The Women of Nell Gwynne’s - Kage Baker (Subterranean)

Kage Bakers's novella The Women of Nell Gwynne’s was nominated for a Hugo Award and a World Fantasy Award in the Best Novella categories. On May 15, 2010, the work was awarded the 2009 Nebula Award in the category novella. Sadly, Baker didn't live long enough to receive the award.

Set in early-Victorian London, The Women of Nell Gwynne’s is a steampunk novella that tells the story of Lady Beatrice - once a proper British daughter, until tragedy struck and sent her home to walk the streets of London. But Lady Beatrice is no ordinary whore, and is soon recruited to join an underground establishment known as Nell Gwynne’s - the finest and most exclusive brothel in Whitehall; and at the same time, the sister organization to the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society. "The beautifully drawn Victorian era is neatly spiced up with futuristic technology such as mechanical eye implants. Baker’s fans will delight in this slight, bawdy and funny confection." - Publisher's Weekly

There's an excerpt up on the publisher's page, just scroll beyond the reviews: Excerpt Nell Gwynne's .

Kage Baker (June 10, 1952 – January 31, 2010) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She was born in Hollywood, California and lived there and in Pismo Beach most of her life. Before becoming a professional writer she spent many years in theater, including teaching Elizabethan English as a second language. Her first stories were published in Asimov's Science Fiction in 1997.

About Subterranean Press
Subterranean Press specializes in scifi, horror, suspense, and dark mystery genres, and has published Peter Straub, David Morrell, Dan Simmons, Poppy Z. Brite, Robert Bloch, and others. They also publish the online magazine Subterranean.

Kage Baker: The Women of Nell Gwynne’s
120 pages
ISBN: 1596062509

Ars Electronica festival + The Afghan Women's Writing Project

2 recommended links:

1) ArsElectronica: hybrid art (+much more)

Ars Electronica is an internationally unique platform for digital art and media culture. It’s made up of 4 divisions: an avant-garde festival, a competition that functions as a showcase of excellence, a museum, and a media art lab. In September, the media festival took place in Linz, and this year's competition winners were announced.

Here the direct links to the winning works in the category computer animation: Nuit Blanche - a short film / 'hyper real fantasy', a fleeting moment between 2 strangers by Arev Manoukian (Canada), there also is a making of online. And the winner in the category digital music & sound art: rheo: 5 horizons - an audiovisual installation by Ryoichi Kurokawa (Japan).

a walk through the festival: there's an excellent feature with many embedded videos online in the german newspaper Zeit. most videos are english with subtitles, so just scroll down, ignore the german, and click the videos: ars electronica videos page 1 / page 2 / page 3

more: more direct links to winners of the other categories are up here, and all winners and honorable mentions are listed here: ars electronica 2010 winners.

related books / categories in Daily s-Press
- let a thousand dictionaries bloom - Sean Burn (live art documentary)
- Letters Patterns Structures - Andrew Topel (visual poetry)
- daily bookshelf: experimental

----------------------

2) The Afghan Women’s Writing Project

The Afghan Women’s Writing Project is aimed at allowing Afghan women to have a direct voice in the world, not filtered through male relatives or members of the media:

"Many of these Afghan women have to make extreme efforts to gain computer access in order to submit their writings, in English, to the project. Most of our Afghan writers participate in the project partially or entirely in secret from friends and family. The Afghan Women’s Writing Project began as an idea during novelist Masha Hamilton’s last trip to Afghanistan in November 2008."

The project reaches out to talented and generous women author/teachers in the United States and engages them, on a volunteer, rotating basis, to teach Afghan women online from Afghanistan. They use women teachers due to cultural sensitivities in Afghanistan. The writing workshops are taught in three secure online classrooms. To read the stories, visit the homepage with latest essays and information.

related books / categories in Daily s-Press
- A Thousand Sisters - Lisa Shannon (the chronicle of a sponsorship)
- Zahra's Paradise(international graphic web novel)
- daily bookshelf: the world these days

--
PS: there also is a personal editor's note on this feature, it can be found here: worlds.

