Posts filed under ‘News’
I initially mistyped that as The Bling Assassin
Ducklings, I’m sorry. I’ve been busy enjoying my life and editing our upcoming titles, and have fallen behind on posting contributor news, so I’ma write this long-ass post and hope y’all will click through every one of these delicious links.
But first! If you live in Nashville, a couplethree events you should know about:
We’re having two readings this coming Saturday June 1st for Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days, at 11 am at the downtown library (Conference Center, Main Library First Floor, 615 Church Street, Nashville, TN; FB; NPL; Nashville Scene) and at 2 pm at East Side Story (1108 Woodland Street, Unit B, Nashville, TN; FB). Join Chet Weise, Tessa Mellas and Maggie Smith for readings from the end of days! Maggie Smith is the author of Lamp of the Body, Nesting Dolls and The List of Dangers. Trapeze aficionado Tessa Mellas is a lecturer at the Ohio State University. Chet Weise, the force behind the local Poetry Sucks! A Night of Poetry, Music, and All Sorts of Bad Language reading series, was once banned from Canada for playing rock-n-roll without a permit.
And speaking of Poetry Sucks!… I will be reading at their open mic night on Thursday, June 6th at Dino’s Bar and Grill (411 Gallatin Ave, Nashville, TN 37206; FB; Nashville Scene listing). They begin at 8 pm and end at 10 pm. Dino’s is very smoky so people with allergies may find it hard to take, but they have to-die-for cheeseburgers and fries and Poetry Sucks! is always a ridiculous good time with a great crowd. My portion will be 5-8 minutes long and I won’t know where I am in the line-up til that night. They turn off the grill when the readings start so you’ll want to arrive by 7 pm if you want to eat.
News for Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days contributors:
- Byliner publishes Margaret Atwood‘s The Heart Goes Last, #4 in the acclaimed Positron Series; additionally, her marginalia on The Blind Assassin is being auctioned off for English PEN; subscribers to The New Yorker can read her “Cat’s Robo-cradle” online; she offers three reasons to keep physical books (and I’ll take advantage of her thoughts to mention we still have physical copies of Apocalypse Now for sale); the Royal Winnipeg Ballet is adapting her The Handmaid’s Tale; and, Tim Wu talks to her on SlateRadio (warning: autoplays).
- In Conversation: Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, and Jesse Bullington: a conversation on genre and world-building (warning: auto plays).
- ManArchy Magazine interviewed Brian Evenson; his story “A Collapse of Horses” is at The American Reader, from their February/March issue.
- T.R. Hummer at Slate: “The Intimacy of Walt Whitman’s ‘America’“
- Tessa Mellas won the 2013 Iowa Short Fiction Award for her short story collection Lungs Full of Noise.
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And for 140 And Counting contributors:
- Richard Baldasty‘s “Op Art” appeared at Burrow Press Review.
- Peg Duthie, who is also the author of the poetry collection Measured Extravagance, had two menupoems in Alimentum (you’ll have to scroll about halfway down the page).
- Chris Galvin posted a review of Berit Ellingsen‘s Beneath the Liquid Skin at the Lit Hub; Ellingsen also was interviewed about writing and being Asian in Timothy Moore’s blog (Moore edits Ghost Ocean Magazine).
- Simon Kewin is providing story prompts at StoryADay.
- Chen-ou Liu has haiku at Issa’s Untidy Hut.
- Luc Reid interviewed Ken Liu for Strange Horizons.
- Jonathan Pinnock was featured on The Undercover Soundtrack, a weekly guest post by a writer who uses music as part of their creative process.
27 May 2013
In the midst of this hyperbolic fun, Apocalypse Now is a startlingly serious contribution. Six sections encompass 98 stories and poems, which are fairly evenly across the breadth of the book in tone and topic. Lured in by the promise of big names like Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood and Paolo Bacigalupi, I fell in love with the sheer variety in this book. Covering more than traditional apocalypse scenarios, it’s a collection of absolute endings.
Missed this when it came out: Apocalypse Now: Revisiting the Daydream, a review by Sarah Dunn for the Nelson Mail.
6 May 2013
Quick, incomplete list of contributor news!
Hi ducklings. I’ve been pulled six ways from Sunday for the past month or two, so I am way behind on listing contributor news! So let’s just get through what we can over my lunch hour.
For Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days contributors:
- Nicky Beer‘s “The Plagiarist” at The Rumpus
- Darcie Dennigan‘s “The Job Interview” at Books Matter
- Seth Fried‘s “Das Kolumne” #10 at Tin House
- WWNO discusses Rodney Jones‘ Imaginary Logic
- Kevin Prufer reading with Martha Serpas at Lone Star College-Montgomery on Thursday, April 18, at 7 p.m. Free, open to public; Library Building (Building F).
