriptions will be fulfilled.

I want to thank you all for your unwavering, wonderful support and for reading! I’d also like to extend a special thanks to my wonderful staff. SSN wouldn’t be where it is today without my incredible and devoted team of editors, reviewers, feature writers and readers. My humble thanks.

Cheers, Felicia C. Sullivan, Editor/Founder

Writers Revealed 10.7.07 Serial Killers & Free Books!

2007-10-06T13:59:00.001-04:00

An Absolute Gentleman is fiction, the memoir of self-confessed serial killer Arthur Blume, in prison for killing twelve, perhaps seventeen, women. He wishes to correct the media’s distorted view of him and his mother. He juxtaposes memories of his childhood in the hands of that loving, but psychotically cruel woman, with his more recent history as aging writer and itinerant instructor, and with observations about the nature of the world—no place for any creature. Offhandedly, he slips in horrors, some of which he endured, and others, perpetrated. While he’s a nice guy, champion of the insulted and outcast, he is also a monster who will, most certainly, strike.

Arthur Blume took shape from my association with murderer Robert Weeks in the mid-eighties, from lengthy research, including consultations with police officers, detectives, and psychologists. The Afterword to An Absolute Gentleman answers some anticipated questions about the inspiration for this novel.

About the Author: Rose Marie Kinder, who writes under the pen name of R.M. Kinder, won the 2005 University of Michigan prize for a collection of short stories titled A Near-Perfect Gift. Another of her short story collections, Sweet Angel Band, was awarded the Willa Cather Award in 1991. R.M. Kinder’s prose has also appeared in Other Voices, Short Stories, and The New York Times. She holds an MFA and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and currently resides in Warrensburg, Missouri.

Essential Links
Visit R.M. Kinder's website
BookStandard Review
Buy the Book!

Want to score a copy of An Absolute Gentleman? Leave your question for the author here, and if I use it on air, you'll receive a free book!

SSN Contributors in the Best American series!

2007-09-27T07:58:00.000-04:00

I'm incredibly pleased to announce that three of our authors have been recognized in the Best American series. Congrats to Scott Snyder ("Dumpster Tuesday") and Mia Alvar ("Roundabout") for their notable mentions in this year's Best American Short Stories. Click here to read their stories. Shari Goldhagen ("It's Really Called Nothing" ) has garnered a notable in this year's Best American Non Required Reading.

Publishing News for SSN Contributor Paul Yoon

2007-09-21T13:37:00.000-04:00

Paul Yoon's debut collection, ONCE THE SHORE, will be published by
Sarabande Books in early 2009. The stories take place on an island off the
coast of South Korea and span the years between the 1940s and the present.

SSN Reviewer Reese Kwon in Commentary Magazine

2007-09-09T15:38:00.001-04:00

Check out Reese's work by clicking here

Writers Revealed 7.22.07 Matthew Sharpe/Jamestown

2007-07-16T15:24:00.001-04:00

Jamestown is a fantasia on the Jamestown settlement of 1607, the first viable English settlement in North America, set not in the past but in an indeterminate future, some years after an unspecified cataclysmic event. The U.S. has devolved into warring corporate city-states. The settlers, rather than setting out for Virginia from England on three ships in search of gold and a route to the Pacific, set out from Manhattan on an armored bus in search of fuel, food, and uncontaminated water.

About the Author: Matthew Sharpe's novel Jamestown was published this year by Soft Skull Press. He is also the author of the novels The Sleeping Father and Nothing Is Terrible, as well as the short-story collection Stories from the Tube. He has taught at Columbia University, New College of Florida, the MFA program at Bard College, and the Bronx Academy of Letters, and now teaches in the English department of Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

Links
Sci Fi Weekly Review
Bookforum Review
Small Spiral Notebook Interview
Matthew Sharpe reads from Jamestown
Read an excerpt from Jamestown

Do you have a question for Matthew Sharpe? Leave your question in the comments field and if I use it on air, you'll score a free copy of Jamestown!

Announcing...The Fourth Comings Mini-Film Contest

2007-07-02T20:21:00.000-04:00

Who: Fans of Jessica Darling, aspiring film-makers, obsessive vloggers,
or anyone who is creative with a camera

What: Create an original 3-minutes-or-under video that summarizes the action in Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings and Charmed Thirds

When: Starting right now, submissions are due by August 7th, 2007 (aka the on-sale date of Fourth Comings)

Where: Post your video on YouTube with the tags Fourth Comings, Megan McCafferty, then email Megan McCafferty the link: megan@meganmccafferty.com

Why: To bring new and forgetful readers up to speed on the action leading up to Fourth Comings. The director of the best video will win a customized Fourth Comings tote bag, containing The Megan McCafferty Collection, including (but not limited to) autographed copies of all the Jessica Darling novels and other books she's contributed to, audio books, and an original You, Yes, You T-shirt

How: Dramatic reading! Music video! Interpretive dance! Anime! Finger-puppet theater! However you want to express yourself...as long as the video is under three minutes and complies with YouTube's Terms of Use

Megan McCafferty will blog about the most entertaining videos as they come in. Have fun!

Visit the author's website

Book Reviews!

2007-06-26T09:40:00.002-04:00

Have you been checking out our reviews section? It's updated weekly!

Writers Revealed: 7.1 Sin in the Second City

2007-06-26T09:40:00.001-04:00

Step into the perfumed parlors of the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in American history—and a catalyst for a culture war that rocked the nation. Operating in Chicago’s notorious Levee district at the dawn of the last century, the Club’s proprietors, two aristocratic (or so they said) sisters named Minna and Ada Everleigh, attracted the elites of the world with their opulent parlors and stunning courtesans. While lesser whorehouses specialized in deflowering virgins, beatings and bondage, the Everleighs spoiled their harlots with couture gowns, gourmet meals and extraordinary salaries. Not everyone appreciated the sisters’ attempts to elevate the industry. Rival madams hatched numerous schemes to ruin the Everleighs, including attempts to frame them for murder. But the sisters' most daunting foes were the Progressive Era reformers, who whipped the entire country into a frenzy with lurid tales of “white slavery.” It was a furor that shaped America's sexual culture and had repercussions all the way to the White House, even leading to the formation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With a cast of characters that includes Jack Johnson, John Barrymore, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Theodore Dreiser, William Howard Taft, and Al Capone, Sin in the Second City is Karen Abbott’s portrait of the maverick Everleigh sisters, their world-famous Club, and the perennial clash between our hedonistic impulses and Puritanical roots.

Karen Abbott worked as a journalist on the staffs of Philadelphia magazine and Philadelphia Weekly, and has written for Salon and other publications. A native of Philadelphia, she now lives with her husband in Atlanta, where she’s at work on her next book for Random House, a portrait of Gypsy Rose Lee and Depression-era New York City. Visit her at www.sininthesecondcity.com.

Want to score a free copy of SIN? Simply leave a question for the author here and if we use it on the air, you'll win a free copy!

Writers Revealed: Virtual Book Club

2007-06-20T17:05:00.000-04:00

Have you thought about joining a book club but grew tired of the drama, the scheduling, the shrieking: I HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK YET!? Afraid to commit to a monthly book club but want to check out a few new books? Want to chat with today's most buzzworthy authors, LIVE? From the comfort of your own home? Well, pull up a chair, put on a pot of tea and charge your phone, because Writers Revealed will launch the WR Virtual Book Club.

Each month you'll have the opportunity to chat live with one of our authors and score a free book in the process.

We're kicking off our Virtual Book Club on August 5, 2007 with Meredith Hall, author of Without a Map and in September, we'll be chatting with Dani Shapiro, author of Black and White

There is no commitment to the club - you pick and choose which live chats you want to participate in, and we'll send you a copy of the book a month in advance of the chat date.

Interested? Leave a comment on the WR website or send an email to writersrevealed -at- writersrevealed -dot- com with the subject line: VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB.

Writers Revealed Site Launch

2007-06-11T17:06:00.000-04:00

Check out my new venture: Writers Revealed. Chat with today's most buzzworthy authors, LIVE, and score some free books in the process.

Writers Revealed 6.10.07 Joshua Ferris & Michelle Goodman: the Post-it edition & *free books!

2007-06-06T09:52:00.000-04:00

This week on Writers Revealed: Joshua Ferris, author of the novel Then We Came to the End. We'll be chatting about his novel, the drone of office life, the dot.com era, whether the office is a surrogate of one's home, and what's the deal with Chris Yop and the chair anyway? (hint: it's in the book!). And as soon as I received Michelle Goodman's incredible book, The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube, in the mail (I ripped the package open with my teeth, people), I knew I had to have her on the show. Click here to access the show & we're taking callers so feel free to share your questions, LIVE!

About Then We Came to the End:
Then We Came to the End charts the end days of a Chicago ad agency caught in the burst new-economy bubble. As the firm’s employees watch those around them laid off and wait for their own walking papers, they obsess over one another’s behavior and the secrets co-workers may or may not be keeping. In Ferris’ descriptions of entire floors closed off and abandoned as the firm shrinks, and of workers clinging to a futile illusion of business as usual, there’s a tragic and palpable hubris.
- from the Small Spiral Notebook Review

More Links
Joshua Ferris's website
Powells.com Interview

About The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube The days seem long with too much time for work and the nights seem short with too little time for sleep. What's a modern girl to do? When you have a passion you want follow it, when you have a dream you want to make it reality, but when you have bills, they must be paid. It often appears as though you can't have the best of both worlds. Today, lots of women would love to integrate their passion with their career and are seeking advice on how to do just that. Michelle Goodman, a self proclaimed, "wage-slave" has written a fun, reassuring, girlfriend-to-girlfriend guide on identifying your passion, transitioning out of that unfulfilling job, and doing it all in a smart practical way.

More Links
Michelle Goodman's website
MediaBistro Interview with Rachel Kramer Bussel

Update! Publishers of both books are sending over *free* copies for our readers/listeners! If you have a question for any of the authors, leave it on my website or feel free to call in on Sunday!

SSN Interview: Dani Shapiro

2007-06-04T15:21:00.001-04:00

JDH: I've certainly read good books about angry children and angry parents before, but no author explores anger with the psychological complexity you do in [your novels]. Even your piece from Story in 1993 explores anger—a mother irritates a daughter by intruding on her while she's getting a bikini wax. What are your thoughts on anger?

DS: I’ll resort to another favorite quote. Edward Albee once said this: “For the anger and rage to work aesthetically, the writer’s got to distance himself from it and write in what Frank O’Hara referred to in one of his poems as ‘the memory of my feelings.’ Rage is incoherent. Observed rage can be coherent.” I’ve thought of that quote often, over the years. You can substitute pretty much any intense emotion there—grief, elation, heartbreak, desire—and it’s true that it is impossible to write out of the immediacy...

