I got a Pushcart nomination! I know, I know. I’m not supposed to be excited about this. I’m supposed to be all, me and everybody else, right? But fuck that. I am always happy to have validation that someone enjoys what I do. Anyway, this one is for my story  “Five Kinds of Human History” in the latest issue of Big Lucks (thank you Mark and Laura and all!) and by the way, you can also get that issue with all its goodness for the Kindle for ONE DOLLAR. How could you pass that up? You can’t, right? Here you go.

So, there is a VERY long awaited and spectacular issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens available, and I have a favorite story of mine published inside: “Death and the People.” Thank you, Bradley Sands, for publishing this weird thing. (For those of you that saw the very first ever Three Tents reading in DC, this is the story I read there.) In addition to my piece, there are stories by Laird Hunt, D. Harlan Wilson, Cameron Pierce, Amanda Billings, Kirk Jones, Andrew W. Adams, Amber Sparks, and a novella by Kirsten Alene, as well as book reviews of Steve Lowe’s Muscle Memory and Shane Jones’s A Cake Appeared. You can buy it here (and sorry but Amazon’s the only place you can get it right now!)

If you’re looking for Christmas/Hanukkah/Whatever gifts, I compiled a great list of gifts over at Vouched. If you just want to get someone the perfect new book, I compiled a list of my favorite books of 2011 over at Big Other.

I guest-edited SmokeLong Quarterly last week and you all sent me some really great stuff. Dang. So now I’m busy trying to decide which story I love the most (and this is not an easy task.)

Ravi Mangla is an awesome writer/person. So I am very happy to see that, in another really terrific decision by Uncanny Valley’s Mike Meginnis and Tracy Bowling, the press is publishing Ravi’s collection of microfictions, Visiting Writers, as an ebook. There are 23 stories in the collection, some of which have appeared in Gigantic #2, Everyday Genius, >kill author, and The Outlet.

Brand new Bright Stupid Confetti, with 50 amazing pieces. It’s–indescribably good. Just curated like honey. Check it out here.

I like what Everyday Genius is doing this month. Where they have a contributor, instead of writing down the same blabbity bla bio that no one cares about, actually point out something else that’s cool online. Good on EG. As always.

History of Graphic Design Avant Garde from Minji Aye Hong on Vimeo.

Manipulated photo from the "Structure, Sign, and Play" series by Matt Lee.

I love this. Artist Matt Lee, inspired by Derrida’s essay ‘Structure, Sign, and Play,’ has manipulated a series of photographs to create a dialogue and “a tension between what is known, assumed and thought.” Very cool stuff.  Worth taking a look at the whole series.

Art by Andreas Franke

If you don’t scuba dive, then sorry–you won’t be able to see these exhibited. They’re underwater on a sunken ship off Key West! I’m in love with these beautiful images. The ballerina one? Want.

The Invention of the Internet, by Bobby McKenna

This is so cool. Seriously. Go to this site and click on every picture to see all the brilliant, riveting takes on history that make up this collaborative project. United States history told in pictures, in all our glory and all of our shame. We are a weird and complicated nation, and this project says that louder than words can. The Momentus Project site explains this project as:

A collaborative project in which a select group of designers, illustrators, and artists create visual interpretations of the most defining moments in United States history as a way of informing others of our proud, yet sometimes troubled and forgotten past.

Contributors hail from around the globe as the most defining moments in United States history have often had a radical effect on the world abroad.

H/t to NotCot.org.

Ai Weiwei has been released!

Mel Bosworth’s highly anticipated novel, Freight, is available for pre-order.

This piece by Christy Crutchfield in The Collagist is well worth your time.  Promise.

Al Gore has a great piece about climate deniers in July’s Rolling Stone.

Having lived in college towns in both Wisconsin and Minnesota, I’m more than familiar with sports-born rioting. And no one riots quite like a hockey fan. And so having witnessed my share of violence-by-rioter, it warms the cockles of my heart to see that at least the crowd in Vancouver could be persuaded to refrain from book-burning, for Christ’s sake.

Sarah Palin continues her quitting streak.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is as pleasurable to read as Christopher Hitchens tearing some writer a new asshole. And when that writer is David Mamet, smug and self-satisfied after giving birth to a monstrously-formed, cobbled-together-by-orcs-on-speed political philosophy, the pleasure increases ten-fold.

Damn. That is a LOT of money. Go get some, writers!

Photograph by Charlie Crane.