Future Issue (Oxford American)

Issue 70 of Oxford American is a special Future Issue. While we can't guarantee our predictions will come true, we can trust the minds of our fearless explorers—our writers and artists—to point us in the right direction.

"Our visions include the Internet-fueled fears of Jack Pendarvis; William Caverlee calling upon Walker Percy's prophecies; Anne Gisleson coping with change in New Orleans; a surreal Frank Gehry structure beheld by Matthew Pitt; and Hal Crowther's version of the apocalypse.

But our greatest fears and unfathomable dreams come to light in our extra section: "The Future of Fiction: Visions from 2050" wherein eleven adventurous storytellers probe our all-too-human desire to ascertain what is to come: sexually active nonagenarians, happy pills, viral false information, and deleted childhood memories."

Several articles of the Future Issue are available online, visit the latest issue page for links, the list includes Ten Great Novels of the Apocalypse. In the Online Exclusives Section, you can find a related Governors' Forum: Six Southern governors address our concerns about the future.

An extra link: last year, Oxford American had a special Race Issue - again, with articles included online.

Future Issue
Oxford American
5,95$

issue 1: telephone

telephone is a new print journal - the name is derived from the children’s game in which phrases change as you whisper them from one person to the next. telephone features four to five poems from one foreign poet in each issue, which are then translated roughly ten times by multiple different poets and translators. There are no rules about how each poem should be translated and we are soliciting a variety of interpretations.

The foreign feature poet of issue 1 is Uljana Wolf, who was born in East Berlin, studied German literature, English, and Cultural Studies, in Berlin and Krakow, and now lives in Berlin and New York. (German wiki page: Uljana Wolf)

Authors of telephone #1 include Mary Jo Bang, Priscilla Becker, Susan Bernofsky, Macgregor Card & Megan Ewing, Isabel Fargo Cole, Timothy Donnelly, Robert Fitterman, John Gallaher, Matthea Harvey, Christian Hawkey, Erín Moure, Eugene Ostashevsky, Nathaniel Otting, Craig, Santos Perez, Ute Schwartz & Uwe Weiß.

A table of contents with selected excerpts is up here: Telephone Contents. It starts with Uljana Wolf's poem in German: "[bad] [bald] [bet~t] [brief]" - and continues with the 'telephone translation' of it by Mary Jo Bang: "best bad bet/t brielfy". Make sure to check out the final excerpt, too: "(z)ed (z)oo (z)ee" by Erìn Moure - such good sound word play, here's a taste:

"..zap a bonspiel of zebras, zigzag in
the saga, zip to the zócalo, in the
ooze or ozone where zen zealotry zooms
home like Jingles to Ed. A toast to
the Ee, okay I agree!.."

Telephone 1
13,95$

Watermark - Clayton T. Michaels (qarrtsiluni)

Watermark, by Clayton T. Michaels, was the first-place winner of qarrtsiluni’s 2010 poetry chapbook contest, selected by Ken Lamberton. Watermark was simultaneously published in print and online. There also is a podcast available.

The images in Watermark are vivid and visceral; the writing superbly succinct; and that something extra — call it gravitas, call it cohesion — that makes a chapbook a work of art as well as a work of literature is present in each of these fine poems. —Pamela Johnson Parker, winner of the 2009 qarrtsiluni chapbook contest

Clayton T. Michaels is a teacher, poet and musician who currently resides in Granger, Indiana. He has been a featured poet at the online journal Anti-, and his poems have appeared in The Prism Review, Nerve Cowboy, >kill author, Makeout Creek, Slipstream, and The Chiron Review, among others. He currently teaches composition, creative writing, and comic book-related courses at Indiana University South Bend. An interview with Clayton on Watermark is online as podcast: inerview link.

