Amber Sparks
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Stuff That is the Opposite of Suck
June 3, 2011 — 5 Comments
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.
This is Just a List But Things are Still Breaking
May 17, 2011
- This book is on its way to me. I am so pumped. I love China Mieville and I can’t to wait a sci-fi-y book by him.
- HOARD YOUR INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULBS! I am. My husband and I are buying them all up. Why? Not for some crazy right-wing reason, but because, jesus, haven’t you noticed how ugly and depressing everything looks under florescent light? I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, for god’s sake. Energy efficient lighting depresses me. So does my face in the mirror under that awful flat dead glare. The thought of a world without soft white lighting to read under makes me want to jump off a cliff. That is all.
- I’ve always thought most unpaid internships were a load of crap. As a middle-class kid working two jobs to pay the rent and tuition, I could never afford one in college and neither could most of my friends. Only the rich kids did internships, or the lucky ones who could find paid internships. Later, after college, I did an unpaid internship at a political firm which was pretty great, but still–you should get paid for work you do. Unpaid internships perpetuate an unfair class system where it’s harder and harder to climb up in the world if you don’t have certain opportunities available to you. And the exploitation is getting worse today , when more and more “internships” are popping up where paid work existed before. I’m proud that my union has only paid internships–and pretty well-paid, too. If you’re not investing in people, then why should they invest their time in what you’ve asked them to do? You want quality–pay people for it. Anything else is exploitation. Period. So read the book, I guess.
- Who wants John Ashbery’s new translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations? You’d better all have your hands up or you’re not my friends anymore.
- Just kidding to the second part of number 4. But seriously, I can’t wait for this book.
- Has anybody else put off reading Blake Butler’s There is No Year? If this book is like Scorch Atlas, I am afraid of not being able to write for much time afterward. I need to be writing now. Also, will I be as afraid of houses as I become reading SA? Alos will I become a little bit broken? Will there be pieces missing? I may not read this book by myself. I am so excited but it’s a scary thing to open those pages. Soon.
- Because we can all admit that there are some things we break our rules over (and mine are pianos clothes books and cars) we shall all now pause and salivate over this ’64 Alfa Romeo. Life is only bodies and things, after all, and one should be surrounded by beautiful things.
- Speaking of beautiful things, I have a reading room now. We made a reading room. It is lovely. I will post pictures the moment it’s made lovely enough for you all.
- My novel is progressing, slowly, slowly. I am really excited about it. I think you all will be, too.
- Because we were so close to ten. Because of symmetry.
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.
Two New Books You’ve Got to Pre Order Now
May 9, 2011
They Could No Longer Contain Themselves: A Collection of Five Flash Chapbooks By Elizabeth J. Colen, John Jodzio, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Sean Lovelace, and Mary Miller. From the site:
They Could No Longer Contain Themselves contains—but just barely—five chapbooks of flash fiction, including the winner of the third annual Rose Metal Press short short chapbook contest, and four of the finalists from the fourth. Dropped toddlers, attempted drownings, juvenile promiscuity, road trips, and inappropriate therapy sessions compose the multi-voiced family portrait in Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake by Elizabeth J. Colen. Yoga stalkers, guns and gold, babies with iron stomachs, drunkards with t-shirt cannons, and warlocks are the stuff of Do Not Touch Me Not Now Not Ever by John Jodzio. Dominatrixes and fetishists, face paint and goo, fierce parental love and perverse longings cohabitate in Evan’s House and the Other Boys Who Live There by Tim Jones-Yelvington. Leukemia, meteorites, Wal-Mart, bocce ball, Charlie Brown’s clinical depression, the language of talking crows and of Che Guevara’s omelets fill the eggs in How Some People Like Their Eggs by Sean Lovelace. And small stories about pretty girls who sit quietly and behave themselves (or not) populate the pages of Paper and Tassels by Mary Miller.
I mean, seriously. You obviously need to get this book. And this one sounds incredible as well: The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals, by Rae Bryant. (more…)
Words that say what I would like to say, but better than I could say it.
May 5, 2011 — 5 Comments
Junot Diaz on what disasters can teach us (the whole essay is amazing):
If, as Roethke writes, “in a dark time, the eye begins to see,” apocalypse is a darkness that gives us light.
But this is not an easy thing to do, this peering into darkness, this ruin-reading. It requires nuance, practice, and no small amount of heart. I cannot, however, endorse it enough. Given the state of our world—in which the very forces that place us in harm’s way often take advantage of the confusion brought by apocalyptic events to extend their power and in the process increase our vulnerability—becoming a ruin-reader might not be so bad a thing. It could in fact save your life.
Wonderful essay today on Pale Fire by Arthur Phillips. I feel exactly, exactly like this about Nabokov’s masterpiece. (more…)
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…)
Some Bright Bits to Carry You Through the Gloomy Midweek Slump
March 23, 2011 — 2 Comments
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. (more…)
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.
Barrelhouse, Your Favorite Writers, Awesome Workshops (and I will be there, too!)
February 22, 2011 — 2 Comments
Did I mention Steve Almond as keynote speaker? Speed dating with editors? What could be better, really? Check this out:
Barrelhouse is one of the organizers, along with the Baltimore Review and Potomac Review, of the Conversations and Connections: Practical Advice on Writing conference, which is being held in Washington, DC on April 16, 2011. The keynote speaker is Steve Almond, and we have three separate breakout sessions, with an awesome lineup of craft workshops and panel discussions, including some of our favorite people, like Matt Bell, Michael Kimball, Adam Robinson, Rae Bryant, Tara Laskowski, Randall Brown, Steve Himmer, Dylan Landis, Mike Young, Amber Sparks, Barrelhouse editors Dan Brady, Dave Housley, and Matt Kirkpatrick, and many, many more.
Registration is $65 and includes the full day conference, plus a year subscription to a literary magazine, a book (attendees will be able to choose among four selected books), and a ticket for “speed dating with editors” (where you’ll get instant feedback on a poem, or a few pages of a short story). The conference is held in downtown DC, minutes from the DuPont Circle metro, in the buildings of the Johns Hopkins Advanced program in creative writing. This conference sells out every year, so the smart move is to sign up early.
Here’s the conference site, where you can get more info and sign up. And you should! It’s going to be a good time and hopefully damned educational, too. In the funnest way possible, of course.
