Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted contributor news, since I’ve been pretty busy with our new projects, like the Floodgate Poetry Series, the Soles Series of Stories, our forthcoming 2015 anthology, How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens, and another anthology still being formed, co-edited by H. L. Nelson and me, Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up To No Good. I’m pretty psyched about all of these projects.
Tina Connolly‘s Copperhead (sequel to the Nebula-nominated Ironskin) came out in November, and her story “On the Eyeball Floor”, which first appeared in Strange Horizons, came out in translation in the Argentinian magazine La Idea Fija. Her “Flash Bang Remember,” co-written with Caroline M. Yoachim, was featured in StarShipSofa 320.
David J. Daniels has a new chapbook, Indecency. It was co-winner of the 2012 Robin Becker Chapbook Prize, selected by Elena Georgiou, and published in a limited edition of 200 copies—if you’re lucky, Seven Kitchens Press still has copies available.
Chet Weise is the co-editor, with Third Man co-founder Ben Swank, of Language Lessons: Volume 1, the debut book by Third Man Books (a new division of Nashville’s Third Man Records), which was celebrated at AWP. Contributors include Jake Adam York, C.D. Wright, Brian Barker, and me.
This collection has so many endearing elements I fear I will not be able to do them justice here. The stories interweave so well that it can be read like a novel, but they are also different in big and small ways that create more than enough interest to keep on reading. I was up till 6am this morning completely captivated by the themes and excellent continuity of the stories. These themes are sometimes deep, metaphysical, existential – generally philosophical; but, they are measured by wry and observant humour. Nothing is left in the ether; this is one of the most satisfying short story collections I’ve ever read.
The characters, plots and themes are very graphic, perverse at times, shockingly so. But the writing is so good, that you find yourself flitting through the stories effortlessly, accepting one outrageous thing after another. You’re eager to turn the page to find out what grotesquely captivating character the author will dream up next.
I’m sitting here in the Dalek Pride t-shirt I got last week at Hypericon (a fun little science fiction and fantasy convention here in Nashville), pretty excited by all the stuff my peeps have done in the past month or so.
Also! We have a new book coming out tomorrow. Well, officially tomorrow, but actually it’s already up at Amazon and Barnes & Noble—which you’d already know if you followed us on Facebook or Twitter. Signs Over the Pacific and Other Stories is a collection of a dozen intertwined short stories by New Zealand author RJ Astruc, featuring airship crashes, Interpol agents, artificial intelligence, hologram cities, bioterrorism and psychic gamblers. Official announcement, naturally, tomorrow.
Seth Fried‘s “Notifications” is in The New Yorker. He and Julia Mehoke have a brand new webcomic, The FactSpace (e.g.: “FACT: Daylight Saving Time was invented to confuse the people who make time bombs.”)
Steven Saus is raising funds at Kickstarter for What Fates Impose, an anthology of original speculative stories about the complications of predicting the future.
Ducklings, I’m sorry. I’ve been busy enjoying my life and editing our upcoming titles, and have fallen behind on posting contributor news, so I’ma write this long-ass post and hope y’all will click through every one of these delicious links.
But first! If you live in Nashville, a couplethree events you should know about:
We’re having two readings this coming Saturday June 1st for Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days, at 11 am at the downtown library (Conference Center, Main Library First Floor, 615 Church Street, Nashville, TN; FB; NPL; Nashville Scene) and at 2 pm at East Side Story (1108 Woodland Street, Unit B, Nashville, TN; FB). Join Chet Weise, Tessa Mellas and Maggie Smith for readings from the end of days! Maggie Smith is the author of Lamp of the Body, Nesting Dolls and The List of Dangers. Trapeze aficionado Tessa Mellas is a lecturer at the Ohio State University. Chet Weise, the force behind the local Poetry Sucks! A Night of Poetry, Music, and All Sorts of Bad Language reading series, was once banned from Canada for playing rock-n-roll without a permit.
And speaking of Poetry Sucks!… I will be reading at their open mic night on Thursday, June 6th at Dino’s Bar and Grill (411 Gallatin Ave, Nashville, TN 37206; FB; Nashville Scene listing). They begin at 8 pm and end at 10 pm. Dino’s is very smoky so people with allergies may find it hard to take, but they have to-die-for cheeseburgers and fries and Poetry Sucks! is always a ridiculous good time with a great crowd. My portion will be 5-8 minutes long and I won’t know where I am in the line-up til that night. They turn off the grill when the readings start so you’ll want to arrive by 7 pm if you want to eat.
