Jensen Beach

Kenyon Review Online

2011-12-14T06:47:00.000-08:00

- Hilary Plum and I discuss families in fiction over at the Kenyon Review Blog. We each wrote mini-reviews of a few books. I talked about Chris Bachelder's Abbott Awaits, Karl Taro Greenfeld's NowTrends and Steve Yarbrough's Safe from the Neighbors. I really enjoyed revisiting these books with a particular theme or element in mind. Let's do it again.

Here are a few of the other books I read and enjoyed this year (they weren't all published this year):

If the Heart Is Lean, Margaret Luongo
Assorted Fire Events, David Means
It's Beginning to Hurt, James Lasdun
Alligator Dance, Janet Peery
Hunters and Gamblers, Ryan Ridge
The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson
The Boat, Nam Le
The Lonely Voice, Frank O'Connor
The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, Patrick Somerville
Us, Michael Kimball
Knuckleheads, Jeff Kass
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, Maile Malloy

I really need to read more women writers next year.

Kenyon Review Online, NowTrends, NEA

2011-11-19T08:29:00.000-08:00

- My review of Kevin Wilson's wonderful first novel The Family Fang is up over at KROnline. I really enjoyed this book and you will too. On the front page, my review is sandwiched right between David Bartone and Adam Parker Cogbill. I can't think of a better sandwich to be a part of. KROnline is doing great things.

I'm increasingly interested in how literary journals can use the web to do innovative and forward-thinking things--publishing on tighter schedules, incorporating a greater range of genre and focus, and including more materials--and I think the Kenyon Review is doing a lot in this area. It's good to see such a venue embrace the possibilities of the internet. That sounds lame, but I mean it sincerely.

- Karl Taro Greenfeld's collection NowTrends is out now from Short Flight/Long Drive Books. It's available in print (three different versions--collect them all); and if you order through the Hobart website, you'll get a code for a free ebook version too. Other SF/LD books are also available for your Kindle. Get Adam Novy's The Avian Gospels right here, for example.

- I was very excited to read that friends Al Heathcock, Belle Boggs, Ted Sanders and Sabina Murray had all won NEA Grants this year. Huge congrats to them and to all the winners!

November Hobart, Los Angeles Review

2011-11-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

- November Hobart is live (I'm late again)! Stories by Matthew Purdy, Carmela Starace, Alan Steward Carl, James Flaherty and Ted McLoof. Plus and interview with David Meiklejohn! And a spotlight on Karl Taro Greenfeld's upcoming book, NowTrends, available 11/15! Go see him read this month in Philadelphia 11/10, Baltimore 11/12 and Washington D.C. 11/13.

- I got my contributor copy of the Los Angeles Review the other day. It features my story "Priest Lake, Idaho" along with lots of terrific stories, poems, essays, interviews and reviews by the likes of Nick Sansone, Randall Brown, Kyle Hemmings, B.J. Hollars and a whole bunch of others. It's a great issue and I'm really enjoying reading through it. Many thanks to Stefanie Freele and the Los Angeles Review staff for taking this story. Here's the beginning:

There is a man who lives at the end of a street on the outskirts of a medium-sized city in the state of Washington. The street is a cul-de-sac. His house is the one with the black shutters that were replaced upside down when the house was repainted. The man has since never been able to tell just what it is that looks so strange about his house, but he finds, every time he comes home, a deficit in its appearance. For a living he makes fine, artisan furniture.

October Hobart

2011-10-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

- October Hobart has been published, featuring stories by Kitty Liang, Gene Kwak, Julie Brown, Amity Bitzel, and Rebecca Leece. Plus Lindsey Drager interviews Alex Shakar about his new novel Luminarium; and M Thompson interviews Kevin Murphy about Dark Sky, the books, the magazine, the wonder.

- Speaking of Dark Sky, they are now affiliated with the University of Houston-Victoria, which is excellent news for the press. They have also welcomed Gabe Durham, Christy Crutchfield, Brian Mihok and Sarah Boyer on as editors for the magazine. Exciting, exciting.

- Good book news lately from some good friends: Nat Otting, Gale Thomspon, Anne Holmes & Lily Ladewig. Exciting, exciting. Can't wait for these books!

- Fall was here but now it's hot again.

Ninth Letter, Stories & Beer

2011-09-30T20:23:00.000-07:00

- If you're in Champaign-Urbana this weekend, come to the Iron Post in Urbana at 4 pm this Sunday, Oct 2 (the Patriots game probably won't even be on anyway) to see me read in the Stories & Beer reading series along with Katie Schmid, Mike Don and Eugene Cross! I hear there will be nipples, beer, rock anthems and probably even some more beer.

- My story "Water Festival" has been reprinted on the Ninth Letter website. Read it there, but you should also really go ahead and buy a copy of the most recent issue because there are some terrific stories, poems, essays and interviews in the issue. The Ninth Letter folks were also kind enough to interview me about telling the truth and making it up; memory; and the town of Jensen Beach, FL. I had lots of fun with the interview. Hope you do too.

- See you Sunday.

Hobart

2011-09-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

- September Hobart is live. Stories by Robert Hinderliter, Ramon Isao, Megan Martin and Kevin Wilson! Visit, read, enjoy.

Hobart, Spork, Witness

2011-07-03T05:50:00.001-07:00

- July Hobart is live, featuring stories by Glen Pourciau, J. A. Tyler, Lincoln Michel, xTx and Dustin M. Hoffman. Plus the next three Short Flight/Long Drive books have been announced! They are: NowTrends by Karl Taro Greenfeld, I Have Blinded Myself Writing This by Jess Stoner and Other Kinds by Dylan Nice. Whoa.

- My story "The Rågbjerg Mile" went up at Spork last week. This is part of my linked collection THE WINTER WAR and a companion story (sort of) to "Henrik Brandt Needed Help."It's about the Rågbjerg Mile, which is a huge moving sand dune in Denmark. Google image it. It's wild looking. Here's the beginning of the story:

The straight of Skagerrak and the Kattegat Sea meet and form a distinct line reaching northeastward from the tip of Skagen in Denmark to the southwest coast of Sweden. Here there are turbulent waves and strong, unpredictable currents. Odd is thinking about these currents as he takes his first steps into the frigid water. It is September, too cold to swim. But there is a girl in the water.

- Witness 2.0 has launched and it is exciting! It looks like they'll be publishing twice a year online and once in print. I think this model is really interesting and I'm eager to see how Witness will make use of it. Most exciting of all is this story by my friend and fellow UMass Alum Megan Turner!

Ninth Letter & Spork

2011-06-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

- My contributor copies of Ninth Letter arrived today and for that I am very happy. As always, the design and the content come together to make something, magically and wonderfully, greater than its parts. Not that each part alone is not already great, but... together, wow. You can see a sneak peak of my story "Water Festival" over at the Ninth Letter blog. The story is a fictional account (sort of) of the 1993 airshow crash at the Stockholm Water Festival. Anyway, the whole issue looks fantastic (news print! Fancy artwork! A Subliminal History of New York State in music!!! A pink poetry insert!) The whole thing is really something else. Thanks to Jodee Stanley and the rest of the staff at Ninth Letter!

- Spork has been kind enough to publish another story of mine, this one from THE WINTER WAR like "Water Festival." It's called "Henrik Brandt Needed Help."

Here's the first part of it:

From the bottom of a shallow gully, Henrik Brandt needed help. From inside his car at the bottom of the shallow gully beside the southbound lane of E18, Henrik Brandt needed help. From where he was seatbelted to the leather driver’s seat of his upside down Volvo V70, Henrik Brandt needed help.

Wigleaf Top 50 2011!

2011-05-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

- The annual Wigleaf Top 50 list has been released. Too many congratulations to list in full. Read the list, read the stories, check out the long list. This year's results are excellent. It just keeps getting better and better. The Wigleaf Top 50 (and Best of the Web) go such a long way in representing and singling out some of the surprising and wonderful work being published online. A generation of writers has come of age online and lists like this one (problematic in a way, like all lists, because it can't possibly recognize ALL of the great work being done) always make me so proud and excited to part of that. Seeing a year's worth of work gathered together like this is invigorating. I've enjoyed spending the weekend reading and re-reading stories I saw throughout the last year and reading for the first time stories I hadn't had a chance to see when they first went up. For that, huge thanks, as always, to Scott Garson, Ravi Mangla and the Wigleaf staff, plus this year's editor, the wonderful Lily Hoang!

- Big way to goes to a few Hobart stories that made the list: Craig Davis's "Chorale for the First Rental House on Your Block," Kristen Iskandrian's "It's Going To Be Okay, I Love You," Matthew Lansburgh's "The Turtle," and Curtis Smith's "The Movie"!

- Congratulations to Hobart staff (current and former) who's work made the Top 50 and the long list this year: Aaron Burch, Elizabeth Ellen, Matt Bell, Aubrey Hirsch, Andrea Kneeland and Mary Miller!

