New Publications

I'm pleased to have a story in the newest issue of the New York Tyrant, alongside great writers like Noy Holland, Mark Leidner, Gary Lutz, etc.  I just got my copy today and I'm excited to read through it!

Also, I'm thrilled to have my story "Iconographic Conventions.." in the new anthology "FAKES" edited by David Shields and Matthew Vollmer.  I have read and enjoyed many of these pieces.  It's so cool to be beside George Saunders, Arda Collins, Chris Bachelder, Stanley Crawford, and other fun writers.

Summer Update

Last month I was interviewed by Yahoo Sports Blog: Ball Don't Lie about my Basketball Player Paintings.

Ball Don't Lie's Dan Devine asked me how I got interested in basketball, about the Miami Heat Sleepover, and other things.

In early November I will be having my first NBA art show at The Rendezvous, a really cool bar, restaurant, gallery and music venue in Turners Falls, MA.

I'm pleased to announce my poetry collection "MOODS" will be published by Factory Hollow Press in 2013, alongside other great FHP books like Crashdome (by Alex Phillips), and Beauty Was the Case They Gave Me (by Mark Leidner), and the newly published Experiments I Would Like Tried At My Own Death (Caryl Pagel), and forthcoming Sign You Were Mistaken, Seth Landman's masterpiece I have been reading poems from for years.

I wrote a screenplay with the poet/director Noah Gershman.  It is called "The Last Good Car."  Actors Jason Ritter and Mark Webber have attached themselves to the project, and last month they were joined by the amazing actress Kara Hayward (the female lead in Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom").  Hayward mentions her plans to act in our movie in her interview with the Wall Street Journal's Blog.

The great site Two Serious Ladies showed some of my digital quilts...

Here is the flyer for my Fall Workshop at Flying Object:

MAY NEWS AND LINKS

Firstly, I'd like to announce the Writing Workshops Emily Pettit and I are teaching this summer.  For more information visit Flying Object.

I started two new blogs in the last two days, one is a site solely for my NBA Paintings.  The other is a selection of art I made at RISD and after RISD.

I am pleased to have two poems featured in the journal Sprung Formal (the Apocalypse Issue), along with Ashley Bellinger, Benjamin Boulier, Brandon Brown, Peter Davis, Marissa de la Pena, Kari Freitag, Madeline Gallucci,  Matt Hart, Jules Izkoff, Anna Kamerer, Mitchell Hugh Kirkwood, Rob MacDonald, Ryan MacDonald, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Christopher Martin, Will Meier, John Northington, Frances Odim-Loughlin, Annie Raab, Christie Ann Reynolds, Alex Rieser, Zach Savich, Reid Sprague, Sampson Starkweather, Lauren Stookey, Matthew Suss, Scott Sweeney, Paige Taggart, Maureen Thorston, Frederick Vorder-Bruegge, Teal Wilson, Patrick Wolf, and Elisabeth Workman.  The issue can be read or downloaded here.

Here is the cover of Sprung Formal:

 and Here is my flyer for my Summer Workshop, heavily inspired by the cover!:

Tonight, Emily Pettit, local gift-giver and talented author of Goat in the Snow, will be reading at Flying Object (42 West st., Hadley, MA) along with Dan Magers, Steven Karl, and with musical performances by Jono Tosch and Elaine Kahn (Horsebladder).

In June, I am proud to be published in Everyday Genius's first ever "Paper Issue" alongside great friend Lesley Yalen, and many other interesting writers!
Here is Jimmy Chen's great cover for the issue:

New NBA Commission plus 4 new Poetry Books!

A few weeks ago I finished this Derek Fisher commission, only a week or so before he was unceremoniously traded to the Cavs. I'm glad I finished him before the trade, which would have definitely distracted my msPainting. Now Derek is memorialized as a Laker somewhere in Canada, possibly in the office of a young lawyer.

In other NBA news, the Bulls beat the Heat and the Sixers without Derrick Rose, which is a great omen for the playoffs, and I'm feeling more confident about the Bulls/Heat conference finals match-up, if all goes how it seems it will.

Z-Bo is back for the Grizzlies. Also I'm looking forward to watching Arenas play for the Grizz, and Ellis and the new big guy play for the Bucks. This isn't really an NBA blog, but reading Landman's ESPN fantasy columns this morning is inspiring me to pretend...

Here is a close-up of D. Fish, much hated by Celtic fans, much photographed and quoted in the lock-out last year.




















The world continues spinning and I am a few hours away from a finished Allen Iverson portrait.

In Poetry News, five of my friends from Umass-Amherst's MFA program have published books in the last couple weeks and months. My friend Chris Deweese's book "The Black Forest" has been released by Octopus Books. Here are two lines of note from two separate poems:

As I ride Eastward,
I can hear my biographer
furiously dictating
his own adventures

and earlier:

Or let's say you're dead
and you wish
for everyone else to be dead
It would be just like living!


"The Black Forest" is in good company of a slew of other new and great poem books, including local sensation Heather Christle's "What is Amazing", out from Weslyan Press.

Here is the beginning of Heather's poem "Basic":

This program is designed to move a white line
from one side of the screen to the other.

This program is not too hard, but it has
a sad ending and that makes people cry.

This program is designed to make people cry
and step away when they are finished.

In one variation the line moves diagonally
up and in another diagonally down.

This makes people cry differently,
diagonally. A whole room of people

New Yorker Lily Ladewig's book "The Silhouettes" is out from SpringGun Press. Here is a selection from "Another Poem for You":

what do you call a pale-faced silence
that makes a healing sound? Me. Watch me
translate myself into English. Watch me
take my invisible top off. Things reconfigure,
they settle. I bought you this beautiful
silver espresso machine--it was imaginary
in the best possible sense.