- Poets’ Quarterly reviewed The Girls of Peculiar by Catherine Pierce
- Chapter16 reviews Joshua Robbins‘ Praise Nothing
For 140 And Counting contributors:
- Ken Liu nominated for Hugo (!!) and spotlighted in Locus
- Stella Pierides‘s “The Price of Youth” at Contemporary Haibun Online
- Rhonda Parrish posted a gallery of Marge Simon‘s art
16 April 2013
a little shine left
Okay, ducklings. Save the date! We’ve set up two Apocalypse Now readings for Saturday the 1st of June—one at 11 am at the Main Branch of the Nashville Public Library (which, if you’ve never been, is a gorgeous modern classical building that’s all limestone and marble with loads of light inside) and the other in the early afternoon at East Side Story (a great bookstore in East Nashville).
Other news! For Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days contributors: Margaret Atwood will be on the Giller Prize jury and was recently on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor; and Joyce Carol Oates will headline the 15th Annual Get Lit! Festival in Spokane, WA.
And for 140 And Counting contributors: Jim Kacian won second runner-up for the 2012 Readers’ Choice Awards for The Heron’s Nest; Ken Liu‘s “The Message” is at StarShipSofa; and Peter Newton‘s haiku is at Issa’s Untidy Hut.
15 February 2013
“The Romantics and the Bohemians wrote poems to impress girls and get drunk–exactly what Chet is trying to bring to Nashville.”
| Hi there peeps. I took the day off from my day job today so I could work on URB stuff, and I’m really excited about some of the stuff we’re bringing into the world in the next fews months, not least Signs Over the Pacific and Other Stories and The Mask Game. I’ll be working on The Mask Game cover art in the next few weeks.
This afternoon I stopped at East Side Story and met their proprietor, Chuck Beard, and dropped off some copies of Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days. Chuck posed for a photo (below). |
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Lots of news to report! For Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days contributors: a review of The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home by Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman is up at The Toronto Review of Books; Booklist Online has a new cute, contentless interview with Paolo Bacigalupi; Davis McCombs received the 2013 Laman Library Writers Fellowship; reviews of Daddy Love by Joyce Carol Oates are up at Pop Matters and The Times; and Chet Weise is featured in the latest issue of Native (check out page 35). If you live near Bellingham, WA, you should go see him performing poetry (and selling anthologies!) on 22 February 2013 with two seminal garage/punk bands, The Mono Men and Fireballs of Freedom.
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For 140 And Counting contributors: David C. Kopaska-Merkel‘s Luminous Worlds should come out this month from Dark Regions Press; David was also recently interviewed by The Mystic Nebula; Peter Newton‘s haiku appeared in Neverending Story; so did Liam Wilkinson‘s; Jonathan Pinnock has two poems in The Pygmy Giant: “Dissonant Love Song #2” and “Dali’s Moustache“, and The Independent gave his Dot Dash four stars; Miriam Sagan‘s short story “The Nun” appears in Orion headless. |
7 February 2013
“Writing is alone, yes, but I don’t think it’s lonely” – Atwood
The print edition of Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days is now available on Amazon as well as at a handful of independents:
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And!! we’re doing a giveaway of ten copies over at Goodreads.
Apocalypse Now contributor Margaret Atwood was featured in Wired for her latest project, Fanado. She was also interviewed yesterday in The Rumpus, and will appear at a free, public event at University of Calgary for Valentine’s Day.
Tobias Carroll and R. Stephen Shodin discussed Brian Evenson‘s fiction for Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and TSP: The official blog of The Story Prize interviewed him.
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T. R. Hummer was interviewed by Meg Pokrass and had 3 poems in Slate this month.
Joyce Carol Oates‘ Black Dahlia & White Rose was reviewed last week in The New York Times Sunday Book Review. |
| 140 And Counting contributor Dawn Corrigan had a story (“Force Majeure“) in The Dying Goose.
Ken Liu talked about translating Chinese science fiction into English. Jonathan Pinnock‘s Dot Dash was reviewed at The Independent, and his poem “This is Just To Be Meta” went up at The Pygmy Giant. |
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21 January 2013
Midnight Scolding and other stuff
News!
Apocalypse Now contributor Margaret Atwood appeared on George Stroumboulopoulos‘s show on the CBC last week, her story “Erase Me” appeared (for subscribers only) on Byliner, and NPR wrote about her serial novel Positron.