- Congratulations to my UMass friends, Boomer Pinches, Christy Crutchfield, Gabe Durham and Mike Young! And congratulations to my buddy Brian Allen Carr, who had two stories "Running the Drain," and "And Finally It Has Come to This. And Finally It Has Come to these Things" make the list!

- My story "Wyoming" from JMWW was named to the Top 50 this year, which is a real honor. Thank you to Lily, Scott and Ravi and also to Jen Michalski and David Erlewine for first publishing the story!

Hobart, American Short Fiction

2011-05-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

- May Hobart is now live, featuring stories by Tim Jones-Yelvington, David Joseph, Mesha Maren, Matt Leibel, Ledia Xhoga, plus an interview with Brock Clarke by Micah Riecker! This is a wonderful issue (as they all are) and I'm happy to see it go up. Huge thanks to the talented writers who let us publish their work!

- My story "Not A Song but a Prayer" is up over at American Short Fiction as part of their monthly web exclusive series. You can read an interview at their blog, too. I talk a little about writing about Sweden and about setting and place and try to sound smart.

Here's the first few sentences from the story:

The twins, Eskil and Einar, are chopping wood. Their father bought a cord from the horse farm in Elmsta. It is the boys’ job to split the logs and stack them along the west wall of the tilting Falu-red outbuilding their father calls a shed but is a carport with a chain-link gate locked across the opening. They have been working for an hour. Caroline is inside and watches from the window as her brothers trade blows with the ax.

Many thanks to Marian Oman, Jill Meyers and the rest of the good folks at American Short Fiction!

Million Writers, American Short Fiction & Gabe Durham

2011-04-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

- April Hobart has been out for a while. As usual, I am late (especially so this month) in my posting of this news. Anyway, great work by: John Dermot Woods, Aubrey Hirsch, Dan Sanders, Wendy Oleson, Patrick Walczy and Alice Lowe. Plus Hobart picks the 2011 season!

- The 2011 Juniper Literary Festival has come and gone. I was there, as usual, with Hobart and it was a great weekend. Got some Hobarts and some minibooks into good hands, bought too many books and journals and drank way too much. Many wonderful small presses, tons of great books and readings and lots of exciting talk about publishing and creating and writing. I also got to hang out with the one and only Roy Kesey, who was in town to read from Pacazo, and make general merriment here in Western Mass. It was a lot of fun to see Roy and to hear him read from his terrific novel. I will never think of turkeys quite the same again.

I also had the opportunity to moderate a panel on book publishing called "Nuts and Bolts: From Manuscript to Book" with Margaret Luongo, Kiki Petrosino, Cynthia Arrieu-King, Mira Bartok and Pam Thompson. I'd never done anything like this before; luckily the panelists were all smart and funny and charming and informative. We talked at length about the publishing process, from putting together a manuscript, to submissions, to book prizes, to the editorial process and more. It was great fun. My thanks to the panelists and the audience for being thoroughly awesome all around.

- In other awesome news, I am happy to repost that Gabe Durham's first book FUN CAMP is forthcoming from MLP! This is such great news. I had the pleasure of reading a draft of this book in workshop and it remains one of the most exciting, strange, funny, energetic and wonderful pieces of writing I read here at UMass. My heartiest congrats to Gabe on this news! Here are some samples from the book: "Free Time" in NOÖ Journal, "Perk" in Wigleaf. And more can be found in Hobart 11!

- My story "Not a Prayer but a Song" is going to appear next month online at American Short Fiction. I'm really very excited about this. I like the monthly series they have there and am happy to be a part of it. Many thanks to ASF folks for taking this one! This story is also from The Winter War.

-So is my story "Destination," which first appeared in Fifty-Two Stories last year, and has been named to the storySouth Million Writers Award list of notable stories. Big thanks to Cal Morgan for helping make the story better and for publishing it! And thanks to Christy Crutchfield, who nominated the story for the award. Also on the list is "The Private Eye's Investigation" by Sam Martone. This story appeared in Hobart and is one of those pieces of writing that makes me so happy to get to work as an editor. I love every story we publish, of course, but I still remember in particular the feeling of excitement I got from Sam's story when I first read it. I'm happy to see his work get this recognition.

- Speaking of, here's a thing I wrote over at the Hobart blog about some books I got recently, all of which deserve to get a whole lot of attention.

Hobart 12 Bonus Web Issue

2011-03-02T07:42:00.000-08:00

- Hobart 12 is on its way. Look for it in April! Having read some of the stories early on in the process, I can say this is another fantastic issue. There's work from Karl Taro Greenfeld, Aubrey Hirsch, Roxane Gay, Dave Housley, Etgar Keret, Dylan Nice, Brian Evenson & Lily Hoang and many, many others. If that's not enough to convince you: bonus issue at the website this month!

- Speaking of new: new issues of Dark Sky, elimae, decomP.

- My story "The Winter War" is going to be published in the upcoming Ekphrasis (a word, admittedly, I've only recently learned--for a guy who's been in school as long as I have, you'd think...) issue of Sou'wester. I'm really excited about this. First, because Sou'wester is a terrific journal that I like quite a lot, and second because though this is one of my favorite stories from my thesis collection, it is very long and very strange and I was beginning to think I wouldn't place it. So many thanks to Valerie Vogrin and the other folks at Sou'wester for taking a chance on it.

North Shore Art Throb, Quick Fiction

2011-02-10T10:35:00.000-08:00

- My story "Their Future Looks Brighter the Closer It Gets to the Sun" from Quick Fiction #8 has been reprinted in the North Shore Art Throb. I'm really excited to see this one there again. It's always fun and instructive to see old stories again. This looks like a fun project that NSAT has going on. I'm glad the folks at Quick Fiction chose my story to participate.

Febuary Hobart, AWP, Witness

2011-02-07T20:11:00.000-08:00

- February Hobart is up. Stories by Spencer Wise, Katie Jean Shinkle, Jody Brook, John Tway Zackel and Drew Ervin's wonderful interview with Bradford Morrow. Great work all around.

- AWP. Well, well. Much happened. I am home. My head still hurts. Free cocktail hour at our hotel was both the best thing ever and also maybe the worst. So was shouting at friends in bars. And grumpy bartenders. And cheap cabs. And the Hobart flask which made it possible to order a single $8 beer and still get drunk. It's good they put a whole year between these things.

- I stopped by the Witness/Black Mountain Institute booth and picked up a copy of issue XXIV (that's 24 for those of you who can't remember that many super bowls ago), which includes my story "Don't Go." I haven't had a chance to read much of the issue yet, but it's got work by some writers I like a whole lot and am happy to share pages with: Stephan Clark, Viet Dinh, Teresa Svoboda, Josip Novakovich and a bunch of names that are new to me but who I am looking forward to checking out. There are some excellent photographs of Bulgarian and Romanian Roma in camps in Italy taken by Andrea Bruce and a poem by Solmaz Sharif that is really amazing. Like every issue of Witness, this one is well worth picking up. I like this journal a lot because it looks outward without losing any of the personal.

Here's the first paragraph of my story:

In the village of Elmsta, which straddles the mainland and an island about two hours outside of Stockholm, there is an uneven asphalt tennis court, veined with cracks and loosely traversed by a substandard net. It was on this court that Rolf Andersson once played the best tennis of his life. He lost the first set, but came back to win the next three by an average margin of four games. His opponent—an aging former tennis professional whose prosthetic left arm made a swishing whistle whenever he hit from his backhand—twice broke Rolf’s service, but Rolf was hitting well to both sides and ran the former tennis pro to exhaustion. Rolf was happy about this. Who can say how the former tennis professional felt? He had only recently lost an arm.

FOR OUT OF THE HEART PROCEED

2011-01-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

I'm very excited to announce that my first book, a collection of stories called FOR OUT OF THE HEART PROCEED will be published in 2012 by Dark Sky Books. Many, many thanks to Kevin Murphy and everybody at Dark Sky Books for this opportunity! And huge congrats to the other authors of the other 2011/2012 titles: Dave Housley, Mickey Hess, Dan Moreau, J.A. Tyler, Kendra Grant Malone & Matthew Savoca, Ryan Ridge, Michael Bible and Stephen Sturgeon!

Sixth Finch

2011-01-21T15:07:00.000-08:00

The Winter 2011 issue of Sixth Finch is now live! It's got a bunch of really great poems by some really great poets. Plus some amazing artwork as always. It's also got my poem "Delaware." Many thanks to Rob MacDonald for featuring this poem in the issue.

Sixth Finch has been on my radar since they published some poems by some good friends of mine; since then I have been visiting and reading each issue and through the back issues. The artwork always brings it, and so do the poems. Great work all around!