Lastly and largely, Tyoyeu is actualized onto pages, written by two Seths. This book is like songs heard underwater, a relative's mid dream babbles. Here are some sections of it:

"I might see you in my nightmare
wandering
How'd you get there?
I'm running from the son I mated
I'm taking Alf on the road
Tell everybody that you know"

"Mathematics on whiskey. Triangles on heavy doves."

"Soup! Soup, are you accurate when I hold us between these spoons?"

First Post of the New Year!

It is freezing in my turret, but I must continue onward, wearing my winter jacket.

<--Here is my latest commissioned NBA portrait, this time the enigmatic Ben Wallace. The whole time I painted him I'd thought he had retired last year, but now that I'm done, I see that he's back playing with the Pistons as if he never left!

Almost weekly, I recommend this book to people, The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond Of Matches, an absolute masterpiece by French-Canadian author Gaetan Soucy. I don't think I've ever read a book with a more interesting narrator. Emily Pettit has it stocked at Amherst Books, if you are in the area. If not, you will likely have to buy it online-- it has been very hard to find in person.

It's been amazing to be watching basketball again. I'm pleased the Bulls and the Thunder are at the top of their conferences so early. Last night, JT and I watched Tony Allen and Rudy Gay play great games as the Grizz killed the Knicks who played with little grace or heart. The night before I caught the end of the awesome/weird overtime Heat/Clippers game, in which LeBron missed the most freethrows I've ever seen him miss.

December News and Links

Poet Jack Christian has a great chat with Poet Mark Leidner about Leidner's Factory Hollow Press book "Beauty Was The Case That They Gave Me"

Pre-orders for Emily Pettit's debut "Goat In The Snow" forthcoming from BIRDS LLC Press

With the news of the upcoming NBA season, writer Bethlehem Shoals writes his first NBA post for new sport blog The Classical

I'm excited to read in Providence, RI where I lived and had fun for so many years at RISD. The reading and panel is at Brown University, part of a program set up by the great Evelyn Hampton and Sarah Tourjee. It will be fun to see old roommate and singer of songs Mike Young, my old fiction teacher Joanna Howard, and the other great readers: Lily Hoang, Matt Bell, and Matt Salesses

12 hours later update

The basketball is better!

Magic

Here is half of my latest commissioned MSpaint, Magic Johnson, painted for the talented and charismatic Michael Kimball! (Click here to see a different view)

Jubilat 20 is out, and filled with great poems by Ben Fama, Peter Gizzi, Shannon Burns, Michelle Taransky, CAConrad, Lesley Yalen, and many more. Come to Flying Object on December 3rd to celebrate the issue and the raffle!

The MLP Stamp Stories Anthology is now available for order. In honor of this publication, Wigleaf published a special edition of 50 word stories. I participated, as did other MLP contributors: Joanna Howard, Joanna Ruocco, Claire Donato, Michael Bible, and more.

Emily Pettit and I's first double workshop reading at Flying Object was a great success. Thanks to all who listened and read.

The new powerhouse of creative, genre-defying, thought-provoking sports blogging, The Classical, is near launching. Currently they have a preview tumblr up, and have started posting.

Hopefully the NBA will return, because right now things are looking bleak.
The NBA looks like this:

Reading and Winter/Spring Class Announcement!

Tomorrow night (Monday the 21st) from 5:30-7:30 join us at Flying Object (42 West st., Hadley, MA) to listen to a reading by the writers who participated in Emily Pettit's class and my own class this past term. From what I know of the readers, I am sure it is going to be very varied and impressive!

Recent Developments

Edward Mullany's first collection of poems "IF I FALTER AT THE GALLOWS" is available from Publishing Genius Press. The collection is beautiful, and funny and strange. PGP runs an online journal called Everyday Genius, which posts poems and stories daily from really talented and varied authors.

The image to the left is one of Mullany's. It has been exciting watching his paintings transform on his blog The Other Notebook. For a long time the paintings were painted with bold wiggling lines, but in the last few weeks, a new De Kooningian quality is erupting within them!

Mike Young, young author of Look! Look! Feathers and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough, is accepting students for his online poetry workshop with Barrelhouse. I have never taken a class online before, but if I was, I'd want someone like Mike Young to teach me, a man who has built a number of cultures on the internet, who has a couch in his chat room.

Additionally, I should congratulate amazing lunatic Nat Otting, whose first book of poems THE WRONG BOOK has won the 1913 Fanny Howe judged prize. Nat has been called The Human Hyperlink. His writing defies logic and delights me. I am very excited for his book to take shape.

It has been super exciting to witness the planning and designing of Emily Pettit's upcoming book GOAT IN THE SNOW, due out February from BIRDS LLC Press. The image to left is not the cover for Pettit's debut, but it was hard for me to not create many alternate covers, which one day might be considered for the Japanese translation. Emily's poems are a wise, comforting voice, giving me instructions while I dream, supporting all levels of wonder, encouraging life with no discrimination for what types of life will come. I am very excited to be reading with her in Denver this February!

This post feels like I am making a newspaper for my homeroom class. The most recent news, which arrived today, while my Adobe Acrobat Icon bounced insistently at the bottom of my screen wanting to update, is that I will be reading in NYC on November 14th at Webster Hall with Ben Fama, Ben Mirov and Marina Blitshteyn for the first reading of a new reading series called Death Hums created by Amy Silbergeld. I hope the reading is in The Marlin Room (pictured right!).

Lastly, here is an interview that I did with The Short Review. Thanks so much to Tania Hershman!