Just got the galleys of my story collection, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, in the mail today!(!!!!) It’s massively exciting, and you can see pictures of them here. Meanwhile, all art everywhere–past, present and forthcoming–is instantly defeated by this thing’s being-in-the-world:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh_JXJoV2Yo&
(As always, bonus points for anyone who can source the title quote without Googling.)
PH MADORE asked me to post this for him:
if you pledge to write ten (or more) articles over ten (or more) weeks at http://undergroundlibrary.info, i’ll have a free copy of LITTLE WHITE POETRY JOURNAL sent to you. you have to be one of the first five people to pledge.
if you write a decently legit blog/tumblr/whatever post describing how you wish you had a copy in your hands and how much you enjoyed the free online archives, and you are one of the first three people to do this, i will send you a free copy.
there is way more information about little white poetry journal seven at http://lwpj.henrychalise.info. you can also e-mail jac jemc and ask her about it, she edited it after all. i’m just the chump clearing the way for it to happen.
submissions for the eighth issue can be sent to h.chalise@gmail.com, i guess.
Well my semester has just begun, which means I’m getting emails from students trying to add my class. Many of these students and others probably check out RateMyProfessors as they try to make decisions regarding in what section they’ll enroll.
We all know how RateMyProfessors works: students anonymously rate their university instructors on a five point scale, and then type up a few sentences of comments, which can often be unintentionally hilarious. Also, anonymous raters assign chili peppers to their instructors to denote ‘hotness,’ so there’s that weird physical evaluation too.
What we might not know is that some of the very authors we’ve read, such as Evenson, Lutz, and so on, appear on RateMyProfessors, having taught at one point or another in their ‘literary career.’ I’ve gathered a handful here (as many as I could think to look for) and inserted some smarmy comments; if you know of others to link to, do so in the thread and I’ll try to add them to the post.
(Is it ‘okay’ to post these? Am I breaking some code of conduct here? I have no idea. Apologies in advance.)
What I do know is I love to gossip.
Read and click through the excerpts/list after the break.
New 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!
Last night I was out with some people, and one of them was Erica Plouffe Lazure, singer in The Dog House Band (pictured above), which is the Bennington MFA-based country-rock outfit whose membership also includes David Gates and Sven Birkerts. Unsurprisingly, the woman in the all-writers-band is herself–wait for it–a writer. Here’s “Evisceration Line,” a sweet (read=”sad”) short story at Keyhole magazine. And here’s a short-short at SmokeLong Quarterly, “Green Monster,” accompanied by a Q&A with Erica. Also, “Cadence,” in the thoroughly un-link-to-able (because it exists in the actual physical world) McSweeney’s #29. Finally, this is as good a time as any–better than some–to remind you that if you’re in New York, you should come see The Dog House Band play the Opium/Gigantic/Bomb Party at Bowery Electric this Wednesday, August 26th. Special guests will include John Wesley Harding, one of the Pierce Sisters, a short play directed by Ben Greenman, and other stuff that I can’t remember off the top of my head. But here’s the thing you click to get yourself a ticket. They’re ten bucks in advance, fifteen the day of, and “all pre-sales get free VIP access”–whatever the eff that means. Anyway, I bought mine, so I guess I’ll find out.
I forgot to mention this: Michael Martone’s 4 for a Quarter twitter feed is brilliant.
Recently in the comments section of this post, DD mentioned Michael Martone’s workshop reading list. Dear Leader responded by asking for the full list. DD didn’t have the list handy.
So I wrote to him to see if he would share it with us. First, he said his recent workshops don’t have a book list except, “Hyde’s The Gift and a baby name book called Beyond Jennifer and Jason. Also The Mac is Not a Typewriter and sometimes Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder.”
But, he teaches a class called American Short Fiction of the 70’s and 80’s, and was happy to share the reading list. It—and more—appear after the jump: READ MORE >
Here’s a fun toy! Translation Party translates your English sentences to Japanese, then back to English, then back again, until it achieves equilibrium. Naturally, hilarity ensues.
Featherproof is creating an iPhone app for flash called “TripleQuick Fiction.” Each story will be 333 words long or fewer, and from looking at the part of the image underneath Shane Jones’s barrelchest, I gather that readers can vote on each piece’s quality by choosing either “Good Egg” or “Rotten Egg.” To me that’s the coolest thing about the idea. Let’s let the techie dudes have a say in what works for li’l lit.
You heard it at the Examiner first, with this keen and clunky description of short fiction: “Because the stories are so short they may seem simple and disposable but writing good flash fiction is challenging because you only have so few words–333 in this case–to create, or at least suggest, a world, to take the reader there and let her experience it.” Now with mobile technology, you can let TripleQuick take you to one world while the bus takes you to work.
I’m really excited about this, even though I don’t have an iPhone. I have a G1. What are the chances some ebookish developer gets motivated enough to set this up for Android? What about people with just regular cell phones, the kind with the hinge? Are they gonna get illiterate?
What’s next? What the hell is going to happen next?