Red Light District

nowhere

My name is Roxane Gay (with one n).

My middle name is not “is.” I do not have a middle name.

I know I don’t have to turn on the red light.

I know you want to be my man.

I am not the rapper Roxanne Shanté though her sweater is lovely.

I write, I edit (check out that swank new site design by Gene Morgan), I am writing my dissertation, I teach, I am on the job market. I live near the end of the world in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Blake Butler was kind enough to ask me to join the team so here I am to bring the estrogen (not really) which is much like bringing the pain, only better smelling.

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Behind the Scenes / 55 Comments
September 24th, 2009 / 1:38 pm
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Pequin what is going on? Are you okay? You’ve been on hiatus for almost 5 months. We miss your almost-daily stories. We noticed you were not reading new submissions to catch up on the back log, but now you aren’t posting any either (great “random link” code from mainpage, btw). Anyways, we hope everything is okay and that you will come back soon.

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Awesome interview with awesome Joyelle McSweeney @ Rob Mclennan’s blog | “What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?” Lack of imagination.

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GIANT Excerpt: from The Dance of No Hard Feelings by Mark Bibbins (#4)

We are not kissing and the river

tricks the boat. Even at night,
colors freeze when they would
rather bleed. He likes delay,

He says, the long ascent to sex.
[first his finger to his lips]
He of the somewhere-wadded-up

mainsail, half hard and too tired
[to the knuckle now] to try–
when in doubt he demurs

then dissolves, spooked
as I and twice as strange.
The glass we handed back

and forth sits on the sill:
mouth- and fingerprints
overlap, more reasonable

as a form of mimesis [out now
and glistening] than simple
trajectory–and what about

the bridge, under which
the boat [back in, slowly,
slowly] has slipped, its

chain of lights, distorted
by the edge of the glass,
just now turned out?

All this week, HTMLGiant will be posting poems from The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon) Mark Bibbins’s eagerly and long-awaited followup collection to 2003’s Sky Lounge. Day #1 is here. Day #2 is here. Day #3 is here. Check back daily for fresh doses.

Excerpts / 3 Comments
September 24th, 2009 / 12:35 pm

What’s Up, Rumpus?

coastal-forest1

Random snag from the website of Ian Huebert, genius.

Last night I was introduced to Ivy Pochoda at a bar. Very, very smart, that one is. She spoke of the difficulties of translating Egyptian hieroglyphs (tell me about it!) and knows quite a bit about James Merrill beside. Maybe it’s because she was a James Merrill House fellow last spring? Maybe… Anyway, this morning, the Rumpus greeted me with Kate Munning’s glowing review of Pochoda’s debut novel, The Art of Disappearing, which is just out from St. Martin’s Press. Cheers, Ivy!

Elsewhere at the Rumpus, Rozi Jovanovic runs down the Brooklyn Book Fair.

Porter Shreve interviews Donald Ray Pollock (Knockemstiff).

And there’s a new installment of Ian Huebert’s rad comic, Pornographic Barn Owl.

Special Ian Huebert Bonus: visit his site: The Milk Machine.

Web Hype / 8 Comments
September 24th, 2009 / 10:22 am

Bat Segundo interview of Brian Evenson

segundo309Ed Champion of Ed Rants/ The Bat Segundo Show has posted an interview with Brian Evenson. If you’ve never listened to the Bat Segundo show then it might be worth checking out the archives. Bat (an alter ego of Ed Champion) has interviewed tons of people, from David Lynch to Nick Antosca to Oliver Sacks to Amy Sedaris to 306 other people.

Click the picture to listen to Brian and Bat.

Web Hype / 14 Comments
September 24th, 2009 / 8:53 am

Can’t Wait Until I Can Buy Moby Dick at McDonald’s

[Via Gizmodo]

Uncategorized / 6 Comments
September 24th, 2009 / 7:43 am
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an interesting thing

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What do you think about Goodreads? What do you think about rating books based on stars? What do you use Goodreads for, if you use it? How do you rate books in this kind of forum? Is it wrong to give a bad rating to a book without saying why? Is their ‘three star’ rating equating to ‘liked it’ apt? Is it scary that the Book of Mormon is #3 on their user-populated list of Best Books Ever? What else?

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We want your long codes.

NO COLONY is open for submissions.  Details can be found at the source. (Hint: see above)

Uncategorized / 63 Comments
September 23rd, 2009 / 6:45 pm