Blake Butler
http://www.gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com/
Blake Butler lives in Atlanta. His third book, There Is No Year, is forthcoming April 2011 from Harper Perennial.
Jesse Ball has retired to the country
Author websites that are not blogs are often a much maligned thing: people get these things built and don’t know a lot about html or don’t really know what to do with their page other than update when they get a new thing in a magazine. For the most part the author website is a consistently boring venture.
Jesse Ball, on the other hand, seems to always be a little bit further out there. Jesse’s website, affectionately titled ‘Jesse Ball was a SPY, but has retired to the country,’ is cryptically arranged and full of all kinds of weird literary and visual projects, which seem to span the long hidden career of the author of SAMEDI THE DEAFNESS, among other things.
You could probably spend quite a while clicking around amongst the layerings here, as depending on how you approach different pages of the site, the offerings seem to vary. Among the more interesting things, outside the weird artworks and art projects, are the nested series of all of Ball’s past manuscripts, which he has kept compiled and archived here, with various amounts available to be read by the willing web traveler. The negotiation of the site itself seems to change sporadically also: depending on when you arrive, you may find all sorts of other things. For instance, when I arrived just now to cull more examples of things to talk about, I got caught in a picture loop promoting Ball’s new forthcoming book.
So let’s say this: Ball’s new novel, THE WAY THROUGH DOORS, is coming out in early 2009 from Vintage, which I for one am quite excited about.
Hobart Oct ’08
Those always massive kids over at Hobart have once again proven their ability to stay on target despite supposed ‘slacker’ status. In addition to the brand new Games issue, which just came out and made me renew my subscription (which also has a series of deleted scenes style stuff on the web for your perusal, if you haven’t already, here), they continue in their monthly reams of goodness today for October with a new update featuring work by Tai Dong Huai, Ed Meek, Jill Widner, and Glen Pourciau, as well as an interview by the always ferocious Matt Simmons with Leni Zumas, which by the second paragraph had me wanting to buy her book.
Their other web feature, the always fun likes/dislikes section, well, I gotta disagree with this month’s dislikes. What’s wrong with BURN AFTER READING? And who doesn’t like watching a couple break up in public?
I am excited, though, about the new Hobart minibook forthcoming, Mary Miller’s BIG WORLD. Not mini at all.
Starcherone Books Open Subs
For the next 10 days (until Oct 15), Starcherone Books has opened their gates for open submission of queries regarding book length works. With fantastic releases in the past year from Johannes Goransson, Joshua Cohen, Zachary Mason, and more, this is a great opportunity for those who are looking to send out their innovative fiction manuscripts.
In addition to the open subs, they’ve also announced their yearly book competition, which should answer the question in many mouths, that being: What’s up with Ben Marcus? as he’s been announced the final judge for the competition. Booyah.
Here’s specific words:
Effective immediately, Starcherone Books will be accepting manuscripts under the following guidelines:
1. Writers may query until October 15, 2008, at starcherone@gmail.com. Please tell us about your book project and about your writing accomplishments to date. DO NOT SEND YOUR MANUSCRIPT; UNLESS WE HAVE ASKED FOR IT, IT WILL BE RETURNED.
2. We will be resuming our manuscript contest this winter, with Ben Marcus as our 2009 Final Judge. See our CONTEST PAGE. Our contest will serve as the preferred method for writers who have not established a track record through prior awards and/or publications to have their manuscripts considered by Starcherone Books. This contest is designed to discover new writing talent, and has been the method by which we have discovered six writers (five winners and a published runner-up) since 2004.
Brandi Wells is a dream person
There’s a new issue of THE DREAM PEOPLE now live, I like the Dream People, it is a surrealist/absurdist journal that’s been kicking for quite some time now, run by the good man D. Harlan Wilson. It seems there aren’t enough surreal-related venues out there by far and often when places claim surrealism they mean ‘goofy,’ but The Dream People seems to be on point with the view, and at the very least is a great read, all -isms aside.
I particularly enjoyed in this issue, Brandi Wells’s BABY. Brandi Wells has been doing a lot of interesting work lately, publishing weird, tight and image-ripping short things all around, I really like what she’s got her hands in. She also seems to be able to write about ridiculous things in a way that makes them seem sensible, which is harder than making sensible things ridiculous.
Lines like this: “She followed me to the bathroom and watched me piss, told me I wasn’t pissing right and I ought to piss better if I was going to be a mother.”
