8.14.2015

I AM AN ORCHID

Poet/friend Mike Young and I are thrilled to have our debut albums up on the extraordinary Black Cake website. Click around there for awhile and you'll have some cool company.




I've been having a good summer reading these gems of books. Each pic has a link to it. Dryland doesn't officially come out until 9/15. The D.H. Lawrence book you can get at most used books stores.








I'm really happy to have my story "Pee On Water" alongside heroes like Joy Williams and George Saunders in Ben Marcus's anthology NEW AMERICAN STORIES





1.15.2015

New Year!

Dear Internet,
I'm so thrilled to be the judge for the Ruth Stone First Book Prize! This is a contest for non-male writers who have yet to publish a book. Big Lucks is one of the coolest new presses alive!
 Click on the picture for more information!


If you feel behind in your fiction reading, check out this end-of-year roundup by Jacob Kaplan at Impose. And while you're at it, his band Perfect Teeth's first official album.


Check out this Bowie gif JT found!






Thank you to the great Heather Christle for putting some new poems of mine up at PEN.













9.12.2014

Minutes after being defeated by the Chess Machine, I've decided to update my blog

Poet/singer/songwriter/tennis figure, Mike Young was featured alongside debut novelist Christy Crutchfield in the Hampshire Gazette!  Our doorbell has been ringing nonstop with local fans asking Mike to sign their bodies.


Atlanta mastermind Blake Butler called "Sprezzatura" Mike's best book in his Vice Review.  Both Young's and Crutchfield's new books are available by the always relevant, always progressive Publishing Genius Press.  Look to PGP in the upcoming weeks for Madeline ffitch's first book "Valpariso, Round the Horn." (!)




I'm flattered that Brooklyn MFA star Jacob Kaplan (guitarist in the band Perfect Teeth) mentioned the poems I wrote in Western Beefs of America as part of his monthly column in the culture goldmine Impose Magazine.

Eagerly awaiting Mark Leidner's Western Beefs post, but in the meantime, here is a newer version of my favorite poetry performance of last year, Leidner's dance poem.



Here is a Weezer song you've probably never heard.



Here is a Velvet Underground song you've heard.



This is sort of old news by now, but more than thrilled that Harper Perennial is going to publish my first novel "Paulina & Fran" in 2015, and that Granta Books will release it in the U.K. in 2016.  So Glad to have met my agent Claudia Ballard and editor Cal Morgan!


Really loved the new Ben Lerner novel "10:04".  I've mentioned this on almost every platform I can think of: word-of-mouth, email, fbook, goodreads, repeated word-of-mouth, reading publicly in two airports, reading theatrically on the plane.  Now that I'm finished, I can finally read all the reviews/interviews/etc.


And I really loved the old poetry collection "Thin Kimono" by Michael Earl Craig.  Here is an interview I haven't read yet.  And maybe if you click this link, Google Books will let you paw through it a little.
 

In NBA news, very excited for Pau to join the Bulls! And for Lebron to return to the Cavs:)  




4.03.2014

Local News

The musical, lyrical, and comical C.S. Ward shot and edited a video in honor of the 50th Anniversary of Umass-Amherst's M.F.A. Program.  I'm glad to be included alongside Corwin Ericson, Dan Chelotti, Mira Bartok and others!

UMass MFA 50th from C.S. Ward on Vimeo.

John and I's wild story "Peer Confessions" is now available from New Herring Press, along with chapbooks by Marin Buschel, Bhanu Kapil and Laurie Weeks!  Here are the first two paragraphs:

Norene and I both want boyfriends. I am going to make mine spin like a statue on a music box. I’ll shine my flashlight all over him, and understand his penis and why it looks like that. Norene will have hers do her homework.


In my town there are two churches. Church Hello is new and white, an Olympic arena for lucky people. Their priest, Herb, drives a Cadillac to go muskie fishing. Our church is in an old Union cannon-ship used in the Civil War. Its enormous hull rises off the grass. There are portholes, and inside, canoe-shaped pews. The ceiling is canopied with thick white sails. It has an odd look, but Priest Paul says we are safe. He sounds far away. Priest Paul is the town’s only licensed orthodontist. He turns my metal with a key.



My very talented "Strange Page" Workshop is having a Reading on April 17th.  Here is the Facebook Event link.  Come by and be dazzled!  These writers are writing some of the best things I've read all year!  They are publishing in great places like Two Serious Ladies and Lit!





For the last few weeks, I've been lucky to participate in Flying Object's first Book Club-- a LAB reading of the epic Moby Dick, taught by the charismatic Melville scholar, Seth Landman.  It's been thought provoking to read this book for the first time and discuss it weekly with local readers, writers, performance artists, doctors, and teachers. The class is full (and at its midway point), but there are rumors Landman might teach this class again at a later date.



Lastly, if you live in the Western Mass area, consider taking my 
Serious Fiction Workshop :)



1.14.2014

THE NEW YEAR is HERE

Have you ever read the book "Desperate Characters" by Paula Fox?  It was written in 1970 and is one of the best books I've ever read.  I just read it for the second time.  It is brutal, but stunning!

I just went to search for a picture of the cover and found out that they made a movie version of it in 1971 with Shirley MacClaine... let's never see it!

Thanks to Jonathan Frazen for rediscovering the book and helping it back into print, and Chris Bachelder for teaching it at Umass-Amherst.

Fun Fact: Fox is Courtney Love's biological grandmother.




Here is a great end-of-year 2013 fiction round-up, full of links and authors to look out for




Here is an interview I did with Kallie Falandays for Lit Bridge about MOODS


Here is a song by John Maus I've been having fun listening to


And another by Janet Jackson that is even better






Do you have a group of poems you want to put in a chapbook?  Consider submitting to Flying Object's Chapbook contest.  Act fast! Submissions close on January 17th.