I’m glad you brought up that short story, “The Way Women Laugh”, which was published a long time ago in Story Magazine. It was, by my estimation, my first decent story. Talk about the shimmer around the edges—that story was borne out of a moment when my own mother did in fact walk into a room in a spa where I was getting a bikini wax. If you’re a writer, and your mother walks in on your bikini wax, you’re pretty much gonna write about it. I was blessed with a mother who gave me tremendously good fodder as a writer. She was a difficult mother in almost every other way, but she supplied me with many years worth of material—which is probably how I managed my own rage toward her. You might even say that I turned her into my muse—the way Ruth turns Clara into hers. Though nakedness in writing and nakedness in image-making are completely different animals. As is taking on one’s mother—versus taking on one’s daughter.

Click here to read Small Spiral Notebook's interview with Dani Shapiro

Writers Revealed 6.10.07 Joshua Ferris

2007-06-04T15:16:00.002-04:00

This week on Writers Revealed: Joshua Ferris, author of the novel Then We Came to the End. We'll be chatting about his novel, the drone of office life, the dot.com era, whether the office is a surrogate of one's home, and what's the deal with Chris Yop and the chair anyway? (hint: it's in the book!). Click here to access the show & we're taking callers so feel free to share your questions, LIVE!

About the Book:
Then We Came to the End charts the end days of a Chicago ad agency caught in the burst new-economy bubble. As the firm’s employees watch those around them laid off and wait for their own walking papers, they obsess over one another’s behavior and the secrets co-workers may or may not be keeping. In Ferris’ descriptions of entire floors closed off and abandoned as the firm shrinks, and of workers clinging to a futile illusion of business as usual, there’s a tragic and palpable hubris. The novel is rich with stirring images, as in this scene of after-hours dormancy:

After everyone went home for the night, after we all fell asleep and the city dimmed, Oldies continued to play inside the abandoned office. Picture it—only a parallelogram of light in the doorway. A happy tune by the Drifters issuing in the dark at two, three o’clock in the morning, when elsewhere murders were taking place, drug deals, unspeakable assaults.

Like the apocryphal story of Nero fiddling as Rome burns, nostalgic Oldies play with no one to listen and herald the assumed safety and detachment of those “inside”—even while they are sleeping at home—from the dangerous world beyond the American office.
- from the Small Spiral Notebook Review

More Links
Joshua Ferris's website
Powells.com Interview

Writers Revealed: Leslie Bennetts recap

2007-06-04T15:16:00.001-04:00

If you missed out on yesterday's Writers Revealed show, feel free to click here to listen! Leslie Bennetts and I chatted about the perils of economic dependency and how stay-at-home mothers (through rigorous and sound financial and career planning) can keep current while out of the job force (and the startling statistics that reveal, after only a year, how a woman’s earning power can sharply decline). We discussed how The Feminine Mistake is not another salvo at the Mommy Wars but more that it raises awareness and criticism of U.S. policy issues - why aren't women's choices equally rewarded? Why don't we provide financial security for women who choose to remain at home? We talked of the marriage dynamic when there is a soul breadwinner (after me having screened Todd Field’s Little Children that afternoon) and how that can possibly change the relationship from one of a partnership to a parent/child dynamic. Bennetts addressed her critics who spoke of her narrow demographic (the educated, affluent Northeast) and we discussed statistics that show children of stay at home mothers fared no better than children of working mothers.

Want to listen to the show? Click here! And thanks to all who submitted terrific questions!!! I used a great deal on the show and I've contacted those who will receive their copy of Leslie Bennetts's book.

This Week on Writers Revealed (6.10.07) Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to The End

NEWSWEEK ESSAY ON CONDOLENCES & MORE

2007-05-21T19:37:00.000-04:00

Hello Friends, This is Jess, Book Review Editor of SSN.

Below you'll find links to my recent Newsweek essay on condolences, as well as links to some of our amazing review staff's publications: Carolyn Slutsky's article in The New York Times. Jessica Allen's article in Poets & Writers and Reese Kwon's review in The New York Sun. Enjoy!

'I'm Sorry' Shouldn't Be the Hardest Words
Losing my father was painful enough without having other people try to talk me out of my grief. By Jess deCourcy Hinds. Click here to read the article.

Reese Kwon's Review of "Singing America" by Caille Millner in The New York Sun

Carolyn Slutsky's piece on immigrant protest in The New York Times (Carolyn is also a reporter with Jewish Week, so you can find her on the newsstands every week!)

Jessica Allen's piece about Miranda July and The Believer in Poets & Writers magazine.

SEED Magazine Essay Contest

2007-05-21T10:50:00.000-04:00

A favorite science magazine of mine, Seed Magazine is holding a 2007 Essay Writing Contest. The contest is designed to foster young talented writers – and will feature 1200 word essays that tackle the question: What does it mean to be scientifically literate in the 21st Century? The essays will be judged by a panel of Seed editors and special guest judges.

The winners will receive a monetary prize and have their essays published in the September/October issue of Seed Magazine. The call for entries has already begun, and the submission deadline is July 1st.

Oh, and check this Phylotaxis by Jonathan Harris. It's pretty sweet.

Between the Sheets: Writers Revealed

2007-05-15T21:09:00.001-04:00

I'm beyond excited to launch my new project, Between the Sheets: Writers Revealed. My debut show will air live, this Sunday, May 20th at 7pm EST/4pm PST. I'll be live in the studio with a fuzzy mike praying I won't need Xanax.

Join me each week in a new kind of Sunday Book Review where I guarantee it won’t be books as usual. Participate in live discussions, book giveaways, and opportunities to get between the sheets with some of today's most buzzworthy writers. From examining choice feminism in Leslie Bennetts’s The Feminist Mistake, to recalling our horrifying and hilarious high school memories with the authors of When I Was a Loser, to dissecting bad mothers in contemporary fiction, to reimagining Jamestown in a post 9/11 New York to reliving The Office, really, in Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End, the writers you’ll meet and the stories you’ll hear will get you talking long after the show is over.

And this is only the beginning. I'm not a critic (I don't know how to be one), I'm just someone who loves books and loves promoting authors. I've been doing this for almost six years with my literary journal Small Spiral Notebook, and now I have the wonderful opportunity to chat with authors I'm fond of, without being so serious about it.

Feel free to check out my debut show lineup by clicking here and leave your comments/questions because I've got free books!!! to unload.

And if you'd like, won't you please post this little widget on your website or spread the word? THANKS!

Check out our latest interviews!

2007-05-08T14:29:00.000-04:00

Scott Esposito: Jamestown's world is very violent, so violent in fact that it often feels cartoonish. Maybe its best summed up by the observations of one of your main characters, bus-rider and slacker skeptic Johnny Rolfe, who says "Some great, quaint pre-annihilation philosopher described the movement of history as thesis, antithesis, synthesis, whereas I've seen a lot more thesis, antithesis, steak knife, bread knife." Why are things so violent?

Matthew Sharpe: Because they were and are. The Jamestown settlement was a fertile ground for the flowering of man’s inhumanity to man: English against Indians, Indians against English, English against English, Indians against Indians. But especially English against Indians. The settlers decimated the locals, commandeered their land, kidnapped, tortured, and killed them. The English thought their God was better than the Indians’, thought their skin and clothes and civilization were better. And England’s foreign policy in the early 17th century bears a striking resemblance to ours now: extract the foreigners’ resources, save them with our superior values, kill them with our superior weapons, and do it all with breathtaking incompetence.

click here to read Scott Esposito's interview with Matthew Sharpe, author of Jamestown.

Mary Phillips Sandy: I read an interview in which you said that this book started when Joseph came to you and told you to write about him – is that typical for you, that books start with a character demanding attention?

Alison McGhee: No, this was the only time that’s ever happened to me. I blame myself, really, because I was being melodramatic. I’d been a couple of months without a real focus in my work, and that’s a kind of hell for me. I pretended I was Job. I spread my arms to the universe and said, “Give me something to write about!” Then this boy just leaped into my mind. He was sitting in the wheelchair and he looked up at me, his hands were on the wheels. He said – he swore at me, but I won’t say that for the interview. He said, “What, you can’t write about me?”

And I really didn’t want to. I’m not a boy; I’m not a teenage boy. I don’t know what it’s like to get through life using a wheelchair. I felt intimidated by the whole idea of it, but he truly would not leave me alone. I wound up putting years into the work and figuring out what he wanted.

click here to read Mary Phillips Sandy's interview with Alison McGhee, author of Falling Boy.

Rishi Reddi on Current TV

2007-05-03T11:52:00.000-04:00

Finally Current TV has something I can watch (kidding, they're great). Rishi Reddi, author of Karma and Other Stories (who is interviewed on SSN), gets a spot on the Culture Clash section. It's certainly worth a look. Furthermore, and possibly even more exciting, I have one signed copy of Karma and Other Stories just aching to be sent to the first person who e-mails me at signorelli.michael@gmail.com. Please include your mailing address and the subject heading "My Karma Is Green". Good luck.

*Congrats to Brian H.

From our Friends at Dzanc Books...

2007-04-25T13:17:00.000-04:00

Dzanc Books announces the inaugural Dzanc Prize – a monetary award to a writer with both a work in progress, and an interest in performing some form of literary community service.

The award itself will be a total of $5,000 to be distributed in two payments over the course of a twelve month period. The purpose of this prize is to give monetary aid to a writer of literary promise, in order to provide a budgetary cushion for them, allowing the author to concentrate his/her efforts on the completion of their work in progress.

Eligibility: Any author with a Work in Progress, and a project in mind that can be deemed Literary Community Service.

Timing: The Inaugural Dzanc Prize will be issued for the 2008 calendar year. We will accept submissions from authors from now through November 1, 2007. The announcement of the winning author will be made during the month of December 2007. The announcement will be made via email to the author, on the Dzanc Books website, as well as sent to trade journals (P&W, Publisher’s Weekly, etc.).

Submissions: Authors please send your current cv, a description of your Work in Progress, along with a ten page excerpt, and your planned Literary Community Service. These should be sent as MS Word Attachments in an email to info@dzancbooks.org.

Dzanc Books will be selecting the author who will receive this $5,000 Prize based on a combination of the Work in Progress, and the intended Literary Community Service. It would probably benefit authors who are submitting to become familiar with Dzanc Books and the types of authors we will be publishing, as well as the Educational Programs Dzanc Books sets up and runs.

Some examples of Literary Community Service:

- Running a series of writing workshops in a school
- Volunteering to do a storytime session or series at your local library
- Volunteering to work at a local book festival (if the festival is run as a non-profit)

The winner of the Dzanc Prize will receive a check for $2500 in the month of January 2008. The remaining $2500 will be paid once the Literary Community Service has been completed.

Dzanc Books will make no claims towards the winner and their Work in Progress. If at the time the author has completed the work, they wish to submit it to Dzanc Books, we will be delighted to have a look. Their manuscript will go through the same reading process every other submission goes through.

The submissions for the Dzanc Prize will be reviewed by, and the prize will be awarded by a panel of Steve Gillis, Dan Wickett and Keith Taylor. All writers, including friends and associates of the panel, are eligible for the prize. The integrity and objectivity of Dzanc Books will not be compromised and, given our vast connections to so many great writers, exclusion of any kind would be impossible.

Any questions can be submitted to info@dzancbooks.org.

