We have a new one up – the poet Allison Titus. She writes pastorals, a poetic genre that makes me cringe in fear of ennui – seeing as no one in America’s a shepherd anymore, who would want voluntary dive into the pastoral? Allison Titus steps up, and unleashes something new from the mouth of the meandering wanderer. A shepherd, or field-walker of some sort, left to walk contemporary North America is sure to see a different kind of beauty or horror than the bucolic verdance one could expect to surround the shepherds of yore. And of course the meditations on this new world are much more threatening than what I’ve come to expect from the pastoral. Go listen to Allison Titus inject new life into an old trope.

Adam Robinson gets it. He’s got a hand in a lot of different projects (Publishing Genius Press, Balitmore Is Reads, This PDF Chapbook Series, etc.) and he does them all right. There’s a great interview/profile of Adam up at Inside Higher Ed. This is a guy who clearly loves the literature he publishes and plans to navigate what can be oily and discouraging waters of book publishing with humanity, and, more importantly excitement. No requisite cynicsim here. Read the article at Inside Higher Ed.

John Madera has the third issue of The Chapbook Review up. More reviews of little books and lots of excellent interviews. I really like this site; it’s pure, dense content – no fluff or posturing.

I just read this interview of James Iredell by Matt DeBenedictis – really compelling stuff – Iredell talks about his experience with his books and the progress of both his character through his series of novellas and creating these books.

I feel like I want to spend the next month reading interviews and nothing else.

Robert Swartwood is putting together an anthology of hint fiction – stories that are 25 words or fewer. Trying to write them is an interesting challenge. I’ve been working on several. Swartwood says that they ought to “suggest a larger more complex story.” Twenty-five words can be pretty complex in themselves, in my humble opinion.

Here’s the info (deadline is the end of August).

The Complete Collection is now in stock at Small Press Distribution. This is the best place to buy it. (Amazon doesn’t like to share money with publishers and authors.) If you haven’t gotten a copy yet, this is your spot.

Thanks!

On All Things Considered last week, Madeleine Brand interviewed Michael Kimball about his Your Life Story (on a Postcard) project. Read the story and listen to it here. Michael points out that he finds the project so exciting simply because he’s asking people questions – and that doesn’t happen much these days. He says, “There are a lot of people who are putting themselves out there in different ways — everything from status updates to tweets to whatever is on their MySpace page or their own blog, but we don’t have people asking questions.” The internet ephemera that I usually find most interesting, including Michael’s project (and Ben Brookshire’s Q&A’s over at Apostrophe Cast), are interviews. I guess I should start asking more people more questions.

After the interview, Michael posted his life story of Madeleine Brand on the project’s website.

My friend Chester, who is WAY more together than I was (or anyone I knew) in high school, is launching a new press – Craven Press. He’s looking for submissions for a print anthology he’s putting together – send your craven prose to: cravenpress [at] gmail [dot] com

Here is Craven’s very just and forward-looking chartering manifesto. It’s not hard to get behind this one:

It is the mission of Craven Press to counteract the ongoing neutering of American literature by providing raw, challenging narratives of contemporary life. In the vein of such writers as Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, David Shields and Roberto Bolaňo, Craven Press seeks literature that comments on, but does not necessarily celebrate the inherent depravity of modern life. Because the requirement of many publishing houses that submissions be sent via literary agent creates a defacto censorship of work prior to being received by the publisher, Craven Press will only accept submissions directly from the writer wishing to be published.

With Love,
The Editors.

Now that I’m on Facebook (after years of evasion), I figure my novel should be too. It’s better at things like social networking than I am. Go join the group for The Complete Collection of people, places & things here. I’ll be posting updates on the readings I’ll be doing in the fall and winter and other pertinent details. Click this button to join:

And, obviously, The Complete Collection is available at Amazon. So, if you’ve read the book and like it, I’d appreciate if you’d share your thoughts here. If you don’t like the book, you can say that too, but, remember, Nina doesn’t eat if daddy doesn’t sell his book. (Not really – if I was really supporting my child with the money “made” off of an experimental novel published by a small press then it would be justified to put in a call to Child Protective Services.) Click this button to review the book:

This is a week late, but no less exciting. Claudia Smith has a reading up at Apostrophe Cast, after our mid-summer hiatus. I’m a huge fan of Claudia’s stories, so I’m really glad that she read these particular ones for us. Her stories really unsettle me, because they open up almost as if they’re going go be these polite, New Yorker-style, Updike/Oates little packages, but then she breaks up all of the floorboards from right beneath your feet. She’s not afraid to walk into the darkness and take her stories with her – deep into it – but she has no need to wear the depravity on her sleeve, to telegraph it. Go ahead and listen.

I still have some review copies of The Complete Collection of people, places & things left to give away. If you write reviews for magazines, newspapers, blogs, whatever, send me an email with your contact info, and a link to the venue that you write for – and let me know if you’d rather an electronic PDF copy of the book, or a shiny new paper and ink copy – and I’ll send one your way.