A couple of weeks ago I got down to Georgia for three readings. Went even better than expected. We filled the Cine screening room in Athens for Sabrina Orah Mark’s book launch for Tsim Tsum (with Blake Butler and I opening) – I did an all comics reading, which almost didn’t happen because we rolled in late from Atlanta and I barely got my laptop hooked up in time. After the reading we introduced Blake to The Manhattan Cafe’s Maker’s and Blenheim’s – I think we have another convert. The next day Sabrina and I went back down 316 to the ATL to read at The Solar Anus with Sandra Simonds and Laura Carter. Generous and solid human beings Jamie Iredell and Blake hosted us, and we had the pleasure of meeting the third Anus host, Amy McDaniel (read her posts on HTML Giant – she’s smart). Small crowd, all good people, awesome reading. We sat in a circle around a cooler of beers. It’s kind of weird that not all readings use this format. Back to Athens – genius reading by genius Reg McKnight on Monday night – breaking out his first book for a live crowd in a decade. Then my VOX Reading on Tuesday night, once again at Cine, to a big crowd in their beautiful screening room. The good folks at UGA arranged for two excellent writers to read with me – Andy Jamison, and my old Athens buddy, Patrick Denker. Patrick got up there, threw his three-day-old Sony Vaio on the cement floor, and then gave a sweat-fueled dramatic reading from his epic-in-progress transliteration of Dante’s Inferno. It was good. I can’t wait to see this thing finished. I warned the crowd that I would fail following a reading like Denker’s. I went ahead and read stuff from The Complete Collection; I read an old story called “Waterslide” that I’ve always loved a lot, but is only finally being published – in the next issue of Anemone Sidecar – and then I premiered some sections from new book about Baltimore. The book only exists in handwritten notebooks that no one else has read, so it was a bit scary revealing it before a live studio audience. I think it went well. I’m tentatively calling the book 100 Atrocities from a Fictional Town Called Baltimore. We’ll see if that sticks.

Here’s the evidence (didn’t take enough pictures – missed Atlanta all together):

A while back I put up a post about Jennifer Fortin (and friend’s) Leveler. It’s gone live, and it’s beautiful in all of its simple glory. The idea behind this online journal is transparency. The editors offer their thoughts on each poem that they publish (a new one every Sunday). (This site’s excellent layout gives you the choice to reveal or hide their words – the poem is always there.) And they invite readers to respond to the writers and the editors by posting the appropriate email addresses beside each poem. I’m interested to see how they reveal these conversations to the site’s readers if they’re conducted via email. Perhaps the solution would be to have an open conversation on a comments thread, and that they ask the writers that they publish to respond to all comments and questions about his or her poem for at least a week. Rob Schlegel’s poem “With Shut Eyes What My Mind Sees Does Not Belong To Me” is the first poem up.

Here’s the Leveler editors’ description of what they’re doing:

“To assure our readers we are being responsible editors and to increase the transparency of our editorial process as a whole, each poem published by LEVELER will be accompanied by a brief note on our selection entitled levelheaded. Here we will look at what a poem conveys and how. In no way do we claim levelheaded is a final, authoritative take on any corresponding poem. Instead, we hope to provide readers with another way into the poem, thereby encouraging closer readings, and ultimately, challenges to our findings.”

Thanks to Joseph Young (and Adam Robinson) for featuring me over at Everyday Genius – my comic “The Moon Gets Closer” was actually featured yesterday. I love big color one-pagers – I’ve spent a lot of time with So Many Splendid Sundays, over the past year (if you haven’t seen it, it’s a collection of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo strips printed at full size for the first time since they were originally published in the broadsheet newspapers; it goddam HUGE). I’ve also been studying Frank King’s Gasoline Alley layouts. And of all the great work in Mome over these past few years, the comics that have really blindsided and impressed me most are the strange and beautiful pieces by Conor O’Keefe. O’Keefe is primarily a landscape painter but he has certainly learned some valuable lessons from McCay, and created something incredibly new. These works were some of the stuff that was going through my head when I drew this comic. This is my first attempt at a color one-pager – I hope to do some more.

Today Joe is featuring another tale of the moon falling by Shellie Zacharia, whose work is new to me. This is a really good story. And, like my comic, it features the words “Such darkness.” It’s complete coincidence that Shellie and I gave these pieces to Joe when he asked us for something, but he said that once he got them, he had to feature them on consecutive days.

p.s. Joe’s book Easter Rabbit just hit the newsstands. His way of telling stories is very new. Go get it.

And has been since last week. So if you’re reading this then you probably already found that one. But, if you haven’t, go ahead and have a listen. (He reads from his forthcoming novella, A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed). Then read his interview with Guy Ben Brookshire here.

The gentlemen who draw and publish the beautifully irregular Dapper Chap Quarterly digest of comics will be featuring a couple of my pieces in the next issue. Until then, you can get a sneak peak on their very classy new website.  Click here to see several comic samples including a series of my drawings called “The Cat Resuscitates.” It’s another offshoot of Johannes and my Genius Child Orchestra project.

Lots of little news to catch up. My house new house is a construction site so production is slow, but I have started posting over at Big Other, with a smart and thoughtful bunch of writers. Lets of good stuff to read over there.

First off, our new Action, Yes is up. This is the first of four issues that is largely collected from our very first open submissions period. We were hoping to get one issue out of it, and then we got FOUR. I’ve heard so many tales of terror about the slush pile – but we didn’t see it – it was a rare submission that didn’t have something interesting going on. Plus we have a specially curated section from Canada.

New Pear Noir! is out, and it’s got my comic “My Brother’s Shoe.” It’s a story that takes place in autumn in New York.  Pretty similar to this movie:

And I have some drawings in the new Caketrain that accompany a series of J.A. Tyler’s Jimmy stories. Totally different project that our image-text novel Glimpse. I think it’s fair to say that the Jimmy drawings are illustrations – which I rarely do.  Here’s one of them:

Leaving for five days – three reading in Georgia. Friday night will be in Athens at Cine with Sabrina (Orah Mark) and Blake (Buter). This is the launch for Sabrina’s brilliant Tsim Tsum, and my southern celebration for The Complete Collection in the town where it was born, and Blake with be bringing his Scorch Atlas to town. Sabrina says this thing will be more party than reading  and she promises RAFFLES, which are similar to the lottery. Then Blake is hosting Sabrina and me, and Laura Carter and Sandra Simonds, at his Solar Anus series at the Beep Beep Gallery in Atlanta. Then next Tuesday I’m reading for the VOX Reading series at my alma mater back in Athens.

Speaking of Georgia, I’ve been reading Jamie Iredell’s Prose Poems: A Novel today. Really desperate stuff – I’m going to go talk about it at Big Other…