Posts from the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Feb 25

Where I’ll be at AWP

A little more than a week from now, I’ll be heading to Boston for AWP! So it’s time for the obligatory “where I”ll be” post which really, honestly, is the online version of those family white boards (Tommy at soccer practice, Suzy at trombone lessons) so that I can keep track of all of my friends’ whereabouts and they can keep track of me. AWP is a little bit of a looser, less calendared out event for me this year, thank god. I mean to relax and have fun, so feel free to join me or just stop and say hi!

Thursday: I will be pretty much parked the whole night at the wonderful Sweetwater Tavern, where magical things will be happening all night long. First up is the AWP IRL Happy Hour. Free drinks! Hosted by Electric Literature, Tumblr, and Lapham’s Quarterly, which my lovely parents just gave me a subscription to for my birthday! FREE DRINKS! And best of all, you don’t even have to go outside to get to the next great event, Their Peculiar Ambitions: A Night of Presidenti al Fiction Readings! I’ll be hosting this puppy and giving out free swag to a lucky few here. This event is going to be killer – tons of your favorite writers reading flash fiction about the presidents of the United States – what could be more fun? Don’t even bother answering with anything else or you’re dead to me.

Friday I plan to eat and drink and play it by ear. Lit Party, maybe? Afterparty? I’m concentrating on food at this point.

Saturday’s a packed day. In the morning, from 11-12, I’ll be hanging out at the Curbside Splendor table at the bookfair and signing copies of May We Shed These Human Bodies – so please stop by and say hello if you get a chance! Then around happy hour time, I’m going to be reading for Curbside Spendor at a joint reading with Other Voices Books, at one of the nation’s best bo okstores, the Brookline Booksmith - with Steve Almond, Steven Dau, Rob Roberge, and Thea Goodman. Incredible goodness – come out come out if you can! Then finally, ending up the night with one of those magnificent mega-readings, Heavy Feather Review, Big Lucks, Magic Helicopter Press, and Factory Hollow Press present There’s Still Good in You ! an AWP 2013 offsite reading, featuring: Jensen Beach, Gabriel Blackwell, Rachel B. Glaser, Evelyn Hampton, W. Todd Kaneko, Seth Landman, Jordaan Mason, Caryl Pagel, Adam Robinson, and me!

Hope to see you all there, regardless of when and where and how! (Okay, well, the how might be kind of important. But you know what I mean.)

Dec 18

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You’ve probably heard, but…Best Small Press Debut!

Atlantic Wire named MAY WE SHED THESE HUMAN BODIES the best small press debut of 2012! Thank you to Cal Morgan at Harper Perennial for sharing the book and his thoughts about it with the folks at the Atlantic. This is the best Christmas gift ever, for sure.

Oh – and if you haven’t bought the book yet but were on the fence, it’s half off at Curbside Splendor through the holidays!

Dec 13

In Which I Self-Promote and Join a Chain Letter (Sort Of): The Next Big Thing, Um, Thing

The lovely Tara Laskowski, author of MODERN MANNERS FOR YOUR INNER DEMONS from Matter Press, asked me to be a part of this thing called, uh, the Next Big Thing. It’s pretty much self-promotion (and isn’t all of this, really?), but while you’re promoting yourself, you’re also promoting other writers, so I could get down with that, I decided. And here I am, down and ready to interview myself, I think. It’s a little creepy – this is the second self-interview I’ve done. I’m kind of an egoist but this feels a little desperate. Nonetheless, I didn’t devise the questions, at least, so here we here we go!

What is your working title of your book? MAY WE SHED THESE HUMAN BODIES. That one was easy.

Where did the idea come from for the book? There were many ideas, and they came from all over the world. They fell from the clouds like rain, they came up like soft shoots into the soles of my feet, they seeded my brain and molded black on the inside of my heart.

What genre does your book fall under? Literary fiction. Or possibly blue cheese nachos.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Hmm, these questions are really more for a novelist than for a flash fiction writer, eh? Bobcat Goldthwait. He would play ALL of the characters. It would be like a reunion of the cast of Police Academy, only with just Bobcat Goldthwait. Wait, is he dead?

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? Stars and stars like seed pearls and a lot of darkness and sometimes a little comet or two.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Neither one. It was published in October by Curbside Splendor, and is not represented by an agency.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? All my life.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? Maybe a little bit Angela Carter, a little bit Lorrie Moore, a little bit George Saunders, with a hint of Ben Marcus. And some Saltine crumbs in the flaps.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? My cats.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? It’s green. Apparently no books are ever green. Well, mine is.

