My Issue with Issuu
Issuu’s slick yet invariably muffled interface aims to mimic the printed page with ‘animated page flipping’ and rendering the shadowed contours of a flayed open book/magazine. Such dramatic flourishes beg the question: what the fuck?
In order to actually read the words, one needs to zoom in, an experience likely to induce vertigo spells. The lightest tap on your cursor will throw your eye over a vast terrain of ‘zoomed in’ space to another part of the book, abandoning it from the context usually established by peripheral vision. (Imagine having your nose to a page then getting hit in the head with a force going 20 miles per hour.)
Word Spaces(5): Kim Chinquee
Kim Chinquee is the author of Oh Baby, a collection of short shorts from Ravenna Press. She has won a Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in various places, online and in print: 3:am, Caketrain, Conjunctions, elimae, Fiction, Hobart, Keyhole, NOON, Phoebe, Post Road, Sleepingfish, Willow Springs, etc. She teaches at Buffalo State College. It is cold up there, I imagine. Probably snowy also.
I had to include Phoebe in that list, as that’s how I first really saw her work up close, if that makes sense. I emailed with Kim after accepting a handful of her short short pieces for an issue. I was (and still am) impressed with the precision of her writing. The stories in the collection are tiny and wonderful. So, if you happen to miss out on the giveaway, you really should click over to Ravenna Press and order a copy of her book all the same.
Here’s what Kim has to say about her new office, which she just moved into last year upon arriving in Buffalo:
This is my home office, a corner of my studio apartment, and I took this photo after moving to Buffalo in August. It’s a little different now, more “moved in,” so to speak, with papers and tablets and books and the drawers are sometimes open, and I’ve been working on a laptop.
The window looks down into a courtyard, that was pretty colorful in August. Now, mostly snow, and it’s really nice when the sun is
shining. I’m on the fourth floor. The bookshelf belongs to my son, who didn’t think he could fit it in his dorm room back in college, and some of the books are his: books on drawing, guitar, and lots of classics. On the top shelves, I’ve included books by my teachers and friends and favorite writers and journals. Some CDs, mostly classical: Ravel, Chopin and Mozart, though I don’t listen to music while writing, only when I’m sending out work, responding to an email. One of the paintings I made as an undergrad rests on top of the bookshelf, but only because I don’t have the heart to throw it out, and I don’t know where else to put it.A framed picture of my son sits by my computer, a recent photo from his high school graduation.
The desk is new for me, but a very old desk, from a generous
colleague. We both left Michigan at the same time; she moved to Boston, and didn’t have the space. I did, and didn’t have a desk of my own. It’s huge. It’s heavy. It’s ancient and holds everything.I spend the majority of my time at this desk. It’s the first place I
go when I wake up, though I do most of my writing late into the night. The chair is pretty comfortable, though I never sit in it the way I’m supposed to. I sometimes prop my feet up on a stool underneath the desk. Or I curl up, sitting at odd angles, like right now, as I write this.
Thanks, Kim, for sharing, and thanks, everyone, for reading.
And now, another book giveaway; I asked Kim if she would like to send a free copy of her book to a lucky HTMLGIANT reader, and she agreed. So you have until, let’s say, noon CST tomorrow (1.22.09) to email us your mailing address; subject line of the email should be OH BABY. If you’ve already won something, maybe step out of this one, thanks. I’ll let you know if the random integer generator smiled upon you. Send to htmlgiant [at] gmail [dot] com.
UPDATE: Congratulations to Evelyn Hampton, winner of the Oh Baby giveaway. Thank you to the other people who entered the contest – one day your time will come.
Claire Donato’s SOMEONE ELSE’S BODY
New from Cannibal Books! Claire Donato!
Someone Else’s Body
by Claire Donato
32 pages, hand sewn
$6
flesheatingpoems.blogspot.comRead sample poems here:
http://www.coconutpoetry.org/donato1.html
http://www.caketrain.org/tellyou.html
http://www.harpandaltar.com/interior.php?t=p&i=5&p=46&e=141
Claire is a badass. She knows about rooms and hues. She knows how to say it. Here are a few lines from the Harp and Altar poem:
Tonight, a man on the phone poses an inquiry re: two boxes of books by Leon Trotsky.
I cover the mouthpiece, laugh with my co-worker.
Dear Sir or Madam: I am stunned by how easy it is to be a Very Bad Person.
This is one I am excited to be buying. The whole Cannibal subscription is a thing to behold, methinks.
hey, why don’t you write some historical fiction about THIS?
This link comes via my friend, David Gates, who retired not long ago from Newsweek. David got it from a friend of his who still works there.
None of us are 100% sure it’s true–and if you scroll to the bottom of the page, there are many highly skeptical commenters–but the pictures are great, and I figure it’s either (a) a very cool, weird nugget of real history, or else (b) something that isn’t true but should be–ie a cool, weird nugget of alternative history.
I like Buddy Wakefield a lot.
My introduction to poetry readings was interesting. A few years ago my life consisted mostly of copious amounts of Oxycontin (among other opiates), extreme alienation and reading poetry. I used poetry to cope with the loneliness and agony when the opiate ration wasn’t enough to distract me.
I wanted to hear live poetry for a reason I cannot remember now. Google showed only one poetry reading in Orange County. It happened to be right down the street from where I lived at an independent cafe named “the Ugly Mug”.
Mean Monday: The Barcelona Review (again, half-assed mean, cause I like their stuff!!!)
This Woman Has Her Nose in the Air
I really like the short stories and book reviews that Jill Adams publishes at The Barcelona Review. And so it is with some mixed feelings that I speak of her literary journal on Mean Monday. But then I did some thinking: she doesn’t give a rat’s ass what I think of her! Nor should she! I posted my ass on the internet! So- whooosh, letting the bitterness flow, people. Bitterness is a huge embarrassment, to say the least, but here it goes.
They do not accept simultaneous submissions and that is fine, in my opinion, if your turnover time is in the three month range. The last submission I sent them (and yes, I did not send it to anyone else), was there for ONE YEAR. I then withdrew it.
Also, I feel they publish an unnecessarily generous amount of “reprints”. Here are three of the many: a Benjamin Percy story from the Paris Review (oh, thanks Jill! I would have never read the Paris Review myself!), Douglas Coupland and Irvine Welsh. READ MORE >
Paper Egg Books welcomes you to the nest
Aaron Burch reminded me that I had posted about Paper Egg Books a while ago, and he said new things are going on over there, things everyone ought to check out.
So I checked it out and am now out $50. That’s right, a 3yr subscription to Paper Egg Books will cost you $50 but guarantees that you’ll receive two books a year for the next three years. I like that idea.
So, goodbye, Ulysses S. Grant. Hello Paper Egg Books.
Paper Egg has also announced a few things that make me excited about my 3yr subscription. Because I am lazy, I have simply copied and pasted from their website the following two ‘press releases’:
The Great Paul Hornschemeier, he of the prodigious illustrative talents and author of numerous fantastic Fantagraphics books, will illustrate and design every edition of Paper Egg. As much as this little effort is something of a throwback, we wanted to embrace the old-school methods of having each Paper Egg contain similar design elements, so that as you line them up on your shelves year after year, they begin to amass a sort of group mind. To that end, Paul will work closely with featherproof design guru Zach Dodson to create our new line of books. And, of course, Paul will illustrate each Egg.
Really, we couldn’t have found a finer artist for the job, as Paul has done some incredible book design work in the past, and each of his own books—including Mother, Come Homeand The Three Paradoxes—combines all that we love in art: a technician’s eye, an impish sense of humor, and enough melancholy mixed in that we can never quite set our compass right.
If you’re not acquainted with Paul’s work, please, please acquaint yourself.
And:
So now that you know what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, it’s time to tell you what we have in store. For our first Paper Egg, we’ll be sending you The Awful Possibilities by Christian Tebordo. It’s Christian’s first collection of short stories, and anyone who’s familiar with his past work knows it’s got to be dark, beautiful, strange, and the kind of book that opens new doors with every page turned.
