Need a fucking job? Well, here’s one for you.
[Note: this is from Joshua Marie Wilkinson, so insert his name in instances of first person.]
***The Volta Seeks a Managing Editor***
Dear friends, poets, editors:
I started The Volta in January 2012 with poet Sara Renee Marshall to feature poetics essays, book reviews and author questionnaires, videos and poemfilms, interviews, audio conversations, and even poems.
Three of our columns are updated weekly, on fridays (Friday Feature, Medium, & Arroyo Chico), and the others have new content on the first of each month.
So far we’ve featured works by known and emerging writers (e.g., C.D. Wright, Rae Armantrout, Harmony Holiday, Joshua Clover, Farid Matuk, Juliana Spahr, Renee Gladman, and literally dozens of others: complete list is here).
We have new work coming out from Bernadette Mayer, Maggie Nelson & Brian Blanchfield, Douglas Kearney, Amy King, Rob Halpern, Lisa Robertson, Ammiel Alcalay, Tyrone Williams, Kate Bernheimer, Zach Schomburg, & dozens of others.
Help Save Mud Luscious Press!!!
Do you remember when Mud Luscious Press announced the chapbook Y2K by Ken Baumann? What about Rat Beast by Nick Antosca, or They by Brian Evenson?
Do you remember when they announced We Take Me Apart by Molly Gaudry?
Do you remember when they announced books by Ben Brooks, Sasha Fletcher, Norman Lock, Michael Stewart, Mathis Stewart, Gregory Sherl, or Matt Bell?
Do you remember when they birthed a NEPHEW? With titles by Andrew Borgstrom, Robert Kloss, Darby Larson and forthcoming Brandi Wells.[…]
Now they need our help. It’s best summed up straight from the horse’s mouth: “We need to raise roughly $2000 to continue our release schedule of the next 2 novel(la)s and the next 2 Nephew titles. Seriously, or Mud Luscious Press may tank. For real.”
So how can you help?
[Basically, buy a book!]
via Ben Spivey (click his name for more options)
Faulkner in Color
In 1929, at the time of its publication, William Faulkner said “I wish publishing was advanced enough to use colored ink” in regards to his vision for The Sound and the Fury, specifically, that each of the many intricately layered timeline threads would be printed in different colors. He resigned to using italics in order to address the past, which was rather confusing, given the blunt binary of italics vs. roman text, and the myriad tiers of pasts therein. Reading Faulkner, I always ignore the italics, as part of the allure in reading him is the palpable confusion of memory — the contradictions, oversights, strange overlaps — as similar to the very way we remember, or mis-remember, our actual experiences. The initial modernists (e.g. Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner) seemed to imbue their books, inadvertently or not, with living matter: the tongue of alliteration; the pulse of cadence; the corrosive and unreliable mind; the insecurity of communication; the unruly heart, the very messy things though which we lived, rather than simply read. Eighty-three years since its publication, English publishing house Folio Society is publishing the book as the author intended. It’s gorgeous, $345 dollars, a promised delivery conveniently in the light of August.
Everyday Genius: The June Issue
(This is my first post here in a while, ugh, and it’s lame that it’s about PGP, but dang I’m all wound up in excitement for this, so why not, and plus it’s a good deal.)
To celebrate The June Issue, Everyday Genius’s first ever print issue, I’m giving a prize to three people who order it before Friday, June 1 (previous orders are being entered to win as well). The prize is a PGP care package, which includes recent books Falcons on the Floor by Justin Sirois (review at The L Mag), Meat Heart by Melissa Broder (review at The Rumpus), Rachel B. Glaser’s Pee On Water (just reviewed brilliantly at The Nervous Breakdown). ALSO included will be Joe Hall’s Post Nativity and Stephanie Barber’s book/DVD these here separated. ALSO also included, Joseph Young’s Easter Rabbit and David NeSmith’s El Greed. Finally ALSO also also included, a PGP tote and a PGP koozy cuz why not cuz it’s summer. READ MORE >
“I tell them, ‘You never had the chance to make 7,000 women happy in one day.'”
It’s weird how the 1,364th story about Amazon sucks mentions my favorite book, Everyone Poops & a lady getting screwed by Amazon when she tried to buy books for my old school district, which I feel was a terrible place; in fact my principle retired & was arrested for soliciting sex in a public park where he told the cop he’d been with all sorts of young bods. Coincidence? I think not.
I was thinking the other day how the cycle of literature : how we burn oil for the light of life lived long ago :: paper pressed down as hard as possible : a blood diamond shines light like everyone deserves to know the truth but at what cost to whom. I don’t know. What do you think. When will small literary presses give Amazon the proverbial bird call? Would anyone care or would it be like when a kid throws a rock in a pond & people just glance & think, “Cute.” But imagine if there were like a thousand kids throwing rocks in a pond. I feel like people would notice that. Have we talked about this 782 times or 783? But if you whore it out someone will write about it maybe? Again? Worth a shot. Just like cage-free eggs. THIS BOOK SOLD WITHOUT AMAZON. Give some good Ra Ra’s & record yourself on VHS kicking an elephant in the junk. So why haven’t you? What are we going to do. Does anyone even care about the weather anymore or was that just something to talk about because the clouds looked like a chorus for a second.
