I wrote this after my husband returned from a gig as assistant director working with Lindsay Anderson who directed a movie about the first rock and roll band to visit China–WHAM, in fact. Then I waited nearly six years to figure out what the last line was. [Read more]

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Jen Michalski
   Luna Digest, 2/9
   Fictionaut Faves, 2/8
   Checking In with Deckfight

I like to think we have a lot of writing teeth. Some are slow and painful or impacted, and you pay a lot of attention to those. But then you wake up the next morning and you’ve cut a completely different tooth that you didn’t know you had. And the trick is to let all the teeth fall out on their own. If you try and pull them, the gums retain the memory of that loss. [Read more]

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 2/9
   Fictionaut Faves, 2/8
   Checking In with Deckfight

News possibly trumping the recent iPad announcement: The Baffler is back. [Read more]

Recently:
   Fictionaut Faves, 2/8
   Checking In with Deckfight

I’ll admit I’m an impatient reader these days. I’m looking for stories to delight me with their language, even more so than the story itself. I want each sentence to be like eating popcorn–every kernel a delight to ingest, so you want to keep going to the end. This is why I like Ben Chadwick‘s “True Love and the Giraffe” so much. [Read more]

Recently:
   Checking In with Deckfight
   Fictionaut Five: Gina Frangello
   Luna Digest, 2/2
   Line Breaks: “The Line” by James Robison

I think fiction can learn a lot from the DIY indie-punk aesthetic. I’m a big fan of thinking of short stories as mp3s…. There was a conversation on the Pank blog and HTML Giant about how in music DIY and essentially “self-publishing” is ok, but in literature it’s not…. That’s where I think something like Fictionaut can help out. It’s a huge community to post a few stories (play a few songs) and see how the crowd responds. [Read more]

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Gina Frangello
   Luna Digest, 2/2
   Line Breaks: “The Line” by James Robison

Gina Frangello is the author of the novel My Sister’s Continent (Chiasmus 2006) and the collection Slut Lullabies (forthcoming from Emergency Press in 2010.) The longtime Editor of Other Voices magazine, she co-founded its book imprint, Other Voices Books, now an imprint of Dzanc Books, in 2005 and is currently the Executive Editor of the press’ Chicago office. [Read more]

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 2/2
   Line Breaks: “The Line” by James Robison
   Passing of an Icon

This week on Luna Park, Michael Copperman writes what seems to me an original and thoughtful essay considering some aesthetic and political assumptions made about race in contemporary publishing. Possibly one of the most inspiring pieces we have published on LP, Copperman’s essay moves quickly from describing publishing obstacles onto the important reasons we read and write stories: “recognizing human suffering and responsibility, and so examining what is true in us and about us.” [Read more]

Recently:
   Line Breaks: “The Line” by James Robison
   Passing of an Icon
   Fictionaut Five: Terese Svoboda

So I asked Jim if we could feature one of his early New Yorker stories in Line Breaks and he said sure, and suggested “The Line.” So I said fine, can you provide an introductory word? He responded with characteristic minimalism:

I wanted to create a narrative that could be best diagrammed by a straight line. No ascending nor descending action, no gathering complexity, almost no dialogue.

Recently:
   Passing of an Icon
   Fictionaut Five: Terese Svoboda
   Luna Digest, 1/26