Up next week! Look for blogs by the fabulous fiction writer Lauren Becker, author of Shut Up/Look Pretty, the wonderful and very witty Steve Himmer, who is working on a fascinating new novel; and the ridiculously-talented Robert Kloss, author of The Alligators of Abraham, just out from Mud Luscious Press.

Oct 15

Happy Pre-Order Order Day, The Alligators of Abraham!

That’s right! Today is the day! You can pre-order Robert Kloss‘s phenomenal alternate Civil War history (illustrated by Matt Kish) at Mud Luscious Press today. And you should, and you should not wait, because I’m guessing this book will sell out very fast indeed.

While you’re waiting for the physical copy, here’s the book trailer to whet your appetite a little.

Oct 14

In Which I Explain How One Should Not Speak to One’s Boss if One’s Boss is A Terrifying Angel with Many Heads

Confused? Wonderful. Read this fantastic collection, edited by James Tadd Adcox and published by NAP, and that should clear things right up. If not, perhaps you’re in the wrong room.

Seriously, this anthology is free and it is amazing and not even in that order. In addition to my story, in which I definitely imply that our heavenliest residents may be missing a screw or thousand, there are also fantastic stories by writers like Matt Bell, Robert Kloss, Meghan Lamb, Michael Czyzniejewski, Joseph Scapellato, Brian Oliu, Davis Schneiderman, and a whole bunch of other fantastic writers and poets and weirdos.

Really this is teh shit. Even the angel kitteh agrees.

Aug 30

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Publishers Weekly Likes May We Shed These Human Bodies!

The review says that “Sparks’s debut story collection swirls with a Tim Burton-like whimsy.” :

The collection’s 30 stories, most no longer than three pages, are modern fables in which epiphanies replace moral lessons and tales unfold with Grimm-like wickedness.

You can read the full review here.

Aug 10

As of Late I Have Written Some Things

Two, actually, and they probably couldn’t be more different. In this corner, we have an essay in the Rumpus on finding redemption in literature without necessarily finding religion. Thank you to Roxane Gay for publishing this.

And in this corner, we have a short short story that Lauren Becker was kind enough to publish in Corium, and I suppose now that I think about it, it’s not as wildly different as I imagined. It’s actually also about finding grace, albeit in the most unlikely of places. And there is sex and there are handcuffs and yes, it’s maybe just a tiny bit of a response to certain bestselling and terrible BDSM books.

I guess maybe rather than a knock-down drag out, the metaphor here could be a nice hug-it-out. Everybody wins!

Jul 11

Pre-Order MAY WE SHED THESE HUMAN BODIES Today!

If you’ve ever read a story of mine and liked it, or if you’ve never read a story of mine but you like mythology, fairy tales, science and math and religion and animals and war and peace and people and plants and everything else under the sun, you should probably pre-order this book my book, MAY WE SHED THESE HUMAN BODIES, a short story collection coming out from Curbside Splendor this fall.

Why pre-order? Why not just wait until October, when it comes out? Well, because Curbside is a small press, so it helps them to print more copies and get more books into the world when you pre-order. So why not? Then you can feel extra cool when everyone starts talking about the book in the fall and YOU’VE already got your hands on a copy. And you didn’t even have to leave your place to get it. Because laziness, folks. That’s really what it’s all about. So click here. Get good words and support a great Chicago press.

Jul 2

And There Will Be Interviews: The Himmer and Horvath Edition

Two of my favorite writers have new interviews up on the interwebs today:

Bee-Loud Glade author Steve Himmer talks about how he became a writer at ph.d in creative writing.

And Understories author Tim Horvath shares the origins one of his best stories from the collection, up at The Collagist.

Jun 24

This is Not A Review. But I Did Read Anne Carson’s Antigonick and I Need to Tell You Some Things.

This is not about me. (But just so you know, if my college had offered Classical Studies, I probably would have gone into it. Instead I did the next best thing and went into the theater.)

I just started reading Anne Carson less than a year ago. A friend told me about her and because I have some very odd gaps in my education and reading history I somehow had missed her completely.

Then. I read her. And more her. And all of her Greek dramatic translations. And her translations of Sappho. And now her translation of what is my favorite Greek tragedy, ANTIGONE. Her version: ANTIGONICK.

(And where have you been all my life Anne Carson? I could have used your words in the earlier times and places I traveled. But this is not about me.)

This is about how I would probably give up my left testicle, if I were a man, to meet this woman and talk for five minutes about life and philosophy and art. Hegel, or Beckett or Brecht (all of whom she brilliantly, wittily references in her ANTIGONICK.) Did I mention it was illustrated? Unbelievably, creepily, beautifully, perfectly illustrated by Bianca Stone on these opaque overlays? Did I mention I’d give a nut? Or I suppose, realistically, a liver? A kidney? Read more