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NYC Area Alert: Lutz, Schomburg & Krusoe on Thursday at St. Marks Series

Hey everyone- it’s 1 AM here in Hong Kong. I’ve been at an all-Indian dance party for the last several hours. I’m pretty drunk right now, and I have to wake up in 5 hours, at 6 AM, to be out of the house at 7 AM to be at the airport by 8 to fly at 93. The flight is about 15 1/2 hours, and if all goes well I’ll be at JFK around 1PM on the 16th, which will actually be the same day I left. What’s the point of this post? It’s that even though I’m super-bummed that my EPIC JOURNEY is finally coming to its close, I’m hugely excited to be back in the USovA in time to go to this reading. Full details about it (swiped from reading curator Greg Purcell’s facebook post) after the jump.

New Issue of B.D.T.D.A.E.A.T.C.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, werewolves, transsexuals, and Frankenstein monsters, step right up and see curiosities and monstrosities, wonders and horrors like you’ve never seen before! See the terror of the Antipodes, the ferocious platypus! Behold the dark, twisted longings of the Satanic progeny of the magus Joseph Smith! For the first time anywhere see the elusive metaphor in captivity! And see the most rare and shy of entities, here for your amusement is the good life! Step right up and break through the barriers set up to protect the tender juicy white meat of your fragile mind, step right up and watch as we BUST DOWN THE DOOR AND EAT ALL THE CHICKENS!

Uncategorized / 8 Comments
August 15th, 2009 / 12:39 pm

Mike Young

The Collagist Now Online

DZANC Books‘s new online literary magazine, The Collagist, has just posted its debut issue. Edited by steam-train-among-men Matt Bell (pictured at right, the totally casual one), The Collagist features plenty of big hitters right out of the dugout, including Chris Bachelder, Kim Chinquee, and Kevin Wilson.

The work in The Collagist‘s first issue—stories, poems, essays—covers everything from router anxiety to sinkhole champions; from snowman-inspired carnality to Eastern Oregon; from thoughtful video reviews to thoughtful verbal reviews (including a review of Brian Evenson’s Fugue State by our own Ryan Call); from an essay about being in some dude’s workshop by David McLendon to a story by the dude who ran that workshop, some dude named Gordon Lish, this Lish dude, dude Lish, Gordotron, named a story, ran a shop, worked.

There is also, of course, the clean-as-a-jeweler’s-glasses presentation that we’ve come to expect from DZANC. Kudos to all involved, and do please readers give The Collagist your face, now and deeply. Press release from Matt Bell, with full contributor list, after the jump. READ MORE >

Uncategorized / 2 Comments
August 15th, 2009 / 1:14 am

Blake Butler

Heehaw, the Book

last laugh PDVD_000

What’s the funniest book you ever read? May not necessarily be the book that made you laugh the most.

Random / 76 Comments
August 14th, 2009 / 9:27 pm

Justin Taylor—

Where I Write: Fantasy & Science Fiction Authors in Their Creative Spaces (via Michael Hemmingson on facebook)

Drew Toal

Power quote: Seduced By His Touch, by Tracy Anne Warren

Let's just be friends, okay?

She lifted an eyebrow. “You want a truce, do you?”

“Yes, most particularly in the bedroom.” His fingers inched toward the small of her back, pausing to draw clever little circles over a spot where she was extremely sensitive.

Damn him for knowing about that spot, she thought as she arched involuntarily beneath his touch. Her heart hammered, telltale moisture gathering between her thighs.

“It’s not as if we’d be breaking any rules,” he pointed out with husky persuasion. “Quite the contrary, in fact, since our union is sanctioned by the laws of both God and man. So why deny ourselves? Why not enjoy what pleasure we can find?”…

In a devastating move, he stroked his hand over her naked bottom., then slid a pair of fingers deep into her aching core. Her spine arched, instant bliss flooding her system.…

And he was right, she did love it. And she would be devastated if he stopped. But he had to know that already, since her body was quite literally weeping from the ecstacy he’d given her, and was giving her still.

Power Quote / 9 Comments
August 14th, 2009 / 6:07 pm

Catherine Lacey

The Interview Awards: Rivka Galchen

Galchen Interviews with novelists seem to always run the risk of being completely inane. (So…. how’d you come up with the plot of your book? Your protagonist is craa-aazy! How ’bout that? ) A lot of interviews have the same confused, polite tone. If you haven’t read the book they’re talking about then the interview might not make any sense but if you have read it, the interview might be boring. Either that or the writer ends up just talking about their “process” (3 hours every day, only after midnight, in the bathtub… blahblahblah…) which can be interesting sometimes but is often dull.

Somehow, though, I like reading these interviews despite having a lot to complain about. Rivka Galchen gives particularly good ones so I’ve decided to give her three highly arbitrary HTMLgiant awards based on one interview in The L Magazine.

Best alternative to just saying “Um, No.”:
The L: The omnipresent character Tzvi Gal-Chen is named after your father. Is there significance behind the names of any of the other characters?
RG: If you take all the letters of the names of the different characters, shuffle them, then transpose their value an X increment, it reveals the terrifying and silent name of the God of our divine disorder.
READ MORE >