Chiasmus Press is Looking For a Managing Editor
chiasmus press is slowly unfurling out of hiatus. we have a big idea about our reincarnation and they want you.
YOU
want to run a nationally recognized micro indie press. like head honcho big mamma jamma.
want to work with Lidia Yuknavitch.
want to reinvent online, print publication, and cross genre media projects.
YOU HAVE
big time digital savvy and skills, including web, blog and podcasting.
large experience with alternative press world–all facets.
impeccable literary and media counter culture taste.
crazy good organization skills.
a relentless desire to correct culture.
alternative forms of marketing do not frighten you. in fact, they turn you on.
you have big ideas everyone else thinks are nutso.
it’s likely you drink and enter altered states on occasion.
OTHER
compensation negotiable. if you know what “micro indie press” means then you have realistic expectations.
it is not mandatory that you live in Portlandia, though it would be helpful. We have heard of Skype and shit before though, so you know, we are down.
if this is YOU, send a 500 word description detailing your experience and desire and why we should pick YOU to: lidiamiles at yahoo.com by April 15.
yes, really.
Sampson Starkweather Strips it Down to Just Chapbooks
The 2012 Chapbook Festival starts tomorrow. I call it “the good AWP.” In preparation, this year I’ve asked Sampson Starkweather, 1/5th of the Birds, LLC braintrust and chapbook enthusiast, some questions about the form. Go get a blanket–he links up some great stuff that is way worth the read.
Hey Sampson, what’s the deal with chapbooks?
Funny, that’s how I start all my stand-up comedy gigs. It kills of course. So I wanted to start with a quote from James Haug’s Why I Like Chapbooks (Factory Hollow, 2011), who waxes lyrical “Chapbooks are stealth books./ They can slip under a door./ They don’t impose. They suggest./ They’re not one thing or another. They don’t take much time. They’re sly and easy to ignore. They imply, insinuate, inquire./ They don’t expect an answer./ They have a long history; they have no history.” READ MORE >
3 New from Action Books: Burning City, Cronk, Hyesoon
If you don’t own every title Action Books puts out, I’d say you’re slipping. Here are three new just released units for that library of teeth:
Burning City: Poems of Metropolitan Modernity ed. by Jed Rasula & Tim Conley [like 400 pp full of insane shit discoveries]
Skin Horse by Olivia Cronk [I’ve already read this twice, it’s wow]
All the Garbage of the World, Unite! by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi [Which after Hyesoon’s first book, Mommy Must Be A Mountain of Feathers, also from Action, I’m ready to be killed again]
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
SPD had a sale I learned about the day it was ending so I never got around to buying anything (discounted). The list of their 100 top-selling books of 2011 is worth a look, however. Hovering the cursor over covers to see titles takes too long so I opened 10 tabs, copied and pasted the info, inserted a number, a period, and the word “by” between author and title, repeating this process 10 times. Except I ended up with a list of only 99 books, so I had to go back and find the omitted book and redo the numbering![!!] I was also going to insert links to everything but decided against it. Enjoy.
1. Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar
Publisher: Ibis Editions
2. Girlvert: A Porno Memoir by Oriana Small
Publisher: A Barnacle Book
3. Devotional Cinema by Nathaniel Dorsky
Publisher: Tuumba Press
4. Barrio Bushido by Benjamin Bac Sierra
Publisher: El Leon Literary Arts
5. Up Jump the Boogie by John Murillo
Publisher: Cypher Books
6. The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field by Tara L Masih, Editor
Publisher: Rose Metal Press
7. Clamor by Elyse Fenton
Publisher: Cleveland State University Poetry Center
8. The Trees The Trees by Heather Christle
Publisher: Octopus Books
9. Gully by Roger Bonair-Agard
Publisher: Cypher Books
10. Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
Publisher: Dorothy, a publishing project
11. Humanimal: A Project for Future Children by Bhanu Kapil
Publisher: Kelsey Street Press
12. Divorcer by Gary Lutz
Publisher: Calamari Press
13. The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford
Publisher: Lost Roads Publishers
READ MORE >
A Book Prescription For Your Reading Pleasure
I often stumble across unique ways of exposing readers to new books. Chin Music Press (which I’ve discussed before here and here), has a pretty cool new program, BooksRx, where each quarter, a writer or artist curates a selection of independently published books and/or magazines around a theme. Their third installment, the Mardi Gras collection, will be available on the 21st and looking ahead, they want to incorporate titles from other presses. One installment is $40 and a yearly subscription is $100.
This seems like a great idea for indie publishers, who could band together and sell their books in curated, thematic packages. It will be interesting to see if this idea succeeds.What presses would you like to see participating in a venture like this?