• The Evil Stepmother: An Essay
• Author Interview
• Talking Points

You can pre-order this one on Book Sense, Powells, Amazon, etc. or from here. Do not miss!

Mothers & Other Monsters

Thu 1 Jun 2006 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade cloth · $24 | trade paper ·  $16 · 9781931520195

“Gorgeously crafted stories.” — Nancy Pearl, NPR, Morning Edition, “Books for a Rainy Day”

Story Prize finalist · BookSense Notable Book · Cleveland Plain Dealer Recommended Summer Reading · Includes 3 Nebula finalists including Hugo and Locus Award winner “The Lincoln Train”

Also available in a signed, numbered limited edition.

In her luminous debut collection, award-winning novelist McHugh wryly and delicately examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using beautiful, deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations:

—A woman introduces her new lover to her late brother.
—A teenager is interviewed about her peer group’s attitudes toward sex and baby boomers.
—A missing stepson sets a marriage on edge.
—Anthropologists visiting an isolated outpost mission are threatened by nomadic raiders.

McHugh’s characters—her Alzheimers-afflicted parents or her smart and rebellious teenagers—are always recognizable: stubborn, human, and heartbreakingly real. The trade paperback has bonus added material for book clubs and reading groups, including an interview with the author, book club questions and suggestions, and a reprint of Maureen’s fabulous essay,  The Evil Stepmother.

Table of Contents

Ancestor Money
In the Air
The Cost to Be Wise
The Lincoln Train
Interview: On Any Given Day
Oversite
Wicked
Laika Comes Back Safe
Presence
Eight-Legged Story
The Beast
Nekropolis
Frankenstein’s Daughter

Reading Group Guide (Download as PDF)

The Evil Stepmother: An Essay
Author Interview
Talking Points

Reviews & Advance Praise

“Unpredictable and poetic work.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer (Recommended Summer Reading)

“[McHugh] cherry-picks subtle magical or futuristic elements from the expansive genre library.” — Angle Magazine

“McHugh’s prose style is unique.” — LEO (Louisville Eccentric Observer)

“McHugh’s stories are hauntingly beautiful.” — Booklist

“The 13 stories in McHugh’s debut collection offer poignant and sometimes heartwrenching explorations of personal relationships and their transformative power…. McHugh (Nekropolis) relates her stories as slices of ordinary life whose simplicity masks an emotional intensity more often found in poetry. The universality of these tales should break them out to the wider audience they deserve.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Passion and precision.” — Locus

“McHugh is enormously talented…. [She] has a light touch, a gentle sense of a humor, and a keen wit. — Strange Horizons

“When I first read China Mountain Zhang many years ago, Maureen McHugh instantly became, as she has remained, one of my favorite writers. This collection is a welcome reminder of her power—they are resonant, wise, generous, sharp, transporting, and deeply, deeply moving. McHugh is enormously gifted; each of these stories is a gift.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club

“Wonderfully unpredictable stories, from the very funny to the very grim, by one of our best and bravest imaginative writers.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin

“My favorite thing about her is the wry, uncanny tenderness of her stories. She has the astonishing ability to put her finger on the sweet spot right between comedy and tragedy, that pinpoint that makes you catch your breath. You’re not sure whether to laugh out loud or cry, and you end up doing both at once.”
—Dan Chaon, Among the Missing

“Enchanting, funny and fierce by turns—a wonderful collection!”
—Mary Doria Russell, A Thread of Grace

News & Links:

Story Prize finalist. Pictures from the event: Maureen, Maureen & Larry Dark, Maureen, fellow finalist Jim Harrison, and winner Patrick O’Keefe
Maureen F. McHugh & Sarah Willis in conversation: parts 1, 2 & 3.
Blog
Interview
Short short story: “Makeover”

About the Author

Maureen F. McHugh is the author of four acclaimed novels including China Mountain Zhang. Her genre-expanding short fiction has won the Hugo and Locus Awards and has frequently been included in Best of the Year anthologies. Since 1988 she has attracted a broad readership in publications such as Asimov’s, Scifiction, Starlight, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She lives in Los Angeles where she writes alternate reality games.

Creative Commons

April 22, 2008: Released online as a free download under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Cover image © Conde Nast Archive/Corbis. Photographer: Erwin Blumenfeld.
Download cover for print.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 18

Thu 1 Jun 2006 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

$5 · 60 pages · Black & white with handtinted woodblock cuts by famous and unknown artists. Printed on a 12th century Chinese letterpress on sheets of kelp-paper handmade by centaurs and sprites. Unattractively bound in the skins of dead animals. Alternately: attractively bound in more handmade paper, these sheets fairly traded from The Mysterions: Those Who Live at the Center of the Earth.