Hi ducklings. I’ve been pulled six ways from Sunday for the past month or two, so I am way behind on listing contributor news! So let’s just get through what we can over my lunch hour.
Kevin Pruferreading with Martha Serpas at Lone Star College-Montgomery on Thursday, April 18, at 7 p.m. Free, open to public; Library Building (Building F).
Okay, ducklings. Save the date! We’ve set up two Apocalypse Now readings for Saturday the 1st of June—one at 11 am at the Main Branch of the Nashville Public Library (which, if you’ve never been, is a gorgeous modern classical building that’s all limestone and marble with loads of light inside) and the other in the early afternoon at East Side Story (a great bookstore in East Nashville).
Apocalypse Now will be released in ebook form online this Friday! Are you excited? We sure as heckfire are. I’ve been talking with the printer (the urbane Sheridan Press) and the limited edition print copies should be ready to ship any moment now, too.
(I watched Groundhog Day last night, and have been saying “sure as heckfire” all day.)
Contributor Maggie Smith was featured last Friday in Technique Talk at Columbus Alive.
Simone Muenchreceived an NEA award for her poetic work Wolf Centos, some of which appears in the anthology.
TR Hummer‘s Available Surfaces: Essays on Poesis is reviewed in Inside Higher Ed.
Kelly Link‘s “Catskin” (also her story in Apocalypse Now) appeared in the December 2012 Lightspeed Magazine, alongside an author spotlight of Brian Evenson and “The Perfect Match” by 140 And Counting contributor Ken Liu… who also has two stories (“The Postman” and “Always Here“) in the November 2012 Intergalactic Medicine Show.
Finally, 140 And Counting contributor Stella Pierides self-published her poetry book In the Garden of Absence, and her “roaring traffic,” “whistling through” and “a thousand times” appeared in With Cherries on Top.
Wild celebration and exhaustion at Casa URB this week, because our Kickstarter campaign for Apocalypse Now has reached its goal! It’s still active until noon Central on Monday, and we’re hoping to make enough extra to print 250 extra books, to be able to sell them at some readings we have tentatively planned for Denver and Nashville and maybe some other places, and at the party we’ll be throwing at the AWP conference in March.
If you’re only interested in an ebook copy, this is still a good time to get it, because it’ll cost you $2 less than if you wait until it’s out on Amazon, B&N, the iStore, etc. (Our authors still get their regular royalties despite the discount, so no worries about exploitation. The only entities missing out are the corporations that run the online bookstores, which normally take 30 to 35% of the cover price.)
Apocalypse Now contributor Margaret Atwoodwas awarded the title of Companion of Literature, the highest honour in the Royal Society of Literature, on November 28th. A recording of her remarks will be available sometime in December in the RSL Library.
Vineland, New Jersey’s Cumberland County College is hostingJoyce Carol Oates as part of their One Book-One College reading campaign, on Tuesday, Dec. 4, at 7 p.m. It’s free and open to the public.
Strange Horizons (whose funding drive is still going strong) has posted their monthly round-up of their contributors’ news, and they include some URB alums: Elizabeth Barrette has been talking about serial poetry at the Poetree Dreamwidth community, and Peg Duthie (who in addition to being in 140 And Counting, also published her collection Measured Extravagance with URB) has a poem + photograph combo (“Hide“) published by unFold.
News for Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days contributors:Joyce Carol Oates is reading at New Jersey’s Ramapo Visiting Writers Series on November 12th; the UCD AdvocatefeaturesNicky Beer; and, Margaret Atwood is pairing with Naomi Alderman to write the young adult serial The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home. Incidentally, I had a chance to speak briefly with Atwood at the Nashville Public Library yesterday (where she was giving a public lecture about The Handmaid’s Tale and related topics) and she told me that her story in Apocalypse Now, “The Silver Astroturfer,” was written to be speculative, but that she’s since found out that it’s actually happening in China (she told me to google “the 50 cent kids“). Subscribers to the Sunday Times, by the way, can read it here (and the rest of you can read it when the book comes out).