About qarrtsiluni
As online literary magazines go, qarrtsiluni, at five years old, is positively venerable -- but retains the edginess, openness, vitality and editorial responsiveness that have set it apart from the beginning. In August, the journal published poems from all eleven finalists in its annual poetry chapbook contest: chapbook finalists. The current issue at qarrtsiluni is The Crowd, edited by Dave Bonta and Beth Adams, the managing editors of qarrtsiluni.

Clayton T. Michaels: Watermark
print + online + audio version
ISBN: 0978174925
32 pages, 7.95$

Calendar of Regrets - Lance Olsen (FC2)

Calendar of Regrets is a wildly inventive and visually rich collage of twelve interconnected narratives, one for each month of the year, all pertaining to notions of travel—through time, space, narrative, and death.

It is a narrative about narrativity itself, the human obsession with telling ourselves and our worlds over and over again in an attempt to stabilize a truth that, as Nabokov once said, should only exist within quotation marks.

"Lance Olsen misbehaves in all sorts of grave and playful ways. He throws Hieronymus Bosch in the mix with Agamemnon; God in the mix with the devil. Here are postcards, podcasts, and fairy tales; terrorism and angels; aphasia and aneurysym; bludgeonings and vacuous friendships. Calendar of Regrets is a spectacular synthesis, a wild ride through a free mind. I have never read anything like it." — Noy Holland, author of What Begins with Bird

Lance Olsen's short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading. Olsen is an N.E.A. Fellowship and Pushcart Prize recipient, a Fulbright Scholar, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, and Finnish. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; Associate Editor at The American Book Review; and Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. Published escerpts of the Calendar of Regrets are online at: Perigree + ServingHouse + Brooklyn Rail.

FC2: Fiction Collective Two
Fiction Collective Two is an author-run, not-for-profit publisher of artistically adventurous, non-traditional fiction. FC2 is supported in part by the University of Utah, the University of Houston - Victoria, the University of Alabama Press, and private contributors.

Lance Olsen: Calendar of Regrets
a collage of 12 interconnected narratives
456 pages, $22.00
ISBN 978-1-57366-157-7

The politics of fiction + Reading and Race

3 recommended links:
1) TEDTalk video podcast: "The politics of fiction" by Eli Shafak
2) The Millions ethnicity essay by Edan Lepucki
3) Best of Web 2010 article in the Chicago Tribune


1) TEDTalks video podcast: Elif Shafak on the politics of fiction
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Elif Shafak was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1971. She is an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. From the podcast:
"We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about other clusters of people. In my opinion, one way of transcending these cultural ghettos is through the art of storytelling. Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls. And through those holes, we can get a glimpse of the other, and sometimes even like what we see."

Just as her books, her speech receives biased comments, from "Stunningly and gently radical :)" to "Slow down, woman." A transcript of Elif Shafak' speech is online at bakikuleyi.livejournal: Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction

related books / categories in Daily s-Press
- International Short Fiction (World Literature Today)
- Zahra's Paradise(international graphic web novel)
- daily bookshelf: international
---------------------------------------------


2) The Millions ethnicity essay: Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction
The Millions is an online magazine offering coverage on books, arts, and culture since 2003. Recently, Edan Lepucki reflects on the books she read about African-Americans, and on fiction / non-fiction books about ethnicity:
"Reading narrative requires empathy. The character’s perspective becomes your own, and through this relationship you begin to feel as another person would. As I read Roots, I felt what Kunta Kinte felt, saw what he saw, and by becoming him, I understood intimately the horrors of slavery. It’s why nonfiction slave narratives, like those of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass, were so important to the abolitionist movement, and why fictional slave narratives persist today.
But stories also require complicity: the reader participates in the action of the story simply by imagining and interpreting it. As Zadie Smith points out in this short interview: "Fiction is like a hypothetical area in which to act. That’s what Aristotle thought—that fictional narrative was a place to imagine what you would do in this, that, or the other situation. I believe that, and it’s what I love most about fiction."
related books / categories in Daily s-Press
- Had Slaves by Catherine Sasanov
- How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique
- daily bookshelf: gender + race
---------------------------------------


