Archive for June, 2009
Alfred A. Knopf published J.S. Marcus’ collection of stories, The Art of Cartography in 1991, with a blurb by Amy Hempel: “Dozens of perfectly observed vignettes - the stories within stories - are amplified when Marcus pieces them together.” It can be had now for $1.99 via Alibris.
Masha Tupitsyn is the author of Beauty Talk & Monsters, a collection of film-based stories, and co-editor of the anthology Life As We Show It: Writing on Film, a cross-genre collection that uses short stories, essays, and poetry to explore the cinematic experience. She also writes daily film criticism on Twitter using only 140 characters. The following is an excerpt from Masha’s introduction to Life As We Show It.
By confabulating movies they hadn’t actually viewed, the writers in Lowblueflame concocted parallel pictures, plots, and narratives. In many of the stories, subtext is teased and stretched until it possesses the official narrative, filling and swallowing it like the amorphous creature in The Blob.
You Must Be This Tall to Ride is a new anthology of coming-of-age stories edited by B. J. Hollars with twenty stories by Antonya Nelson, Chad Simpson, Steve Almond, Aimee Bender, Stuart Dybek, Michael Martone, and others. Each writer also contributed an essay and a writing exercise. The book’s website doubles as magazine that will continue to publish new stories every few weeks, beginning with Matt Bell’s “A Certain Number of Bedrooms, A Certain Number of Baths.”
On August 15, Dzanc Books is launching a new online journal called The Collagist. The magazine will be edited by Matt Bell and Matthew Olzmann and is reading submissions now. American Short Fiction interviewed Dzanc executive director Dan Wickett about it.
J.A. Tyler’s Mudluscious Press is giving away free copies of Charles Lennox’s “fantastically explosive text” A Field of Colors for the month of June. Mud Luscious also has Molly Gaudry’s first novella We Take Me Apart available for preorder.
The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom & Party Girl succeeds wonderfully—triumphantly—as both a comic skewering of the suburban dream-cum-chimera and a poignant drama about one woman’s descent into self-estrangement (where mirrors used properly can fix everything). It’s hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure, a work that understands why the agents of hope and despair are the same, and why, therefore, we are a troubled, hopeful animal. It is, in short, a brilliant novel.”
So says Josh Emmons, author of Prescription for a Superior Existence, about Marc Schuster’s debut, now out from PS Books.
Library Journal says it all:
[Mark] Sarvas, writer of the highly praised literary blog, The Elegant Variation, has written a brilliantly funny and heart-wrenching first novel about one man’s struggle to face the truth. … Harry Rent is of the same ilk as Walter Mitty and Rabbit Angstrom: deeply flawed, likable, and hilariously, touchingly memorable.
The paperback edition of Harry, Revised is now available. Here are Mark’s answers to the set of questions we call the Fictionaut Five.
“Since How the Broken Lead the Blind is sold out and won’t be reprinted, I’ve now posted the entire book online so that anyone who couldn’t get a copy can still read it exactly as it was in print.” You can download Matt Bell’s How the Broken Lead the Blind as pdf file or read it online at issuu. The title story is on Fictionaut.
May was short story month, and there’s a wealth of reviews, recommendations, and interviews in the archives at Emerging Writers Network, Condalmo, Hobart, and Matt Bell’s blog.
Calls for submissions: new journal Kill Author and Epiphany are both inviting you to submit. Epiphany is also looking for an assistant fiction editor. Rusty Barnes’ Fried Chicken and Coffee offers a helpful list of writers he admires.
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