fwriction

The new issue - “Cera” by Sian Cummins” - is...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:29:49 -0500

The new issue - “Cera” by Sian Cummins” - is really striking a chord with readers. See for yourself, even on-the-go with Google Currents!

Enjoy the new issue of fwriction : review—Sian...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:16:00 -0500

Enjoy the new issue of fwriction : review—Sian Cummins’ short story, “Cera”—on your mobile device!

(Follow fwriction : review on Google Currents to read the journal, blog, and Google+ all on-the-go!)

Happening now. Like my author page, sexy things...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:52:08 -0500

of Love & Death (from Mixer)

FPQ 2011: The Complete Collection

Happening now. Like my author page, sexy things happen.

dannygoodman.me:

A special giveaway, just for liking my Facebook author page!

Beginning today, head over to my Facebook author page and give me a Like. Share it with your friends (but only if you really mean it). Make me smile.

At each 100 person milestone (it’s at 81 at the time of this post), I will choose one person at random and send them a special gift!

For the giveaway, I have four copies of Mixer Publishing’s gorgeous anthology, of Love & Death, and one copy of Found Press’ 2011 anthology, FPQ 2011: The Complete Collection (available as an ePub or Mobi).

About of Love & Death, which contains my short stories “Cloisters” and “Based on True Events”:

of Love & Death features award-winning writers Kate Braverman, Kirstin Allio, Myfanwy Collins, Tom Bonfiglio, Danny Goodman, Sam Decker, Daniel Grandbois, and many, many more. Structured in three parts, the anthology first explores the joy and pain of early relationships, then marriage, and finally family. of Love & Death is subtle, profane, tragic, lewd, thrilling, insightful, sad, provocative, painful, hilarious, insane, occasionally murderous, and authentically powerful—capturing the beauty and ugly of real life in all its variations. Fifteen stories in three parts—a rare thematically structured anthology that can be read as a composite novel of life.

About FPQ 2011: The Complete Collection, which contains my novella “Somehow There Was More Here”:

Found Press Quarterly 2011: The Complete Collection contains sixteen exceptional stories that were hand-picked by the Found Press staff and originally published in the four collections released throughout 2011. With a stunning range of voices, the unforgettable narratives included in this anthology will take you on a journey around the world, and pull you from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other.

Please head on over to my Facebook author page, give me a Like, say hello—I have five brilliant anthology copies to give away, so let’s make it to 500!

Cera, by Sian Cummins

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:06:05 -0500

Cera, by Sian Cummins

When you’re fwriction : review’s editorial cat,...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:45:05 -0500

When you’re fwriction : review’s editorial cat, Thursdays tucker you out.

This weekend in NYC, presented by The Uptown Collective, former...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:47:00 -0500

This weekend in NYC, presented by The Uptown Collective, former fwriction : review contributor Robb Todd (“City From a Bridge”) will read from his new collection, Steal Me For Your Stories. Win.

Chosen by Sian Cummins, for her short story “Cera,”...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:17:39 -0500

Chosen by Sian Cummins, for her short story “Cera,” in the new issue of fwriction : review

In Memoriam: Barney Rosset

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:00:05 -0500

In Memoriam: Barney Rosset:

from The Paris Review’s The Art of Publishing No. 2:

In 1951, he bought a fledgling literary publishing company, Grove Press, named after the Greenwich Village street where it began. For the next thirty-three years he ran it from various locations in the same neighborhood, developing Grove into a critical part of the downtown New York firmament and one of the most influential publishers of its day. Attracted to books that in some way—through their form or content—challenged the status quo, Rosset published writers other presses passed up because the were too far out, too experimental, or violated the prevailing mores of the day. Among them were the Beats, the postwar European avant-garde, the New American poets of the fifties and the playwrights of the Theater of the Absurd.

Always undercapitalized, Grove often paid low advances. But writers came to Grove because it championed their work in an often hostile environment. In the fifties, repressive obscenity laws made it illegal to publish D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Rosset deliberately set out to overturn these laws, publishing and defending these books, and others, in court. Over the years, Grove took on hundreds of lawsuits, in the process expanding the range of public discourse.

As the fifties turned into the sixties, and the Beat generation gave way to the counterculture, Grove became the principal home for writers who challenged the American mainstream—from both a literary and a political perspective. In addition, Grove produced a magazine, Evergreen Review, distributed art films, and by the late sixties, added a book club and two film theaters in the Village. But when the sixties ended, the press abruptly hit hard times and implemented drastic cutbacks. Rosset continued the company for another fourteen years, before selling it in 1985. He left the following year after disputes with the new management.

Following his strong personal tastes and left-wing convictions, Rosset had developed an impressive list of authors. Indeed, many Grove writers, who were considered iconoclasts in their day, are now regarded as central figures in our culture: Samuel Beckett, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Leroi Jones, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, Charles Olson, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Joe Orton, Hebert Selby Jr., Michael McClure, Kenzaburo Oe, D. T. Suzuki, Kathy Acker, and David Mamet. In 1988, the PEN American Center presented Rosset with its Publisher Citation for “distinctive and continuous service to international letters, to the freedom and dignity of writers, and to the free transmission of the printed word across the barriers of poverty, ignorance, censorship, and repression.”

