Listed! (long short this time)

One of the best things about the Wigleaf Top 50 is that it comes at a time of year when I'm usually on vacation, so I never expect it. I'm so thrilled to have made this year's Long Shortlist with "The Temple Dog," a story that Adam Robinson took for Everyday Genius. BTW, 5 of the top 50 came from EG. Thanks Scott, Ravi, and Adam. No one works harder for the art.

This year's Top 50 is stellar, take your breath way stuff.

Everyday Genius:The Final Three! March 29-31

I am sad it's over but relieved, too. After Wednesday Everyday Genius is some other art-tard's baby.

Monday

The first man will do anything for the moon.

—from Cami Park’s “Night Walk” (Plus “As If to Become, as If One Actually Were” & “It Is a Wonder”)

Tuesday

So when Kim asks if I want to go for a ride, I say sure.

—from Robert Swartwood’s “Summer of ‘84”

Wednesday

And like that my days in the garden began to go by.

—from Steve Himmer’s “Whose Hands”

March 15-19 @ Everyday Genius

This week at Everyday Genius!

Monday

“What the hell,” the pickpocket lady said, peeking into the stroller while the boys shoved their sticky hands into her pockets, pulling various small toys, all made of plastic.

—from Michelle Reale’s “At the Fair”

Tuesday

He begins to play solitaire! Is this strange behavior? Should I shoot him now?

—from Dawn Corrigan’s “The Assignment”

Wednesday

That fucking spotted hyena working behind the counter—he was probably, at this very moment, laughing his anal pouch off.

—from Tamm Walters’ “The Hyena and the Gnus”

Thursday

It had a child it didn’t know; blessed that fruit with silver hands.

—from Joseph Young’s “Stories Around People” & “More from Stories Around People”

Friday

SHE LEFT HIM WITH THE TALLOW OF THEIR LOVE GONE FLABBY. It was the first line from her mystery novel-in-progress--Augurs Under My Bed

—from Kyle Hemmings’ “Amazing Animal Facts #4” & “Amazing Animal Facts #2”

Everyday Genius Line-Up, March 8-12 2010

Gonna be a weird week at http://www.everyday-genius.com/

Monday

You are less attractive than I am. If panties are to be wetted for this, then I will be the master of the waterworks

—from Ben White's "Milestones"

Tuesday

an unending landscape of glue and glue and glue

—from Tara Laskowski's "Day 72"

Wednesday

Those were some muscles he had and Sally Potawatomi wanted to eat them

—from Gabriel Orgease's "For Three Days They Were Not Able to Identify a Body That Had No Arm"

Thursday

They measure her body for the sake of the artists, then they build a barge and sail her corpse east

—from Danny Collier's "Ouch" & "His fortune gone . . ."

Friday

You may find her grunting on the floor, in the manner of a goat, to find what she let fall and roll under the table

—from Donna D. Vitucci's "The Woman"

March 1-5 Everyday Genius line-up

Monday through Friday at Everyday Genius

Monday

I watched Thomas Pynchon lather himself with cologne samples from magazine ads

from Ravi Mangla’s “Visiting Writers”

Tuesday

Attention now count the damns/ Of remonstration the damn

from David Kaufmann’s “You’ll Poke Your Eye Out”

Wednesday

She developed a dappled scarlet rash and used it as a passport

from Kathryn Scanlan’s “Victorian Wedding Portrait”

Thursday

a book you will never write can only be read by people fluent in the English language

from Jimmy Chen’s “Potential Prologue”

Friday

I thought about stalking her children. Finding her daughter and learning of her dreams

from Barry Graham’s “13 Ways of Looking at a Road Trip”

Adventures in editing

I'm in the process of making my selections for Everyday Genius--I'm the guest editor for March, and I've probably got around 1/2 of my picks. Keep 'em coming folks, but sooner than later--I want to be able to spend time on the arrangement before I hand over the files to Adam Robinson.


I haven't done this kind of thing before (well, we all experimented in college, right?), so I wanted to take a mo to make note of a few unexpected surprises.

1) my normally slacker friends, in their paranoia, are giving me super-awesome stuff.

2) I don't really "get" some of the submissions. And I'm not talking about understanding what they mean. I'm saying I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about them.

not so unexpected surprises:

1) My tastes in poetry are obscenely narrow

2) lotta snow imagery. Hey you guys, please ease up on the snow. I'm genuinely concerned about turning off readers who, by March, will have no more tolerance for or sense of humor about effing snow.

Warmest Congratulations and Thanks

Congratulations to all those marvelous writers whose writing was selected for Dzanc Books' Best of the Web 2010 production! And another congratulations to editors Kathy Fish and Matt Bell for being who they are. As far as I can tell from the chatter, the selections are magnificent. (Is there a master list yet?)

My sincere thanks to Adam Robinson and Cooper Renner for nominating my work (mind still blown by that)--the stories didn't make the cut for the anthology, but I'm still high from the recognition.

2009 was a sweet year for our kinda fiction, and I continue to be moved by the generosity of spirit that pervades the scene.

38 minutes of my life

So happy to see Reb Livingston and Dave Housley at Mason today, paneling for a session about local lit journals. They did a fine job, despite the lack of structure and a shy crowd--20+ of us in a venue that seats 100+. Well, they were shy as a crowd, but swarmed Dave and Reb after, which was kinda weird. Wonder what they wanted?

A friend said to me about Dave: "He's good looking."
A different friend said to me about Reb: "Oh wow, she publishes non-linear poems? I'm home."

Up top on the plaza, Richard Peabody was selling Gargoyle and Paycock Press publications from a table. He always recognizes me, but never knows who I am. That must bug him. Especially when I wave and smile like a nutjob.

When Dave's "Ryan Secrest is Famous" story made the top 10 of StorySouth's Million Writers list, I taught it to my class. But it was months after I connected with Dave and the Barrelhouse editorial pod (at their conference they traveled together, I assume so they could sing barbershop songs when needed), that I realized he'd written that very cool story. Similar experience with Paula Bomer--we were net friends for a while before we realized that we had been reading each other's stuff for years. Paula's great, she still reads print. She's Amish. Her specialty is Amish erotica.

So the Barrelhouse Mixtape podcast marks my first willing listen to a podcast. I'd been ignoring the announcements fairly successfully until today when Dave described what was covered, and I suddenly thought, oh hey--THIS IS RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS. It's quite good, and as promised, in the style of This American Life, right down to the swallowing sounds from the host. Adam Robinson sounds exactly as I thought he would. Michael Kimball does not (I thought he'd sound more like a cartoon bear). And Mike Ingram? He just sounds troubled. Dave.

No need for me to be cool

Adam Robinson nominated my story "The Temple Dog" (from Everyday Genius)for Dzanc's 2010 Best of the Web anthology. I was gonna keep my bloggy mouth shut about it, but he just posted his noms and alts on the Publishing Genius blog.Congrats also to Joseph Young, Cindy Loehr, Jamie GP, and Theresa Columbus.

Adam is so cool.

Way cooler than this guy. I dare you to listen to all the clips and and retain your sense of self.

Everyday Genius

And as if my day weren't awesome enough, Adam Robinson has given my "Temple Dog" a home in his new online thing: Everyday Genius.

Dedicated to Michelle(there's 2 Ls in that) Reale, in a gesture of sisterhood and typecasting.