The Collagist 18

2011-01-15T08:17:00.001-08:00

My story "Massachusetts" is now live in The Collagist! Also in the issue fiction by: Michelle Latiolais, Roberta Allen, Nick Kocz & Jenniey Tallman; non-fiction by Kyle Beachy; novel excerpts from Roy Kesey and Bradford Morrow; and poetry by Melissa Broder, Laura Van Prooyen, Gary L. McDowell and Daniel D'Angelo.
Here's the first few sentences from my story:

It has been cold all day. It is winter and this all takes place in Massachusetts. There have been rumors of snow. The man sits in his car, parked in a parking garage. He holds the steering wheel tight. There's no telling what he will do.

January Hobart, Ninth Letter

2011-01-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

- January Hobart is now live, featuring work by Todd Cantrell, Harmony Neal, Dylan Hicks, Dan Pinkerton and Andrew Scott, plus an interview with NewVillager!

- My story "Water Festival," which is about the jet crash at the air show at the Stockholm Water Festival in 1993, has been accepted at Ninth Letter. I'm really excited about this. Ninth Letter is one of my favorite journals. It's a gorgeous object with beautiful design and always excellent writing. I'm particularly interested in the lines between fiction and non and how willing Ninth Letter is to blur them. Big thanks to Jodee Stanely for taking the story.

- New issue of Dark Sky Magazine out too. It features, among other greatness, this story by my friend Christy Crutchfield.

December Hobart

2010-12-03T14:05:00.000-08:00

- December Hobart is now live with new stories by Leah Bailly, Dan Sanders, Maria Romasco-Moore, Luke Hawley and Carlin Mackie! This is a great issue and you should read it. Especially Carlin's story because he is really awesome and really tall.

- My story "Massachusetts," which is from an ongoing project of stories named after places, is forthcoming in The Collagist. I'm really excited about this. The Collagist has since it first appeared, magically I sometimes think, been one of my go to places for good reading. Many thanks to Matt Bell for taking the story.

- The semester is winding down and I'm ready for that, though it's a little sad too. I've been teaching creative writing this semester and I'll miss the challenges and rewards of this course. My students are all wonderful, talented, amazing weirdos who write wild fictions that are heartbreaking and hilarious and always, everyday teach me new things about writing fiction and teaching fiction. I'm going to miss them all a lot.

- Speaking of hearts and wonders: there are some pretty amazing poems right here by many great friends.

- Also, tons of goodness in the new elimae: Luke Goebel, Christy Crutchfield, Mel Bosworth, Elizabeth Ellen, Greg Gerke and others. It's a great issue and I've been really enjoying scrolling through.

- Also squared: New Dark Sky, featuring Greg Gerke (again!), Steve Himmer and Hobartarians Sal Pane and Andrew Roe, plus many more. Dark Sky is up to something great. Visit them.

- Val Molloy took the photograph up there. She is great. Visit her here.

November Hobart, Best of the Web, Sixth Finch

2010-11-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

-The November issue of Hobart is now live, featuring work by Sal Pane, Jared Yates Sexton, Anne Valente, Sam Martone and Kristen Iskandrian, plus part I of Matthew Simmon's interview with Shya Scanlon (part II can be found at HTML Giant)! Many thanks to a great bunch of writers. Also: Shya's book can be pre-ordered here starting 11/15.

-Hobart has made its annual Best of the Web nominations. It was a tough choice, but we narrowed it down to the following three: Stephen Graham Jones for "Sunsets Unlimited," Kristine Ong Muslim for "We Figure the Leaves" & Glen Pourciau for "Ride".

-Speaking of Best of the Web, BULL has nominated my story "The Dark Is What" for the 2011 edition. My story has been nominated along with work from Matthew Baker and Jared Yates Sexton. Congrats and good luck to both of them!

-In poetry news (I know, right), a couple of my poems (yes, really) are going to appear in the winter issue of Sixth Finch, a great poetry journal which I've been really enjoying lately. The latest issue features a poem by my good friend David Bartone. Excellent genealogy all around.

Dark Sky

2010-10-04T07:03:00.000-07:00

- My story "Luntmakargatan" is now available in the newly revamped Dark Sky Magazine. The new design looks incredible. Also in the issue, great stories by: Gabe Durham, Mel Bosworth, Molly Gaudry, Harold Jaffe, Jac Jemc, Sarah Sorensen, Rusty Barnes, R.A. Allen and Marc Watkins. Plus poems by: Stephen Sturgeon, Elissa Gabbert, Ed Higgins, Kate Lebo, J. Michael Wahlgren, Medeia Starfire, Howie Good and Shannon Carson. And and a terrific essay by Charlie Geer and artwork by: Charles Farrel, Lisa Iglesias and Jorg Meyer. The full issue is available online, and you can also purchase a print copy (pictured there to the left) right here. The issue comes out 11/15! Many thanks to Brian Carr and Kevin Murphy for taking this story.

-And even cooler than all that: Ethel Rohan's book CUT THROUGH THE BONE is available for order from Dark Sky Books! Many congrats to Ethel on this most excellent news!

The Avian Gospels, Witness, Los Angeles Review

2010-09-24T08:08:00.000-07:00

-First of all, vol. 1 of Adam Novy's book/object The Avian Gospels is now available from Hobart and all is good in the world. This novel is seriously great. Go buy it. It looks like a little bible. Has a red placemarker and gilded edges. You've never seen a book like this. It's perfect.

-Second of all, see above.

-Thirdly, my story "Priest Lake, Idaho" is going to be in Los Angeles Review next year. Many thanks to Stefanie and the rest of the LAR folks for that.

-Fourthly, my story "Don't Go," which is the title story from the collection/linked book of fiction or whatever this thing is going to be will appear in Issue XXIV of Witness. Word.

Hobart, Route 9 & more

2010-09-03T11:09:00.000-07:00

- The September issue of Hobart is now live, featuring new work by Nick Kocz, Curtis Smith, Heather Clitheroe and Kate Petersen. I'm really proud of this issue and pleased to get to feature these great writers.

- Route 9, the new UMass MFA literary journal is now live. My story "We Cannot Cross the River" (originally featured in Everyday Genius) is in there, alongside excellent work by current and former students here like Gabe Durham, Jeff Downey, David Bartone, Emily Rae, Leni Zumas, Matthew Zapruder, Zach Savich, Christy Crutchfield and others, so many others. Many, many thanks to Sarah Malone for getting this journal going and doing such an excellent job with everything. I think it's important for us to showcase all the great work getting done here at UMass, and Sarah has provided a terrific venue for this. UMass is dope. You should all come here and get MFAs. We like beer, and poems.

-Speaking of Gabe Durham and his greatness, this caused a minor forest fire among the underbrush of the internet earlier in the week, and for that and other reasons I love it. And I love Gabe.

-Further speaking of Gabe Durham, and also Blake Butler and Brian Evenson and Diane Williams and Mike Meginnis and Ryan Call and Matt Bell and Kim Chinquee and others, so many others, I got my contributor copy of The Lifted Brow 7 the other day, and it is the beast it was promised to be. There are few things I love as much as thumbing through a newly-arrived journal; and TLB is one the best recent reads I've had. The artwork is rad & and the layout and the design and cover and writing all kill. Blake's introduction/story is a monster. Buy a copy here. You'll get something in the mail from Australia, which doesn't happen everyday.

My story from the issue, "Africa" can be read here if you fear the USPS and internet credit card transactions.

BULL: Men's Fiction

2010-08-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

My story "The Dark Is What" is now up at the awesome BULL: Fiction for Thinking Men. I am a man, and I think. So, the match was inevitable.

Here's the first paragraph:

We’d lately been buying old puzzles from the flea market. Any picture was fine as long as the seller guaranteed no missing pieces, which they always did. Of course, most of the puzzles were incomplete. The boxes were full of mismatches and deficit. People will say anything to make a buck. I knew this disappointed my son, but I never hid it from him. We’d just finished working on a pair of whales floating in a square of ocean. Jigsaw-shapes of our brown carpet showed through the blue. “People can be greedy and dishonest,” I told him. “You should get used to that about us.”

I've been admiring BULL for a while now and am super pleased to have my story appear in it's pages. Thanks to Jarrett Haley for taking this one!

Fifty-Two Stories

2010-08-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

My story "Destination" is now up at Fifty-Two Stories! Many thanks to Cal Morgan for including this one in one of my favorite journals. I'm really honored to be a part of it!

Here's the first paragraph:

From across the room Martin was monitoring his wife. He planned on taking her home before she could drink too much. Henry, the son of the party’s hostess, was speaking very loudly about the variety of modern coffin-building materials. He was twenty-two and appeared to have a preoccupation with dying morally. Martin did his best to listen, but Henry kept going on and on about biodegradability and the cycle of life until Martin believed he saw, on the cream-colored wall above his wife’s head, the image of a tree growing out of his own decomposing skull.