Want List: 'Stay Awake' by Dan Chaon

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:06:56 -0500

Want List: 'Stay Awake' by Dan Chaon:

from The Book Beast:

Dan Chaon’s intent in his chilling new short-story collection is clear. In the opening line, “Gene’s son Frankie wakes up screaming.” We learn that Gene is a UPS deliveryman trying to escape his past, and his son’s bloodcurdling screams are reminders that “something bad has been looking for him for a long time, he thinks, and now, at last, is growing near.” In these haunting tales, Chaon writes about the tragic fallout of broken families; the loss of a child, parent, or spouse often drives the narrative. In one story, a foster child moves in with a couple and sleeps in their dead son’s bed. As he grows older, his traumatic childhood catches up with him, chipping away at his grip on reality until his demons come eerily into view. Chaon excels at inciting a gripping sense of foreboding; just as the reader realizes there’s a monster in the closet, its shocking revelation only stirs the imagination further. While the notorious severed hand from his 2009 novel, Await Your Reply, is absent from this new collection, the author’s fans will delight in discovering a few stray fingers and other signature motifs.

from Patrick Somerville: Empathy and Reading

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:30:36 -0500

from Patrick Somerville: Empathy and Reading:

patricksomerville:

To me, the penultimate paragraph is the most interesting part of the review, and I will end this empathy ramble there, noting that fiction writers, I think, should pitch a tent within these temporary episodes if they want to write well and continue to understand characters:

At the core of this deceptively simple book is the question of the nature of cruelty. In the last and most philosophical chapter Dr. Baron-Cohen discusses situations in which an individual who is not otherwise lacking in empathy may behave cruelly. Citing the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s term “the banality of evil,” and discussing the work of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo in which ordinary people exhibited cruel behavior, he acknowledges that in most of us empathy may be suspended temporarily, under certain circumstances.

“…the mayor put one of his plump hands across her...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

“…the mayor put one of his plump hands across her eyes, pushed the girl towards the flames, turned away and shouted hizzah! huzzah! while the children madly danced around the blazing lake of fire, their unseeing eyes mesmerized.”

Marcus Speh, “Candy”

"The moon-faced fat mayor smiled and his triplicate chin wobbled. His thick rose-colored hand lay on..."

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:07:41 -0500

“The moon-faced fat mayor smiled and his triplicate chin wobbled. His thick rose-colored hand lay on the head of a child, who wasn’t dancing but reading. ‘What’re you reading,’ asked the mayor’s spouse. The girl cast down her eyes and said: ‘I’m reading the bible.’”

- Marcus Speh, “Candy”

David Foster Wallace Turns 50

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:32:20 -0500

David Foster Wallace Turns 50:

dannygoodman.me:

An excerpt from my essay, “Angles of Response to Your Angles, or Brief Reflections on Tennis, Sharks, and the Loss of David Foster Wallace,” to celebrate what would have been David Foster Wallace’s fiftieth birthday.

“The goosebumps still came, despite having read that passage at least a dozen times before. Wallace had memorized the facts, the numbers; it seemed, however, even within those statistics, that Wallace had also categorized the panic, loss, horror brought on by that historic event. And, within the pages of his essay, Wallace found the words to bring to life, not only the fear, but also the interminable beauty moving, fast and determined, like a Great White shark just below the surface. He was capable, at all times, of noticing the fin breaking through the cresting waves.”

Come see what readers are saying about Marcus Speh's "Candy"

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:10:00 -0500

Come see what readers are saying about Marcus Speh's "Candy"

"Marcus Speh’s story took me apart."

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:13:41 -0500

“Marcus Speh’s story took me apart.”

- Susan Tepper, author of From the Umberplatzen, on Marcus Speh’s new fiction, “Candy,” at fwriction : review

"He sipped coffee and remembered beginnings."

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:52:58 -0500

“He sipped coffee and remembered beginnings.”

- Raymond Carver, from “The Augustine Notebooks”

(via dannygoodman.me)

In which fwriction : review’s inaugural contest, the...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:32:34 -0500

Brevity

Brevity (Facebook)

Matthew Salesses (Facebook)

In which fwriction : review’s inaugural contest, the Sidney W. Vernick Award in Nonfiction, gets some love from nonfiction powerhouse Brevity and Matthew Salesses, author of The Last Repatriate (the contest runner-up will receive a signed copy of the novella!).

Submit to the nonfiction contest here.

Enjoy the latest issue of fwriction : review—Marcus...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:49:16 -0500

"Candy" by Marcus Speh

"Mother Burning" by Marcus Speh

Enjoy the latest issue of fwriction : review—Marcus Speh’s “Candy”—on your mobile device!

Exactly one year ago today, fwriction : review first published the fiction of Marcus Speh, with “Mother Burning.” Enjoy both today!

FSG: Michael Cunningham on Translation

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:05:01 -0500

FSG: Michael Cunningham on Translation:

A wonderful piece on translation from Michael Cunningham.

fsgbooks:

“As the author of Las Horas, Die Stunden and De Uren — ostensibly the Spanish, German and Dutch translations of my book The Hours, but actually unique works in their own right — I’ve come to understand that all literature is a product of translation…

The Rubberbandits, I Wanna Fight Your Father (As Gaeilge):...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

The Rubberbandits, I Wanna Fight Your Father (As Gaeilge): chosen for the Waffle-Rocking Playlist by Marcus Speh for his flash fiction, “Candy,” now live at fwriction : review