Two Notes

1. LCRW comes out twice a year. Should you wish a third issue, please send us a check for $500. That issue will be the Your-Name-Here Issue. It will also be numbered for our simpler editors.

2. A new literary award. We believe everyone is special (even those people who don’t read — or write for — LCRW, but this award is not for them). Here is the press release:

June 2006, Northampton, MA. LCRW and Small Beer announces The Eponymous Award, given to all writers on publication in LCRW of their writing. So, Bob Smith has been awarded the Bob Smith Award for Fiction Writing. Jane Smith has been awarded the Nonfiction Award. D.K. Smith has been awarded the Poetry Award. You get the idea.

Reviews

“I always like this kind of publication: there is fiction, non-fiction, poetry and illustration – something for everyone – and I felt, from the start, that I would find this to be an enjoyable little zine. I was wrong. This is more than simply enjoyable: it is purely, simply, incredibly delightful! Becca De La Rosa almost moves me to tears, enlisting me to look for burn ointment in a Helsinki airport; E. Catherine Tobler’s gypsy girls are charming; and who is John Schoffstall? He seduced me with a few simple sentences and I feel that I should – at the very least – send him a thank you card for his prose. Thank you, John, that was so thoughtful. I love it: ‘–But youth is careless, and Jorge was young, so it happened that one dreary evening in November, in the raw, wet time when the etheric winds howl across the heath, Jorge felt –’ I won’t tell you what happens next. You will simply have to get a copy of “Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet” for yourself.”
—Andree Lachapelle, Broken Pencil

masthead
Made in the spring of 2006 by:
Gavin J. Grant · Kelly Link
Jedediah Berry · Michael Deluca · Erik Gallant
The Fiction Workshop at Lenoir-Rhyne College

fiction
David J. Schwartz — Play
John Schoffstall — Errant Souls
Becca De La Rosa — This Is The Train The Queen Rides On
Scot Peacock — Diabolique d’amour
Stephanie Parent — In Ophelia’s Garden
Will McIntosh — Followed
E. Catherine Tobler — Threads
Matthew Lee Bain — A Half-Lizard Boy
Peter Bebergal — A Static of Names
Sarah Micklem The Fabricant of Marvels
Angela Slatter — The Juniper Tree
Jeannette Westwood — Crimson-lady at the Auction, Buying
Fred Coppersmith — At Uncle Ogden’s House
Michael Emmons — A Message from the Welcomer
Veronica Schanoes — Swimming

poetry
Jenny Benjamin-Smith — Two Poems
Sunshine Ison — Two Poems
Tsultrim Dorjee — Son of a Bitch

nonfiction
Erik Gallant — Music Reviews
Gwenda Bond — Dear Aunt Gwenda
[Name Withheld] — Article Withdrawal
William Smith — The Film Column
Zine Reviews

cover art
Emily Wilson

advertisers may include the following:
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
Mothers & Other Monsters
Oddfellow Magazine
Jubilat
Mockingbird
Perfect Circle
LCRW subscription department
Small Beer Press Chapbook Series
Travel Light
Barbara Stanwyck fan club
Howard Who?
Storyteller: Writing Lessons from 27 years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop
Lady Killigrew Cafe
Carmen Dog
Forthcoming books
Future Bestsellers Club

those writers

Matthew Lee Bain writes: I am twenty-nine autumns old. My avocations include the study of psychology, German (language and culture), and philology. In my free time, I enjoy strength training, viewing avant-garde cinema, and rolling around on the floor while screaming in agony. My vocations include writing fiction and poetry; I’m a freelance daydreamer of dark fantasies.

Gwenda Bond wears an N95 mask while posting about books and writing at her blog, Shaken & Stirred.

Fred Coppersmith finds it difficult to write about himself in the third person. He writes stories, and sometimes things that aren’t stories — and sometimes, late at night, things that are caught in some weird place in between. As luck would have it, he lives in New York.

Jenny Benjamin-Smith has had poems published in the New York Quarterly, Poetry Motel, Wisconsin Review, Iowa Woman, Columbia, and Crab Orchard Review. She has poems forthcoming in the South Carolina Review, Chelsea, The Baltimore Review, Hubbub, and Carquinez Poetry Review. She teaches literature to high school students in Milwaukee, Wisc.

Peter Bebergal is the co-author, with Scott Korb, of The Faith Between Us (forthcoming, Bloomsbury), and is an editor at Zeek.net. He lives in Cambridge, Mass.

