Posts from the ‘NF Writer-in-Residence’ Category

Jan 21

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.

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…)

Dec 24

My remix of Robert Kloss’s story makes a great last-minute stocking stuffer: suicide, silent film, clowns, and dysfunctional families.

Robert Kloss wrote a killer story called “The Clown Show.” Then he let a bunch of us hack it apart and remix it. Here’s my version today: it’s an homage to a favorite, silent movie great Lon Chaney Sr., and it’s called “Aria for the Clown’s Wife.”

Enjoy, and thanks Robert, for letting me beat up and twist around your story as much as I did.

Dec 7

Robert Kloss Dismembers My Sleepers at Necessary Fiction

Today Robert Kloss has turned my sad, gentle little story into a rather terrifying dream poem. I love it. A bit of a peek at my story:

To sleep is to be in a state of rest, but these dreams are rarely restful. The men—and they are always men—who dream them knew nothing of rest when awake. Their lives were mad and glorious and they were pure motion, streaks of flame burning through their own eras, their brilliance blurring all down the centuries except the fact that there was brilliance, there is brilliance still, lying dormant and deep under the dreams. For gold, yes. For love, yes. For lust, yes, for blood, for glory, for power, for country, for freedom, and sometimes just for the sheer dear pleasure of the fight. The fortune won or lost or defended.

Read the rest and the remix here.

Sep 30

The Last Two Ancient City Writers Are Now Up…But Still More to See…

Today for the Ancient City, Sheldon Compton has written one of the most realistic and sad and touching and hopeful and just all-around great stories about teen pregnancy that I’ve ever read. This is not really surprising, as Sheldon roots for the underdog in pretty much everything of his I’ve ever read. He’s got the empathy, the humor, the realistic optimism, and the eye for the hidden and scraped-out-of-sight in society to truly write on behalf and about those who are disenfranchised in some sense from the rest of society. His stories always make me want to go find the characters in them and give them a giant hug and tell them it’s going to be okay, even if it very clearly isn’t. Sheldon’s great and a happens to be a writer I’ll read anything of his I can get my hands on.

The extremely smart and talented Chantel Tattoli’s vivid, coolly witty, fascinating piece is so cool because it’s practically diametrically opposed to Sheldon’s and YET…it’s also perfect for the Ancient City because it explores the outer edges of what humanity means, and what it means to be/feel like/do things as/exist as a human being. That’s one thing that I feel has really distinguished every single one of these Ancient City stories, and why I find this project to be so revealing and so amazing: the City means different things to everyone, but to everyone it means people. Humanity. Populations and lives and relationships and death and dishonor and love and eating and sleeping and stabbing and screwing and dreaming and hoping hoping hoping, even at the moment mankind is already destroyed, the left back still have hope, always. In in depravity, even in darkness, there is always someone left with a hope of some kind, a will that transcends time and the events that have unfolded before them.

I’m so sad that these are the last two pieces I get to present to you wonderful readers, but also very excited to unveil the Ancient City in its entirety later today. Can’t wait for you to see it all, and since it’s on the internets–it truly lives forever. Well, kind of. Just like the City itself.

Sep 29

The Ancient City is Speeding Up and Spinning Down and Ending Tomorrow But…

…don’t worry, because yesterday and today we had an amazing selection and tomorrow, we have more plus even more. (You’ll see.)

Yesterday, we had a fantastic scholarly piece full of conjecture and mystery and concocted, never-was myth mixed with real lore by Tim Dicks. I was unfamiliar with Tim’s work before, but will certainly be adding his name to ye old Google Alerts now. A talent to watch, for sure, and I’m awfully glad he found out about this project and wanted to participate.

We also had a beautiful, moving, mysterious post-apolcalyptic piece by Alan Stewart Carl. Alan, besides being one of the nicest writers around, is also one of the most talented. He can write in a multitude of styles and on a multitude of subjects, but always with that voice: deeply empathetic, full of humanity and compassion, with a little bit of something strange, observer-like, otherly thrown in as well.

And we had a piece from a newcomer, a Ms. Lori Richards, a visual artist and friend of mine who I knew also wrote fiction, and who I asked to write this great piece. I knew Lori’s piece would be dark and funny and fun to read, and it absolutely was. So thanks, Lori, for jumping in and participating–and for letting me publish your terrific story.

Then today–whews0muchgoodstuffhowdidIgetssoluckywiththisproject?–we had two more amazing, amazing, very different from anything-that-came-before pieces.

J. Post, whose talents a mutual friend introduced me to (thanks, C.!) did a kind of prose poem on beauty and ugliness and consumer need and greed in the Ancient City. It’s a lovely, really interesting piece and I highly recommend it. Might I also add, J. took a very strange object indeed and turned it into something quite poignant. So that just made the piece even cooler.

And certainly last but not least today, we had the marvelous Erin Fitzgerald, one of my favorite people and also favorite writers. Erin writes people like maybe nobody else I know. Her portraits of people are honest and real and sharp and quick to see weakness and even quicker to forgive it, to blur it and smudge it the exact way our brains do with our friends and family in life. Every time I read a story by Erin, I feel a)smarter, because Erin is one witty and observant chica, and 2)like I’ve added more people to my life’s acquaintance roster somehow–her people are just that real. Realer than real. More human than human. Erin is also clever and very funny, and her stories manage to often be both without being condescending or cloying.