I want a Brandi Wells novel.
Free for Magic For Beginners for all
Kelly Link, in celebration of her new collection just released, PRETTY MONSTERS (of which I am stoked), has released to the reading public and online freakshow free digital copies of her incredible collection MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS.
MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS is one of my favorite story collections ever, so if you haven’t read it yet, maybe this will give you the push. ‘Stone Animals’ is easily in my top 5 stories ever, for its weird magical listmaking and supreme creeps, but all of the stories in MFB are pretty damn fantastic.
The newer PRETTY MONSTERS book also has a website which makes me excited for the book. Here is what it is said to contain:
# A phone booth in Las Vegas
# Aliens
# Unhelpful wizards
# Possibly carnivorous sofas
# A handbag with a village inside it
# Tennessee Fainting Goats
# Dueling librarians
# A statue of George Washington
# A boy named Onion
# Pirates
# An undead babysitter
# A nationally-ranked soccer player
# Shapeshifters
# An unexpected campfire guest
Kelly Link can eat you. Read free then buy.
Daniel Bailey’s exploding face
Earlier this year a new secret head emerged from the face of the internet, it was a new journal that instead of words on screens that you can look at and read decided to feature video feature work only, though to this point work that contains poetry and semi-corresponding videos made by lonely young male authors.
The site is called HERE EXPLODES MY GIANT FACE and is run by a fine man by the name of Daniel Bailey.
The videos run thus far have been mostly all really well put together and fun to watch, a nice shift in public poetics. I particularly like the most recent video on the site by Sam Pink, which features a video of a man walking through the woods with a flashlight until he comes upon a rather cryptic and somehow very creepy scene in a house, all while Sam reads his one-liner-ish words from his recent Jaguar Uprising Press release YUM YUM I CAN’T WAIT TO DIE. The whole experience of the video caused weird rashes and giggle marrs on my knee.
I think I’ve said before that Sam Pink should become a stand up comedian, I would go see him.
The rest of the stuff on the site, including work by Brandon Scott Gorrell and Ken Baumann and Matthew Savoca and several others, is all very nice viewing. Check it, and submit!
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October 4th, 2008 / 12:43 pm
October 4th, 2008 / 12:43 pm
for godot: Issue 1 Release, mhmm
This issue features new poems by Nada Gordon, Evelyn Reilly, Julianna Mundim, Emmy Catedral, Enid Bagnold, Richard Siken, Stephen Ratcliffe, Michael Gottlieb, Jodie Childers, Norman J. Olson, Brent Hendricks, Sean Kilpatrick, Tom McCarthy, Stacy Doris, Michael Rerick, Corrinne Clegg Hales, Mark Decarteret, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Darren Wershler-Henry, Letitia Trent, Debra Di Blasi, Laura Elrick, Bruna Mori, Popahna Brandes, Robert Sheppard, Diana Magallan, Kristine Danielson, Ed Higgins, Drew Gardner, Kyle Kaufman, Matthew Thorburn, Tiel Aisha Ansari, Christopher Wells, Vanessa Place, Simon Pettet, Grace Vajda, John Bennett, Ian Patterson, Joseph Hutchison, John Cotter, Cheryl Lawson Walker, Scott Esposito, Jason Nelson, Daniel Kane, Kimo Armitage, Alan May, J.D. Nelson, Bob Hershon, Jennifer Karmin, Kim Rosenfield, Nathan Austin, Pearl Pirie, Rosmarie Waldrop, Tara Betts, Donald Revell, Jim Ryals, Danuta Kean, Jeff VanderMeer, Alfredo Bonanno, Irene Latham, Michael Hennesy, Dick Higgins, John Hanson, Billy Merrell, Sam Ladkin, Jeff Ward, Debra Jenks, K. Lorraine Graham, Kenji Okuhira, Sean MacInnes, Adam Seelig, Steve Halle, David Mus, Monique Wittig, Joyelle McSweeney, Daniel E. Levenson, Luke Daly, Henry Thoreau, John Palattella, Abby Trenaman, Kristen Taylor, Vassily Kamensky, David Jhave Johnston, Gene Tanta, Cate Marvin, Alison Roth, Shad Marsh, Asher Ghaffar, Henry Gould, Justin Theroux, Susan Grimm…
/nor 4 gives more
The 4th issue of New Ohio Review, or /nor, is out now, their site is also facelifted for it and looks really nice. The new issue includes a new story and interview with Frederick Barthelme, as well as a lot of new work by new and familiar names. My copy of /nor 3 is one of the ones I continually go back to read, the work is top notch and the design on the book and quality of the paper makes one of those kinds of book objects you feel good just touching.
