Amber Sparks
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In which I struggle against my Midwestern roots and do a little bragging despite the hurt it causes.
May 9, 2011 — 5 Comments
It’s always triply exciting to win something you didn’t even know you were up for. So I was pretty stoked to learn that I’d made the Wigleaf Top 50 List of Very Short Fictions (selected this year by the lovely Lily Hoang, with long list help from Scott Garson and Ravi Mangla.) with one story, and made the long list with two others–and even more stoked because these three pieces (“The Dictator is Drinking Alone” in Annalemma, “Feral Children: A Collective History” in The Collagist, and “May We Shed These Human Bodies” in Art Voice. Thank you Christopher, Matt, and Greg, for originally publishing these pieces.) There are so many good writers on the shortlist and the long list, and so many wonderful fantastic amazing stories. Some of these I’ve read, some I’m just reading now, some I’m not familiar with at all and am eager to read. I’ve been reading the Wigleaf list for years now, learning my craft from the best of the best (or at least trying to) and so its unbelievably cool to see my own name on that list. Happy happy.
Tyler Gobble and Layne Ransom have put together this unbelievably cool little magazine as an offshoot of Stoked Press, and have launched it into the atmosphere with an excellent first issue that I am honored to be a part of. My story, “Some of Our More Useful Planets” appears, with awesome graphics that I most certainly did not, could not create. Thanks, Tyler and Layne–your enthusiasm and dedication to indie literature is pretty much boundless and you deserve some serious props for that.
Finally, trnsfr Issue 4 is out and it is one hell of a gorgeous magazine. I have a story in here, too; thank you to Alban Fischer for including “The World After this One” in this issue. You should get this baby now and also you should help out with funding for Issue 5 at this Kickstarter project because this really is a labor of love and a work of art, every issue.
Weekend Reading: Three Fantastic Stories
April 8, 2011 — 5 Comments
I loved these stories. I want you to love these stories. Read them. Love them. Thank me later.
Erin Fitzgerald’s “The Mage in the Tower, the Wizard in the Sky,” at >kill author
Mel Bosworth’s “When Smiles Stretch Translucent,” at Night Train
xTx’s “The Littlest Superman” at The Good Men Project
Enjoy your weekend, kids!
Things to Read and Think About and Some to Bitch About
April 6, 2011 — 9 Comments
Richard Thomas, author of Transubstantiate, has a tight, taut, bloody neo-noir revenge story that you can download and read for just .99. It’s way more nourishing than that Diet Pepsi you were going to buy. Get it here for your Kindle, or here for your Nook or other e-reader. (more…)
Roundup: Lit Mag Edition
March 31, 2011 — 4 Comments
Off work today desperately trying to catch up on a million things, including writing. So instead I’m crawling around the Internet peering at everyone else’s terrific work. Sigh.
Oh, well. Benefit from my laziness! Here you are:
Robert Kloss’s “The Lives of Alligators” at Smokelong Quarterly. The whole issue is fantastic, too.
Corium Magazine has a new issue up–their anniversary issue! Wish them happy one year (congrats Lauren Becker, Heather Fowler, and Sal Pane!) and read great great stuff from Andrea Kneeland, Brian Oliu, Michael Kimball, Sean Lovelace, and many many other greats.
Blake Butler interviews Matt Bell at HTMLGiant. Thoughtful and good stuff here. I particularly like Matt’s words on revisions and on use of music in writing.
New elimae! New Mudluscious! To speak truth I’m only partway into these two beasts of awesome but loving what I’m reading so far. Loving.
And…you’re welcome. Now I’m going to attempt to write something half as good as any of the above.
NEW NEW NEW NEW IMPROVED EMPRISE REVIEW – NOW WITH ACTION-PACKED ISSUE 18!
March 22, 2011
That’s right, kittens. Gotta tell you about a whole new thing over at Emprise Review. Yes, we know our site has been in maintenance mode for a while. Yes, we know it’s been a while since the last issue. But we think it’s been worth it. Truly. I mean, have you seen how great the site looks? That’s all thank to our Editor-in-Chief, Patrick. He’s done a fabulous job making this site awfully specutacular.
And now…drumroll please…THERE’S A BRAND NEW ISSUE! Yes, brand-spanking new and full of amazing amazingness by some of your favorite writers and some new ones who we think will become some of your favorite writers. Check it out, read the pieces, give the writers some love, won’t you? All of our issues have been amazing but I really do think this might be the tippy top of the heap so far. Everything in it is nothing short of greatness.
FICTIONEvery Day Periplaneta Americana Now With 50% More Domestic Problems Stillborn Box Riders This Fog of Ash The Lobbers Share Thanksgiving as an Asteroid Hurtles Toward Earth Quickly Kill Yourself (viii) |
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FEATURED WRITERSESSAYWhat’s Left Behind: Memories From A High School Yearbook POETRYArs Poetica Sky Poem |
Every single Wonderfort piece so far is amazing. So is this poem by Peter Schwartz.
March 14, 2011 — 2 Comments
It is called 104 F. I don’t know how to do the little degree thing on my computer. Hopefully Peter will forgive me.
His poem is beautiful and you should read it. It’s well worth your time.
PANK 5! IS SO GOOD! And not because I’m in it.
March 1, 2011 — 2 Comments
Though my piece in the new Pank IS one of my very very favorites. This is such a standout issue. More risks taken. More experimentalism. More new faces. More extraordinariness.