So I was super-duper-extra happy that Erin agreed to jump in and participate in this project, since I knew she’d do something amazing with it–and she has. I don’t want to get into the details, because I want you to read it for yourself and be no less amazed than I was. Get going!

And see you all tomorrow for the final installations by Chantel Tattoli and Sheldon Compton, and the unveiling of the Ancient City in its entire, properly researched and sketched out form!

Sep 27

Katrina Gray Offers Scholarship and Something Extra at the Ancient City

Katrina Gray has a startling, fantastic piece at the Ancient City right now at Necessary Fiction. It’s a bit of scholarship based on some primary sources…and then it becomes something a little bit more. More lovely, more real, more brave, more sad, more sure, more and because of that less perfect just like we are less perfect and more human than human.

More human than human–that’s actually a good way to describe Katrina’s writing. She’s a smart, smart, smart chica, and her writing always just floats above, just transcends our human goals and desires–reflecting them but at the same time reflecting on them, making us examine, think, notice.

Her story in Necessary Fiction is just as breathtaking, just as lovely, just as focused as her writing always is. And that’s a good thing, and a great thing, and a thing you need to read now.

Sep 27

Kirsty Logan Paints a Wistful Parental Portrait for the Ancient City

I’ve been so excited to put up Kirsty’s piece at Necessary Fiction. I’ve had all these post-apocalyptic pieces, which of course I can’t get enough of, and all these dark lovely epic-ish pieces–which are all brilliant but it was time for something a little different. Which Kirsty very much provides, in her sweet, beautiful, wistful drawing of a parent as they might have been before. It’s a smart piece that reminds us there are other kinds of change, other smaller losses that are sometimes the hardest to bear and the least noticed.

Kirsty, by the way, is one of the best and brightest and this story only highlights her best-ness and brightest-ness. She has a way with language that I absolutely love; when I read her stuff I feel like a I could taste it, chew it, roll it around on my tongue, the language is so delicious and sturdy and musical. She also has a knack for getting relationships exactly right in her writing, whether between parent and child or lovers or friends. She also does these fantastic book reviews at PANK, and she’s an editor/founder of Fractured West, a relative newcomer with an already stellar reputation on the literary journal scene.

Without further ado, I suggest you start with this. You’ll love it–it’s a little space in the middle of breath for you to pause in.

Sep 26

Matt Cozart and Henry Vauban Today at the Ancient City

Both Matt and Henry’s writing was new to me before they volunteered to write a piece for the Ancient City; both are now two names I’ve already added to my ever-growing list of talents to keep track of. Both their stories are a little bit different than what we’ve had so far, which I love.

Henry’s piece is an email exchange gone awry, and Matt’s piece is a nice, ironic little tale about greed and curses and–yes, that’s right–land acquisition. Some juicy stuff in both these pieces, and two distinctive voices I’ll be looking out for in indie literary land from now on. Thanks to you both for contributing!

Sep 24

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Kira Sparks Preserves History at the Ancient City

My rather awesome and talented little sister, Kira Sparks, gives us a tale of archivists and the end of history over at the Ancient City today. (I didn’t really mean for this to be post-apocalyptic week, but it’s sort of ended up that way, which is pretty cool.)

Kira is my sister, yes, but that’s not why I published her story. I published her story because she’s a great writer and it’s a great piece. It’s very fun watching her emerge as a writer in her own right, with her own wildly smart, compassionate voice and unique perspective on things. I’m very excited to offer up this piece from her, and hope you look for more from her in the weeks and months to come.

Sep 23

Matt Kirkpatrick Tells a Tale of the Tall Endings at the Ancient City

Matt Kirkpatrick, who by the way is awesome and amazing, has kindly visited the Ancient City to lay down some nice fiction around a very large object. It’s a weapon…no, it’s a shelter…no, it’s a phallus…no, it’s a strange strangled bit of hope at the end of things…anyway, it’s many things and it’s wonderful and it’s something you should read.

Now, about Matt being awesome and amazing; I am going to steal something that I just wrote a couple of months ago about Matt, because I don’t think I could ever describe his writing any better than this:

Matt Kirkpatrick is a writer I really admire, and one I enjoy blatantly evangelizing on behalf of. Why? Because he’s always doing something new with words. He’s not content to settle into one thing, one form or style, although he easily could and he’d still write superb stories. But he takes a more adventurous approach. Matt makes his words work, too. He never just lets his words sit there and be words on a page; his words do jumping jacks and front handsprings and fall down wells and dig around in the brain’s attic and turn into animals and sometimes slink away when you weren’t looking, or even get all up in your face and are all like, SERIOUSLY, DUDE. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT I’M DOING OVER HERE.

And yet—and yet!—Matt’s stories always have heart. They have soul , maybe clouded-up but they need our clarification, after all. They have meanings and so we care and care and care, and keep on thinking and caring and clarifying in our heads long after we leave the pieces behind.

This latest is no exception. It has soul and heart and wit and compassion and a melody and a refrain and it’s a lovely salute to the tallest and saddest of endings. Read it and learn.