Fund Mark Baumer’s 50 Books in 1 Year
The first and only Kickstarter I’ll probably ever pledge to fund:
Watch the ALT LIT GOSSIP 2011 Awards Broadcast
ALT LIT GOSSIP ran a live awards broadcast hosted by Steve Roggenbuck. Below you can watch the archive footage.
The Price of Revelation
This week, I read an article in the New York Observer that baffled, bothered and bewildered me. The article tells a story about Marie Calloway, a “part feminist, part fame whore,” young woman writer (pseudonymous) who e-mailed a much older Internet writer in New York she admired, told him she was coming to the city and wanted to sleep with him, slept with him, and wrote a 15,000 word “story, “Adrien Brody,” about the experience. None of that is necessarily shocking though some of the details (his relationship status, for example), make the assignation a bit sordid.
We are in the age of Internet confession. Have blog, will reveal, memoir, pixilated for a hundred random strangers to read. Or more. I wonder about the cost of confession these days, and the reach.
“The city is a giant brain giving itself directions.”
If it’s raining on you and the music you’re listening to, I suggest adding even more input to your afternoon by checking out Barrelhouse’s new all-poetry online edition, guest-edited by Justin Marks. All the time cool stuff comes out in the vein of online magazines, etc, but I forget to post about it, but this time I didn’t want to forget, particularly because the author pictures are maybe inadvertently the best set of author pictures, together, that I’ve ever seen. I mean look at Dan Hoy (originator of this post’s title line) with that bear. Look at Ish Klein with those eyes. Look at Jeremiah Gould sideways on the railroad tracks. That also all the poems are pretty great, that’s like a coupon for your favorite chips right there on your favorite chips bag. Go go and see see.
Let’s all take the internet addiction test together and compare answers
I’ll start! Then you show me yours, in the comment box, if you want.
1) How often do you find that you stay online longer than you intended?
Rarely
Occasionally
Frequently
Often
Always
2) How often do you neglect household chores to spend more time online?
Rarely
Occasionally
Frequently
Often
Always
3) How often do you prefer the excitement* of the internet to intimacy with your partner?
Rarely
Occasionally
Frequently
Often
Always
*haha, ‘excitement’
One sky is dark and one is monochrome
What a sweet week for mice who live in walls. Wait, I mean what a sweet week for this pink skull and crossbones wrist thing. Wait, I mean what a sweet week for all these old MTA bus passes I am uselessly collecting. Wait, I mean what a sweet week for new litmags. That’s it. Adam already posted about LPZ, and since I just got in trouble the other day for accidentally double posting about Ryan Call’s Whiting Award, I’m going to stick to a strictly newsworthy diet.
Dark Sky 14 is out! You should read Dark Sky 14 if you like mustached short Siamese women, a family crawling naked from the sea clutching plastic suitcases, counting bullet holes, Burt’s cans of nuts and screws, broken floating, a horse in a Dumpster, seagulls collecting Styrofoam with their beaks, Mars sex, kicking ants, cashmere moons, warbling accountants, smoke that turns into bears and vice versa, and anonymous book reviews where the book itself is the anonymous.
NOÖ [13] is out! You should read NOÖ [13] if you like dance-offs, Russian salads, laundromats outside of burnt down malls, people who give you their ADD medication for your birthday, Ivan Lendl nostalgia, Hawaiians with machine guns, fake boyfriends, people who marry houses, confused police, sisters who are boxes of snakes, sisters who threaten you with ginsu knives, pummelhorsing social compromise, meat screams, oysters collected by widows, letters to jailed Lil Wayne, hearts too full of apples and wind, slut bags, triangle booth sandwiches, fucktrys, lung balloons, the bicycle in the wrong part of the neighborhood, the fast snapping motion of a neck during the fickle stages of a swan-dive, whiskey & chocolate, roller hockey coaches, furniture apocalypses, people who swallow entire friends, and eerie floating underwear. Plus one review of one giant book, a book written by a person named Adam Jameson Rod Smith Jennifer L Knox Brad Liening Jennifer Denrow Christian Hawkey Ryan Ridge Dan Hoy. Can you imagine calling for that guy in the doctor’s office? Luckily you don’t need a doctor to read either of these two new issues, but you might need a doctor after them.
your actions become more forgivable if you don’t know the rules: an interview with Harriet Alida Lye
I wanted to talk to Harriet on here because I like what Harriet is doing and I think people ought to know. What Harriet is doing is living in Paris as a Canadian expatriate, publishing a journal that keeps getting better, writing her own fiction, and essentially just doing it. In the last three years, I’ve watched her journal, Her Royal Majesty, grow from printer paper and staples to cardboard and printer paper and staples to letterpressed covers and hand-sewn binding to its most recent incarnation as a slick and perfect bound gem. Something I love about the journal is how fully-considered each issue is — unlike most “journals of the arts,” the art isn’t an afterthought in Her Royal Majesty. The layout and design — the way the thing functions and moves as a whole — seems prized above all, which makes each issue less a collection of contributors’ work and more like a large-scale collaborative project. The journal has recently expanded its online presence with a fancy new website and very nice looking blog called HRM Daily, which I advise people to look at. I’m thrilled that Harriet has kept the faith and never looked back. After the jump we talk about the journal, being a foreigner, James Franco, and European MFA programs (they don’t really exist).