Becca De La Rosa lives in Ireland and is studying English at university. She refuses to apologise for this. Her fiction has appeared most recently at Strange Horizons, among other places.

Tsultrim Dorjee lives in Southern New Hampshire where he is a student at Vermont College. He received his Tibetan name from Lama Pema Wangdak, and works as a crisis line operator for a peer support center. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in, The Awakenings Review, Puckerbrush Review, Sacred Journey and Red Owl.

Michael Emmons was born and raised in Missoula, MT, where he now lives. In 2004 he graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in English. This is his first published story.

Erik Gallant lives in Northampton, MA.

Sunshine Ison works in Mexico, is writing a book on beauty pageants, and next year will be working in Vietnam.

Will McIntosh has sold stories to Interzone, Futurismic, Abyss & Apex, Albedo One, and Challenging Destiny. By day, he’s a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University.

Sarah Micklem published her first novel, Firethorn, in 2004. She is currently working on the sequel, Wildfire (Scribner., 2007). She lives in New York and Indiana, where she teaches at Notre Dame University. “The Fabricant of Marvels” is part of a series of folk tales from the nonexistent island, Abigomas.

Famous Novelist is working on his umpteenth Great American Sleep Device. His “story” here was written in 1972 and is published in an attempt to pull in more readers for this zine and to pay for his coffee this week.

Stephanie Parent is a recent graduate of Franklin & Marshall College, where she majored in English and Women’s Studies. She is currently working as a piano teacher in Baltimore, Maryland while working on a young adult novel. She hopes to attend graduate school in England next year.

Scot Peacock is a senior editor in the academic reference field. His works of weird romance, published in such journals as The Suburbanite and Pluto’s Orchard, are few and far between. A novel about a ghost and his mother will remain unfinished for years.

Veronica Schanoes is a writer and scholar whose work has previously appeared on Endicott Studio, Jabberwocky, and Trunk Stories, as well as LCRW. Her poem “The Room” was recently published by Papaveria Press. She does not like cats.

Ma-tsu and John Schoffstall were out for a walk, when they saw some wild geese flying past.
“What are they?” asked Ma-tsu.
“They’re wild geese,” said John.
“Where are they going?” demanded Ma-tsu.
John replied, “They’ve already flown away.”
Suddenly Ma-tsu grabbed John by the nose and twisted it so that John cried out in pain. “How,” he shouted, “could they ever have flown away?”
“Well,” said John, “a bird’s wing is arched, so that air takes longer to pass over the top than the bottom. Through the Bernoulli principle, this creates lift, enabling flight. Muscular activity provides forward thrust. Birds’ bodies also have a number of specializations for flight, including hollow bones that decrease their weight relative to other vertebrates, and a streamlined shape. Birds in flight will rapidly out-distance individuals on the ground, eventually disappearing from their view behind trees or other landscape features. Thus, the birds were able to fly away.”
“You’re never going to achieve enlightenment, are you?” Ma-tsu asked.
“I just think birds are cool,” John replied. “I’m hungry. C’mon, let’s get lunch.”

David J. Schwartz lives in Chicago with a guitar named June. Cyberdavidjschwartz lives here, but is moody. His stories and poems live in The Third Alternative, Say…, Talebones, and Strange Horizons, as well as previous issues of this publication and others. Han kan norsk, men ikke saa bra.

Angela Slatter is a Masters in Creative Writing student at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia. Her flash fiction has appeared on Antipodean SF several times and she ghost-writes finance articles to help pay the bills. She can often be found pushing papers around a desk at the Creative Writing & Cultural Studies Discipline at QUT, putting her admin-nerd skills to good use.

William Smith makes spanky new books and sells dusty old ones. Find him at trunkstories.com and hangfirebooks.com.

E. Catherine Tobler climbed mountains in her youth, in a bright yellow coat, with shoes that were red, yellow, and blue, and made her feel like a clown. She endured. Writing, she decided, is not that much different. In addition to other places, her short fiction has appeared in SciFiction, Strange New Worlds, Mota 3, and Would That It Were.

Jeannette Westwood is seventeen years old and has attended the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers. She likes paper-mache cats. This is her first publication.