I'm almost done with my first novel "Paulina & Fran"! It's 48,??? words right now. I'm excited about it!  Besides that I've been playing chess against the computer and getting ready for my workshop "The Strange Page" that starts on January 27th at Flying Object.

10.09.2013

A Crackle in Your Ear

Sometimes updating this blog feels like writing "The Glaser Gazette" a twice ever published family newsletter I made in PrintShop (R.I.P.) on our Apple 2 GS (R.I.P.) many many years ago with the help of childhood best friend Jeff Puro (who has since moved on from his position at the Gazette).  But Mike Young updates his blog, and Jono had a pretty serious blog, etc.


Recently I rediscovered how great Jesus' Son is (duh!) and the lesser known collection "Escapes" by Joy Williams.  My copy of Escapes looks nothing like the one pictured.  For the first time I've been reading "Why Did I Ever" by Mary Robison, which is just as amazing as everyone told me it would be.  Who needs friends when you can spend your days with lovable lunatic narrators like this?




























October 1st marked an important date in local literature news--It was the 3rd anniversary of Flying Object!  Refurbished firehouse and house of words dreamt and founded by Guy Pettit! For the last three years, I've marveled at it, and parked by it, and taught writing there, and learned about reptiles there, and participated in readings and collaborative drawing nights, and danced and sweated there, and snuck into the apartment there, and fiddled with the lock there, and been surprised to see Luke there, or Ben Roylance there, and tried to discern Guy's moods there, and pushed aside the black curtain there.  (The editors at The Glaser Gazette would have never let such a sentence fly, but here there is more creative freedom).  

On October 18th, we celebrate FLYING OBJECT, and all the poetry of the world, and the people in these towns, and the wildly inspiring performance work of Ben Hersey (who I had the joy of watching perform at the Book Mill last week, in an epically weird display of all the funniest parts of being human, in a tour de force (did I get that right?) that made all other art seem flappy and useless).  I will be reading poems alongside the music of Potty Mouth  (the talented, girl-powered band that reminds us how things used to feel/should feel, who have in the last year grown into their own, outgrowing their own with their new record Hell Bent), and the poems of Sampson Starkweather, a competitive athlete, a necessary dancer, the giant of the poetry world, and author of the murder weapon, The First 4 Books of Sampson Starkweather.  

If we are lucky, woman of grace, maker of beauty, Paige Taggart will show, and Ben Pease and Bianca Stone, and Ben Fama and Monica?  I know Peter Gizzi will be there, come early for a signature, and Dara Wier (in elegant black), and even possibly John Maradik, amateur badminton player, Seth Landman (man of the whale), famous sportswriter Frank Basket , Emily Hunt (artist/poet/beginner poker player), Emily Pettit (who I don't want to embarrass with any quick nickname), newlyweds and hilarious duo, Jacob and Shannon, the voice behind the clouds, Mike Young, gentleman about town, Boomer Pinches, local opinion, Jono Tosch, the beating heart of Brian Foley, neighbor of wit, Jonathan Volk, guys it's an exhausting amount of people... I heard that the ghost of Chris DeWeese will drop by and change the ipod to grunge music, and I know Dan Chelotti will be there, gathering the sticks of a poem the morning after, and is it too much to think new Umass Fiction Professor, Jeff Parker, might stop by? or Lucy from the bookstore, or the first years I haven't met yet, or Luke Bloomfield, mayor of Cattan, or Haley Thompson on her beautiful rescued bicycle, Halie Theoharides, the face inside my ring, Carla Costa brilliant mind in the trees.  Mike Young, is this what it feels like in your head?

If you want to buy tickets for the raffle or learn more about the party, click here.
Also, check out Kelin Loe's newest endeavor: Flying Object Radio!  Her first guest is stunningly amusing poet, Dorothea Lasky


Lastly, thanks to The Atlas Review and Ghost Proposal and Similarpeaks (any day now) for publishing new poems of mine.  Thanks to Better magazine for publishing great works by Emily Toder, Chris Deweese, and Dan Chelotti!  Did you guys check out Sink Review's new issue yet? I liked Jack's new poem in there and excited to read the rest!  Also, thanks to Jacob Kaplan for the shout out in Impose Magazine's new segment about literary happenings in NYC.
  

7.23.2013

THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER (it feels like)

I was excited when a friend told me MOODS was on display at McNally Jackson, a book store I've always wanted to visit.  In this picture it looks so like the Amherst Books Poetry section.  Even that stretching girl seems slightly familiar.  

In local news, no more Kathy's Diner.  Mike Young couldn't be reached for comment. 

Also, if you are looking to read one of the wildest, most sophisticated sex stories of the 70's, find Harold Brodkey's Innocence.  The story appears in Brodkey's "Stories in an Almost Classical Mode" and also in the anthology "My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead" which is the only anthology I've ever loved and carried around with me like a treasure.

6.05.2013

"Triple Overtime" and more


My art show "Triple Overtime" opens at P-R-I-M-E-T-I-M-E Gallery on June 15th.  Here is the Facebook invite.  Please stop by!



I've been discovering a lot of interesting sports painting on the internet these days.  Here is one of my favorites:



Shouldn't the Basketball Hall of Fame look more like that??


Two writer friends of mine, Jack Christian and Gabe Durham are about to embark on the tour for their first books!  Are they coming to a place near you?  They are reading with phenomenal people everywhere they go!


Lastly, tonight John and I read aloud the first chapter of one of the Wayside School books and several lines were cracking us up.