A little background: I’m lucky enough to hold off the bill collectors with my job as the editor of Time Out Chicago’s Books section. When Christian’s first novel, The Conviction and Subsequent Life of Savior Neck came across my desk in 2005, I was blown away. I had one of those nights where I didn’t fall asleep until a couple of hours before work, when the book was finally done. Since then, he’s followed it up with Better Ways of Being Dead (awesome) and We Go Liquid (amazing). So when we decided to launch Paper Egg, it was obvious to me that we should to start off right with a book from Christian. In fact, in some sense, Paper Egg was designed to publish Christian’s book. It’s brilliant, and strange, and the mammoth bookselling network is simply not suited for something like it. We’re hoping we are.
To read a great Ned Vizzini interview with Christian, go here, and one of his stories at La Petite Zine.
I am going to go check my mailbox now. While I’m gone, why don’t you visit their website, see how it works, and then subscribe.
Is StoryQuarterly back?
the rutgers-camden mfa program celebrates acquiring storyquarterly
Cliff Garstang has done a bit of detective work and discovered some news about StoryQuarterly. He writes at his blog:
[T]oday I was browsing the exhibitors that are scheduled to appear at AWP 2009 in Chicago next month and I noticed that “MFA at Rutgers” is sharing a table with StoryQuarterly. I checked on the web and read all about the new MFA program at Rutgers that Jayne Anne Phillips is directing, but that didn’t answer my question. Then I Googled “MFA at Rutgers” AND “StoryQuarterly” and made a very interesting discovery.
According to this press release, Rutgers University-Camden acquired StoryQuarterly in October. They plan to continue the annual publication and also plan an online publication that was supposed to have begun in the fall. Following the links, I got to a new website for StoryQuarterly, although it doesn’t give much information about how the revived magazine will operate, other than to say that Marie Hayes will continue as a consultant.
This is interesting, considering all of the hype that came out of Narrative Magazine‘s announcement that they had taken over StoryQuarterly and would continue to publish it in print annually. Cliff Garstang wants to know what happened with all of that, and I’m curious as well.
I think it would be great to see StoryQuarterly back in action, if only to know that a magazine with that kind of history carries on. For example, looking through a few back issue tables of contents in the ’90s will give you a glimpse of the makings of NOON, a result of Diane Williams editorial hand, and you can see work from Christine Schutt, Gary Lutz, Lorrie Moore, Deb Olin Unferth, etc. Obviously, you can find their work in their full length books, I think, but it’s interesting to see it in some bigger context, I suppose, other than a story collection. Lorrie Moore’s story “How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)” appears in Self-Help, but was published in StoryQuarterly in the early ’80s – it was her second publication, if what I’ve read is correct. And this interview between Ben Marcus and Brian Evenson originally appeared in StoryQuarterly #31.
That is all for now – look for a hardcopy issue of StoryQuarterly to be published this summer. I know nothing else other than the webmaster at StoryQuarterly appears to have a sense of humor when it comes to posting submission guidelines – click on the Frequently Asked Questions link.
Uncategorized / 18 Comments
January 18th, 2009 / 3:27 pm
January 18th, 2009 / 3:27 pm
Shampoo Poetry and Anne Babson
Htmlgiant's Mike Young Has A Poem Here
As you may have noted from earlier posts like this one, I sometimes believe in God and it makes me feel sort of crazy. I talked to my shrink about it recently and he reminded me that most people believe in God. That made me feel less crazy. Then I asked him, but do other people see “signs”? I think he said yes. I don’t remember. I am hungover and watching hockey. Years ago, I went to a reading in a bar in the East Village. The poet Anne Babson read a very long poem that dealt with her belief in a Christian God and miracles and basically, getting your prayers answered and I think, angels. I was moved at the time (but also thought she was crazy at the time, but now I don’t know if I think she is crazy) and went and walked up to her and bought her book called Counterterrorist Poems (Pudding House Publications). She also has a poem in Shampoo Poetry as does Mike Young. Here is an excerpt from the rather long poem she read that night: