Wigleaf Top 50 izzup!

So my Wigleaf Top 50 news is complicated:

1) I've got two stories on the long shortlist: "The Brewsters" & "Last Seen Leaving," which appeared in Moon Milk Review and Smokelong, respectively, and are also collected in Curio.

2)Next year I will be on the Top 50 team, along with Ravi Mangla and Greg Gerke, and the new guest ed. (I know who it is, but it doesn't look like Scott has made a formal announcement yet). Being part of the team means that I have been handed a massive list of sites to follow and pick through.

3) Though I didn't make the Top 50 this year, stories I selected for Everyday Genius and helped select for Prick of the Spindle did:

Roxane Gay's "Boys in Drag"

Barry Graham's "13 ways of looking at a roadtrip"

Simon Smith's "Things I've Eaten That I'm Not Proud Of"

Valerie Vogrin's "Apologies"

4) (takes big breath) Plus others I selected/helped select made the long list:

Erin Fitzgerald's "At Grayfield Keep"

Jen Michalski's "The Turn of Things"

John Minichillo's "Working Halloween for Christmas Money"

Cami Park's "When You Heard"

Congratulations everyone--it was a pleasure working with you!

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”

Everyday Genius, March 22-26--oh wow

so there will be a lot of new things out this week, but EG will be on fire every day:

Monday

They teeter. They totter. They fall, knees pressed together, into crumpled heaps.

—from Roxane Gay’s “Boys in Drag”

Tuesday

He looks about to cry. His shoe comes at my face before I can close my eyes.

—from David Erlewine’s “Buried”

Wednesday

They told her that she was an orphan, a feral child. To repay her rescuers, she became a prisoner of science.

—from G. Walker’s “An Experiment”

Thursday

Under the dog’s old quilt they listened to the voices inside the butter-light windows, Aunt Louie’s laugh rising over the murmur, an unidentified man cough.

—from Jen Michalski’s “The Turn of Things”

Friday

My old buddy Asidri burned to death on a lava cavern tour and was chewed on by a goblin. Post-mortem.

—from Erin Fitzgerald’s “At Grayfield Keep”

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”

There is probably a better way, right?

Progress and a Blind Item

So my selections for the March "edition" of Everyday Genius are just about complete, and I'm especially excited by the fresh work--that is, the stuff people have offered me from brand new projects. There's going to be a lot of funny and/or brain-folding prose and a little poetry, punctuated by a few moments of loss and despair.

I'm really happy that everyone I asked to contribute coughed something up, or tried to--that is, everyone except

BLIND ITEM

--This writer who wrote the TWO best flashes of 2009.
--Both flashes appeared at premier venues that have rejected you multiple times (once on Christmas day!)
--This writer loves EG, appreciates being asked, but must decline. Because those two flashes were the only ones this writer has produced.

There's only one word for this: CRIPES-OH-JEEZ-YER-KILLING-ME

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.

Everyday Genius! I'm the March editor

I am blown away by the fact that Adam Robinson is going to let me select everyday genii for the March 2010 issue of Everyday Genius! Seriously, I'm over-excited.

You know my tastes in fiction--I like the weird common and the common weird, well under 500 words, but I'm a sucker for anything with a killer first line. As for poetry, I'm a fan of the DC poetry scene and Language poets in general, and not really into straight narrative poetry. I like poetry that forges new paths in my brain. But you never know.

Official guidelines here.

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.