3) Chicago Tribune article: "Best of the Web 2010" edited by Kathy Fish and Matt Bell
From the book section of the Chicago Tribune:
"Reading, poetry and prose written for the Web calls for a different kind of writing than one might find on the printed page and this annual volume is a terrific reminder of great possibilities and experiments in style and form." - Elizabeth Taylor, Literary Editor Chicago Tribune


related books / categories in Daily s-Press
- Best of the Web 2010 (Dzanc, edited by K. Fish + M. Bell)
- daily bookshelf: indie + small prize winners / best of anthologies

Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt)

Short Circuit is the first textbook written by prize-winning writers for students and more experienced practitioners of the short story. The 288 page guide brings together 24 specially-commissioned essays from well-published short story writers who are also prize winners of the toughest short story competitions in the English language.

Each essay picks up on one or more craft or process issues and explores them in context, within the creative practice of the writer. Much of the guidance can equally be applied to writing longer fiction. A 25-page excerpt of Short Circuit is available online: Short Circuit pdf-sample.

Short Circuit is edited by Vanessa Gebbie. Contributions include five essays from winners of The Bridport Prize. There are interviews with Clare Wigfall — winner of The National Short Story Award — and with Tobias Hill whose short story collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. Other prize-winning writers in this book include winners of The Asham Award for New Women Writers, The Fish Short Story Prize, The BBC Short Story Prize, The Commonwealth Award, Writers Inc. Writer of the Year, The Willesden Herald Prize, NAWG Millennium Award for Radio Short Story and the Per Contra Prize.

Vanessa Gebbie’s short fiction has won over forty awards, including prizes at Bridport, Fish (twice), Per Contra (USA), the Daily Telegraph and the Willesden Herald, from final judges such as Zadie Smith, Tracy Chevalier, Michael Collins and Colum McCann. She is a freelance writing teacher working with adult groups at literary festivals as well as school students. Many of her prize-winning stories are brought together for the first time in Words from a Glass Bubble (Salt, 2008). A second collection, Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures, is forthcoming.

About Salt
Salt is an independent publisher whose origins date back to 1990 when poet John Kinsella launched Salt Magazine in Western Australia. Now, Salt publishes over 80 books a year, focussing on poetry, biography, critical companions, essays, literary criticism and text books by authors from the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Caribbean and mainland Europe.

Short Circuit
288 pages
Price: GBP 14.99, USD 26.95
ISBN: 9781844717248

author talk: Daniela Elza + Arlene Ang

ABOUT THE AUTHORS + THE TALK

Daniela Elza is a free-range poet, and a non-medicated scholar of the poetic consciousness. She has rel.eased more than a 140 organic poems into the wor(l)d in over 42 publications. Her inte.rests lie in the gaps, rubs, and b.ridges between poetry, language, and philosophy. She is currently compiling her second manuscript and collaborating with fellow poets. Daniela is the recipient of this year's Pandora's Collective Citizenship Award. She lives with her family in Vancouver and spo.radically blogs at Strange Places.

Arlene Ang is the author of The Desecration of Doves (2005), Secret Love Poems (Rubicon Press, 2007), and a collaborative book with Valerie Fox, Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press, 2008). Her third full-length collection, Seeing Birds in Church is a Kind of Adieu was published by Cinnamon Press in 2010. Her poems have appeared in Ambit, Caketrain, Diagram, Poetry Ireland, Poet Lore, Rattle, Salt Hill as well as the Best of the Web anthologies 2008 and 2009 (Dzanc Books). She lives in Spinea, Italy where she serves as staff editor for The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1. Website: arlene ang, Blog: event museum

This author talk took place in the virtual daily café in September.



