Amber Sparks » writers

Shut Up/Look Pretty Roundtable at Necessary Fiction

Amber Sparks — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:31:47 +0000

Steve Himmer has published a pretty entertaining roundtable with the authors of Shut Up/Look Pretty at Necessary Fiction! Thanks, Steve. If you want to read some damn good writers discussing craft, process, great books, and Tralfamadorian romance novels, look no further.

Read it all here.

And order Shut Up/Look Pretty today before it sells out! You may want to get on that now, especially, because Tiny Hardcore Press has got a great deal going on where you get bundles for less! Including 2 THP books for sixteen bucks. They’re gorgeous books and that’s a good, great deal. Get on it!

Tagged: chapbook, Erin Fitzgerald, Kirsty Logan, Lauren Becker, Michelle Reale, Necessary Fiction, Roxane Gay, Shut Up/Look Pretty, Steve Himmer

All Kinds of Things are Happening

Amber Sparks — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:01:55 +0000

I’ve been horrible about updating this blog lately, so of course all the random everything that I want to tell you about has been piling, piling, piling up. This will be a very linky post, but it will be worth it because all of these things are things you need to know about. Promise!

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.

Jonathan Lethem Says We Are all Sub-Cultures Now ( And I Agree)

Amber Sparks — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:53:41 +0000

I really, really like this interview with Jonathan Lethem over at Fiction Writers Review. There are lots of great parts, so you should read the whole thing, like his take on the supposed death of the novel or publishing industry or whatever. But I really particularly liked this:

And I think a lot of American life resolves into certain versions of subculture. The people I know in rural Maine will say to me, “Not only have I never been to New York but I would never wish to go.” It’s just an inconceivable world. Well, Mainers don’t go to conventions where they wear nametags that say “I’m from Maine and my name is such-and-such.” But they are also participants in a sub-cultural identity as Mainer—specifically, this flinty, caustic, sea-salty, coastal Maine identity is a subculture. It may not have as many love beads as being a hippie, and it wouldn’t be very willing to see itself in the framework I’m proposing as analogous to MFA programs. But it’s another kind of sub-cultural choice that’s been made.

There are only subcultures, in a way, is what I’m saying, and then an idea of a whole or outside. Even “mainstream” literary authority—let’s just say, to be able to isolate more or less what we mean—the people who are routinely asked to write reviews for the New York Times Book Review and therefore, and let’s please understand that it is therefore, guaranteed that their own books will be reviewed by the New York Times Book Review, among whom I will now number myself. As hegemonic and oppressive as the assumptions that go with that, the degree to which that subculture has the privilege and utilizes the privilege of pretending there are no other literary cultures besides itself, it’s also still a subculture, where social reinforcements and tribal ritual prevail. And where a limited number of people are executing maneuvers amongst one another as though it is a whole world, but it’s not.

YES. THIS.

Pre-Order Jason Jordan’s A Dying Horse from Main Street Rag

Amber Sparks — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 22:22:04 +0000

I mean. A novella full of bleak black humor about the apocalypse and cats that talk? Yes, please. I’ll be snapping this one up. Get it here.

This is from the same dude who wrote Cloud and Other Stories, so you know it’s going to be great. Just FYI.

ACTION POST! Giant Exclamatory Roundup w/ xTx, R. Gay, Tattoli, Kimball, Fitzgerald, Becker, Reale, K. Logan, and L.E. Scott

Amber Sparks — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:22:54 +0000

THRILL…as Roxane Gay’s first book, Ayiti, finally arrives!

WEEP…to read Michael Kimball’s sad and creepy and lovely new flash, at Matter Press!

DIVE IN…to Chantel Louise Tattoli’s excellent, fascinating essay on the Little Mermaid statue and its anthropological history!

DISCOVER…interviews, articles and more, as The Lit Pub celebrates xTx’s amazing book, Normally Special!