Hobart & more!

2010-07-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

-The July issue of Hobart is now live. Stories by: Sara Bohannon, Brian Allen Carr, Travis Kurkowski and Matthew Salesses. Plus an interview with Hobart-favorite Andrew Ervin by the novelist Bayo Ojikutu and a spotlight feature just in time for tomorrow's matchup with Brazil on some embarrassing moments in imagined-Dutch soccer by Karl Taro Greenfeld! Go Netherlands!

-I got my contributor's copy of the Best of the Web 2010 the other day, and it is amazing. It's much bigger than I thought and so well put together. Many thanks and many congrats, again, to Matt Bell, Kathy Fish, Dan Wickett, Steve Gillis and the rest of the Dzanc crew.

-The Summer issue of JMWW is now live. It features all kinds of great work by a whole bunch of great writers. It features my story "Wyoming. Thanks to David Erlewine for selectiing it for his last issue as flash fiction editor! I'll post a little more about what looks like an awesome issue when I can access the site again. It seems to be down for me right now.

-The amazing Roxane Gay said some really kind things about all the writers involved in her month-long virtual-residency at Necessary Fiction to close out the month. It's a wonderful essay. Just like the project itself. I wish I had had more time to post about it here. It was a really interesting idea and one that I loved following. Roxane is a tireless and creative promoter of work big and small and I'm honored to have been included in this project. Thanks, Roxane!

-The Juniper Institute for Young Writers came to an end last week. I was part of the faculty this year, and it was such a great experience. I loved each of my students and was honored to watch them grow as writers and readers. I made fun of them all week for being all corny-camp-in-love and then the Institute ended and I realized I'd been that too. It was a super week. I learned a lot about teaching, about fiction and about being 17--things I never knew on all counts. Now, I'm painting houses and trying not to think about Padgett Powell's story "Wayne's Fate" everytime I climb a ladder. So far, my head is intact.

Hobart, Necessary Fiction, Peacocks!

2010-06-12T16:02:00.001-07:00

-A little late with all this, but:

The June Hobart is up (and has been) featuring stories by Alison Christy, Michelle McMahon, Grant Flint, Stephen Graham Jones and Andrew Borgstrom, plus graphic stories by John Dermot Woods and Lydia Conklin, and a roundtable discussion about first books I moderated, featuring Kyle Beachy, Jedediah Berry, Andrew Ervin, Roxane Gay, Rachel B. Glaser, Julia Holmes, Caitlin Horrocks, Holly Goddard Jones, Tom McAllister, Laura van den Berg, Kevin Wilson, Mike Young. I had so much fun with this discussion. Many thanks to all the writers who participated!

My story "Peafowl" is live now at Necessary Fiction as part of Roxane Gay's tenure as Writer in Residence. Included is my reflection on the story, a link to a youtube video of a Swedish punk rock band and a picture of me being spooked by a peacock. Thanks to Roxane and Steve Himmer at Necessary Fiction for including me. It's a great project--on going all month--in which you get to read terrific stories by a whole bunch of writers.

Yes.

Wigleaf's Top 50!

2010-05-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

-Two of my stories, "Family" (from Necessary Fiction) and "We Cannot Cross the River" (from Everyday Genius) were selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fiction list. I'm indescribably happy about this. Many, many thanks to Scott Garson and Ravi Mangla for putting this together and huge thanks to Brian Evenson for selecting my stories! Also thanks to Steve Himmer and Joe Young (and Adam Robinson) for first publishing these stories. I'm honored to be included along with so many amazing writers!

-In Hobart news: Alan Rossi's "Three Mississippi Fictions" was also selected! Many congrats to Alan! And nine (!) other stories from this last year at Hobart made the long shortlist: "Vacation," by David Aichenbaum, "The Impotence of Reading Ernest," by Jimmy Chen, "What Dogs Mean," by Lucy Corin, "Discontent," by Stephanie Johnson, "The Piano Thief," by Stephen Graham Jones, "The Cow," by Jeff Kass, "Azul," by Jim Ruland, "House Calls," by Chad Simpson and "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service," by Robert Swartwood.

Hermano Cerdo

2010-05-15T05:52:00.000-07:00

-My story "To the World I'll Be Buried Here" is up at Hermano Cerdo, translated into Spanish! This is actually an earlier, shorter version of the story that later appeared in Waccamaw. I can't read Spanish, but the rest of this issue is full of apparent goodness. Stories by Tom Lutz, Alex Rose, Todd Zuniga, Leslie Jamison, Marie-Helene Bertino, Garth Risk Hallberg, Aaron Garretson, Lesley Clark, Cybele Knowles, Clint Head plus a whole bunch of other stuff--essays and criticism and articles, all of which look pretty great. Many thanks to Mauricio Salvador for asking me to be part of this project!

Here's the first paragraph, translated into English by the google translator:

Before you can go to bed, Glen's wife tells him to find the dog. He is drunk and prone to make good use of each of the nights that they stay together, and who fights against his desire to tell me to get the dog herself, she smiles politely and ranges from the study hall, where the Ranger Lone usually hides during the holidays. The Lone Ranger is a terrier mix of naughty with the habit of running away when people at home during the weeks before his departure is quite common.

I wish I could write sentences like that without first having to go through another language and back. The whole re-mis-translated version is actually pretty good. Also true for the other stories. They all become something new, unfamiliar. If you can't read Spanish, go check it out.

Best of the Web 2010

2010-05-13T16:22:00.001-07:00

-Best of the Web 2010 is now available for pre-order over at Dzanc, which should be done. By you and you.

The Great Outdoors!

2010-05-04T05:25:00.000-07:00

-The web extras issue for Hobart 11, The Great Outdoors! is now live. It features alternative endings, essays, excerpts, new comics, interviews, appendixes, new stories and all manner of new and incredible work by Hobart 11 contributors. I love every issue of Hobart, but am especially proud of this one because it's the first that I helped read and select stories for. It's a really good issue--readable and engaging and exciting as ever. Go get one.

The Lifted Brow

2010-04-21T04:36:00.001-07:00

-One fifth of the new issue (#7) of The Lifted Brow has been posted online! It includes my story "Africa" along with work by Diane Williams, AE Reiff, Robert Shearman, Chris Somerville, Jimmy Chen, Kim Chinquee, Bryce Wolfgang Joiner, Chris Currie and Joel Van Noord! The Lifted Brow is a beast! Watch for the other four fifths of this issue, available in August.

Notnostrums!

2010-04-12T16:15:00.001-07:00

Baseball

2010-04-09T06:10:00.000-07:00

-The annual Hobart baseball issue is live with stories by Pasha Malla, Kelcy Wilburn, Nicholas Mainieri, Thomas Mundt and an excerpt from Billy Lombardo's novel, The Man with Two Arms. Plus Seth Pollins interviews Billy Lombardo!

-I was pleased to find out that my story "Wyoming" will soon appear in JMWW. Many thanks to the super David Erlewine and Jen Michalski for taking this one.

-Like JMWW and a ton of other great mags, Hobart is now using the Submishmash submission manager. This program is amazing. It's intuitive and easy to use, makes managing submissions and different months and issues easy and has centralized our processes in really helpful ways. No more lost subs! Plus, it's free to independent journals and presses, which I think is both generous and necessary. There is no need to have a server or any particular knowledge of computers (which is great for a person like me). And the submishmash people are amazingly helpful. As a writer, submishmash is also wonderful. I've always really liked the CLMP manager, but one thing that bugs me is having to log into five separate sites to withdraw a story. With submishmash, all the stories I've submitted to journals that use the system are right there on one page. This means I can also keep track of comments/rejections/etc. easily. Also, submissions are saved so if I upload a file once, I can submit it several times without uploading it every time. Big thanks to Michael FitzGerald and the rest of the submishmash team for making this happen.