NYWC Write-A-Thon

2007-04-23T13:29:00.000-04:00

I really wish I hadn't left that last post stand on its own for so long. I'm very well adjusted to life. Please believe me! The weather is helping.

Just got a little postcard for the Second Annual NYWC Write-A-Thon to be held Saturday, June 9th. The NY Writers Coalition wants you to "Write your a** off" for a great cause! They've given you plenty of time to drum up some sponsors, so why not at least think about it? I am. I am totally thinking about it.

Folderol

2007-04-13T13:59:00.000-04:00

I just finished up one of those naps I was talking about. Wait.

lguic i0k.mh; f.

That

was

my face.

I must still be tired. It's no wonder (and here comes the hook) since there's so many great literary events going on this April!!! No foolies. They're falling out my ass. And once April's over we have BEA in NY and that's a whole other bag of tricks. I can't keep up. But it's good material, Mike. You're a blogger, you gotta write this shit down, man. Let me be. I feel like I need some time to create! You know, to just slip on that purple leotard I have crumpled in my closet and to let loose with all this energy swirling inside of me. Doesn't that just sound delicious, just silky? God, I just want to DANCE!

Until that divine moment of release descends, I'll have to deal with what I got, and that ain't so bad. Right, Rico? You gattit, Mikey.

And for those of you who think this makes absolutely no sense, well...it doesn't.

Links: Dennis Loy Johnson, Mark Doty, Writer's Rooms (you'll love this one), and Roberto Bolano tribute.

New Boldtype

2007-04-05T14:37:00.000-04:00

IZZUP - Boldtype

The New GOOD

2007-04-04T15:08:00.000-04:00

Some time ago, I weighed the implications of the inaugural issue of GOOD magazine. They were all for charity and against advertising, yet had advertisers and were making money. I was mildly suspicious and alternately warmed by the foolhardiness of their venture. With the early release of their fourth issue (May/June 2007) "Plan B," I've been so taken with the content that I've decided to just enjoy what's on offer and give my work-addled faculties a rest.

My highlights:

#1: "Nodding Off: Can afternoon naps save your life?" by Sara Mednick. Now this piece might just as easily fit in Good Housekeeping (or something equally lame) but Sara's got a PhD in psychology from Harvard and I respect that. But I'm having a tough time following this advice--I have no doors to close, anywhere.

#2: "The GOOD Guide to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, aka North Korea" by Paul French. Six pages of scary facts: my fav! Did you know that Kim Jong-Il is 5'3"? That he's afraid to fly? That his favorite movies are Rambo, James Bond, and slasher flicks? The most bizarre facts, however, have to do with daily civilian life. The few images included conjure the unsettling landscapes of dystopic anime, say, like Neon Genesis Evangelion. (Looking for a thesis topic? How about that the fantastical nightmares of some free-Asian artists are identical to visions of North Korea? Fucked, eh?) The jury is mostly out, though, since the NK is an extremely closed society. Welcome to Pyongyang a new book of photographs by Charlie Crane offers a rare glimpse. Find out more at www.chrisboot.com.

#3: "Jen Bekman on art collecting" by...take a guess. Jen gives art back to the masses with her new project 20x200, which will sell limited edition prints for between $20 and $200. Since I got my hands on GOOD a little early ('cause I'm so eager), the site isn't ready for public consumption. In the meantime, Jen has plenty to offer all of us at her gallery site.

*Now that I've looked into a bit more, I'm ahead of even the GOOD site, so consider this a preview. I do suggest you keep an eye out for it; there's much more than what I mentioned.

What Neon Genesis Evangelion character are you?

new issue online!

2007-04-04T12:40:00.001-04:00

check out the new online issue of my literary journal, Small Spiral Notebook. what will i find, you wonder? well, you'll find short stories by Mary Beth Caschetta, Rusty Barnes, Keith Wells & Steve Cushman, a memoir piece from Joe Oestreich, poetry from the likes of Douglas Martin, Sandra Ogle, Ray Succre, Kathy Davis, Erica Wright and Christopher Burawa.

and interviews! oh my! with Tom Bissell, Maggie Nelson, poet Bob Hicok, Ellis Avery, Gayle Brandeis and more! Within the next few weeks, we'll have interviews with Vendela Vida, Joshua Ferris, Dani Shapiro, Rishi Reddi & more!

so why not check out our new issue today.

One of these things is not like the other...

2007-04-02T10:43:00.000-04:00

Sing those words! Anyway, Judith Reagan is back in the game with Schizophrenic House, the literary imprint of her Chutzpah Press. In what Shelf Awareness called "a long, rambling statement," Reagan outlined, alluded to, and declared that Chutzpah Press will specialize in "books that go to the edge, call into question, get in the face, never surrender and are distinguished by utter originality."

So what is Chutzpah's first title? Harry Potter and the Secret of the Purpose-Driven Da Vinci Code Life.

No joke. Is it original to pander to the public's basest, aesthetic instincts? I'm just sick of it.

SSN Interview: Ellis Avery

2007-03-29T17:40:00.000-04:00

MS: I also found it interesting that Urako’s love relationship with Inko develops without any self-consciousness. Maybe I’m under the false impression that sexual relationships outside the traditional social order were looked down upon or even punished back then, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. How are lesbian relationships historically represented in Japan? Was there a place for them? Were they ignored?

EA: There’s not a lot of material to draw conclusions from. I would say that it looks like they just turned a blind eye to them. There were no religious proscriptions against lesbianism. There wasn’t a medical discourse of perversity—nor was there in the Victorian period in England or America until the 1880’s, 1890’s with sexologists, Havelock Ellis, and so on. And my partner was writing this book about relationships between women in the Victorian period while I was writing my book, so I got to eavesdrop on her research. It doesn’t seem like there was a lesbian sexual identity per se, which meant that there wasn’t necessarily a place in or out of society. Based on that, it doesn't seem too crazy to assume that the way I wrote it is the way it might have happened, especially in an all-female environment like the geisha world. Well, we don’t know, so it doesn’t seem totally impossible.

click here to read more

SSN Interview: Gayle Brandeis

2007-03-29T17:37:00.000-04:00

JDH: Are there other guides to writing that you’ve found helpful? How do you think writing guides can be useful, and sometimes not useful, to the beginning writer?

GB: I love Natalie Goldberg's books, especially Wild Mind. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is a favorite, too. So is poemcrazy: freeing your life with words by Susan Wooldridge. As for new books about writing, my friend Laraine Herring's Writing Begins with the Breath comes out from Shambhala later this year. It will rock your world.

I think that writing guides can be very useful for beginning writers—they can help us gain confidence as writers, begin to take creative risks, begin to feel like part of a larger writing community. There is a risk inherent in these books, though—it can become easy to read about writing without actually writing, or to do continuous writing exercises rather than working on a project that is coming from deep inside yourself. I guess it's important to notice whether you're using the book as a tool to enrich your own writing, or as a crutch that's keeping you away from your truest work. If it's the latter, try to wean yourself away from the writing books, and work on trusting your own judgment, your own voice, your own autonomy as a writer. You can always return to the writing books for a quick fix of inspiration.

click here to read more.

The Darkness at Noon

2007-03-19T11:31:00.000-04:00

Downshifting quite considerably from my last book post is the reissued Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler. First published in the 1941, Darkness at Noon tell a bleak insiders tale of Stalin's brutal 1930's Communist Party purges. In my research of the book, I've often seen it compared in magnitude and importance to Orwell's 1984. While the anti-communist/Stalin theme is the same, I found little else to support that assertion while reading Darkness myself. Koestler, who was once an ardent supporter of Communism, but at the time of his writing had denounced the Party, writes his fiction with a much more personal and haunting prose. Knowing this it is puzzling, however, that through his main character the imprisoned, former Party Elite Rubashov, Koestler often sounds more like a Communist apologist that anything else.

How old might Gletkin be? Thirty-six or seven, at the most; he must have taken part in the Civil War as a youth and seen the out-break of the Revolution as a mere boy. That was the generation which had started to think after the flood. It had no traditions, and no memories to bind it to the old, vanished world. It was a generation born without an umbilical cord, deny the last tie which bound one to the vain conceptions of honour and the hypocritical decency of the old world. Honour was to serve without vanity, without sparing oneself, and until the last consequence.

In prison, Rubashov sees the divergence Communism has taken, from a Party of thought and theory to one of mindless action. He chooses to romanticize it rather than deal with the consequences, which in his situation usually means torture and death. Rubashov was a co-architect of the system which has now fingered him as an enemy. He finds it ironic, just and at times, humorous. He has been a conspirator, murder, antagonist and subjugator all for the sake of the Party's philosophy. History will be his judge he says, "if I was right I have nothing to repent, if wrong, I will pay." But he is wrong, history will not be the first to judge him, it will be the monsters in his own Party, the very people he helped put in power.

Darkness at Noon does a fair job of revealing the mindset of the brainwashed Communist masses, the underlying Party insurgents and the brutal bureaucratic system which considers both groups its mortal enemy. However, the long passages of political monologue and debate that encompass most of the second half of the book grow tiresome, especially in light of Rubashov's subsequent capitulation in the face of torture. If all agree who is right and who is wrong, why the need for long debate? "Observe, " Gletkin went on, "that the Party holds out to you no prospect of reward. Some of the accused have been made amenable by physical pressure. Others, by the promise to save their heads- or the heads of their relatives who had fallen into our hands as hostages. To you, Comrade Rubashov, we propose no bargain and we promise nothing."
"I understand", the old revolutionary Rubashov says. He would rather give up than fight on.

Darkness at Noon
Arthur Koestler
Scribner

What I'm reading next: Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer

Average American Male

2007-03-16T16:27:00.000-04:00

Now I don't mean to offend anyone, but Chad Kultgen the author of Average American Male might. I know this is blatant props to my employer, but hey, would your boss give company money for the creation of this?

That's the first of three promotional videos now adding to the general debasement of wo/mankind. The others are not as tasteful. Search "Average American Male" on Youtube. Blam-O.

Doty / Sterns / Avery / the Underminer

2007-03-15T15:56:00.000-04:00

Thank God for the SSN blog! I don't say that enough. Josh, Felicia, do you guys say that? I'd make a small wager that you do. I say it now because, away from the evaluating eyes of my employers, I can tell you that I've done jack shit today. I hit the ground running but one salami/turkery sub and weird-tasting cookie later and well...I'm rambling like a jackass.

Last night, despite a lingering cold, I sprung from a hard day's work to a hard day's night of covorting with the hip and literary. Not really, actually. I kept to myself and blushed often. First stop was the B&N Chelsea where Mark Doty read from his recently released memoir, Dog Years. I wish all writers lucky enough to read to an audience would take a lesson from Doty. He's concise, clear, and engaged with what he is saying. He likes questions but won't bleat on if a sentence or two will do. He doesn't even stutter. He's a rock.