I wrote about Diana Wynne Jones, and what her writing meant to me, over at Big Other. I’ve received several private responses about this post and how much she meant to others as well, which I feel hugely gratified about. You see, Jones recently died, and I had been meaning to write to her to tell her how much I owed her. I procrastinated, not knowing she was terminally ill, and by the time I got around to it, it was too late. So it makes me feel better, knowing that at least a few others who knew and loved her books read the post and found something good to take away from it.

File this one in the more depressing category. As our economy continues to founder and Republicans blame Obama, screaming that he needs to cut taxes on business so they’ll create more jobs, here’s the real culprit: companies looking not to provide jobs, but to cut them in favor of mechanization, in order to facilitate an even more rapid downward spiral. As the Times points out,  “Workers are getting more expensive while equipment is getting cheaper, and the combination is encouraging companies to spend on machines rather than people.”  And dooooooowwwwwwwwnnnnnnnn we go.

Eerie, beautiful photos of North Korea by Charlie Crane. Look.

Anybody else headed to Netroots Nation in Mpls next week? We’ll (UFCW peeps) be there, sitting on panels, talking to old friends, and…hosting an AWESOME bourbon and bacon happy hour, with bourbon and bacon made by UFCW members. If you’re there stop by and say hi!

How can you not love this picture? Taken from the Tumblr blog linked here, Awesome People Hanging Out Together.

Jen Michalski has an amazing new story in the latest issue of Bluestem. In fact, lots of people have amazing stories in the latest issue of Bluestem, so you should definitely read through it.

You probably noticed–since there so many great things posted and written there–but Matt Bell, at his blog, spent the entire month of May writing about short stories for Short Story Month. And I mean WRITING. There was so much good stuff, both from him and his guests, that I’ll be taking stuff away for a long time to come.  And now he’s written a beautiful essay about the experience which makes me so proud to be a part of this writing community, and he’s put his writing into an e-book that you should certainly download, and he’s put up links to all the posts as well. Bookmark this! Get the ebook! It’s free, dummies! Why wouldn’t you? Matt retains his title as the Hardest Working Man in the Indie Lit World and ups the ante for anyone else who’s gunning for that title.  Seriously.

The always excellent Roxane Gay has a really, really good story in The Fiddleback. You should read it here .

The Lit Pub has launched into being! What the hell is the Lit Pub? Well, it’s Molly Gaudry, Chris Newgent, Mike Young’s press Magic Helicopter, and a whole bunch of other hardworking indie writer/publisher/editor/publicist types. It’s great literature. It’s support. It’s a community. It’s a conversation. It’s a bunch of really really good books and people who feel passionately about them. No need to say more–I’ll let Lit Pub explain itself, here.

Finally, perfect for Friday, how great is this Tumblr blog? Awesome People Hanging Out Together? I could look at these for hours. I kind of did. Your turn.

Have a great weekend wherever you are and hope the weather is what you want it to be. Inside and outside.

an “empty” chair in honor of Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese intellectual and dissident awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. A prize that he could not pick up in person because he was in prison serving an eleven year sentence for “inciting subversion of state power.”

The Empty Chair intends to symbolically denounce the increasing repression of writers, journalists, artist, and activists.

This terrifying picture was taken by Peter Hinson, and you can buy it from his sister on Etsy if you click here.

One of my favorite books that I’ve read this year so far is Ethel Rohan’s wonderful debut, Cut Through the Bone. I finally had the chance to review it over at Vouched.

xkcd put together this chart that breaks down how much radiation we’re exposed to normally, how much the Japanese around the power plant and elsewhere are being exposed to, and what exactly that means in terms of health and safety. Really interesting stuff.

I’m reading this weekend in DC with Joseph Riippi, Laura van den Berg, and Paul Zaic at the inaugural reading of the Three Tents Reading Series, put together by the folks at Big Lucks.  If you’re here or close, come on over at 7pm Saturday the 26th, to the Big Hunt in Dupont Circle, and watch some good people read. This should be a very fun event.

Over at Fiction Writers Review, Tyler McMahon reviews Alan Heathcock’s short story collection, Volt. I’ve been very much looking forward to reading this one, and even if I hadn’t been McMahon’s review would have sold me. Love this:

Heathcock’s third-person narrator has the big heart and bright socks of a Garrison Keillor, but the bad liver and hard knuckles of a Raymond Chandler. The prose moves like an old flatbed down a one-lane road: with confidence, with wisdom, and with a trail of meaning drifting skyward in the mind’s rear-view mirror. It is the poetry of bowling balls through shop windows—of freedom, of consequences, and of beautiful sounds.

The reliably excellent Roxane Gay has a sharp (ha, ha) story over at the Good Men Project about a knife salesman and his would be customer. I won’t give too much away but I absolutely loved this story and guarantee that you will, too.