Author News

‘A story about reluctant vikings’

viking-helmetsWells Tower reads “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned” for The Guardian Books Podcast thingy they have going on at their thing.

(via Anthony Luebbert’s twitter thingy)

Author News / 31 Comments
April 10th, 2009 / 1:55 pm

Tao Lin wins Cave Canem First Book Prize & I talk to Prize Judge Yusef Komunyakaa

********UPDATE: APRIL FOOLS’********

 

The announcement isn’t up on their site yet, but after I heard from the source himself, I called Yusef Komunyakaa–who is judging the contest this year–and asked for clarification. “I wish you wouldn’t post about this conversation,” Komunyakaa said, “but I’m not telling you that you can’t. Anyway, if you don’t break the story, one of our interns–or Tao’s–is probably going to.”

Here’s a bit of info about the Cave Canem prize:

Established in 1999, this first book award is dedicated to the discovery of exceptional manuscripts by African American poets. The participation of distinguished judges and prominent literary presses has made this prize highly competitive.

As you can see, this is an incredibly audacious choice for Komunyakaa and Cave Canem to have made, since Tao Lin is neither a first-book author or an African American. “We thought about that,” Komunyakaa told me, “but after last year, when the judge declined to even award the prize, I thought it was time to shake things up. If Tao Lin had the courage to unironically enter a contest for which he was entirely unqualified at every conceivable level, then maybe we should try and reward that courage, as a message to other young African American writers out there.”

I asked Komunyakka if it had occurred to him that perhaps Lin’s entry was not, in fact, unironic at all. “Yes, that did occur to me,” he said. “Some people on the Graywolf board were especially concerned about this, but I finally just said, ‘Listen, what does it matter? A good book is a good book, and this kid’s stuff actually sells.’ It’s the name of our prize–and your press–that will be on the cover of his book, which we expect he will promote with the same machine-like relentlessness that is his trademark–which of course is how he ended up entering our contest in the first place. I said to them, ‘you want to see Cold-Pressed Organic Virgin Coconut Oil come out with that little Melville House logo on the spine instead of your wolves, be my guest. But this is the book I’m writing an introduction for.’

I’m a little baffled by all this, but I  have to go start preparing for teaching this afternoon, so I can’t really give this thing the attention it deserves, but anyway, congrats, I guess.

Previous winners of the Cave Canem Prize include Major Jackson, Natasha Tretheway, and Tracy K. Smith. Tao Lin finds himself, as usual, in good company.

Author News & Contests & Web Hype / 64 Comments
April 1st, 2009 / 11:42 am

Sana Krasikov wins Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature

Okay. In a totally non-sequitur comment on the post below this one (which is about Mathias Svalina’s iPod) some person identified only as ‘j’ (no link to website or email add’y) had a little freakout, the point of which seemed to be the sentence that is the title of this post. I couldn’t figure out whether ‘j’ was happy or sad that Krasikov just won the Rohr Prize, which carries a purse of $100,000–pretty sweet stuff for a book of short stories (One More Year, Random House)–and I also don’t know Krasikov’s work, so I am in a singularly uninformed position on basically all aspects of this story. But it seems to qualify as “literary news,” so what the hell? here’s a link to the Jerusalem Post, who has the full story, which really isn’t much more than what I’ve already said. Thanks to ‘j’ for the tip.

Author News / 15 Comments
March 26th, 2009 / 4:54 pm

Sam Pink Interviews Barry Graham for Orange Alert

I love these guys

I love these guys

Author News / 7 Comments
March 19th, 2009 / 3:24 pm

Harper Perennial and Congrats to DearLeader

52stories1

Fifty-Two Stories with Cal Morgan is a ‘New Delivery Service’ from Harper Perennial intent on publishing a short story a week for an entire year. Of the site, Cal Morgan writes:

This year we’re celebrating the thriving art of the story by sharing a new one every week: most of them new, a few of them classics, from authors you know and some you don’t, each of them treasurable in its language or wit or human insight.

This week, Morgan has posted ‘The Copy Family’ by our own Blake Butler.

About the story, Morgan writes:

Here’s the first story we’ve selected from the wide array of submissions from our readers. Blake Butler writes to say that “The Copy Family” is from a book he’s just completed, not yet published. It reminded me of some of Poe’s comic stories, or of Tom Neely’s graphic novel “The Blot.” Could I describe exactly what it’s about? I’m not sure I could do this odd family story justice. But it will stay with me for a long time.

Click on over to have a read, everyone, and good work, Blake Butler.

Author News / 20 Comments
March 17th, 2009 / 5:56 pm

Richard Yates Reads a Story

richardyates

I found this while poking around the discussion below. Alicia, who is putting up a good fight in the comments section for Narrative Magazine, has linked on her blog to an audio recording of Richard Yates reading “The Best of Everything.”

If you’re tired of reading about Narrative, take thirty minutes to listen to Yates.

Thanks, Alicia.

Author News / 2 Comments
March 16th, 2009 / 11:09 pm

James Purdy died today.

purdy2450

And, really, fuck the rest of us.

Author News / 12 Comments
March 13th, 2009 / 9:02 pm

Also…

banjokazooie_qjpreviewth

Justin, get your ass back to HTMLGiant and get to work.


(Our own Justin Taylor has a post up at Dennis Cooper’s blog, The Weaklings, about X-ing Books.)

(A prize package to anyone who can correctly guess the significance of the image on top of this post. Books and stuff.)

Author News / 8 Comments
March 5th, 2009 / 8:41 pm

Crystal Gavel, New Lights Press, Michael Kimball don’t ever change (your jacket)

crystalgavel Sean Lovelace turned me on to his new Ander Monson-inspired journal, The Crystal Gavel (v1).  This first issue features new work from Ander Monson, Darby Larson, Daniel Bailey, yours truly and more. Not just anyone can get published there, though: Amazon is handling the rejections.

This is an important idea, really. Fight absurdity because it is yours to defeat. I am excited to see what’ll happen in issue 2.

So what else is new?

Aaron Cohick of New Lights Press, the wizard that brought us the $400 Brian Evenson book (no shit, $400 — I offered Cohick $200 cash on the spot for a copy and he declined — what an ethos! Eat it, JA Tyler and your $2 Evensons [do we need a link?]!) is looking for writers who want to work with him on an artist book version of their work. Check out the press, consider it carefully, see what happens.

Also, I really, really like this video about Michael Kimball and his book Dear Everybody (which, though it’s a pretty high-ranking book, has only half the reviews that the crystal gavel has) (eat it, Michael Kimball). Michael Kimball once published a poem in The Quarterly that went like this: Now Do You Remember?

This concludes my first ever HTML Giant mamma-jamma (sp?).

Author News / 29 Comments
March 5th, 2009 / 2:51 pm

PRODUCT PLACEMENT: McSweeney’s Field Recordings Vol. 3 now on emusic

I just got an email from HTMLGiant BABY-NAMING CONTEST alumnus Rachel Sherman, announcing that her short story “The Neutered Bulldog” appears on McSweeney’s Field Recordings Vol. 3, a new audiobook which also features Jack Pendarvis, Claire Light, Jonathan Ames, Keith Pille, and Jessica Anthony. The link she sent takes you here, to emusic, which if you don’t know is a music/audiobook subscription service, which gives you a set number of drm-free mp3 downloads based on a monthly rate that you choose.

Rachel says “I think you can download it free” but the site seems to suggest you need to sign up for a free trial to do that. For me, though, that’s not actually a consideration, since I’m already an emusic subscriber. (I get 75 downloads a month for about twenty bucks- it’s delightful.)  Speaking of which, if anyone is seriously considering joining emusic, you should email me via my website and let me “sign you up” because if you let me do that (Columbia House Records style, like the old mail-order days) then WE BOTH get 50 more free downloads on top of whatever their regular offer is–plus no shipping and handling.

Dude, whatever. Free shit is free shit. Email me about this via my website.

Dude, whatever. Free stuff is free stuff.

Author News & Web Hype / 8 Comments
March 4th, 2009 / 1:55 pm