From there, then lugging a New York Cheeseburger and fries in my gullet, I took the V-train down to the Happy Ending reading series hosted by Amanda Stern. Sheri Joseph, Ellis Avery, and Mike Albo were the readers and as required by Amanda they each had to attempt something they had never done before on stage. Sheri showed us her androgynous sketches of David Lee Roth and sci-fi boy-heroes of her own creation. Ellis (who I've interviewed and am now editing a transcript of indescribable brilliance) sang the chorus of a Japanese pop song--in Japanese! Mike Albo, aka Gawker's the Underminer, did something so brilliant I can't even guess what to call it. Basically he recited clusters of common utterances, all indicative of our frivilous and shallow society, and enunciated each in succession with such accuracy and pace that I still can't make any sense of it.

GODDAMN I HAVE A HEADACHE!!!!

Sorry, I was so happy then, POOF, my head hurt.

the red parts...

2007-03-15T14:01:00.001-04:00

"The Red Parts chronicles the uncanny series of events that led to Nelson's interest in her aunt's death, the reopening of the case, the bizarre and brutal trial that ensued, and the effects these events had on the disparate group of people they brought together. But The Red Parts is much more than a "true crime" record of a murder, investigation, and trial. For into this story Nelson has woven a spare, poetic account of a girlhood and early adulthood haunted by loss, mortality, mystery, and betrayal, as well as a subtle but blistering look at the personal and political consequences of our cultural fixation on dead (white) women. " read more

Jane Carr: Do you agree with Mark Seltzer that ours is a “wound culture?” If, as Seltzer argues, the violated body mediates between private fantasy and public space, then mourning may be either the ultimate act of fetish, or the most fertile site for resistance. Can mourning or the study of violence be recuperative, or are we simply a nation of voyeurs and fetishists?

Maggie Nelson: Brilliant question. That’s the nail on the head, isn’t it? I’m tempted to run on and on in response, but instead I will simply point toward the two best recent books I know on the subject: Judith Butler’s Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence and Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others. Both have crucial things to say about the uses and abuses of grief, and the problem of the wound as fetish. Together they have served as a precious dyad for me throughout this time. But I will say this (along with Butler and Sontag): Americans have a lot to answer for, and a lot of work to do, on this account—work we’ll be doing, vis a vis the war in Iraq, for the rest of our lifetimes. The effects of all the repressed deaths and of the physical and psychological wounds that Iraqis and American soldiers will continue to bear in the years after the violence stops— if it stops—will be with us all for some time.

read more of our incredible interview with maggie nelson

Rep Yo City

2007-03-14T11:55:00.000-04:00

The best thing about reading a really compelling, entertaining book is when you've finished and you sit there for a few minutes with the book still in your hand thinking about the characters and how they're advancing beyond the pages. Perhaps you might flip back through the dog eared pages and reread some particularly highlighted passages. Or maybe you just sit back and feel true contentment for five or ten minutes.

All of the above encompasses the way I felt the other day when I finished Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. Though it is nearly thirty-five years old, much of the attitude, demeanor and controversies in the book still ring true. Though it's importance to the GLBT community cannot be overlooked, the real story in Tales of the City, was Maupin's unabashed love for the City by the Bay and all its weird and wacky inhabitants.

Tales of the City centers around the lives of the tenants of 28 Barbary Lane. We have Mary Ann, just moved from Cleveland and having a hard time adjusting to the San Francisco lifestyle, Michael, who enjoys cruising the bathhouses, Mona, a part time lesbian and Michael's best friend and Anna, the landlady, who welcomes all new tenants with a joint rolled from her private stash.

Although many of the old landmarks like Hamburger Mary's and the EndUp are either gone or irrevocably changed by time, Maupin's idea of San Francisco has not and probably will never change. It's still the same place where a guy can pick up another guy while waiting in line to go on stage in a Jockey shorts contest. Where an Afro-centric white lesbian can fall in love with another white lesbian because she is posing as a black fashion model. Where someone can be gay one day and straight the next. Maupin's San Francisco is simply a place where two (or more) people can connect without judgements and please each other as best as they know how.

I first read Tales of the City when I moved to San Francisco in 1995 and didn't understand much of it. It seemed sappy, pop-ish to me and it read like the newspaper serial it was. Back then, I was Mary Ann. I was living my own version of Tales and I didn't even know it. My landlord was a gay Filipino bank executive who lived above me with his Puerto Rican lover and a roommate whose fethish was violent night wrestling. I was a little freaked. I thought a million times about leaving and going back to where I came from. But I stayed. Somewhere over the course of time I changed into Mona, I could never pinpoint the date, but it's there.

Tales of the City
Armistead Maupin

What I'm reading next: Darkness at Noon (actually, I'm finished but will blog about it later)

Mohammed Hayawi

2007-03-12T11:47:00.000-04:00

Anthony Shadid of The Washington Post has written an important article on the life of the Iraqi bookseller, Mohammed Hayawi: "The Bookseller's Story, Ending Much Too Soon". Shadid accounts for what was lost, for the vibrant and thoughtful man whose Renaissance Bookstore embodied the open, intellectual spirit of of Baghdad's Mutanabi Street. He died in the recent bombing that destroyed the famed bookseller's market.

"The American promises to Iraq are like trying to hold water in your hand," he told me in one conversation. "It spills through your fingers."

But he was never strident; he was filled with a thoughtfulness and reflection that survival in Iraq rarely permits these days.

Hayawi resented the occupation but voted in the elections the United States backed. He was a devout Muslim, but feared the rise of religion in politics. In his bookstore, once-banned titles by Shiite clerics, imported from Iran, vied with books by radical Sunni clerics, among them Muhammad Abdel-Wahab, the 18th-century godfather of Saudi Arabia's brand of Islam. Profit may have inspired his eclectic mix, but Hayawi also seemed to be making a statement: Mutanabi Street, his Baghdad and his Iraq would respect their diversity.

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

2007-03-09T16:19:00.000-05:00

I began re-reading Nightwood by Djuna Barnes last week. It's recently been reissued by New Directions and upon seeing the new cover I was inclined to purchase (though, I still love the old cover). It's been a much-needed reintroduction to character, to life, tenuous and fleeting, set in prose. I'd like to highlight two brief passages. The first appears near the beginning of a section titled "Night Watch" and describes Nora Flood, the domestic centerpeg of a "'paupers' salon for poets, radicals, beggars, artists, and people in love.":

"Whenever she was met, at the opera, at a play, sitting alone and apart, the programme face down on her knee, one would discover in her eyes, large protruding and clear, that mirrorless look of polished metals which report not so much the object as the movement of the object. As the surface of a gun's barrel, reflecting a scene, will add to the image the portent of its construction, so her eyes contracted and fortified the play before her in her own unconscious terms."

I'll admit that it took a few readings before her meaning settled with me. The bold reach of her metaphor, the tempered delivery of her prose, the passage's initial difficulty, they all affect the same difficulty of apprehending a person's character. And this is just one paragraph of many! The second passage describes Jenny Petherbridge--please note that this paragraph appears at the end of a series of descriptive paragraphs, when considered by itself it might seem a bit much, but I see it as the exclamatory cymbal punctuating the end of a drumroll:

"She had a continual rapacity for other people's facts; absorbing time, she held herself responsible for historic characters. She was avid and disorderly in her heart. She defiled the very meaning of personality in her passion to be a person; somewhere about her was the tension of the accident that made the beast the human endeavour."

Bring it all back, Djuna! Again it's but a piece. Well, that's all I had to share. Dalkey Archive Press has some of her back list. Enjoy the weekend! (I'll add links once I get to a different computer.)

Aftermath and the PageTurner Awards

2007-03-05T09:33:00.000-05:00

Good morning and Monday. I know. It's weird to be back.

The baby shower was more than I expected. Sometime after I cursed out a third-cousin for embarrassing me in Dance Dance Revolution and before I was markered with a third eye and a stubby black mustache, I may have made a pass at someone's grandmother. Class act. All the way.

In order to cleanse myself of deeds past, I thought I'd spread the word about the second annual James Patterson PageTurner Awards. $500,000 in cash prizes are presented to "the people, companies, schools, and other institutions who find original and effective ways to spread the excitement of books and reading." Thirty-nine book-loving entities were awarded the 2006 prize, each receiving various sums of a lot. The $100,000 PageTurner of the Year Award went to the Washington Center for the Book in Seattle, WA, founder of the "One Book, One City" campaign.

For a list of all the winners and an irrepressible feeling of goodwill toward mankind, follow the link above.

ROUND UP - Wi * Pishhh!

2007-03-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

From reading other blogs I've gathered that Fridays sometime garner a round-up of some sort, recapping the highs and lows of the week now past. So it's high-fucking-time I rounded something up, here goes:

Last week New York saw the coming and going of the Armory Show and Comic Con. I made it to neither. Both overwhelmed and tickled non-fanatics in attendance. And Comic Con was a costumed orgy of onanism.

B&N Discover, Lambda Literary, PEN/Faulkner, Granta, Kate Chopin Writing, and LA Times Book awards were presented to the worthy and talented. My book, The Tenfoot Shit, received no such awards only the renewed suspicion of my mother.

I did get to attend the Granta party at Housing Works last night. I ate a dinner's worth of cheese, humus, pita, and these little roll-up quesadilla thingies that were delicious. The wine was free, readily available and went perfectly with the lowlit, bookish setting. I have a feeling it will be a tame memory when compared to the n+1 shindig happening Saturday. Unfortunately, I've been volunteered to attend a Filipino baby shower so will not be able to report. If you've never been to a Filipino baby shower, let me say this "Two babies enter, One baby leave." It's a brutal yet graceful tradition that has miraculously survived all attempts at assimilation.

Well, did I round things up? Like one or two things. Are they relevant to each other now? Probably not.

New Bear Parade / Granta Party

2007-03-01T10:58:00.000-05:00

The newest Bear Parade features the surreal stories of Ofelia Hunt: My Eventual Bloodless Coup. Pay a visit. Enjoy what she tells you.

***

Tonight - oh my God! Granta throws a party for the Best of Young American Novelists 2: Now Even Younger at Housing Works. www.Granta.com.

Felicia READS!!!

2007-02-27T16:11:00.000-05:00

One of the most important loves is self-love. Oh, how I know it. In that spirit, and with the assumption that SSN is a singular entity of which I am but a part, I'd like to spread a little in-house self-love in the direction of Felicia.

Tomorrow, Feb. 28, she reads from her memoir, The Sky Isn't Visible From Here, at the Boxcar Lounge. The evening will be hosted by Jami Attenberg. Felicia will read with Joshua Ferris (Then We Came to the End), Annie Choi (Happy Birthday or Whatever), and Min Jin Lee (Free Food for Millionaires). The event starts at 8pm. For more information, click like this.

Gabriel Josipovici

2007-02-27T14:45:00.000-05:00

Please excuse the light cross-pollination but there's an interview up with Gabriel Josipovici, author of the forthcoming novel Goldberg: Variations, at the CruelestMonth. A few books are being given away too.

It's coming!

2007-02-23T16:09:00.000-05:00

issue #4 will hit brooklyn this weekend. i received a copy of ssn #4 via overnight mail and i'm thrilled. seriously. really. absolutely. i love every single story in this issue and if you have a few bucks, why not support my little mag that could today. unsure? well taste the whole shebang for free. you heard me, FOR FREE.

