At AWP, I sat down with Ben Tanzer as a guest on This Podcast Will Save Your Life. I’ve known Ben for years and we talked about the Navy, tattooing, punk rock, Big Lonesome, Forest of Fortune, Vermin on the Mount, and the unspeakable horror of the literary life. Check it out!
Ashley Perez reviews California Prose Directory edited by J Ryan Stradal for The Rumpus and gives a little love to my short story “Kessler Has No Lucky Pants.” In case you missed it, California Prose Directory collects some really strong work by West Coast writers, including Wendy C. Ortiz, Joshua Mohr, Sean Carswell, Amelia Gray, Rob Roberge, Jerry Stahl, David Ulin, Zoë Ruiz, Colin Winnette and many others.
The Floating Library is becalmed by a less-than-stellar rock and roll memoir by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon:
Unlike Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Friends, with its narrow focus on her years as a struggling poet with her friend and confidant Robert Mapplethorpe in pre-punk New York City, Gordon attempts to describe too much and frequently falls short. She occasionally employs tired and predictable language, particularly when describing the way her adopted home has changed over the decades. “New York City today is a city on steroids.”
I’ll be moderating Alternate Realities at the #LATFOB today at 2pm with these fine authors. (at University of Southern California)
Here’s Annie’s #LATFOB15 schedule. I think I’m going to lose out to the Marie Lu and misscecil combo on Sunday…
Wendy C. Ortiz interviewed me about Vermin on the Mount, Forest of Fortune and a host of other topics. Wendy has been running Rhapsodomancy for eleven years and it was fascinating talking with her about the ups and downs of running a reading series. We also discussed Forest of Fortune, the loneliness of casinos and cats. A sample:
Do you see yourself doing the series five years from now? If so, where would you like it to go next?
Absolutely. I don’t want it to “go” anywhere. Even if it’s just me and some writers in a bomb shelter and 10 million mutant cockroaches at the door, I’ll keep doing it. I refuse to quit. I want to keep it irregular and irreverent. I’ll keep making posters and T-shirts, but instead of scheduling events more frequently with more established writers, I’d like to make things more spontaneous and more unpredictable. More artful. More, dare I say it, dangerous. Less AWP, more Burning Man. I feel a manifesto coming on …
Wendy C. Ortiz interviewed me about Vermin on the Mount, Forest of Fortune and a host of other topics. Wendy has been running Rhapsodomancy for eleven years and it was fascinating talking with her about the ups and downs of running a reading series. We also discussed Forest of Fortune, the loneliness of casinos and cats. A sample:
Do you see yourself doing the series five years from now? If so, where would you like it to go next?
Absolutely. I don’t want it to “go” anywhere. Even if it’s just me and some writers in a bomb shelter and 10 million mutant cockroaches at the door, I’ll keep doing it. I refuse to quit. I want to keep it irregular and irreverent. I’ll keep making posters and T-shirts, but instead of scheduling events more frequently with more established writers, I’d like to make things more spontaneous and more unpredictable. More artful. More, dare I say it, dangerous. Less AWP, more Burning Man. I feel a manifesto coming on …
The infamous bloofing scene from Forest of Fortune. The audio is pretty good despite a noisy back bar. Many thanks to my publisher, Ben LeRoy at Tyrus Books, for shooting the video, and to Curbside Splendor for hosting Small Press Night at the Crooked Pint in Minneapolis on Wed. April 8 at AWP.
