Catherine Lacey

http://www.catherinelacey.com/

Catherine Lacey is a 2012 NYFA Fiction Fellow. She has published work in The Believer, The Atlantic.com, a Harper Perennial's 40 Stories, Diagram and others. She writes for Brooklyn Magazine rather often and is a founding partner of 3B, a cooperatively operated bed and breakfast in downtown Brooklyn.

Ander Monson Will Hack You

Ander Monson

Ander Monson

I re-read Ander Monson’s brilliant “Essay as Hack” today and thought I might share a section for anyone out there who is writing memory-based stories or personal essays.

The brain reconfigures memory, reorders events, resets them among other events to form narrative, causality: it creates sense. The mind tells itself stories about what happens to it. So me saying that I did X because of Y rests on thousands of assumptions about who or what I think I am, how I thought of myself then—transmuted into how I think about myself now.

…Any sort of attempt to sort meaning from the past is fraught in thousands on thousands of ways, exponentially splintering. The more you think about it the more it asymptotically approaches impossibility.

This is not to suggest we shouldn’t attempt it. The attempt is glorious, and attempting rewires the brain. It moves the circuitry around, attaching a new conclusion to an action, reconstructing self. In a way, thinking about the self hacks it.

Power Quote / 8 Comments
September 15th, 2009 / 10:29 pm

Back to Grad School

poetrymfaI used to blog here about getting an mfa in creative nonfiction, but since I finished classes there’s nothing much to report other than I am working on my thesis. Sasha Fletcher, however, just began his mfa in poetry and he’s writing about it over at his blog. He’s got the talented and lovely Sarah Manguso for workshop, Timothy Donnelly for a poetry craft seminar, Marjorie Welish for 20th century experimental poetry,  and a lecture from the adorable Richard Howard titled “The Beginning of the End.”

Expect me to crash the guest lectures while I’m still in the city. Hopefully they’ll be as memorable as the Joyce Carol Oates one last semester.

Web Hype / 6 Comments
September 14th, 2009 / 5:45 pm

Gigantic Magazine’s new website

giganticGigantic Magazine has a fancy new website up today and it is good looking.  They’ve got stuff from J.A. Tyler, Shane Jones and Chapter 18 of  Shya Scanlon’s internet takeover.

And as if the website wasn’t snazzy enough they’re running an art feature of work from Thomas Doyle.

Worth checking out.

Web Hype / 11 Comments
September 14th, 2009 / 11:47 am

Kiki Smith

KikismithI feel cross-influenced. By that I mean that some visual artists and musicians have as much influence on my writing as writers do, often more. For this reason I want to show you some pictures of work by Kiki Smith, a visual artist who makes incredible objects.

I realize that a lot of HTMLgiant readers might feel like the art world is another planet. It often feels that way if you go to an art gallery opening to mooch free wine or the MoMa on a busy afternoon. Maybe you were stoned all the way through your Art History 101 class in high school or college or maybe you never took one or maybe your teacher was unforgivably snobbish. Maybe it seems like 90% of the “contemporary art” you’ve seen shouldn’t be called art at all. That might be true. I don’t know. I just know there are a lot of living artists that I love because I get that giddy-faced-piss-my-pants feeling when I see their work in real life. Kiki Smith is probably at the top of this list of Artists Who Are Like Writers.

I feel like writers and visual artists have a lot more in common than we often acknowledge. Writing and making objects are lonely endeavors. We’re both trying to get something that is so clear in our brains to be just as clear to other people. READ MORE >

Random / 29 Comments
September 8th, 2009 / 4:51 pm

Hate Mail

hate mailEd Champion has started this new series on his blog where he does dramatic readings of user-submitted hate mail. Who here has gotten (or sent) hate mail?  You should send it along.The new one he posted is really funny. You can hear it here.

Random & Web Hype / 34 Comments
September 2nd, 2009 / 1:00 pm

The Guardian’s book blog calls us “Generation Zzz”

NYC: Multi Lit Magazine Benefit

youdontNew York dwellers and New York visitors should know that this Wednesday (that’s tomorrow) there is going to be a cool fun thing to do. Opium, Gigantic, and Bomb Magazine are having a benefit/party. There will be micro-readings, plays, musical acts, video art and more.

Six bucks will get you in the door at 8 pm and 10 bucks will get you in the door for a “VIP” cocktail hour and bonus entertainment.

-VIP performance from Kalup Linzy

-Short plays directed by Ben Greenman and Bob Powers
The Dog House Band, featuring bluegrass David Gates
and Sven Birkerts and John Wesley Harding
– performances by Joseph Keckler, James J. Williams III, and the band The Library Is On Fire!

Get tickets here.

Read more here.

Web Hype / 7 Comments
August 25th, 2009 / 1:49 pm

Racist Book Covers: An Update

Liar1Last month Justin Taylor posted about the Justine Larbalestier cover controversy. (Recap: Larbalestier is an Austrailian author who’s YA novel is about to be released in America by Bloomsbury. Despite having a dark skinned heroine, Bloomsbury was all “Black people on book covers make them not sell” and they put a white girl on the cover. Larbalestier posted on her blog something like “Can You Believe These Chumps?” Instant controversy.)

So now Bloomsbury has changed the cover, despite having sent the white girl galleys out. There’s the new cover with a slightly European-looking dark-skinned lady on the cover. Now when I think of Bloomsbury I will just imagine Justin Timberlake with cornrows, trying to rap or prove that when called upon to do so, some white people can dance.Liar2

Author News / 16 Comments
August 23rd, 2009 / 10:07 pm

Bob Who?

I'm gonna need some ID.

I'm gonna need some ID.

Bob Dylan was stopped by the NJ police for looking “suspicious,” walking around a neighborhood in the rain and peeking into the window of a house for sale. The police asked Bob Dylan for identification and Bob Dylan said he didn’t have any. He said, “I’m Bob Dylan,” but the police didn’t believe him so they all walked back to Bob Dylan’s tour bus so he could get his ID. No word on whether or not Bob Dylan felt this was racist, a violation of his right to walk around in the rain or if he’ll be invited to the White House for a beer. Maybe he’ll get a good protest song out of it…?

Random / 24 Comments
August 15th, 2009 / 2:40 pm

The Interview Awards: Rivka Galchen

GalchenInterviews with novelists seem to always run the risk of being completely inane. (So…. how’d you come up with the plot of your book? Your protagonist is craa-aazy! How ’bout that? ) A lot of interviews have the same confused, polite tone. If you haven’t read the book they’re talking about then the interview might not make any sense but if you have read it, the interview might be boring. Either that or the writer ends up just talking about their “process” (3 hours every day, only after midnight, in the bathtub… blahblahblah…) which can be interesting sometimes but is often dull.

Somehow, though, I like reading these interviews despite having a lot to complain about. Rivka Galchen gives particularly good ones so I’ve decided to give her three highly arbitrary HTMLgiant awards based on one interview in The L Magazine.

Best alternative to just saying “Um, No.”:
The L: The omnipresent character Tzvi Gal-Chen is named after your father. Is there significance behind the names of any of the other characters?
RG: If you take all the letters of the names of the different characters, shuffle them, then transpose their value an X increment, it reveals the terrifying and silent name of the God of our divine disorder.
READ MORE >

Author Spotlight / 13 Comments
August 14th, 2009 / 4:14 pm