-Dzanc has posted the ToC for Best of the Web 2010. You can see it right here. My story "Family" from Necessary Fiction is in there, along with work by these folks: Chris Bachelder, Brian Baldi, Elissa Bassist, Mary Biddinger, Kyle Booten, Robert Bradley, Emily Bromfield, Rachel Bunting, Aaron Burch, Robert Olen Butler, Dan Chaon, Kim Chinquee, Myfanwy Collins, Kristiana Colón, Thomas Cooper, Lydia Copeland, Elizabeth Crane, Michael Czyzniejewski, Oliver de la Paz, Alison Doernberg, Kasandra Duthie, Elizabeth Ellen, Claudia Emerson, Brian Evenson, Lucas Farrell, Sasha Fletcher, Scott Garson, MollyGaudry, Matthew Glenwood, Amelia Gray, Mary Hamilton, Leslie Harrison, Matt Hart, Christine Hartzler, Donora Hillard, Lily Hoang, Dave Housley, Jac Jemc, Stephen Graham Jones, Sean Kilpatrick, Matthew Kirkpatrick, Stokely Klasovsky, Kendra Kopelke, Krystal Langwell, Emma Lannie, Charles Lennox, Sara Levine, Jie Li, Sean Lovelace, Josh Maday, Ravi Mangla, Peter Markus, Meredith Martinez, James McCormick, Steven McDermott, David McLendon, Mary Miller, Kyle Minor, Ander Monson, Stefani Nellan, Amber Norwood, Frank O'Connor, Cami Park, Jennifer Pieroni, Julie Platt, Michelle Reale, Nanette Rivera, Dave Rowley, Joanna Ruocco, Gary Rzicnek, Christine Schutt, Amy Lee Scott, Matthew Simmons, Sarah Sloat, Sue Standing, Leigh Stein, Angi Becker Stevens, Terese Svoboda, August Tarrier, J.A. Tyler, Pamela Uschuk, Anne Valente, William Walsh, David Welch, Brandi Wells, Elanor Wilner, Kevin Wilson, Angela Woodward, Barbara Yien, Rachel Yoder, Lisa Zaran.

I mean...jeez.

New elimae

2010-03-02T06:14:00.000-08:00

-The new issue of elimae is live and features amazing poems and stories by some of my favorite UMass people: Christy Crutchfield, Gale Marie Thompson and Hilary Plum! Congrats, guys! It's a great issue, as always. elimae has long been one of my go-to journals for spending time with some good reading. This issue also features work by Elizabeth Ellen, Mel Bosworth, PH Madore, Lincoln Michel, Greg Gerke and this nugget of greatness from Jason Downey. It's a seriously amazing issue. Check it out.

-"Changes like that never bothered my heart." -R.I.P. Barry Hannah.

March Hobart

2010-03-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

- The March Hobart is now live, featuring stories by Ethel Rohan, Andrew Brininstool, Alex Pollack, Neil de la Flor and Craig Davis. Plus Amy Minton interviews Mattox Roesch and Michael Kimball interviews Ingrid Burrington. Read and enjoy!

Adam Robison and Other Poems by Adam Robinson

2010-02-16T20:19:00.001-08:00

-All, click here to preorder Adam Robinson's debut poetry collection, Adam Robison and Other Poems, from Narrow House Press. Narrow House is having some trouble getting this book paid for and needs help. So preorder. Seriously. Adam's poetry is awesome and with Publishing Genius Press, he does tons for our corner of the world. Plus, I want to see the copy I preordered a few months ago. Get on it!

PANK 4

2010-02-12T05:22:00.000-08:00

-PANK 4 arrived the other day and it is enormous. It's got my story "Ladies' Night" inside, which is about a bowling alley and breasts. Yeah, I don't know about it either. The rest of the issue, though, is seriously amazing. Work by: Lauren Becker, Angi Becker Stevens, Summer Block, Melinda Blount, Aaron Burch, Ryan W. Bradley, Randall Brown, Rita D. Costello, Kristina Marie Darling, Craig Davis, Ryan Dilbert, Max Dunbar, Stevie Lee Edwards, David Erlewine, Moe Folk, Travis Fortney, AD Jameson, Elisa Gabbert, Karen Gentry, Alicia Gifford, Barry Graham, Kevin Grauke, Katherine Grosjean, Sarah Harste, Travis Hessman, Sarah Hilary, Justin Heifetz, Kyle Hemmings, Bob Hicok, Donora Hillard, Shane Jones, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Matt Kirkpatrick, Laurence Klavan, Sarah Layden, Laura LeHew, Lisa Lewis, Kirsty Logan, Sandee Lyles, Taylor Mali, Jen Michalski, Steven McDermott, Kyle Minor, Adam Moorad, Joel Patton, Jennifer Pieroni, Meg Pokrass, Coralie Reed, Ryan Ridge, Andrew Roe, Ethel Rohan, Kathleen Rooney, Emily Rosko, Francine Rubin, Nick Sansone, Peter Schwartz, Gregory Sherl, Matthew Simmons, Audri Sousa, Sarah Sweeney, JA Tyler, Jared Walls, Jared Ward, Brandi Wells, Lauren Wheeler, Kevin Wilson, Bill Yarrow, and Erin York. You can buy a copy here. Many thanks to Roxane Gay, M. Bartley Seigel and the rest of the PANK staff for including my story!

-Speaking of PANK and awesome, Aaron Burch's chapbook How to Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew also arrived the other day from PANK. The storypoemshybrids in this chapbook absolutely kill me. This is a such a great little book. You can, (and should) if you haven't already, order a copy here.

-And speaking of Aaron Burch (see the way I'm doing this...) the new issue of Hobart has been live for a couple days now and it too is rad. Part 2 of Jim Ruland's interview with Laird Hunt is up and it is great. So is Matthew Simmon's interview with Kevin Sampsell in which they discuss Kevin's newly-released memoir, A Common Pornography, which is definitely on my soon to read list. Check out "Jailbreak" at Fifty-Two Stories if you need any convincing. The February issue is rounded out by stories from Jan LaPerle, Lydia Ship, David William Hill, Brandi Wells, and Rob Carney.

-And a quick note about another book I've been looking forward to: Justin Taylor's story collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever is out! Read "Tennessee" over at Fifty-Two Stories for a taste. I can't wait until summer comes and I can catch up on all this reading.

Best of the Web 2010

2010-02-02T19:58:00.000-08:00

-My story "Family," which was first published in Necessary Fiction, has been selected for inclusion in the Dzanc Best of the Web 2010 anthology. I am unbelievably excited about this. I've really enjoyed the previous years' anthologies and based on the buzz the selections have made this year on blogs and facebook, I'm eager to see the newest edition. Many, many thanks to Steve Himmer and Necessary Fiction for taking this story and big thanks to Matt, Steven, Dan, Kathy and the rest of the Dzanc folks, first for taking on such a wonderful and important project, and also for including my story.

Northville Review

2010-01-12T12:34:00.000-08:00

-Today, my story "This Is Where You Are at Home" is up at the Northville Review! The issue also has work by: Ethel Rohan, Greg Gerke, Thomas Mundt, Julie Innis, Chris Castle, D.J. Morris and Katarina Boudreaux. It looks great. Thanks to Erin for the chance with this one. I'm looking forward to checking out the rest of the issue.

-The Tyrant is open to submissions now, and taking them via email, which is rad. Way to go Tyrant.

-I've been hearing rumors (read: I think I remember reading this on the internet someplace) that PANK 4 and Aaron Burch's chapbook ship the 15th! Super.

January Hobart

2010-01-05T12:12:00.001-08:00

-The January issue of Hobart is now live. Stories by Karl Taro Greenfeld, Stace Budzko, Amy L. Clark and Matthew Lansburgh and an interview with Laird Hunt by Jim Ruland! Enjoy.

-The Lifted Brow, an Australian journal that is doing really amazing things (besides accepting me, of course), yesterday took one of my short-short stories, "Africa," for an upcoming issue. TLB is a cool-looking journal. The previous issues have contributors that make me feel both tiny and very happy to be included. "Africa" is from a project I'm working on that has something to do with maps and atlases and travel and fathers. Anyway, I'm excited about this. Thanks to team TLB for having me!

-Between Christmas gifts and gift cards, I loaded up on books these past couple of weeks. Here's an incomplete-off-the-top-of-my head list:

Invite, Glen Pourciau
The Quick and the Dead, Joy Williams
Aliens of Affection, Padgett Powell
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, Laura van den Berg
Stories of Happy People, Lars Gustafsson
Letting Loose the Hounds, Brady Udall
Tabloid Dreams, Robert Olen Butler
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Grace Paley
The Law of Averages, Frederick Barthelme
Best American Non-Required Reading 2009
Dress Your Family in Corduroy, David Sedaris
One Story subscription
Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson
Dogs on the Cross, Aaron Gwyn

Yes.

Avery 5!

2009-12-21T13:40:00.001-08:00

Avery 5 is available for pre-order! You can see a picture of the cover over there to the left and also at the Avery site, where you can pre-order. So, yeah, do that.

On the Avery blog, you can find sneak previews of each story! They look pretty great. Here's mine:

"For Out of the Heart Proceed" by Jensen Beach:

Two days before he was supposed to move to Cleveland with his mother and her husband, I took my son to the mall to buy his first winter coat. Gene sat quietly in the passenger seat. I could feel him building to another one of his questions. Lately he’d been coming up with impossibilities like, “What is funny?” or “Why don’t birds have teeth?” We’d spent hours driving around, or sitting in parks if the weather was nice, discussing the answers. Just as the mall came into view a couple blocks ahead, Gene asked if I knew what ninjas were.

“They’re warriors,” I said, “from Japan.”

“Ancient Japan,” he said.

“What’s the difference?”

“It’s the same, only older.”