Paolo Bacigalupi‘s The Windup Girl was voted third in the Locus Online best of 21st Century SF Novel poll; his Ship Breaker was on The New York Times Best Sellers list for Young Adult Fiction.
| Kelly Link was featured in an author spotlight at Lightspeed (“Catskin,” the story she is asked about at the top of the interview, is her contribution to Apocalypse Now).
Marc McKee was interviewed for First Book Interviews about Fuse. Jeff VanderMeer reviews Joyce Carol Oates‘ The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares. |
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Catherine Pierce‘s poems “The Unabashed Tourist Brings Her Lover to the French Quarter” and “The Unabashed Tourist Talks With a Skee-Ball Proprietor in Ocean City, MD” appeared at The Good Men Project.
And finally, 140 And Counting contributor Francis W. Alexander had a bunch of December publications: stories “A Middle Class Man’s Woeful Tale: The Perfect Wife Made in China and Runaway Inflation” and “A Love Bird Preparing the Nest” in The Drabbler Issue 21, and poem “Midnight Scolding for Things Not Done” in Spaceports and Spidersilk, and “Zantook the Santa” in Residential Aliens.
1 January 2013
Look!
Apocalypse Now:Poems and Prose from the End of Days
in the bindery department at The Sheridan Press
19 December 2012
the end is nigh
Apocalypse Now will be released in ebook form online this Friday! Are you excited? We sure as heckfire are. I’ve been talking with the printer (the urbane Sheridan Press) and the limited edition print copies should be ready to ship any moment now, too.
(I watched Groundhog Day last night, and have been saying “sure as heckfire” all day.)
Contributor Maggie Smith was featured last Friday in Technique Talk at Columbus Alive.
Simone Muench received an NEA award for her poetic work Wolf Centos, some of which appears in the anthology.
TR Hummer‘s Available Surfaces: Essays on Poesis is reviewed in Inside Higher Ed.
Kelly Link‘s “Catskin” (also her story in Apocalypse Now) appeared in the December 2012 Lightspeed Magazine, alongside an author spotlight of Brian Evenson and “The Perfect Match” by 140 And Counting contributor Ken Liu… who also has two stories (“The Postman” and “Always Here“) in the November 2012 Intergalactic Medicine Show.
Finally, 140 And Counting contributor Stella Pierides self-published her poetry book In the Garden of Absence, and her “roaring traffic,” “whistling through” and “a thousand times” appeared in With Cherries on Top.
18 December 2012
hundreds of gourds
| Wild celebration and exhaustion at Casa URB this week, because our Kickstarter campaign for Apocalypse Now has reached its goal! It’s still active until noon Central on Monday, and we’re hoping to make enough extra to print 250 extra books, to be able to sell them at some readings we have tentatively planned for Denver and Nashville and maybe some other places, and at the party we’ll be throwing at the AWP conference in March. | |
If you’re only interested in an ebook copy, this is still a good time to get it, because it’ll cost you $2 less than if you wait until it’s out on Amazon, B&N, the iStore, etc. (Our authors still get their regular royalties despite the discount, so no worries about exploitation. The only entities missing out are the corporations that run the online bookstores, which normally take 30 to 35% of the cover price.)
Apocalypse Now contributor Margaret Atwood was awarded the title of Companion of Literature, the highest honour in the Royal Society of Literature, on November 28th. A recording of her remarks will be available sometime in December in the RSL Library.
Vineland, New Jersey’s Cumberland County College is hosting Joyce Carol Oates as part of their One Book-One College reading campaign, on Tuesday, Dec. 4, at 7 p.m. It’s free and open to the public.
A Hundred Gourds has posted their December issue, with lots of 140 And Counting contributors in it: Jim Kacian is pictured at the 2012 Haiku Festival Aotearoa in Tauranga, New Zealand with one of his poems on the Haiku Pathway and in a Katikati pub; the issue contains haiku and tanka by Helen Buckingham (1, 2, 3), Chen-ou Liu (1, 2, 3, 4), Peter Newton (1, 2, 3, 4), and Christina Nguyen (1, 2); and, finally, John McManus has written a review of T.D Ingram‘s haiku ebook Hiss of Leaves.
Other news for 140 And Counting contributors: Miriam Sagan‘s short story “M.I.A.” appeared in issue 4 of Literary Orphans; Darusha Wehm‘s story “The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1” was in Escape Pod on November 15th; and The Haiku Foundation has posted their Video Haiga #7: radium by Jim Kacian:
1 December 2012