‘I eat books’
Scott Esposito has begun posting at Conversational Reading a series of interviews with various publishers of small presses. Here’s what he has to say about the series:
In order to get some a picture of how publishing beyond New York’s giants is faring, I’m going to be conducting interviews with presses and publishing them here. I’ll be interested to see if they’re feeling the pain every bit as much as the big guys, or if their different publishing models are yielding different results. I’ll also want to see what they’re doing to stay competitive in this market and if they think the recession is going to shake up publishing at large.
So far he’s heard from Declan Spring of New Directions, Fred Ramey of Unbridled Books, and Richard Nash of Soft Skull/Counterpoint.
The series can be read at this link.
Magic Helicopter Press Seeks Pilots
I posted this at the NOÖ blog, but wanted to post here as well.
Mike and I will have a remote control mini-helicopter at AWP. We will raffle this helicopter off to a lucky AWP-goer. If you’d like to enter your name in the raffle, come by our table (we’ll be sharing with Publishing Genius Press and No Colony), donate some money or buy one of our Magic Helicopter Press chapbooks, and we’ll enter you in the drawing.
In the meantime, we’ll be flying the helicopter around the bookfair, demonstrating our skillz, etc.
Here is a video of the helicopter doing what helicopters do. When you watch the video, imagine lots of authors in that room, sweating and being scared; that is what AWP will be like:
Of course, if Black Warrior Review hands out those fly-swatters they had in Atlanta, then we might be in trouble.
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.
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.
Mary Miller
As a subscriber to Hobart, I recieved a litte gift package, which included matches (thanks, I have yet to open up that box of nicotine patches I bought in September), a cute little coaster, and a “special sneak-peek chap for subscribers” of Big World by Mary Miller. Big World will be out this year by Hobart’s Book Division, Short Flight/Long Drive Books. The mini-chapbook has two stories in it: “Fast Trains” and “Even The Interstate Is Pretty“. The stories are very good. Very, very good. They also happen to be very much to my taste, as well as what I often try to do as a writer. After reading them, I went online and read most everything I could find of hers there. I loved her flash works on Storyglossia, which you can read here, or here.
2 New from Black Ocean
from Black Ocean:
We are swollen with pride and brimming with relief now that our next two books of poetry are at the printer. Please consider pre-ordering either/both of them now, at a specially discounted rate of $10, plus free shipping. In doing so you will not only help us quickly recoup some of our overhead expense (and in these dark days of publishing all expenses seem to be over our heads har har), you will ensure yourself that status of ‘coolest kid on the block’ when you receive your copies weeks before they’re even available on Amazon. But hurry: this offer expires on February 11th. All pre-orders will ship on March 3rd. A little bit about these titles:
WITH DEER by Aase Berg / translated by Johannes Göransson
In this, her first single-volume collection to be published in English, Berg works a wicked necromancy in her poems. Filling each page with fluids and viscera she plunges into the palpable, pulsating center of our psyche—pulling up fistfuls of nightmares at once strange and familiar. To read this book is to glimpse the ecstasy you always suspected lay at the heart of every rapturous horror. With Deer [Hos rådjur] was Berg’s first full-length book of poetry, originally published in Sweden in 1996. Since then she has published four more books in her native language, exploring the divine terror throbbing beneath the surface of a naturalistic and barely human world. Read advance praise from Cathy Wagner, Dodie Bellamy and Michael Gira (and place your order) at blackocean.org.SCAPE by Joshua Harmon
Scape, a poised and attentive debut collection by Joshua Harmon, engages with various landscapes—from the constructed and debased world of parking lots, potato chip factories, and cul-de-sac traceries to the “rural equation” of woods, fields, and “clouds’ crumpled page” to create a series of conversations and engagements with the idea of the natural. Through his precise observations, Harmon defines landscape—the word and the idea—through an insightful and meticulous relationship with language. For Harmon, landscape is never static; instead his poems map a constantly changing terrain, in which the interior is imposed on the exterior as a frame for seeing it. Read advance praise from Lydia Davis, Michael Davidson and Noah Eli Gordon (and place your order) at blackocean.org.
Quite stoked on both these, my order is in. The Berg (who is indeed an incredible poet, can’t wait to see this one) has a blurb from Michael Gira. Fuck. At $10 a pop, free shipping, this is a do-it-now.
Cannibal Books announces ’09 list, subscription option, and that they’re maybe throwing a party
Apparently a lot of big, cool stuff happening for Cannibal this year. Off the top of my head, I’m excited about the Claire Donato and Jared White chapbooks because I think both these cats are rad. Rad cats, they are. (You might remember that I blogged a poem of Claire’s when I wrote about Harp & Altar #5. For some instant Jared White-ification, check out this long great essay on Jack Spicer he wrote for Open Letters Monthly.)
But then there’s the cats I don’t know about, and only assume are rad. For example, Sommer Browning, who hosts a great reading series here in the city, and is super funny and fun to hang out with, but I don’t know her own work very well, so this’ll be my big chance. I also don’t know too too much about Shane Jones, except that he has a lot of fans among the writers/readers here on Giant–in particular I recall that Kendra was a huge partisan for Jones’s now-sold-out Greying Ghost chapbook, I Will Unfold You With my Hairy Hands–so I guess a lot of people are excited for that one and I further guess that if you’re excited I’m excited, because friends help each other learn and grow. Anyway, click through for the full press release from my favorite wife-husband duo in poetry:
new from Willows Wept Press
Willows Wept Press has revealed the cover of the first book in what promises to be a solid catalog. Matt Bell‘s How The Broken Lead The Blind anchors the press and is due to be printed this month. To fully appreciate the artwork by Christy Call, you can see a wraparound cover here.
You can preorder it at the website for $10. Get on it quickly, as there are only 100 copies to be printed.
And look out for the next Willows Wept book, Scott Garson‘s Vercingetorix.
TriQuarterly and the Poet Jana Harris
Yesterday, I actually left my house and went to the bookstore to try to buy a 2009 calendar (my choices, since most were gone, were between Harry Potter and one with a 3D skateboard on the cover). I also bought TriQuarterly, which I pick up from time to time, but not with any regularity, and NPlusOne, which I think I get a bit more regularly. Then I skimmed them both. Then I settled deeply into Jana Harris’s poems, (she teaches at University of Washington online), in TriQuarterly. They are gorgeous things. Here is the beginning of “Feeding My New Son With An Eyedropper, I Remember Coming to This Country with My Parents, One Trunk, and Seven Words of English”: