httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIsaNmTXhW0

Inquiry: besides Sigur Ros and Magma, can you name a band whose lyrics are in a language made up by a member of the band? (Did a little edit on the sentence. Sounded made-up.)

If you could live one writer’s life instead of your own, whose would it be?  (My picks: Nabokov and James Salter.  Despite Salter’s melancholia over having missed out on going to the moon by quitting flying.)  Alternately, whose life would you least like to live?  (Malcolm Lowry.  Alcoholic.  Wife attacked by dogs.)  Typing this just reminded me of that old list of 5 Writers More Badass than the Characters They Created.

Mega-congratulations to our own Roxane Gay on Ayiti, a collection of stories and poems about Haiti, which the folks over at Artistically Declined Press announced today they’ll be publishing this fall. Congrats also to Jereme Dean, HTMLG personality, whose collection of poems Of Many Departures has found a home with the same!

This book is just crushing, and so much.

Help Leigh Stein’s hand people get to AWP.

1. Heather Christle is doing a video challenge contest to win a copy of the new blue edition of her The Difficult Farm.
2. Keyhole just announced and is preselling a new minibook by William Walsh, Pathologies.
3. Tom Bissell writes for the Guardian about his addiction to Grand Theft Auto, a preview of his new book on video games, Extra Lives.

*BSG Warning*

Brandon Scott Gorrell offers a Wikipedia-style article on our recent flare-up.

Due to the present risk of bringing Shitstorm Alberto back from the brink of death, I’m turning off the comment section.

What books have actually gotten you wet or given you an erection?

“I packed, my feelings taking on such mass that I felt them jutting horn-like from the space between my eyes.” I love Helen Oyeyemi. I love that the Times online publishes short fiction.  And I love this story.