-I'm excited for this issue. Thanks to Emma, Adam and Stephanie.

December Hobart

2009-12-05T07:35:00.000-08:00

-December Hobart is up (as of a few days, actually. I'm slow). Check out awesome stories by Kuzhali Manickavel, Xhenet Aliu, A.J. Patrick Liszkiewicz, Trent England and Glen Pourciau plus Anna Clark interviews Katie Bowler and Matthew Specktor!

Everyday Genius

2009-11-30T09:41:00.000-08:00

-My story, "We Cannot Cross the River" is up today at Everyday Genius. The super Joe Young was guest editing this month and I'm honored to close out a wonderful four weeks of stories and poems and graphic stories and things. Thanks to Joe! Here's the first paragraph:

We cannot cross the river until it freezes. Bekker predicts January. For food we gather leaves, berries and roots from the thick forest behind the cabin. Suarez boils what we find into a revolting paste that we spoon into our mouths with dirty fingers. Winslow ate a spider he plucked from the web that now covers the ceiling and much of the north wall. We are retreating into nature. Being swallowed up by it. A colony of roots has broken through the tired plank floor.

-Issue Six call for submissions at Annalemma. Theme: sacrifice. Annalemma is seriously one of the best looking journals out there. Plus, it's great reading. Anyway, submit.

-Keyhole is running a free shipping sale on already reduced priced books and subscriptions. Ends today!

-Opium #9 is out.

-Quick Fiction 16 is out, too.

November Hobart

2009-11-08T06:17:00.001-08:00

-The November issue of Hobart is up, featuring work by Justin Hamm, Brian Mihok, Roxane Gay and Chad Simpson, plus an interview with Victor LaValle!

-Matt Bell's story "The Cartographer's Girl" is in the new Gulf Coast, which just arrived in my mailbox the other day. I like everything about this journal--the design, the mix of fiction, non, poetry, reviews, etc. And Matt's story is, as always, superb.

Waccamaw

2009-10-30T12:29:00.001-07:00

My story "To the World I'll Be Buried" is now up at Waccamaw, alongside stories by Greg Gerke, Ted Chiles, Rachel Furey, Zachary Vickers and Andrew Roe.

Here's the beginning of "To the World I'll Be Buried":

Ben sat on the edge of the bed, watching Molly struggle with a clasp on a new wine-red blouse. Her arms were contorted behind her neck and her elbows poked the air. “You look like an insect,” Ben said. “You want help?”

She turned her back to him. “The top one,” she said. “What kind of insect? A preying mantis? A mosquito?” She held her hair up with one hand and swayed like she could still hear music.

I'm super excited about this issue and can't wait to dig in. And as always with Waccamaw, the Non-Fiction and Poetry sections look great too.

I've been enjoying this journal for past year and a half or so it has been online and I couldn't be happier to have my story along such a great group of writers and poets.

-Speaking of recent and upcoming publications, my story "For out of the Heart Proceed" which is forthcoming in Avery has been summarized very neatly over at the Avery blog with other teasers from that issue. Avery 5 should be out in the next month or so. Feel free to subscribe.

PANK, The Collagist & More

2009-10-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

-Aaron Burch, Hobart editor, has won the first PANK Chapbook Competition for his chapbook, HOW TO TAKE YOURSELF APART, HOW TO MAKE YOURSELF ANEW: notes and instructions from/for a father. It'll be published in January 10 and will be available packaged together with PANK 4 and also separately. I had the pleasure of reading this in manuscript form and it is a truly great little book. I couldn't be happier for Aaron and PANK. I've pasted the runners up below. Congrats to all!

Runners Up (in no particular order):
Tree Riesener A Kmart Kind of Suicide
Paula Bomer Baby
Tim Jones-Yelvington Evan’s House…
Erin Fitzgerald Passive Aggressive
Ethel Rohan If Only We Were Seahorses
Pedro Ponce Homeland
Laura LeHew Silence
Stephen Mills This Side Up
Jensen Beach The Dark is What
Andrew Borgstrom We Are an Accident

-I'm late to the party with this, but I've been enjoying the newest issue of The Collagist for the past week or so. Fiction from Roxane Gay, Matthew Derby, Catherine Zeidler & Sarah Norek. Plus novel excerpts from Norman Lock and Hesh Kestin. I've only read the fiction so far, but the poetry and non-ficiton and review are looking good as usual, too.

-Dogzplot is reading for a MAGIC issue!

-We're all about chapbooks over at the Hobart blog this month. If you have any news about Chapbooks, contests, readings, reviews, interviews, feel free to email Hobart with tips or any other info. We'd love to have some other voices up on the blog, so get in touch if you're into it.

-The Collagist is running a flash fiction contest until November 15. Kim Chinquee is judging. That alone is reason to submit.

Keyhole

2009-10-06T05:51:00.001-07:00

-I got my contributor copy of Keyhole 8 yesterday and, man, I got to say, this is one great journal. I've been working my way through the fiction and poetry and really enjoying it all. Great new work by some old favorites and some writer's I've not yet read. I can't wait to dig into the rest here. Peter and team Keyhole do great work.

-Keyhole's iPhone and iPod Touch app is now available for free (!) in the itunes store.

October Hobart!

2009-10-02T11:49:00.001-07:00

- The October issue of Hobart is now live with stories by Lucy Corin, David Holub, Reynard Seifert, Andrew Roe and Kevin Wilson! Plus interviews with Molly Gaudry about her upcoming "novella in verse" We Take Me Apart, which looks rad, and Patrick Dewitt by Hobart Interview genius, Matthew Simmons, in which they discuss Patrick's novel, Ablutions.

- Speaking of Matthew, his novella "A Jello Horse" (Publishing Genius Press), one of my favorite books of recent months, is now in its second printing and has been reviewed in The Believer by the always great Jim Ruland. Jim's approach here is really interesting. He forgoes the usual "This + This = Pretty Good, but This Right Here = Could Maybe Have Been Better" critical algebra and instead writes a letter to Matthew about the book. It's a cool approach and really perfect for "A Jello Horse." Anyway, check out both the review and the novella. Congrats to Matthew on a second printing.

- And speaking of Adam Robinson of PGP, my story "Letter of Application for the Position of Your Lover and/or Boyfriend" is forthcoming in the Chapbook Genius series!

Carry on!

Hey there,

2009-09-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

- My story "Family" is up today at Necessary Fiction.

- The Boom Chapbook Contest is underway over at Bateau.

- PANK's new design is tasty. As is the new issue. Also, they are having a contest or two.

- There's an interview with Dan Chaon over at The Rumpus right now.

- Hobart is looking for an intern!

- The second issue of the Collagist is up.

New Hobart!

2009-09-02T14:47:00.001-07:00

- The September issue of Hobart is up today and it includes my interview with Kyle Beachy. We discuss skateboarding, Denmark, humor, and St. Louis among many other fine, fine things. Kyle is a great writer and one generous dude. I am really pleased with the interview and hope you all want to buy some books.

- Over at Keyhole, Gabe Durham has an interview with Edward Mullany in which they both drop buckets full of serious knowledge. Edward is a Hobat contributor and wonderful writer who co-edits a journal I've been meaning to mention here for sometime now: Matchbook. This is a journal for short-short fiction which also publishes critical essays by each writer along side the stories -- an innovative and fascinating idea. There some good stuff in the archives over there.

Swink, at last.

2009-08-27T04:22:00.000-07:00

-At long last, my "Letter to the Metric System" is up at Swink today in their Dead Letter Office.

2009-08-25T03:30:00.000-07:00

-You can now pre-order issue 8 of Keyhole Magazine, which will feature my story "Orion." Peter Cole and the Keyhole folks do amazing things and I'm really excited to get a look at this new issue in December. Plus: Robert Lopez. I mean, c'mon.

-PANK is having a chapbook competition! This is going to be rad. They also have a new design over at the blog. Man, Roxane Gay and the rest of the PANK editorial team are tireless and awesome.

-A friend showed me this website the other night. Instant Origami is the funniest thing I've seen a long time. Apparently, the creator of IO has been getting angry emails from origami enthusiasts the world over, which adds to the hilarity a thousand "fold." HA!

-We're going home tomorrow after almost three months out traveling (by which I mean sitting around in houses not my own). I'm really excited to get home and get started on a new semester at school and get back into a regular routine of reading, writing and eating normally. Three months of vacation is too many. I never thought I'd feel that way, but my god, three months is a long time.

-My interview with Kyle Beachy is going up at Hobart next month, but just a short plug for his novel beforehand. THE SLIDE is a truly great book. It's funny, touching and wonderful. I suggest you all: Pick up a copy and read it immediately. I've read a lot of great novels this year and this one is very near the top of the list.

The Collagist

2009-08-18T01:15:00.000-07:00

-Dzanc Books' latest instance of awesome, The Collagist, edited by Matt Bell, is now live with its first issue. It features fiction by Chris Bachelder, Kevin Wilson, Gordon Lish, Matthew Salesses, Kim Chinquee and poetry, essays and reviews by Ryan Call, David McLendon, Ander Monson, Anna Clark, Charles Jensen, Oliver de la Paz, Christina Kallery, John Madera, Dawn Raffel and an excerpt from Laird Hunt's forthcoming novel, Ray of the Star. Oh my. The people over at Dzanc always put together amazing projects and this is no exception. Go read it.

-Keyhole Magazine has just taken my story "Orion" for their upcoming eighth issue. Keyhole is a great journal and I'm pleased to have a story coming out there.

-Noö Journal (helmed by my friend Mike Young) has just put out their tenth issue. Ryan and Mike always impress me with Noö and I'm excited to dig in here. So far I've only just taken a look at the poetry (Ari Feld, Ron Padgett, and others), but the prose side of things with work by Kim Chinquee, Bonnie ZoBell, Matt Bell and others looks equally delicious. Good work guys. Noö is available for free at bookstores and coffee shops all over the place, and can also be read in its entirety online.

-Juked is one of my favorite online journals. They consistently publish great work and I'm never disappointed when I wander over that way. Especially not today when I saw (a few days late but whatever) that my friend Anne Holmes has a poem ("I Am Not a Satellite") published there.

Updates...

2009-08-10T07:45:00.000-07:00

-Up today: I've been interviewed by Roxane Gay for the PANK blog. We discuss gay marriage, Sweden, Hobart and the spork. They do a fun interview series over at PANK, and I'm happy to be included. Thanks, Roxane.

-In other news, Avery: An Anthology of New Fiction just took my story "For out of the Heart Proceed" for their upcoming fifth issue. Past contributors include Scott Garson, Mike Young, Blake Butler, Ryan Call, Glen Pourciau, Kevin Canty and Hannah Tinti. Good stuff.

-Speaking of Scott Garson. Over at his blog, Patterns of Silver Light and So Forth, he's got an interesting post about realism in fiction, which can be read here. It's a thoughtful and insightful post, touching on some stuff I've been lately thinking about when it comes to realist fiction. I agree with most his thoughts and hope I don't misrepresent him or his points. The question that realist fiction raises in a reader's mind (Does this represent the world I also live in?) is essentially a boring question, one that gets in the way of the, what, proper and full reading experience; and the writer of strictly representational fiction, aiming to answer this question positively, provides an artifice that is somehow watered down, somehow applies to the greatest number of lives. This both an impossibility and a failure of purpose, of execution, of art (or whatever). I think this goal of giving the reader, as Scott calls it, "consensus characters, about whom a majority might say, yes, that's us, these are our lives," is misguided. As writers, this is not where we should aim.

I'm far more interested in the "realism" of a writer like Joy Williams, whose stories for sure could happen, but who does not at all seem concerned with this possibility. Take the story "Charity" from Honored Guest for instance. Janice and her husband Richard are driving through New Mexico. They are on their way to Santa Fe for a vacation of some sort. Richard and Janice are not getting along well. There is a clear underlying tension between them; they argue intensely about the smallest things. Janice is fascinated by the spirituality, the enlightenment she sees around her. Richard finds this mostly annoying. So far so good. Two people, presumably a married couple, drive a car down the highway. They argue. This so far is a good example what Scott calls "consensus fiction." IEverybody, surely, has driven down a road and argued with a spouse/child/parent/friend/whatever. Ok, so at a rest stop Janice sees a family in need of help. She wants to give the family money. Richard does not. When Richard stops for gas a few miles down the road from the rest stop, Janice takes the car and returns to the family. And here the story takes a turn. Janice ends up stuck with this family, and with her own good intentions. Richard disappears, literally, from the story, from Janice's reality, never to return. But the story remains firmly in grounded in the real. This still could happen. It's highly unlikely, but plausible. This turn interests me. It represents a deliberate divergence from consensus fiction, to something greater; to, well, art. Williams doesn't give us a story that goes like this: husband and wife argue. They arrive at their destination, eat dinner in their hotel restaurant, maybe have a couple drinks, and go sleep still miserable, stuck in the endless loop of a loveless, mutually antagonistic marriage. Or the happier version: maybe they argue a little, have a few drinks, realize how much they really still love each other and live happily ever after. Maybe a little vacation was all they needed. No, Williams breaks the pattern of consensus, of recognition, by removing Richard from the story altogether. And then replacing him with this family, through whom Janice is forced to examine her intentions, not just with this family (i.e. who is providing the charity of the ironic title?) but, we assume, in her life. She violates what might most likely be true, replacing it with a clearer emotional truth. That is, the consensus here among readers might instead be an emotional understanding. We've all been Janice, thinking that we are offering help (charity) when really we're getting it. To me this turn, from what may be recognized as being a true event to what maybe understood to be a true emotion is really interesting. The actual mechanism of this is, I think, to be found in the hinting toward something unreal, to some deeper level of reality at which the events of this story might be taking place. We get, for example, on Janice's last search of the gas station where she has left Richard, two enormous dogs chewing on "something" (purposefully vague signifier here) grey and wet with sinew and blood. Had the story gone on to depict Richard actually being eaten by two dogs, it would have left the realm of real possibility completely. Obviously, dogs don't consume humans. Instead we are given a nudge in that direction. It's not clear that this is what has happened to Richard, but the mention of the dogs is no accident. Something has happened to Richard. He has left this place, and Janice will not find him.

Anyway, I'm writing this kind of quickly, so apologies if it's sloppy or ill conceived, but I really enjoyed Scott's post and thought I'd add my thoughts here.

-That's all.

Hobart Contributor News!

2009-08-05T02:30:00.000-07:00

I posted this over at the Hobart blog too, but here it is again:

One of the great things about being an editor at Hobart is being introduced to new (to us) writers, getting to watch where they go in their work and how they get there. There really is nothing like seeing a story we accepted or a writer whose work we fell in love with in the slushpile go on to even greater things. Eugene Cross, whose story "Hunters" appeared in the December 08 issue of Hobart, recently got in touch with news about the story:

On Sunday August 16th, WordTheatre, a nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping the love of language and literature alive through the ancient tradition of oral storytelling, will present "Thrill or Peril: Tales of Adventure" at M Bar in Hollywood. The actor Xander Berkeley who has starred in such films as Taken and Year One, will be reading "Hunters" as part of the evening's program. "Hunters" will be read alongside several other stories, including three originally published in The New Yorker.

You can find out more at the Word Theater website. If you live in or near Los Angeles, you should go check this out.

Congrats, Eugene!

Hobart 10 DVD Bonus Material Issue

2009-08-02T23:57:00.000-07:00

The August edition of Hobart is up. It's a DVD Bonus Material Issue, as is the tradition at Hobart, and it's awesome. I've only just started to dig in but it looks pretty great. The cover of this issue is my favorite so far, and I'm really excited about stories by Hobart friends Alicia Gifford, Mike Young, B.J. Hollars and Blake Butler. Plus work by: Claire Vaye Watkins, Amy Clark, Daniel Nester, JoeAnn Hart, Curtis Dawkins, Brad Gayman, Colleen Hollister, Lori Ostlund and comics by Lydia Conklin and John Dermot Woods.

-Matt Bell's The Collectors (Caketrain) is now available for free online. This is something Matt and Willows Wept Press did with How the Broken Lead the Blind as well, and I think it's a noble idea that Matt is committed to here: to make his work as widely available as possible. I love Matt's work and can't to check this out. His forthcoming collection (How They Were Found) from Keyhole looks mighty fine too.

-The new issue of Scott Garson's Wigleaf is up, marking the return from summer. Work by: Dave Housely, Ravi Mangla, Elizabeth Ellen and many more.

-I've got a story, "Family," forthcoming in Necessary Fiction in September, which I am looking forward to. I've been enjoying Necessary Fiction quite a lot lately. The current story posted over there is by Steven McDermott, editor extraordinaire of Storyglossia. Storyglossia, incidentally, is currently reading for an issue themed: Musical Obsession.

Dogzplot Reading!

2009-07-28T12:02:00.001-07:00

Dogzplot reading this weekend in Atlantic City. I wish I could make it. Check out the list of readers.

Also, a little late, but the new issue of Quick Fiction is out and includes my story "All the World's Oceans," plus stories from folks such as Elizabeth Ellen, Dan Wickett (making a rare-outside of the EWN appearance, woot!) Scott Garson, Andrew Micheal Roberts, my good friend Mike Young and my new colleague at Hobart's webediting hideout, Andrea Kneeland. I'm out of the country until the end of next month so haven't had a chance to read this yet, but QF never disappoints; it's one of the most readable and most enjoyable journals out there. Get some.

That's all.

New Hobart!