Arlene: To begin at the beginning, how did you get started with poetry? How did this influence your writing?

Daniela: I have written poems for as long as I can remember. In the beginning, mostly for fun, for friends and family, for different occasions. Recently, my parents read me over the phone a poem I wrote for their anniversary. I was touched. They have kept it for close to three decades. There was something very rewarding and magical to express in words (words available to every one), something that touches another. Something I could give as a gift. It is empowering, especially for a child, this kind of giving. To create something real with your words. I am still under that spell. After two Masters degrees and an almost PhD I have not changed my mind about the power and magic of poetic language.

And for you, Arlene? Why poetry?
Arlene: What fascinates me about poetry is how it involves the reader and allows different interpretations depending on who's reading it. It's like Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and people would stand there saying: "That's a man. Trust me." "Don't like her. Bet she poisoned puppies and children." "Look at her hands. That's chronic arthritis for you." I find it quite fascinating. Fiction, on the other hand, requires less creativity on the reader's part. I also like to think that poetry has a higher alcohol content than prose since it's a distillation of experience or thought. It's no incident that alcohol travels faster in the blood stream and gives a nice rush to the system.

Daniela: Freedom in interpretation that poetry offers is important. Perhaps the kind of freedom that one experiences in reverie. Isn’t that how we come to own a poem? Although we do not tend to teach it this way. There is a tendency to put a straitjacket on it. Interesting you liken it to alcohol. Robert Bringhurst (2007) says: "Poetry, like alcohol and sex, is subject to rules and invested with ritual because of the threat it represents."

>> click to read the whole dialogue:
>> author talk: Daniela Elza + Arlene Ang
>> on poetry, collaboration, plus the birds, the beasts and ...

Aquarium - Ryan Bradley (Thunderclap)

In his new chapbook Aquarium, Ryan W. Bradley twists together his years of academia with words you just can't learn from a book. In his own words, the poems included in this chapbook are "outcasts of persona, confessional conventions and bastards of tradition."

You can read more about Aquarium and Ryan Bradley in a recent author talk at OWC with Mel Bosworth. Themes range from writing in general to Aquarium and related projects. The interview inlcudes a story on life choice: "I try not to get too longwinded here, but I think the best way to answer such a question is to start with the story of what my stepfather told me..." - interview link

Ryan W. Bradley has fronted a punk band, done construction in the Arctic Circle, and managed a children's bookstore. He is the author of a novel, Code for Failure (Black Coffee Press, 2012), and the editor of Artistically Declined Press. He received his MFA from Pacific University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a myriad of publications including The Oregonian, Oranges & Sardines, Sir! Magazine, and PANK. He lives in Oregon with his wife and two sons.

About Thunderclap
Thunderclap's goal is to always make people feel something sublime in as few words as possible. They also publish Thunderclap Magazine.

Ryan W. Bradley: Aquarium
Paperback, 26 pages, $7.00
order link (lulu)

International Short Fiction Issue (WLT)

The September 2010 issue of WLT (World Literature Today) includes a first-ever marquee section devoted to International Short Fiction, introduced by guest editor Alan Cheuse. Several pages are available online (names are linked).

Authors contributing short stories include Ana Menéndez (Cuba/US), Raija Siekkinen (Finland), Nicole Lee (Malaysia), Andrei Cornea (Romania), Fatou Diome (Senegal/France), Cyrille Fleischman (France), Simon Fruelund (Denmark), Benjamin Percy (US), Amanda Michalopoulou (Greece), Alix Ohlin (Canada), and Ru Freeman (Sri Lanka), with original artwork by Edel Rodriguez on the cover and Danica Novgorodoff inside.