Poor People

2007-02-22T13:29:00.000-05:00

Vollmann's latest, Poor People, is reviewed by Janet Maslin: "The Poor Are Different From You and Me. Or Are They?"

Clip/Stamp/Fold

2007-02-22T11:29:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry to point this out so near its closing (not to say that you didn't already know about it - if you did), but hopefully the time constraint will get you moving. Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X - 197X exhibits "an explosion of architectural little magazine in the 1960s and 1970s [that] instigated a radical transformation in architectural culture." The show can be found at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, 97 Kenmare Street. It closes this Saturday.

Dzanc Books First Two 2008 Titles Announcement

2007-02-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

Straight from the source:

Dzanc Books is both excited and proud to announce the first two titles we will
publish in 2008.

February 2008 will see the publication of our second
book, Yannick Murphy’s In a Bear’s Eye. Murphy’s collection includes 24 stories,
16 of which have been published in journals such as The Quarterly, McSweeneys,
and StoryQuarterly. The title story will soon be included in The O’Henry Prize
Stories 2007 (Anchor, May 2007).

Dzanc Books will follow In a Bear’s Eye
with Peter Markus’ Bob, or Man on Boat in the Fall 2008. Peter’s fourth book,
Bob, or Man on Boat, will be his debut novel. Markus’ three story collections
have shown him to be a master of repetition and rhythm and have earned him a
loyal following of readers, as well as seeing his work frequently anthologized.
Markus’ third collection, The Singing Fish, spent its first few weeks atop
Powell’s Small Press bestseller list.

Click here to read more!

Circles in Life: Pigeons, Zeffirelli, the Hurdy Gurdy Man

2007-02-15T14:17:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a meaningful Valentine's Day with someone special. If not, well, hang in there, tiger.

The past few months I've been going on about Donovan - aka, the Hurdy Gurdy Man - and his free-spirited music. Totally tripped out on love, I stumbled upon The Autobiography of Donovan: The Hurdy Gurdy Man (St. Martin's, 2005). It just appeared in my cubicle one day and stared up at me like a pebble smiling from the bed of a mountain stream - so groovy. I haven't delved too far yet (though, it's better than one might expect). Janet Maslin reviewed it in the NY Times this past November.

However time has treated Donovan personally, it has been kind to his music. This
book, with legitimate frustration but without hubris, reinstates that music's
seminal influence and the underlying seriousness that has always been easy to
miss.

I couldn't agree more (judging from the first three chapters), especially in regard to the work he did for Brother Sun, Sister Moon, a film directed by Franco Zeffirelli (better known for his classics Romeo and Juliet and Jane Eyre). I first experienced the mystic joys of BSSM in my 10th grade Italian class. (It's about the life of St. Francis of Assisi, so it was relevant.) Back then, the proliferation of MP3's had only begun, and out of the fifteen songs I had managed to download to my Gateway Desktop, eight or nine of them were by Donovan from this soundtrack. This, also, was something I had been going on about the past few months. My girlfriend (yes, girlfriend), being the astute and beautiful creature she is, honed in on these obsessions and gifted me the DVD for V-Day. So last night we stayed in, drank wine, and I cried like a bitch when St. Francis got all goofy on God. But the convergences did not end there.

In addition to the fantastic DVD, I was gifted Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird by Andrew D. Blechman. I had read the NY Times review awhile back, which only reinforced my conviction that pigeons were a species of import and interest. Here's the kicker, though. The epigraph to Pigeons:

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. - St. Francis

It must be love.

Before You She was a Pit Bull

2007-02-12T22:39:00.000-05:00

I like the way Elizabeth Ellen writes. But it isn't her style, which is unique, or her ability to mold believable charaters within the confines of a single paragraph, which she can. She understands the most important (I believe) rule of writing which so many writers ignore; that it is imperative to start out strong and hook the reader from the first sentence.

We're halfway across the field when I realize the weed we're smoking is laced.

Her technique is more than simple shock value. From the first story, "Trucker," in Ellen's collection, Before You She was a Pit Bull, I was hooked. She's got me wanting to know more, what weed? what field? how did the character get in this position in the first place? I read on. And before you know it I'm investing an entire afternoon when I should be working to read all her first sentences, all of her stories.

The stories of Before You She was a Pit Bull have a confessional feel and all consist of the same thematic element, what little girls with drunk, philandering mothers grow up to be and do. In "Trucker," it means attempting over and over to cheat on her husband with a man that has no interest in her. In "Breathing Lessons," it means getting involved with a man who has a fetish for choking.

Only after I'd felt him inch his way up inside me did he release his grip on my hands. He let go and they remained where they'd fallen on either side of my head. His hand moved the to my neck, encircling it first gently with his fingertips before closing completely around it. My back arched, offering up more of my nech to his hand, as though I was familar with this technique, as though I knew what I was doing. I didn't. Slowly, in gentle increments, he excerted more and more pressure on my throat until I felt as though I were being submerged deeper and deeper into a pool or warm water. Finally my body succumbed to a series of epileptic shudders that outlasted any I'd previoulsy experienced.

Although the characters of Before You She was a Pit Bull do hold similar backgrounds, personalities, penchant for drug use and a taste for the bizarre, there is a toned down matter-of -factness to her storytelling that makes the events and situations feel as normal as brushing your teeth.

My mother will tell me these things in the morning as she walks from the bathroom to the kitchen naked and smoking. She will talk to me as I wipe the crumbs and smears of grape jelly from the counter and she stands in front of the fridge, drinking juice from the pitcher. She will kiss me goodbye and pitter-patter back to her bed with the pianist while I walk down our drive singing to myself and wondering if it will ever snow.

Before You She was a Pit Bull may only be a chapbook, Ellen's first, however, it packs the same wallop as a double Jack neat. Here's to seeing more of this talented writer in the future.

Before You She was a Pit Bull
Elizabeth Ellen
Future Tense Press

What I'm reading next: Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

Contention surrouning NBCC

2007-02-12T12:05:00.000-05:00

Eliot Weinberger, a former finalist for the NBCC award in criticism, said that one of the nominated authors, Bruce Bawker, had engaged in "racism as criticism" in his book While Europe Slept. Weinberger's voiced this opinion two weeks ago when he announced this year's finalists. The NY Times has a report on the cultural implications of recent books dealing with the clash between Islam and the West: "In Books, a Clash of Europe and Islam."

Albyn Leah Hall

2007-02-08T15:49:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Albyn Leah Hall's The Rhythm of the Road, and I am fairly impressed. Hall's debut novel takes place in England and is about a lonesome, depressive Irish truckdriver, Bobby, and his daughter, Jo. Bobby is all the family Jo has, as her mother, Rosalie, abandoned her at birth and returned to her California home. Bobby raises Jo in their lorry while on road with country music and junk food instead of with fresh air, public schools and plenty of vegetables.

That weekend we were off the road. We were in London, and London was making me sad the way only London could. I missed the transport caffs and the roundabouts and the road spinning beneath our wheels. I missed the motorways at night with their tall yellow lights or red lights or sometimes on the B roads, no lights at all. I missed the night itself, when there was no real bedtime.
It was Sunday, and I had school the next day, I hadn't been to school for three weeks and I could hardly remember what happened there, though I had the back-to-school smell in my nose already: a thickish smell of chalk and glue. Bobby said I was always miserable before school. "Ah, Jo," he said when I was like that, because he didn't have enough words to change my mood.

Jo's unique and solitary upbringing has left her socially stunted and once she meets the beautiful, rising country start Cosima Stewart, Jo begins to realize there are other opportunities in life than those of the road.

A few things were different about her. She was an American, but it was just that. On the road we met just about everybody: Welsh people and Irish people and Scots, German people and Spanish people and Americans and, of course, people from every part of England...
Cosima was a cowgirl, at least to look at. She wore a cowboy hat and a belt with a brass buckle. She wore a suede jacket, its fringe damp and tangled from being sat on in so many cars and lorries (or trucks because they didn't say lorry in the U.S.A.). Her accent wasn't broad, but her voice had gaps in it wide enough to park a lorry in. I'd ask her a question and she wouldn't say anything and I'd think she hadn't heard me. Just when I was about to ask it again, she would answer. Cosima always kept you waiting, even when she was right there next to you.

When Jo is eighteen, Bobby commits suicide on the ferry from Liverpool to Belfast. Jo is now alone in a world she is unprepared for. Within just a few pages Hall shows us the surprising and awkward ascention of girl to woman as Jo dives head first into drugs and promiscuous sex, using them as means to love and acceptance. Jo attaches herself to Cosima and her band as a groupie, Jo loves their music as if they were making it just for her. Soon, however, the band tires of her as they prepare for their American tour. Rejected, and with no place else to go, Jo morphs into a desperate stalker.

When I finally came out of the toilet Zero 7 was still playing, but nobody was in the sitting room. I wasn't hot anymore, but numb and cold and wanting my bed. I put on my coat and looked around for my hand bag. I found it on top of a pink chest of drawers, just before the door. One of the drawers was open. It was filled with matchbooks from Tokyo, New York and Brussels. There were cigarettes, foreign money, condoms and keys. Some of the keys had labels attached: MUM, CHARLOTTE, JAMIE, KATIE. And finally, RICK & COS.
I picked up the keys marked RICK & COS. I
could hear Bobby's voice in my head:
Put them back, will you Jo?

Hall's talent for writing and her ear for the awkward and absurd uncoils The Rhythm of the Road like a train wreck in slow motion. Many times throughout the book I found myself wincing and thinking, god, no, how can Jo do that? That, I believe is the mark of a job well done by this burgeoning story teller.

Albyn Leah Hall
The Rhythm of the Road
St. Martin's Press

What I'm reading next: Before you she was a Pitbull by Elizabeth Ellen

Lethem on the joys of "second-use"

2007-02-08T15:35:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Lethem's thought-piece "The Ecstasy of Influence" running in February's Harper's Magazine is an insightful (charming, perhaps) take on American copyright law. "A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense." This wisdom prompts Lethem to open a new dialogue for the revision of copyright law in what he says should be "an ongoing social negotiation." Along with the necessity to keep ideas active and relevant, he cites the joys of "second-use" as reason enough to question the extensive (blind) reach of copyright law.

His argument is vast, nuanced, and required four sittings for me to finish. If I've been a little dry, check this quick interview he did with Publisher's Weekly: "Lethem on Plagiarism."

"Frost on the Edge"

2007-02-07T12:53:00.000-05:00

David Orr discusses the often awkward placement of Robert Frost in the American canon: "Frost on the Edge," NY Times.

Killer Amazon Sales

2007-02-06T11:30:00.000-05:00

According to Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com's total merchandise sales rocketed up an amazing 21% for the fourth quarter and media sales were up 19% world wide for the year (a year which was not influenced by Potter sales). On the one hand, these are incredibly uplifting stats. After years of down stats, books are finally making a comeback. More sales means more people with books, means more folks reading. However, on the other hand, it's quite possible that this supposed huge popularity spike in book sales is more a reflection of market share, and not a statement on the reading habits of the nation.

