My hat goes high and then higher to the new U.S. Poet Laureate, W.S. Merwin: extraordinary poet, superb translator, and author of one of my favorite offbeat nonfiction gems, The Mays of Ventadorn.
I've got a new story (and an interview to boot) up at the excellent Subtropics, rubbing shoulders with great work by Padgett Powell, Kevin Prufer and Chris Bachelder, among many others. Many thanks to Anastasia Kozak for her great questions and to David Leavitt for his deft touch.
June 21, 2010, 9:35 p.m.Categories: China, Litmags, Short Stories
That is, a sentence about a sentence I love, up now at the brilliant Big Other.
May 17, 2010, 10:52 a.m.Category: Nonfiction
A full glass lifted to Ron Mitchell and the rest of the staff at Southern Indiana Review for fitting two chunks of flash memoir into their Spring 2010 issue. “Houhai Lake in Winter” and “The Overnight Train from Xian Pulls Into Beijing” have superb company - Liam Rector and James Valvis, Randall Brown and Joe Meno, Laura Madeline Wiseman and Adam Johnson, bright lights all.
April 28, 2010, 7:35 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, China, Litmags, Nonfiction, Travel
Poems, yes, in the many-platformed Vitruvius, with, among others written by, among others, a favorite poet of mine, Jules Gibbs.
Many thanks to mudluscious' J.A. Tyler for giving the internets a new taste of Pacazo, my novel to come, and for stacking the crowd around it: Michael Kimball, Amelia Gray, Aaron Burch, Lily Hoang, Robert Lopez, Dawn Raffel, Peter Markus and many more.
You must believe me: I was as tired of all the Best of the Month/Year/Decade lists as everyone else. But then I found one with my name on it! Nate Brown over at The L Magazine decided that All Over was one of the 111 best books of the Aughts! Thank you, Nate and L, and Happy 2010 to you both.
December 30, 2009, 9:57 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, Fiction Collections
Huge gaping thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, which recently granted me one of their forty-odd 2010 Literature Fellowships in Creative Writing (Prose). It's pretty amazing company to be in--Barry Gifford and Adam Johnson and ZZ Packer also won this year, along with my friend and fellow Dzancer Mike Czyzniejewski. The book I pitched in my application will require more in the way of travel expenses than I could ever have afforded on my own, so again, thank you, NEA!
December 18, 2009, 9:20 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, History, Novels, Travel
Allow me to posit that it is fun to talk about things that don't yet exist, like flying cars and justice and Issue 6.2 of The Cincinnati Review.
Let me further suggest that we now take the advice of Christ and consider that last item first.
Fiction by Micah Riecker and Kevin Wilson. Poetry by Sherman Alexie and William Logan and Chase Twichell. Nonfiction by Khaled Mattawa, and poetry reviews by Norman Finkelstein, and then of course the other things. The fiction reviews. There are at least two of them: one by Keith Lee Morris and one by Erin McGraw.
The issue in question also claims to have a fiction review by me. I shall not cavil with the 'by' part of those last four words, or the 'me' part, or the 'fiction' part. As for the sole remaining cavilable word, well, feel free to make the call yourself.
One thing I know surely: it was as much fun to put to paper as anything I've ever done, and many thanks to Nicola Mason and Michael Griffith for letting me play on their field. Flying cars and justice have got nothing on these folks.
October 16, 2009, 3:40 p.m.Categories: Auto-trumpeting, Fiction Collections, Litmags, Review
I just now learned that McSweeney's is about to launch The Better of McSweeney's, Volume 2, with stories selected from Issues 11 through 20 of the Quarterly Concern, including work by most of my personal heroes: Stephen Millhauser, Chris Adrian, Stephen Elliott, Brian Evenson, Yannick Murphy, Tom Bissell and Tony D'Souza, among others.
The alley-oop you've been suspecting all along: it will also have a story of mine.
Asparagus spritzers for everyone!
September 26, 2009, 11:43 a.m.Category: Auto-trumpeting