Highlights include: an excerpt from Vietnamese American author Andrew Lam’s forthcoming essay collection, East Eats West, new poetry by Tedi López Mills (Mexico), Jyrki Heikkinen (Finland), and Roger Sedarat (Iran/US), plus interviews with Israeli author Eshkol Nevo and Dutch crime writer Charles den Tex.

Alan Cheuse is best known for his frequent book reviews on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. As part of the International Short Fiction issue, his essay "The Form Read Round the World: American Short Fiction and World Story" is online at WLT, author profile included.

About World Literature Today
World Literature Today was founded as Books Abroad in 1927 by Roy Temple House, a scholar of vision from the University of Oklahoma. From a modest seedling of 32 pages in January 1927, Books Abroad grew to 256 pages by the end of its fiftieth year (Autumn 1976). In January 1977 the journal became known as World Literature Today, reflecting the truly international range that its coverage and reputation had acquired. Now in the 84th year of uninterrupted publication, WLT is the second-oldest such literary periodical in the United States, and remains devoted to their mission of serving students, scholars, and general readers worldwide.

International Short Fiction issue (WLT)
online excerpts (click title row)
several print / online subscription options available

related links: short stories, bilingual authors

A Thousand Sisters - Lisa Shannon (Seal Press)

A Thousand Sisters is the story of how a single moment can change a life – and the lives of others. How a life’s mission can come to you, not in contemplation, but sprawled out on the couch, watching TV:

"I had a great life—a successful business, a fiancé, a home, and security. But in the wake of my Dad’s death, and soon-to-be thirty years old, I found myself depressed, camped out in my living room watching Oprah. It was there that I learned about Congo, widely called the worst place on earth to be a woman. Awakened to the atrocities –millions dead, women being raped and tortured, children starving and dying in shocking numbers –I had to do something. A Thousand Sisters chronicles how I raised sponsorships for Congolese women, beginning with a solo 30-mile run, and then founded Run for Congo Women..." - Lisa Shannon

Lisa Shannon recently spoke about Congo and her book with ABC World News, you can watch the interview online here.

Lisa Shannon presently serves as an ambassador for Women for Women International. She previously owned a photography production company, where she served as art director and producer. She lives in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. A Thousand Sisters is her first book.

About Seal Press
Inspired by the simple yet radical notion that a book can change a woman’s life, Seal Press is devoted to publishing titles that inform, reveal, engage, delight, and support women of all ages and backgrounds. Seal Press was founded in 1976 as a small DIY publisher to provide a forum for women writers and feminist issues, and since then, Seal has published groundbreaking books that represent the diverse voices and interests of women. "From cultural revelation to pop culture, our books are smart and fun, insightful and hilarious."

Lisa Shannon: A Thousand Sisters
non-fiction, 336 pages
ISBN: 1580052967

related links: the world these days, gender + race + age, non-fiction

Pushcart Prize anthology 2010

The Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses series is published every year since 1976, and since the first issue, has represented hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays in the pages of their annual collections.

2010 Edition
The Pushcart Prize has an official homepage with general information at Pushcartprize.com. Some more detailed information on the 2010 Edition is available in a Publisher's Weekly Review: "This year's Pushcart anthology offers consistently good prose and poetry that covers a broad range of styles and topics. On the historical front, "Tied to History" by Greil Marcus and "A Poetics of Hiroshima" by William Heyen are among several pieces that reinvigorate well-plowed terrain from WWII.. .. The anthology is at its most innovative with its poetry, which surpasses the prose in experiments with language and form." (for the full review, visit the Editorial Reviews at the Amazon/Pushcart page.)