I suggest that the latter is true in part because I am a hypocrite. A book bigot. And I accuse more than a few of you of doing the same. We know who we are, we say "Think Globally, Buy Locally", "Support Your Local Mom and Pops". Which I did for so many years. Fuck the internet profiteering. If I wanted a book, I'd walk over to City Lights in North Beach, or Green Apple Books in the Sunset, or Stacey's or Powells City of Books, where I would browse to my heart's content and pay in cash.

But something happened to me. I admit it. I got lazy. I became bored with my lack of choice in those stores. I logged on for the first time. Created an account. The Amazon interface is so intuitive! One click purchasing! In my underwear! And how do they always seems to know just what I'm looking for before I do! I was quickly out of control. The UPS man knew my by my first name, I had to get a bigger mail box. All because, I admit it, I love Amazon's cheap, infinite selection of books!

Sob...

I haven't been to City Lights in nearly two years. The last time I was at Green Apple was for the last Harry Potter, it was midnight and I had been out drinking. I was at Powells last week but that was just because it was a convenient place to meet a friend before we went to lunch.

Sob...

Hi, my name is Joshua, and I'm addicted to Amazon.com.

Powell's Will Buy Your Used Books!

2007-02-05T10:21:00.000-05:00

Powells.com has unveiled a program where you can sell your used books to receive credit with the online book retailer. Shelf Awareness reports:

Under the program, which has been quietly launched, powells.com offers credit, not cash, on the titles. Sellers submit ISBNs for books that must be in good condition, meaning that there is no underlining or highlighting, hardcovers have the original dust jacket, no pages are torn, etc. The site checks the ISBNs and will then either decline the book or make an offer. If the seller agrees to the offer, powells.com pays for shipping within the U.S. by providing a link to a prepaid "media mail" Postal Service shipping label. (Sellers may also send the books other ways and from around the world at their own cost.) Books must be shipped to powells.com within a week for the price to remain valid. For now, powells.com is buying only used trade books online.

Powells.com will promote the program in a "heavier" way in the next three weeks, according to Dave Weich, director of marketing and development at powells.com. Eventually the company may also offer cash for purchases. The key element of the project was developing the technology that allows the site to respond immediately to the ISBN offering "looking at what we have in stock and based on the book's sales history," Weich said.

"We've been thinking about this for a long while," he continued. "This is what we do so well in the stores, and to offer it online is kind of a no-brainer. We're thrilled to extend it into the online environment."--John Mutter

The Rhythm of the Road

2007-02-02T16:18:00.000-05:00

I'm fifty pages in to Albyn Leah Hall's debut novel, The Rhythm of the Road about an Irish/American girl, Jo, growing up in England, on the road with her truck driving, depressive father, Bobby. Bobby and Jo love country music, junk food and the feel of the lonely open road. Jo seldom attends school or has any other interaction with kids her own age and often feels a heightened and confusing awkwardness around young people, especially young women. Here Hall captures a "tweens" angst perfectly-

I was standing between the prettiest girls in the world, working hard to make me one of them. I wouldn't have swapped the moment for any other, apart from one thing: me. I had never thought I was ugly exactly, but now I saw that I was. I had a small mouth and a flat nose and a hint of a double chin. I had three spots: on my nose, on my forehead, to the side of my mouth. And my body! It was a tree-stump wedge, straight up and down, soft from all the fried food we ate. Bobby hadn't said those things because he was in a mood. He'd said them because it was true.
Cosima snapped the compact open and smoothed powder over my face. "This will take the shine away."
I'd never thought about the shine before. Now that she'd said it, I could see that it was very much a thing - another thing - to be taken away. She dabbed on some more powder and, using her fingers, she spread it on the oily bit around me nose. She was taking the shine away, but she'd never take my face away.

Albyn Leah Hall
The Rhythm of the Road
St. Martin's Press

SoMa

2007-02-01T16:02:00.000-05:00

Just finished reading Kemble Scott's SoMa and I need to take a deep breath and a cold shower. I'll be reviewing the book and interviewing Kemble for SSN, but I do want to jot down an initial thought about the book that isn't really proper in a normal review.

The sex is amazing, embarrassing, sickening and erotic.

SoMa is the neighborhood in San Francisco south of Market Street and east of The Mission known for it's kink, fetishes, drugs and danger. It was home to the dot-coms and the dot-bombs. It's glittery and grimy. SoMa was my neighborhood for nearly ten years and I thought I had seen, heard and experienced everything, but parts of this book blew me away.

"Don't move, man. I'm going to pull out now." That should do it, Andrew sighed. He thought of the club boys who would trade piss on Tina. They'd each do a hit and then dance for hours, filling themselves with bottled water all night long. When they'd feel their high start to wane, they'd head to a men's room stall where they'd drink each other's piss to make the buzz last a little longer. The routine would repeat until the sun came the next day. Amateurs, Andrew thought. You can recycle crystal to keep a high going that way, but it was nothing compared to pissing up someone's ass. Why go through the stomach when there's a more direct route?
He marveled over his protege's ability to hold on. It had already been several minutes, and there was no sign of weakening. On meth, this guy Raphe was a natural, able to take anything without complaints or fear. Some guys would turn into such pussies on Tina, but not this kid. It was like a shield for him. Andrew couldn't introduce him to the Boys Toys women, since that would violate his agreement. But if this kid was up for making some money, his immunity to this type of pain would make him perfect for...

Potter set to fly July 21

2007-02-01T11:29:00.000-05:00

Not that you're all Potter freaks or fans, but you should at least prepare yourself for widespread public weeping and a riot or two. PW Daily Reports:

The Harry Potter bookselling bonanza will take place this July, though not on July 7 as many expected, but two weeks later, July 21. Scholastic announced this morning that the final volume in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will be priced at $34.99, the first price increase since 2003. Scholastic has received the manuscript, but no page count has been released, though at the hefty price the book is likely to be a long one. Amazon is already accepting preorders and is discounting the title at $18.89. It will be interesting to see how the discounting story plays out in the U.S. In the U.K., where a number of independent booksellers said they won’t carry the title because of deep discounting by other retailers and e-tailers, Bloomsbury will also release the book on July 21, in four editions: a children’s hardcover, an adult hardcover, a gift edition and an audio version.

Upcoming Events

2007-01-29T15:34:00.000-05:00

Some mid-week readings/events in early February:

February 6 - Upstairs at the Square: Author Paul Auster and Chanteuse Sophie Auster, hosted by Katherine Lanpher - Union Square Barnes & Nobles, 7PM.

February 7 - Ballyhoo Stories: readings by Amy Brill, Bill Cheng, Felicia Sullivan, and Sue Doherty. And presentation of comics by JP Coovert, Andy Hartzell, and Ray Fenwick - Think Coffee NYC, 248 Mercer Street (b/w 3rd and 4th Streets), 8PM.

taking the biggest leap!

2007-01-25T14:31:00.000-05:00

this might be insane. it might cost me all the funds i need to raise for an issue which is still sitting in a warehouse, waiting for payment. waiting to find a home. but when i was approached by the very kind and very smart folks over at NXTbook Media with an offer to digitize one of my issues, i thought #4 would be my best shot.

i recently attended a google conference where authors spoke of giving up great portions of their printed matter, online, and not only did offering up a free book not canabilize sales, they saw huge spikes in sales of the printed book. it's not up to me to dictate how one wants to read a story, whether it be online or print, so i thought why not offer my readers access to both? maybe you'll love mia alvar's story so much, you'll want to purchase the whole issue.

in all honesty, i'm finding it increasingly difficult to publish the way i want to publish. publishing a book without concerning myself with page counts and expensive art, distribution, mailing costs and the list goes on. i'm hoping, with this new approach, i might attract some new readers. they might want to take the leap with me. they might discover that i'm trying hard to publish the very best work i can find. and perhaps they'll support that by reading the journal and possibly buying an issue.

so...gulp...here it is. the new issue of small spiral notebook, still sitting in the warehouse in michigan, but free for your eyes today.

please, please, please spread the word!

BEA launches website

2007-01-25T11:54:00.000-05:00

New York was host to a number of book festivals in 2006, but none were so large as to be referred to as an Expo. Thankfully. we'll avoid such a sorry fate in 2007 when BookExpo America (BEA) unloads onto the waiting quays of the Jacob Javits Center. This massive hemorrhage of books will take place May 31 - June 3. In preparation, BEA has just launched their newly redesigned website. PW Daily reports:

Among the Web site's new features are easier navigation tools; headlines from trade publications within the book industry; and a BEA show director's blog. A new platform for networking, My BEA, allows attendees, exhibitors, speakers and press to set up appointments; create a personalized schedule; and check job and message boards. My BEA will be available to all preregistered BEA attendees beginning the first week of April. The site is also expanding its podcast program

Bookish Love

2007-01-24T12:47:00.000-05:00

Not to deflect from our daily siege of readers (Mom, Dad), but you should pay a visit to the blog Bookish Love. There you will find some quality pics from lit happenings all over New York City. They have a knack for capturing readers mid-word, hanging on a gesture. Latent energy. Kosmic. Also, a useful directoy of events features in the right column.

NBCC Finalists

2007-01-22T10:42:00.001-05:00

The National Book Critics Circle announced its 2006 Finalists this past weekend. Frederick Seidel's latest, Ooga-Booga, received a nod in the poetry category. FSG created a great website for the book where you can listen to the poems.

The Caravan Project

2007-01-19T15:43:00.000-05:00

"Make it new." So they have. Here comes The Caravan Project:

A partnership of six non-profit publishers, the nation’s largest book wholesaler, and a group of independent and chain bookstores is embarked on the Caravan Project. Just as consumers of music, film and television now can choose how to receive those media, the Caravan Project will offer buyers of serious non-fiction books a “menu” of formats, both print and digital, from which to choose how they read a book.

Caravan, funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, will use all the emerging digital and time-tested technologies for the manufacture of books with a goal of making their distribution in the marketplace significantly more efficient by placing them when and where they are needed.

Top Ten Bookstores

2007-01-18T17:49:00.000-05:00

Jeremy Mercer takes a break from staring intensely to produce a list of the Top Ten Bookstores...in the World! Actually, the list is great, includes links, and has got the ol' butterflies ticklin' my ribcage. Worth your while: Jeremy Mercer's top 10 bookshops.

Foofaraw

2007-01-18T14:04:00.000-05:00

The Dictionary.com word of the day for yesterday.

foofaraw \FOO-fuh-raw\, noun:

1. Excessive or flashy ornamentation or decoration.
2. A fuss over a matter of little importance

Vollmann Reviews

2007-01-17T09:36:00.000-05:00

Despite his aversion to unecessary public exposure, Vollmann knows when to make an appearance. With his forthcoming book, Poor People, due out next month, he reviews Anthony Swofford's first novel, Exit A. Swofford is known, firstly, for his non-fiction, Jarhead. It is this latter book that Vollmann recalls to disparage the former. By doing so, I think he did Swofford justice. Others may disagree, but you can, of course, find out for yourself.