GET PUMPED…and pre-order a book by Lauren Becker, Erin Fitzgerald, Kirsty Logan, Michelle Reale, and me called SHUT UP/LOOK PRETTY, published by Tiny Hardcore Press, the likes of which is going to rip your face off!

GASP…as you discover that you, yes, YOU, can get the brilliant Laura Ellen Scott’s new book, Death Wishing, on Kindle for exactly ZERO DOLLARS HOLY SHIT DO IT NOW.

Whew. Wipe brow. Exhale. Now go shopping.

Have you read Emprise Review 20 yet?

Amber Sparks — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:23:15 +0000

You need to be reading this. All of these stories are killer and I’m just not making that shit up. Each of these stories and poems is unique in a way that is completely unique from the other stories’ uniqueness. That is what makes Emprise Review what it is. A place for the utterly unique. Go read these.Killing Oligocene
Faith BeckTriptych
Sutherland Douglass

The North Face
Erin Fitzgerald

John Sevier
Aubrey Hirsch

Gilly the Goat-Girl
Julie Innis

Karen The Temp
Jason Jordan

The Irradiated Man
Ken Poyner

The Wolf Who Cried Boy
Sam Rasnake

The Kimono Tailor
Eric Dreyer Smith

POETRY

Vanessa Blakeslee

Christopher Dungey

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

James Silas Rogers

REVIEW

Fragmentation + other stories
Reviewed by Nathan Huffstutter

Issue Four of a Genius Mag Arrives: Zine-Scene’s The Reprint

Amber Sparks — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:54:49 +0000

Image by Joe Scarano

I think the Reprint is one of the best ideas in indie lit today. I think it’s brilliant. Take stories, that let’s face it, probably most people haven’t read because not a lot of people are buying print mags nowadays, and reprint them in their own beautifully illustrated online magazine. Voila! Genius.

This, the fourth issue, is as fantastic as the last three and features stuff from top-notch writers like xtx, Brandi Wells, Meg Pokrass, Kirsty Logan, Aubrey Hirsch, Roxane Gay, Adam Moorad, and Travis Hessman; creepy-great artwork that made me think of nothing so much as Ren and Stimpy (also genius, still) by Joe Scarano; a kick-ass intro by Sarah Rose Etter, and interviews with Travis Hessman and Annalemma Editor Christopher Heavener.

I know, right? Get to reading! Seriously, this is one I read cover to cover every time because not only is it a great idea, but editor Richard Mocarski is an amazing curator with really terrific taste in fiction and in writers of fiction. This one should always be on your go-to list for great fiction, on and offline.

Have you read Emprise Review 19 Yet?

Amber Sparks — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:05:07 +0000

Just a little reminder, in case you missed the unveiling, because this is some seriously strong material in the June issue here. Read, read, read and enjoy through the dog days of summer…

Why you should really, truly pre-order Rae Bryant’s marvelous debut collection now.

Amber Sparks — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:56:02 +0000

I wrote about Rae’s collection, (The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals, coming out at the end of June from Patsola Press), over here at Vouched.

As a tribute to the book itself, I wrote my review in a loose, fragmentary, symbolist-sort-of- way. Or maybe I just finished reading Nightwood, too, and that influenced me. Either way, here’s an excerpt:

Gorgeous language, lush and built up like layers of embroidery, etched secret meanings under secret meanings. Sensuality, sexuality, no separation of the body and mind in these lovely, deadly stories. Experimentation, but with form rather than subject matter–formulae, repetition, one sentence stories, play–never two stories quite the same, never a dull moment, despite the shared themes of love, sex, food, bodies.

Sound intriguing? Then you should read the rest of the review over here.

A Long Long List of Links

Amber Sparks — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:23:37 +0000

I’ve been away at a work conference for a week–just got back and then got sick and everything’s all out of whack. I’m mostly doing a lot of a lot of a lot of working these days and not a lot of writing, so when I can relax it’s with news and fiction and just reading, reading. Here’s some stuff I read today that I found interesting–maybe so will you?

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!