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!

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.

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.

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

Both these issues are remarkable, remarkable, remarkable. As always, as ever, artistry shining sharp and deep through. I am surrounded in both by too many amazing writers to put to pen (or pixel) here, but take it from me: you must read both these publications all the way through.

My piece in Gargoyle, “The Woman Across the Water Wore the Shape of Love,” can be found here.

And my piece in Smokelong Quarterly (which you might like if you’re a fan of Peter Pan–or not a fan at all) is called Never Never, and can be found here.

Enjoy! And seriously–read the whole thing(s.)

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.

The five stories in A Great Dark Sleep: Stories for the Next World  explore death and what follows. These stories are by turns gothic, sweet, funny, fanciful, tragic, playful, and even gruesome. Whatever the tone, whatever the tune, these stories are all written in the language of loss: that ancient tongue the dead have left their loved ones to make sense of.

So anyway, you should definitely pre-order this book because holy shit is it going to be good. These writers will eat your bones and read them back to you like the I Ching. So here you are. And you are welcome.

History of Graphic Design Avant Garde from Minji Aye Hong on Vimeo.

Manipulated photo from the "Structure, Sign, and Play" series by Matt Lee.

I love this. Artist Matt Lee, inspired by Derrida’s essay ‘Structure, Sign, and Play,’ has manipulated a series of photographs to create a dialogue and “a tension between what is known, assumed and thought.” Very cool stuff.  Worth taking a look at the whole series.

I have a new piece, “Five Kinds of Human History,”  in the DC-based Big Lucks magazine, thanks to Mark Cugini and Laura Spencer, the fabulous editors of that publication. It’s a great issue, full of really good poetry and fiction by people like Ryan W. Bradley, Dawn Elisa Gabbert, Ricky Garni, Joe Hall, Kathleen Rooney, Nick Ostdick, Nick Ripatrazone, Justin Sirois, and, J.A. Tyler. Best get you some words today. 

And Mud Luscious Press is fast becoming one of the most consistently stellar presses out there. They keep pumping out these terrifically designed, beautifully and engagingly written small books and this makes me happy. What makes me newly happy about MLP? They’ve just released my friend and terrific writer Robert Kloss’s magnificent How the Days of Love and Diptheria, as part of their Nephew imprint. Buybuybuy!