Here are some favorites from the issue (though you should really just read it all, front to back and cover to cover and upside down and in a mirror): J.A. Tyler’s oddly lovely story; a raw and revealing and really great piece by Rion Amilcar Scott; Brian Oliu’s strange and wonderful story that begins with a file extraction and pulls you in with the weight of the whole world; Lauren Becker’s award-winning “The Apple Dress” which you MUST read; “The Right Company for Death,” by Lydia Ship; an amazing multi-faceted glittery piece, “The Bell Curve,” by Valerie Suffron; two great, rubbed bare stories by the always top-notch Andrea Kneeland; “Quisling” by Nick Ripatrazone; Lucas Southworth’s creepy-good Little Red story; and brilliant side-by-side poems by xTx and Sheldon Compton. Oh, and the artwork! Genius.
Good job, everyone in this issue. Thank you, Roxane Gay and Matt Siegel, for another amazing issue.
Anyone, if I spelled your name wrong, I’m sorrier than I can say. I’m reading from notes scribbled at three in the morning and as you probably would guess, my handwriting is not so awesome even at three in the afternoon. But I love you all anyway.
These are some things that are sharp and bright. I like them very much.
January 28, 2011 — 2 Comments
This article on Pippi Longstocking! Or about a book about her. I want my little girls, if I have little girls, to read those books. I want them to want to live just like her.
This fascinating piece on Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei.
Two poetry collections that some wonderful anonymous soul sent my way: the heartbreaking, rich-in-language-and imagery Threadbare Von Barren by nicolle elizabeth and Old Men, Girls, and Monsters by Peter Schwartz, the latter almost a collection of the items of being alive, of where we’ve been and how we traveled there and what we lost in the effort. Both great. (I can’t find TVB on the site anymore to link to? Maybe they’re out of copies…)
Clouds and other Stories by Jason Jordan. Sweet and funny and odd and wide-open stories that beg you to fall into them, ordinary people who you root for as they deal with ridiculous, extraordinary things, like a stolen heart or hooks on their back. I loved reading this.
The latest issue of Caketrain, particularly JA Tyler, Robert Kloss, and Blake Butler’s/Sean Kilpatrick’s stories. I was fully, fully immersed throughout in a weird wild sub-universe.
As for things I can’t wait to read already, check out this fantastic list of upcoming books by your favorite writers and mine–by Dark Sky Press, of course. Dark Sky is proving to be so top-notch every single day I want to squeal with delight at everything they do. Lame but true.
I have no idea what I’m going to read for AWP. Or wear for AWP. There are too many people to meet. Problems! Problems that are hardly problems when one considers, say, Egypt. But still. I’m pumped and nervous and can’t wait to meet you all!
In which Robert Kloss and I are inspired by Beckett to write a story about fathers and meat and glass and ducks and labyrinths and cavemen and other things, too.
January 21, 2011 — 1 Comment
For January 2011, Steve Himmer over at Necessary Fiction asked past contributors to write new stories beginning with the last line of a story by someone else, for a month of fictional “first footing”.
Robert Kloss and I decided to write one together, using Beckett’s “Fizzle #6″ as a starting point and moving from there into this organic sort of thing. Fathers and dirt and glass and smashed things and cities and earth and meat and concrete and dead things emerged as we went along–which is probably par for the course as far as we’re concerned. Here’s a little bit of the story, “What we Dream About the Fathers:”
You have always been willing to bring him food, to clean his wounds, to hand him his spear and watch as he writes his name in the biggest spaces under the sky. You have always fed him the oil clumps of roast goose and duck while the aluminum tin of his canoe skimmed the green-black. The crisp beaks and the molted over eyes of the creature you pulled fat fistfuls of. The way his eyes skimmed along the peat and black, the way his eyes searched for the yellow eyes beneath, even as he chewed the greasy meat from your hands.
Read the whole thing here. You won’t be sorry. (Well, you might, but not for the reasons you think…)
Get yer JMWW Anthology V, hot off the presses and full of good words!
January 17, 2011
Everyone. You need to order this, and not because i’m in it–but because these people are: Lindsay Ahl, Matt Bell, George Blecher, Andrew Borgstrom, Callista Buchen, Alan Stewart Carl, Alexandra Chasin, Kim Chinquee, Robert Coover, SL Corsua, Patrick Dacey, Jeremy M. Davies, Nicelle Davis, Andy Devine, Spencer Dew, Brian Evenson, Jon-Michael Frank, Timothy Gager, Scott Garson, Katrina Gray, Justin Hamm, Jane Hammons, James Hannaham, Clarinda Harriss, Lily Hoang, Tim Horvath, Joanna Howard, Jamie Iredell, Brian Kiteley, Norman Lock, Ben Loory, Robert Lopez, Sean Lovelace, Miguel Morales, David Peak, Emily Peterson Crespo, Nate Pritts, Timothy Raymond, Ethel Rohan, Davis Schneiderman, Savannah Schroll Guz, Laura Ellen Scott, me, Ken Sparling, Terese Svoboda, and J.A. Tyler. Seriously. That’s a LOT of good shit. And it only costs $10. For 148 pages! You can get it here or at AWP.
And while you’re purchasing said anthology, don’t forget to check out jmww’s winter 2011 issue, now up and full of goodness.