2009-06-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

The June issue of Hobart is up. I'm really pleased with this issue. Stories from Eric Vrooman, Ravi Mangla, Kyle Beachy, Jeff Kass and a collaborative piece by BJ Hollars & Brendan Todt. Also: a sneak peek at the cover of issue #10! Carhenge, people. Carhenge depicted. Check out that contrib list, too! Plus: my very first interview! This one is with Jed Berry, author of one of my favorite books of the year, The Manual of Detection. Seriously, if you haven't read this novel yet: do. And a plug for a future interview: I'll be interviewing Kyle Beachy soon about his recent novel THE SLIDE, which I am also really excited about.

Dan Wickett at The Emerging Writers' Network is doing a whole month reviewing/critiquing/presenting stories from the new issue of Unsaid. Dan is a tireless and amazing reviewer and advocate of all things lit. So, be on the look out for updates at the EWN site. Enjoy.

New weekly fiction at Spork.

Over at HTMLgiant, Elizabeth Ellen (writer and organizer of writers' debauchery extraordinaire and good friend) is the subject of Ryan Call's ongoing Word Spaces project. Triple points to EE for the pic of Skeet Ulrich!

I'm in California for the next couple weeks, then off to Sweden!

Here's my summer reading-list-in-progress:

Barry Hannah, Airships
Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust
Padgett Powell, Edisto & Typical: stories
William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow
Evan Connell, Mrs. Bridge
Alic McDermott, That Night
William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
Saul Bellow, Seize the Day
Doctorow, Ragtime
Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son

I'm please with this list so far, and would love further suggestions. I'm hoping to prepare a short critical response to each book with the aim of exploring potential teaching opportunities as regards craft and/or language. I tried to compile the list to provide a broad range of possible approaches and subjects. I think some wild and amazing Barry Hannah will be just what I need in the midst of a miserable Swedish summer. Give me more, give me more...

SPORK, and more.

2009-05-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

My story "Training Exercise" is up today at Spork I'm really pleased about this. I have had a big lit-nerd crush on Spork for a long time and am super, duper excited they are back now and decided to take a story of mine. Plus: Check out the archives for recent work by Evelyn Hampton, Amelia Gray, Shya Scanlon, James DiGiovanna, Jilly Dawson, Kelly Hellworth and Ander Monson.

The reading in Ann Arbor went great, thanks for asking. Met a whole gaggle of great folks and heard some awesome reading. It was especially nice to meet up with Julia Wertz again, whom I hadn't seen in a few years (if you don't already read The Fart Party, you should fix that and start). Thanks to Aaron Burch and Elizabeth Ellen for organizing the weekend and putting up with us all for so long. Let's do it again next year!

I picked up some great books while I was there: Matthew Simmon's A Jello Horse is a truly great book. It is funny and sad and perfect. I loved it. A Jello Horse is out now from Publishing Genius Press, which is run by Adam Robinson of "Blake Butler and Adam Robinson wrestle with Bananas" fame; Barry Graham's The National Virginity Pledge (Another Sky Press), which I got to hear Barry read from and am really enjoying so far. Barry's stories are awesome; and Sam Pink's I Am Going to Clone Myself and Then Kill the Clone and Eat It (Paper Hero Press). Sam read from this last week and it was wild and strange and right in good, good ways. I can't wait to dig in. Let's see, other folks with books I didn't get (thanks, guys): Matt Bell, whose books The Collectors and How the Broken Lead the Blind (Caketrain and Willows Wept Press, respectively) are both now available but sold out! Fear not, Matt Bell probably has nine more books forthcoming shortly. Matt is a superb writer and one generous dude. It was great to meet him finally. Same with Mary Miller, whose book Big World (Short Flight Long Drive Books) was one of my favorites from the year so far. I really loved this book. She read from both BW and her chapbook Less Shiny (out and sold out with Magic Helicopter Press). Blake Butler's Ever is out from Calamari Press, which I picked up when he was here in Amherst reading a couple months back, and the forthcoming Scorch Atlas from Featherproof Books. Speaking of both finally and forthcoming, Aaron Burch's How to Predict the Weather drops (yes, I said it) in December 09 from Keyhole; and Elizabeth Ellen's newest is out soon from Paper Hero Press. It's called Mouthfeel and is included in the Foxforce 5, chapbook collective! Joe Young was there. It was awesome to finally meet him. Joe is one of my favorite writers of really short stories. It was also great to finally meet Dan Wickett, who through the Emerging Writers Network and Dzanc Books is responsible for some of my very favorite things happening in literature right now. Mike and Julie Alber were awesome (except for when Julie kicked my ass at ping pong). Mike's reading on Saturday night at the comic book shop was the high point of a hilarity. Sean Kilpatrick showed up for, like, twenty seconds, but I didn't meet him.

I think that covers it. Needless to say, it was a great weekend full of lots of reading and drinking and merriment of all forms. Can't wait for next year!

2009-05-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

Well, there's that. I'll be reading in Ann Arbor in a couple weeks with all my best internet friends forever (biffs?). I'm very excited.

I'm especially excited to meet Aaron and EE, whom I have known for way too long without ever seeing in real life. The internet is a weird, weird thing. But also amazing.

The new issue of Hobart is up now. New fiction from Stephanie Johnson, T.M. DeVos, Sean Lovelace, Scott Garson & David Aichenbaum. And interviews with Norman Lock and Joe Meno! There are some new names on that list for me, which I can't wait to read. I love me some Sean Lovelace and Scott Garson, and can't wait to read these new stories either. Way to go, Matt. This is is a great issue. Next month, my interview with Jed Berry goes up. If you haven't read The Manual of Detection yet, do so immediately. It's truly a great book.

Updates...

2009-04-23T10:40:00.001-07:00

I've got stories forthcoming in the next Quick Fiction and in the next PANK. Word.

The semester is winding down, finally. Ann Arbor in May is going to be rad. Lots of good readings and meetings of folks.

I'm considering moving this blog. I'm bored with it.

Scarecrow

2008-10-19T19:58:00.000-07:00

Behold the scarecrow that Noah and I made on Saturday at the Belchertown Public Library. Noah picked the outfit, I stuffed it.

Reading

2008-09-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

I'll be reading next week in New York at this event at Supreme Trading in Williamsburg on September 27 starting at 8:30 in the P.M. If you are at all so inclined, come join me for an evening of public speaking and abject terror, I mean literary fun. It should be dope. My students, who are 19 and experts on such things, although not such experts, it turns out, when it comes to the ins and outs of basic English usage, tell me no one actually says dope anymore. So there you have it.

The new issue of Hobart print is out. Buy a copy or two. I'll be selling copies at the above-mentioned dope reading, so feel free to buy yours there. Or you could go order here. While you're there, check out the newest online issue, which is a Bonus Material from the Print Issue issue. It features tons of dope (did I overdo it with that?) stuff about games and other greatness. Julia Wertz, the She-ra of hilarious online comics has a funny story up. So, check it out.

In the meantime, enjoy a picture of a giant, child-eating Bobble Head about to consume its prey.

Or don't. I can't make the internet work right now. Enjoy said image in your minds.

Roger,
Jensen

Big Move

2008-07-21T05:33:00.000-07:00

A week from today we leave for Massachusetts. I'll be attending the MFA program at UMass, Amherst.

In the meantime, here are some recent links:

-Bateau came out! It's super. They've put together a really gorgeous mag, which I enjoyed and am honored to be a part of.

-The new Opium is out. It includes my story, "The Weather Factory," which has little to do with weather or the environment, but nonetheless fits perfectly with the Go Green theme!

-The newest issue of Hobart is out. Every month, I keep getting prouder and prouder to work for this great mag. This month is really great. Every month is really great.

Long Lost

2007-09-12T11:38:00.001-07:00

Here I thought using blogger would be easier. Instead I find myself never using it. I'm caught up in school work and grad school applications at the moment, but here is some news:

-Bateau took a short-short called "Divine Messages." I'm very excited about this. This is James Grinwis's new mag and it looks pretty cool. Here is the address: http://www.bateaupress.org/.

-The new issue of Quick Fiction is coming out next month. The contributors look awesome.

-And speaking of awesome, the ever-brilliant Claudia Smith's chapbook, "The Sky Is a Well and Other Shorts" is out now from rose metal press. It goes without saying, but this book blew me away. Claudia is a fantastic writer and editor and all around great person. Many congrats to her. Buy this book!

-Up there to the right is a picture of a turtle.

First Post at the New Site

2007-05-25T01:18:00.000-07:00

I've changed my site again. Using blogger is just so much easier than trying to code everything. Especially because I never really knew what I was doing anyway.

On the right there are links to some of my stories posted online. Below those are some links to magazines which have published stories of mine on paper. Feel free to buy copies.

Up there to the left is a picture of a stove in the middle of the forest.