It is only my admiration for “Jarhead” that impels me to express my disappointment in “Exit A” so bluntly. I hope and believe that Swofford, who has many books ahead of him if he chooses to write them, can achieve true greatness on a future occasion. "Military Brats in Love" NY TIMES

Celine passage

2007-01-15T18:04:00.000-05:00

I just came across this while taking a break from work to read a bit of Journey to the End of the Night:

There's nothing terrible inside us or on earth or possibly in heaven itself except what hasn't been said yet. We won't be easy in our minds until everything has been said once and for all, then we'll fall silent and we'll no longer be afraid of keeping still. That will be the day.

S&S + Gather.com = Again?

2007-01-12T10:04:00.000-05:00

I know you guys were big fans of the now-dead Sobol awards, but S&S refuses to let the dream die.

The house’s Touchstone imprint, which had planned to release the Sobol Award winners before that contest was shuttered this week, has unveiled a partnership with social networking site Gather.com calling for fiction manuscripts for publication. (S&S Launches Writing Contest)

What a strange convergence? At least, within the context of sentiments espoused on this blog.

You want whipped cream with your genocide?

2007-01-11T00:13:00.000-05:00

Starbucks has announced the second book slated to be sold in its cafes, part of its plan to turn wired, overweight housewives into an Oprahian literary force -"mom-niks" (patent pending), as Ishmael Beah's, A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a boy soldier , to be released by FSG within a month. A Long Way Gone has garnered quite a bit of prerelease praise and the topic, stories of when Ishmael was a boy soldier in the Seirra Leone Civil War, is quite attractive to all sorts of finger pointers and looky-lous, but Starbucks, to their credit, claims not be going for an instant bestseller (As they did with their first offering, a Mitch Albom book). However, Starbucks has the shelf power and the dedicated consumers that could quickly launch this book straight through ten printings. Which brings me to the cool part (hopefully for Ishmael) that here is a dude whose life was totally screwed as a kid, yet he lived, worked hard at his art, and now he's about to get paid $$. In this disconcerting corporate scenario at least one deserving person will get just a little bit.

Kemble Scott

2007-01-09T17:01:00.000-05:00

You can now preorder my good friend Kemble Scott's new book, SoMa, which takes place in my old 'hood in S.F.

Publisher's blurb:

To outsiders, San Francisco is all one big city. But to those in the know, there is SoMa, South of Market, where sleek eateries are squeezed between bail bonds storefronts and high-priced lofts look out over still rough edges. It’s home to a generation of hipsters disillusioned by the dotcom bust, restless and searching for the next thrill, the next high, the next step too far. Sex, drugs, kink—you can find it anywhere in SoMa, if you know where to look. But first, you’ll need your tour guides. There’s Raphe, a writer torn between two worlds, belonging to neither. Lauren, the poor little rich girl living on the edge and pushing farther out. Mark, beautiful and cruel, who lives for games, the more extreme, the better. Baptiste, hot, smooth, and maybe as real as it gets. And Julie, both an object of desire and a pretty pawn to be played.

In a glittering, surreal subculture of private sex clubs and kept boys, identity theft and betrayal, nihilism, redemption, and sometimes love, they’re spinning out of control and into each other’s orbits, desperately looking for something real—something that will show them who they really are. In this provocative, intense novel, Kemble Scott puts a new neighborhood on the literary map for good, in a tale that is disturbing, gritty, wholly original, and utterly unforgettable.

William Vollmann's new book

2007-01-08T17:20:00.000-05:00

You can pre-order the new William T. Vollmann book, Poor People from Amazon now. No description of the book other than this one, that I've seen.

New Year Reading Resolutions

2007-01-07T13:52:00.000-05:00

Although mine (finally plow through the Object Oriented Programming for Flash that's been sitting on my bedside table, pick up something else other than Jesus' Son when I'm feeling low and uninspired, read more books about painters) are decidedly less ambitious than Scott Esposito's, he's really put together a thoughtful and thorough list of admirable goals for '07.

I especially like this:

Half and Half. Most people's reading tends to be gender-biased one way or another. So try a year of alternating between male and female authors. Once you're done, you'll probably have some interesting ideas about the differences between how each gender writes.

Speaking the Written Word

2007-01-07T13:36:00.000-05:00

A totally interesting article in this Sunday's NYTBR about the PC Tablet 2 voice recognition software and the history of spoken word writers.

Writing is the act of accepting the huge shortfall between the story in the mind and what hits the page.

Call for Submissions: H.O.W.

2007-01-05T09:24:00.000-05:00

H.O.W. (Helping Orphans Worldwide); a new journal representing the vision of two writers dedicated to publishing quality fiction and nonfiction while giving a voice to those suffering in silence worldwide.

H.O.W. was started with the purpose of raising money for orphanages across the world. For each submission you send us we ask that you include a donation of five dollars. The entire sum will be donated to the orphanage we are working with at the time. This year we are focusing our attention on a small orphanage run by Haregewoin Tefarra, an Ethiopian woman, who opened her home to hundreds of children orphaned by AIDS. She now operates two houses in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.

The orphanage’s mission is: to house and support children, both HIV-positive and HIV-negative; to provide food, clothing, education, and medical care; to reunite children with surviving family members whenever possible; to seek new family situations if necessary through licensed inter-country adoption agencies from North America and Europe; and to promote employment among adults living with AIDS.

Submission Guidelines:

1. Please submit one story, or essay, at a time. Submit clearly typed manuscripts, double-spaced on 8 1/2 x 11 inch white paper, one side only, to: H.O.W. 22 West 15th street (apt 3B), NYC, 10011. The submission must contain your name, address, e-mail address, and a telephone number where you can be reached. Enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope or we cannot guarantee your work will be responded to or returned. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but please let us know immediately, if your submission is accepted elsewhere. It takes up to 4 months to respond to submissions. We do not accept submissions via fax or email.

2. The word-length limit is roughly 8,000 words.

3. After edits are done to our satisfaction, writers will receive a payment. Payment varies according to the length and genre of the submission, but we pay $200.00 minimum for fiction and nonfiction. We buy First Serial Rights; nonexclusive, and one-time anthology rights. Authors proof their galleys and receive 2 copies of the issue in which their work appears.

4. All manuscripts are carefully considered. Due to the large number of submissions, we regret that we cannot comment on every manuscript.

5. Do not forget to include a check for $5.00 made out to Helping Orphans Worldwide, or else the submission will NOT be read.

Publishers:

Natasha Radojcic and Alison Weaver

Natasha Radojcic earned her MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Pindeldyboz, The Boston Review and Small Spiral Notebook. Her two novels, Homecoming and You Don’t Have to Live Here, both published by Random House, have been translated into seven languages.

Alison Weaver earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The New School University. Her short fiction has appeared in Small Spiral Notebook, Opium Magazine, Red China and The Fifth Street Review. Her memoir, Gone to the Crazies, will be published by Harper Collins this July.

Mobil Phone Novel

2007-01-04T01:56:00.000-05:00

When the first video phones came out with had the capacity to make 15 second movies, I spent two months trying to become the worlds greatest 15 second film maker.

But what I should have been thinking was, I'll just write my next novel on this SG.

Make way for cell phone novels, the hottest thing in Japan.

Upstairs at the Square

2007-01-03T11:37:00.000-05:00

I haven't yet made it to one of these events, but I've wanted to. The guests have been stellar from the onset. Next Thursday, January 11th, will be no different:

Groundbreaking film director David Lynch and Indie Pop Trio Au Revoir Simone will feature in the next "Upstairs at the Square" on Thursday, 7pm, January 11th, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble (33 East 17th Street). For more information about the series and about past events visit B&N's site.

David Lynch is also the author of Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.

The Coliseum: plundered of its treasures.

2007-01-02T15:12:00.000-05:00

"Plunder!" they cried. "Feast of pages!" they howled. Several, dozens maybe, customers whooped as they ran past the ravaged shelves of Coliseum Bookstore. At 40% off, nearly everything went in the last days before the store's closing, leaving only perennial crowd pleasers like "Colloquial Thai" and "Hebrew for Dummies" clinging to their nooks. "Running a bookstore is like running an insane asylum," said George S. Leibson, a founding partner and the principal executive of Coliseum Books.

On one side, Mr. Leibson said, are the employees, who love books, and on the other are the customers, who love books but who cannot always resist shoplifting them, or spilling coffee on them or reading them in the store and putting them back.

All this according to the NY Times (by way of Shelf Awareness).

Bonkers for Blood

2007-01-01T22:18:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, bitches. I've been absent for about two weeks. My bad, dilz. I really hit the holidays hard, but I realize now, given the season, that I should strive to be a better blogger, nay, a better person. We'll see what that striving entails--likely more baths, less garlic (actually, you can't smell me, so the clothes stay on)--and, hopefully, some cracking good times. I also realized this: MEL GIBSON IS A MADMAN.

Has anyone seen Apocalypto? It is the most ludicrously violent film I've had chance to witness. Infants are tossed, held upside down and swung like Peking ducks. Women are raped in front of their husbands. Fathers are executed in front of their sons (complete with squishy, gurgling noises). Hearts, dozens of them, are removed and shown to their owners. Heads, dozens of them, are thrown down stairs. Jaguars snack on peoples' faces (and require not one, but TWO, egregious close ups). Valleys of corpses. Body spiking booby traps. Rattlesnakes. Rocks. Clubs. Child birth. No detail left unfocused, no discretion considered. It truly is a feast.

The best part, however, is not so obvious, and I would put money down that it's true: the grunting and roaring noises that accompanied chase and hunting scenes (clearly to bestow an animalistic intensity....grrrrAAH) sound like they are made by none other than Mel Gibson himself. I'm not sure what that signifies if it is true. Maybe that he's crazy. Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think.

Burnside Review

2006-12-29T13:11:00.000-05:00

The new issue of the great Portland poetry magazine is out and available now. Sid Miller, Burnside's editor and publisher, has worked tirelessly to bolster the local poetry scene and support emerging poets. $8 gets you a piece of that. This issue includes Grzegorz Wroblewski, Richard Jones, Ray Gonzalez and Laton Carter.

Flibbertigibbet

2006-12-23T14:09:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's Dictionary.com word of the day.

\FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it\, noun:
A silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.

We discover here not the flibbertigibbet Connolly describes but a serious reader (Goethe, Tolstoy, Proust) who found her cultural ideal in 18th-century France.
-- Martin Stannard, "Enter Shrieking", New York Times, November 28, 1993

He argues persuasively that Millay's reputation has been harmed not only by academics who dread and fear her heartfelt "simplicity," but by the very admirers who wished to promote her as a kind of whimsical flibbertigibbet, a poetical Anne of Green Gables.
-- Liz Rosenberg, "So Young, So Good, So Popular", New York Times, March 15, 1992

Last minute gift ideas

2006-12-20T20:45:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth Ellen's first book, "Before You She Was a Pitbull" , is getting some really great reviews.

Also, Kevin Keck's "Oedipus Wrecked", (Kevin Sampsell, indie book buyer for Powell's, favorite book of the year) seems like a good choice. The first story in the collection, the author cutely reminisces about sticking bananas and broom handles up his ass. Can't go wrong there.

