The new issue of Action Yes is live, and all Swedish, and amazing.

An excellent interview with Ben Lerner by Tao Lin is an online exclusive at the Believer.

What writers do you think are the best, or really good at all, at dialogue? And in what way?

“My momma always said I got a head shaped like a heart. Not like them cartoon hearts bitch girls draw about other boys in their notebooks. Like the real thing. A pumping chambered ugly of a muscle not meant for no light of day. Guess that means instead of brains I’m all blood. Guess that’s why I ain’t ever been scared of blood. It’s warm like I’m warm. It pools thick and gorgeous and don’t step in it less you want to make a painting of what you done for any passing bitch to start hollering about.” — from “Heart,” a great new Lindsay Hunter short in Burrow Press’s “15 Views of Orlando” project

This Wells Tower essay about traveling in Iceland and Greenland with his father and brother is one of the best things you will read this week (and beyond). Also, consider voting for American Short Fiction’s SXSW Interactive panel.

Tao Lin’s next novel, reportedly titled Taipei, Taiwan, has been sold to Vintage. More info at the Observer, “I honestly feel, to a large degree, like me and everyone else are close to death and that the awareness of this has, to me, precluded thoughts of “making it” (this is a theme of the novel).”

Today the New York Times tells us everything is going to be okay. That’s not quite what they say, but there are signs of growth in all markets. The adult fiction market, in particular, showed strong growth and e-books are doing pretty well so maybe this writing thing is going to work out, after all. Good news in publishing. Imagine that.

I equate publishing to a certain, necessary loss of innocence. Anyone care to expound?

lol re: “Time spent on the blog is time spent away from something else: writing another book, contacting book clubs, taking a part-time job and investing that money in advertising or a publicist.” from Author Blogging: You’re Doing It Wrong by Livia Blackburne.

To have your writing solicited, and then to be rejected by said solicitor, is good for you.