In addition to free pdf previews of certain work on the site by Stephen Dunn, Claire Bateman, William Todd Seabrook, and others, /nor is currently running an incredible deal where if you subscribe for a year, they will throw in another free year. A one year subscription is $16 including shipping. The $4 per-issue price on that is sick, and for the quality I know is in the journal, mixed with the great design, you almost can’t turn that away. I love that they are doing this, it almost seems to say: we just really want you to read this. If more journals made it more financially lucrative to get in the door, as recently Hobart and Fence have, I think we’d see a lot more journal activity. The /nor deal is good through October.
I’m particularly interested to see how the aesthetic of the work in the journal shifted after the editor for the first 3 issues was hoisted for seemingly printing too much ‘experimental’ work. I don’t know how anyone could look at those first 3 issues and want to end it, but hopefully the experimentation level hasn’t been squashed too hard. From the previews on the site, it seems things are still on.
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October 3rd, 2008 / 1:44 pm
October 3rd, 2008 / 1:44 pm
Smokelong 22
There’s a new issue of Smokelong Quarterly now live.
Issue Twenty-Two (October 2, 2008): Innocence, Briefly by Jenny Arnold «» Tapioca O’s by Natalie DeClerck «» How Anything Got Done by Paul Elwork «» Tenderoni by Kathy Fish «» Breathing Oysters by Stefanie Freele «» The Mime’s Dog by Steven Douglas Gullion «» Two Minute Silence by Sarah Hilary «» Constructing Birds by Jo Horsman «» Crazy Sun by Lauren Huckstadt «» One Night Out by Ashley Kaufman «» Asian Girl by W.P. Kinsella «» Fatback by Jeff Landon «» Bounty by Tricia Louvar «» Beautiful by Antonios Maltezos «» Private Room by M.E. Parker «» True Identity by Kevin Sampsell «» Campfire by Donna D. Vitucci «» Interviews: Jenny Arnold «» Paul Elwork «» Kathy Fish «» Stefanie Freele «» Steven Douglas Gullion «» Sarah Hilary «» Jo Horsman «» Ashley Kaufman «» Jeff Landon «» Tricia Louvar «» Antonios Maltezos «» M.E. Parker «» Kevin Sampsell «» Donna D. Vitucci «» Cover Art “November Leaves” by Marty D. Ison «» Letter From the Editor
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October 3rd, 2008 / 1:33 am
October 3rd, 2008 / 1:33 am
Duotrope is neat
Duotrope.com does a great service to writers, and for free. I don’t use the submission tracker they have as much as I used to, because it was too easy to obsess over, but I still at least a few times a week go to the ‘What’s New?’ tab on the front page and check out what markets have opened or reopened, as well as new journals that have been added to the digest. It’s a good way to figure out, among the gamut of journals out there, who is currently reading and who isn’t.
Here’s the list from today, with some new places to pay attention to:
Markets that have Opened/Re-Opened to submissions (last 7 days):
1. American Letters & Commentary: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
2. American Literary Review: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
3. Antigonish Review, The: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
4. Boulevard Magazine: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
5. CALYX: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
6. CutBank Literary Magazine: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
7. Glimmer Train Stories: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
8. Global City Review: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
9. Heroin Love Songs: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
10. Interfictions II: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
11. KNOCK: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
12. Ledge, The: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
13. Massachusetts Review: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
14. Metromania Magazine: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
15. Necrotic Tissue: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
16. Nemonymous: Re-opened to submissions.
17. New Letters: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
18. Normal School, The: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
19. Parlor: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
20. Red Mountain Review: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
21. Rose & Thorn, The: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
22. Salamander: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
23. Seattle Review: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
24. Superficial Flesh: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
25. Swill Magazine: Re-opened to submissions.
26. TriQuarterly: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
27. Vignette Press / Mini Shots: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
28. Warwick Review, The: Re-opened to short fiction submissions.
That’s a lot of stuff. What is ‘Superficial Flesh’? What is ‘Nemonymous’? I feel scared. Internet.
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October 2nd, 2008 / 8:08 pm
October 2nd, 2008 / 8:08 pm