Elizabeth Ellen
Before You She Was a Pitbull
Future Tense Press

Kevin Keck
Oedipus Wrecked
Cleis Press

Oriana Fallaci

2006-12-18T11:37:00.000-05:00

An excellent eulogy for the head strong and controversial Italian journalist and shit stirrer, Oriana Fallaci, in the current issue of the Atlantic. Includes plenty of "go fuck yourself's" and moving antidotes of male urinary prowess.

Bye bye, love...

2006-12-18T09:29:00.000-05:00

So that's that for Judith Regan at HarperCollins; though, I doubt it will be the last we hear from her. She's like the Terrell Owens of publishing--and where's T.O. now, even after messily cutting ties with the Eagles--he's at the top of the NFC East, that's where. James Pinkerton of the Huffington Post makes merry of an ugly situation. And Ron Hogan at GalleyCat, who it has been suggested helped prompt Regan's dismissal (which I find hard to believe, considering she commissioned a murderer to write about murder), compiles everything you would ever want to know about the whole debacle.

just in from dr. sketchy...

2006-12-13T14:26:00.000-05:00

Last week's launch party for Dr. Sketchy's was nothing short of a smash success. Missed out on all the fun? Don't fret. Check out Molly Crabapple's next big book signing at Jim Hanley's Universe in NYC, where she'll be giving an illustration demo with the lovely Lady J.

Details: Friday, December 15th from 6-8pm (4. W 33rd Street @ 5th
Ave). Books are on-sale at Jim Hanley's now.

**photo courtesy of Brian Van.

Hey, Hot Shot!

2006-12-12T17:39:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow and Saturday, Jen Bekman (6 Spring St., NY, NY) hosts the Fall 2006 Hey, Hot Shot Winners' Showcase. Visit their blog to read the big announcement. Learn more.

Currin

2006-12-12T17:21:00.000-05:00

Click here for a totally gnarly pic of me crushing some mountain. That rock had no idea what hit it. "It was me! Rock. You Dummy." Just kidding, I revere the rock.

5:20 rants aside, last Friday I visited John Currin's exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery on 76th and Madison. A few well-placed recommendations and some provocative imagery had convinced me that I would have a blast. Upon entering the gallery, beautifully rendered pornography and explicit penetration interspliced by tea sets, children, and oddly pregnant women elicited something less than "a blast." I'm no art scholar, so I won't try to convey the "essence" of anything, but I do recommend you take a peak. The show closes Dec. 22nd.

Sobol Part Tres

2006-12-07T16:39:00.000-05:00

Felicia brought up a good link from Miss Snark you should check out as we all pile on the Sobol "Awards".

Sobol Awards

2006-12-06T12:53:00.001-05:00

Remember this post? It seems I wasn't the only one who felt the Sobol Awards were a rip and a front. Publishers Weekly reported today that they are extending their deadline for manuscript submissions due to a "sluggish response", even though Simon and Schuster imprint, Fireside, has signed on to publish the top three manuscripts.

PW-
While Sobol initially said it would accept up to 50,000 submissions on its Web site (www.sobolaward.com) from September 14 to December 31, the response has been sluggish, so contest organizers have extended the deadline to March 31, 2007. Pollock would not say how many manuscripts Sobol has received so far, but told the AP it was more than 1,000. "It's been very hard to get the word out," she said. "We're all still learning on the job in terms of publicity. The Internet has been more difficult to penetrate than we had hoped."

(rest of the article)

One Story writing conference in Italy

2006-12-05T22:00:00.000-05:00

Join writer Dani Shapiro (One Story issue #69) and One Story magazine March 18th-23rd, 2007 for the first annual Sirenland Writers Conference. Experience an intensive, advanced fiction and memoir workshop in an intimate, supportive environment at one of the most beautiful five star luxury hotels in the worldLe Sirenuse in Positano, Italy. Click here for more info...

Sepulculture presents: Dr. Sketchy

2006-12-05T16:37:00.000-05:00

Publicity rock star and friend Scott Diperna recently launched his indie publishing house, Sepulculture Books. Sepulculture Books is an independent book publisher in Brooklyn, focusing on humor and art, while specifically employing a DIY aesthetic in its publishing, marketing, and selling strategies.

His first title Dr. Sketchy's Official Rainy Day Colouring Book, which according to their website is "is one part DIY handbook, one part activity book on acid, and one part history of the Sketch Revolution. To sweeten the broth, Molly Crabapple [the author] and John Leavitt have added dozens of photos, paper dolls, colouring book pages and puppets of Amber Ray, Lolita Haze, Little Brooklyn, Audra Gwarskitty,and all your other favorite Dr. Sketchy's models."

Click here for more info & upcoming events.

GOOD Magazine

2006-12-05T12:38:00.000-05:00

You may have come across this recent start-up, GOOD Magazine. The second issue, Jan/Feb, just came out and for the most part it looks like an auspicious start. They've set a clear mandate for the publication, mainly to offer what is "good" for a socially conscious and politically active demographic, and to spur those who are not already members of the choir to voice in. They appeal to this set with popular contributors (Gary Shteyngat, George Saunders, James Surowiecki, John Hodgman, to name a few), hip design, and truth-stirring content. This latest issue features "The GOOD Guide to Culture Jamming"--which includes intructions on how to subvert "the authority of the dominant culture." Somehow potency is lost, however, in the glow of an adjacent advertisement for Beleza Pura Super Premium Brazilian Rum; still, their hearts seem to be in the right place: a sentiment that can be applied to much of the magazine's content.

I suggest you visit the mag's site, linked to above, to get a clearer idea of what they're about. Once you do, you can weigh this statement: they purport to be a mechanism of social change, one that supports a "merger of capitalism and idealism," but whose capitalism is subverting their idealism.

I'm not decided on what side I fall yet. I'll wait to see how things evolve. But it is either commendable or foolish to so blatantly advertise your message, especially when it involves two inherently incompatible ideas.

Pleasure Center

2006-12-04T15:58:00.000-05:00

I got my Friday night off to a heartily irresponsible start at the Legion of Lit Mags party, which is perhaps why I didn't feel well enough to attend the actual event on Saturday. I know I missed an opportunity to share something special with you. I'm sorry. You're still important to me. Maybe Felicia will step in. But all is not lost: there were goodie bags. Attendees scored items from BOMB, Ugly Duckling Presse (which I say more about here), Harcourt, Poets & Writers, Ballyhoo Stories, Harper Perennial, SSN, Pindeldyboz, Post Road and maybe some others that I unfortunately could not get my hands on.

Hem the Master

2006-12-04T11:49:00.000-05:00

Scribner is re-releasing "The Sun Also Rises" in paperback with a seven CD set of the great Hemingway book read by William Hurt. I've been listening to the CD's and reading along a little bit as I'll be reviewing the book/CD's for SSN. It's been quite awhile since I read this book and I'm amazed how well it holds up (both in the writing and under my own jaded skepticism). There have been many points in the novel where one still gets the sense of the mighty Hemingway throwing words down onto paper like Zeus threw lightening bolts down from Mount Olympus and you just have to give props to the master of American fiction.

From Chapter Three:
I was very angry. Somehow they always made me angry. I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure, Instead, I walked down the street and had a beer at the bar at the next Bal.

From Chapter Four:
Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

Don Asmussen Reveals All

2006-12-01T12:44:00.000-05:00

Don Asmussen, cartoonist for the SF Chronicle and author of my favorite satirical comic strip, "The Bad Reporter", will be promoting his new book "Dog vs. Cat: A Nation Divided:Dirty Tricks and Other Shocking Secrets From a Nasty Pet Election" at Books Inc on Van Ness, San Francisco this Tuesday, the 5th.

What? You're on the East Coast and have never read the "Bad Reporter"? Check the archive and you'll be hooked. Not the most user friendly page, though. Click the dated links to the left.

You can buy his book here.

Zeitgeist Press New Titles

2006-12-01T12:30:00.000-05:00

Zeitgeist Press unveils its fabulous new titles this Sunday (3rd) at Moes Books on Telegraph in Berkeley. Talk about some good poetry- "Cannibal Casserole" by Julia Vinograd, a reprint of David Lerner's "I Want a New Gun", Susan Birkeland's "Bruised Angels Almanac" plus many more.

Joie Cook, QR Hand and others will read during the event.

2006-11-30T09:35:00.000-05:00

Year-end Boldtype is up.

Air in the Paragraph

2006-11-29T11:54:00.000-05:00

Hi all-

It's been quite awhile since my last post. I hope I haven't disappointed the SSN blog readers (hi mom). I've been under a brick that was placed over a very large and incredibly deep hole and I've spent the last couple of weeks wondering if I wanted to crawl out of it.

No fear, I am back now to be nothing but self-promotional. I actually am a writer too, and after a very trying year behind the keyboard I'm happy to say that I'm in the new issue of Air in the Paragraph. My story, "three days ago, wednesday" is roughly based on events that happened to my older half-brother, who works at a maximum facility upstate (New York) for the mentally retarded.

Mike Daily is also in this issue. I know him well, have published him in my magazine, and have been completely blown away by his live performances. He's got a book coming out real soon so look for me to blog more on that later.

William Diehl

2006-11-29T10:02:00.000-05:00

My daily dose of reality from Shelf Awareness. Spare not the details:

"William Diehl, who wrote such thrillers as Sharky's Machine, Primal Fear, Thai Horse and Eureka, died on Friday in Atlanta, Ga., of an aortal aneurysm. He was 81."

The NYTimes reports: "Mr. Diehl was unemployed when he got the news that [his first] book was going to be published...When his agent first called to tell him, the phone line went dead: Mr. Diehl hadn’t paid the bill"

PEN American Event

2006-11-28T16:01:00.000-05:00

The Writer's Conscience: Remembering Anna Politkovskaya & Russia's Forgotten War

When: Wednesay, December 6 @ 7pm
Where: Proshansky Auditorium, CUNY Graduate Center: 365 Fifth Ave., NYC

"An evening of reading from Anna Politkovskaya's work and a conversation about the costs of an ongoing but forgotten war."

Musa Klebnikob, Kati Marton, Dana Priest, David Remnick, among others will feature in the night's event. I am itching for the opportunity to hear Remnick speak on the subject. He was the Washington Post correspondent in Moscow in the final years of the Soviet Union. The New York Review of Books features a review of his Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker. It is an outstanding overview of the book's contents as well as Remnick's approach to reporting and attitude toward his subjects. "A Far-Flung Correspondent."

2006 Pushcart Nominations

2006-11-28T14:48:00.000-05:00

Our nominations are in!

Perennials by Aimee Pokwatka (Fiction)
So That They Do Not Hear Us by Paul Yoon (Fiction)
Yard Work by Joshua Mandelbaum (Fiction)
Natural Cause by Priscilla Becker (Poetry)
Watermark by Stacie Cassarino (Poetry)
Birds in April by Becka Mara McKay (Poetry)

Congrats to our amazing writers!