Behind the Scenes of Pushcart (or: Pushcart Dreamin')
Earlier this year, 2 essays provided some insights on the Pushcart nomination process. The first essay is from Mark Halliday, "Pushcart Hopes & Dreams", published in Pleiades (in print), and thus not available online. Yet author Mary Miller read the piece, and wrote a commentary with some quotes, published in Luna Park: "I’d never thought much about how it [the Pushcart Prize nomination process] worked, but this is what I always assumed: an editor at one of the contributing small presses listed in the back of the anthology recommends a particular story or poem and then the people who are listed in the front, along with the big cheese, Bill Henderson, make a final decision. After reading Mark Halliday’s essay, “Pushcart Hopes & Dreams,” in the current issue of Pleiades, however, it’s clear that my assumption was wrong..."
the full commentary is online at Luna: Pushcart Dreamin'

Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses 2010
600 pages, $18.95
ISBN: 1888889543

related links: prize winners / best of, mixed formats, anthologies

99 Problems - Ben Tanzer (CCLaP)

Why is it that so many full-time writers seem to be full-time runners as well, and what is it about each activity that seems to fuel the other?

In 99 Problems, Chicago author Ben Tanzer tackles this very question, penning a series of essays completed after a string of actual runs across the United States during the winter of 2009, cleverly combining the details of the run itself with what new insights he gained that day regarding whatever literary story he was working on at the time; and along the way, Tanzer also offers up astute observations on fatherhood, middle-age, and the complications of juggling traditional and artistic careers, all of it told through the funny and smart filter of pop-culture that has made this two-time novelist and national performance veteran so well-loved.

A unique and fascinating new look at the curious relationship between physical activity and creative intellectualism, 99 Problems will have you looking at the arts in an entirely new way, and maybe even picking up a pair of running shoes yourself.

Parallel to the book, CCLaP plotted a story from the book into a customized Google map, splitting the text up into a series of placemarkers located at various spots mentioned in the story: Map link. There's a blog entry about the map, too, including an embedded verison of the map and screenshots of it running in Google Earth on an iPhone: Map-Blog.

Ben Tanzer is the author of the novels Lucky Man (Manx Media), Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine (Orange Alert Press) and the forthcoming You Can Make Him Like You, as well as the previous CCLaP story collection Repetition Patterns. He also oversees day-to-day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life and This Blog Will Change Your Life, the centerpiece of his vast, albeit faux, media empire.

About CCLaP
CCLaP Publishing is an imprint of the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, an organization dedicated to promoting the best of the underground and cutting-edge arts. On top of the seven books it has put out since 2008, the center also maintains a popular website, produces a bi-monthly podcast, and hosts a growing amount of live events all over the city of Chicago.

Ben Tanzer: 99 Problems
essays about running and writing
electronic book
"Pay what you want" at website

review
a review of "99 Problems" is up in Rose Hunter's blog: 99 Problems / A Picture of a Place

What May Have Been - Gary Percesepe & Susan Tepper (Cervena Barva)

What May Have Been is a novel in letters exchanged between the artist Jackson Pollock and his fictional lover, a young woman called Dori G. Gary Percesepe and Susan Tepper have created a luminous love story that takes place sometime during the late 1940’s, in that sandy wonderland at the eastern tip of Long Island known as The Hamptons.

“In this extraordinary novel, Pollock tells his lover that things like paint and wives are very small in the scheme of things. Gary Percesepe and Susan Tepper show how the great scheme of things is, in fact, in literary art, captured in paint and wives and a Montauk surf and a silky scarf and narrow hips and a cold water flat and a used Ford. Brilliantly conceived, brilliantly executed, this is a stunning book about art and about life.” —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

An interview on "What May Have Been" with both authors is up in fictionaut: Checking in with What May Have Been.

Susan Tepper is the author of Deer & Other Stories (Wilderness House Press, 2009) and the poetry collection Blue Edge. Over 100 of her stories, poems, interviews and essays have been published in journals worldwide. Susan hosts the reading series FIZZ at KGB Bar, and is Assistant Editor of Istanbul Literary Review (online journal based in Turkey). Where You Can Find It, her second novel, is available.

Gary Percesepe is Associate Editor at Mississippi Review (now Rick Magazine) and serves on the Board of Advisors at Fictionaut. His works have been published in Salon, Mississippi Review, Antioch Review, Westchester Review, Big Muddy, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Review of Metaphysics, New Ohio Review, Enterzone, Intertext, Luna Park, Istanbul Literary Review, Pank and other places. He has just completed his second novel, Leaving Telluride.

About Cervena Barva Press
Cervena Barva Press was inaugurated in April 2005. In a mere 5 years, Publisher Gloria Mindock has released 52 chapbooks and 20 full length books. Projected for this year are 7 more books. Cervena Barva Press has published authors Gary Fincke, Lucille Lang Day, CL Bledsoe, Nancy Mitchell, Kathleen Aguero, Linda Nemec Foster, George Held, Eric Greinke and many other unique voices.

Gary Percesepe & Susan Tepper: What May Have Been
novel in letters
104 pages, 15$
ISBN: 978-0-9844732-8-1

Tough Skin - Sarah Eaton (BlazeVOX)

Tough Skin consists of three separate—but linked—sections of little stories/prose poems, which follow the exploits of a time-traveling inventor and his greatest creation, Peaches, the blood baby; a drunken uncle, his sidekick (the one-hundred-year-old monkey), and their unnamed target; and, four incompetent women caretakers who keep running into someone called Pedro. This book also contains illustrations by Philadelphia-based artist, Sarah Jackson-Moore.

Michael Martone writes of Tough Skin: “This prose poses a visceral threat, the poetics flail. Who knew there were so many layers of skin to skin? Sarah Eaton rings this bell, pulls this trigger. Like that, she floors me."

This is Sarah Eaton’s first book. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, elimae, and a number of other publications. She teaches and works at Indiana University in Bloomington.

About BlazeVOX Books
BlazeVOX Books represents neither a group of writers nor one mode of writing. We enjoy innovative works of literature in whatever format that it chooses to find itself. We wish to promote new style, emerging voices and provide an outlet for these artists to express their artistic visions.

Sarah Eaton: Tough Skin
poetry collection
93 pages, paperback, $16.00
ISBN 9781935402619

Dog Days of Summer 2010 (Not From Here Are You?)

Dog Days of Summer 2010 features 80 authors from around the globe and their 101 word entries into the recent flash-fiction contest sponsored by Not From Here Are You? Blog.

Summer is of course a relative term depending on which side of the equator you reside on. In the northern hemisphere, June 21, 2010 marked the first day of summer and September 23, 2010 signifies the first day of fall. In the southern U.S - where editor Michael J. Solender resides - folks start complaining about the heat in May and continue well into October, with the 101 days between May 25th and September 6th being unofficially known as the “Dog Days of Summer.” - Why Dog Days? Because in the brutal humid heat of the south, even our four legged friends don’t want to be left outside.

What better diversion for Flashers than to write about it. And write they did. The gauntlet was thrown down as writers were asked to submit flash fiction pieces of exactly 101 words in length and containing the words “summer” and “heat.”

The collection that follows represents the best of those efforts accompanied by the magnificent photography of Kristin Fouquet.

The stories? As varied as the Summer. Classic literary tales, NOIR and Pulp crime drama, Summer Fun, Sci-fi and much much more.

Michael J. Solender writes a weekly Neighborhoods column for The Charlotte Observer and contributes frequently to Charlotte ViewPoint and Like The Dew, Journal of Southern Culture & Politics. Solender’s micro-fiction and poetry has been featured online at Bull Men’s Fiction, Calliope Nerve, Danse Macabre, Dogzplot, Full of Crow, Gloom Cupboard, Writers’ Bloc and over one dozen other venues. His essay "Unaffiliated" will be featured in the upcoming print anthology Topograph, New Writing From the Carolinas and the Landscape Beyond, published by Novello Festival Press in the fall of 2010.

Dog Days of Summer 2010 - Not From Here Are You?
e-book

related links: anthologies, modern fiction, e-books