Emily Wilson finds stories inspire her and enable her to create more than she could on her own — she loves to collaborate. She believes that with all our powers combined we can fight for justice much more easily, and wear really fun outfits — perhaps matching, in fluorescent colors.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No.18 June 2006 (The Ethereal Issue). ISSN 1544-7782 Text in Bodoni Book. Titles in Imprint MT Shadow. Since 1996 LCRW has usually appeared in June and November from Small Beer Press: info@lcrw.net lcrw.net/lcrw $5 per single issue or $20/4. Contents © the authors. All rights reserved. Submissions, requests for guidelines, & all good things should be sent to the address above. No SASE: no reply. Printed by Paradise Copies, 30 Craft Ave., Northampton, MA 01060 413-585-0414. Thanks for reading.

BEA

Mon 22 May 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., A. DeNiro, Cons, Maureen F. McHugh, To Read Pile| Posted by: Gavin

Book Expo — the annual trade show of the sliced wood imprinted with colored marks — is out of the way for another year. This time Small Beer did not have a booth (rather our distro, SCB, displayed some of our books and stacked up freebies of our catalog, the paperback edition of Mothers & Other Monsters, and Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead. One of the fun things of the show was A.’s reading guide and drinking game which can be downloaded here: (PDF warning) The Cabana on the Lake of the Dead. A. signed a ton of copies of his book and carried boxes of them all across our great taxed-but-not-represented capital city. Thanks, A.!

There were awesome parties (PGW [w/ the Brazilian Girls], Consortium, SCB[!] and others at Madam’s Organ, maybe the one below), a good time was had by most, galleys were picked up, and food was gathered more sparingly than dietitians recommend.

Books at the top of the stack include:

• M.T. Anderson The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party
• Karen Russell‘s debut collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.
• The Long Tail (apparently not about rats or anteaters, etc.)
• Ursula K. Le Guin’s follow-up to Gifts, Voices.
• Inside the Not So Big House (hoping for 4-dimensional shelving options).
• Liz Hand’s November collection, Saffron and Brimstone, from the lovely people (because they were kind to exhausted Sunday browsers) at M Press.
• Ysabeau Wilce’s first young adult book Flora Segunda.
• Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu. (The book will have b&w illustrations, so we’ll need a copy of that, too!)

There are tons more but now it is time to empty the suitcases into the washing machine (mustn’t mix up the galley-filled suitcase with the smoke reeking post-party clothes) and get ready to git on the road to WisCon.

May reading

Mon 22 May 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., To Read Pile, Uncategorized| Posted by: Gavin

– Not to be missed: a huge LA Times profile of Jim Sallis and review of his latest book.

– Takedown in Jill Lepore’s New Yorker review of Nathaniel Philbrick’s book Mayflower, a history of King Philip’s War (ca. 1675) in which Philbrick relies on a biography of Benjamin Church written by his son long after the war:

On the second-to-last page of his book, he [Philbrick] reluctantly concedes that Church is a “persona,” even as he insists that “Church according to Church is too brave, too cunning, and too good to be true is beside the point.” This is about as reasonable, and as indefensible, as writing a history of the Vietnam War that relies extensively and uncritically on an “autobiography” of John Kerry written in 2013 by Kerry’s daughter Vanessa.

– Congrats to Rick Bowes whose SCI FICTION story ” There’s a Hole in the City” won the Million Writers Award. (Seen at Matt‘s.)

– “The United States announced that it would free 141 of the 490 “enemy combatants” at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba because they do not threaten U.S. security after all.” (Harpers Weekly)

– New story on Strange Horizons by Gavin Grant: “We Are Never Where We Are.”

– Today’s moral leader: Steve Almond? Wow. Go Steve. (Seen at Bookslut.)

Like the president whom she serves so faithfully, she refuses to recognize her errors or the tragic consequences of those errors to the young soldiers and civilians dying in Iraq. She is a diplomat whose central allegiance is not to the democratic cause of this nation, but absolute power.

This is the woman to whom you will be bestowing an honorary degree, along with the privilege of addressing the graduating class of 2006.

It is this last notion I find most reprehensible: that Boston College would entrust to Rice the role of moral exemplar.

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L See RW May

Thu 18 May 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

– A review of LCRW 17 just as it seems to be sold out! Shocking. Must have been that massive sale. Luckily #18 is just sticking its pretty nose around the corner and will take up the slack.

– New issue of LCRW (18, wherein LCRW can drink, drive, vote, and fight. Wait, can’t drink…) is taking shape. You can see the early, incomplete Table of Contents here. Feel free to preorder or subscribe. We have a wonderful story from David Schwartz who has a lovely gentle story this week on Strange Horizons. More SH goodies: an interview with our fave co-opist, Barth Anderson. Quote from his first line, “There’s no high culture without bug culture.”

– Also a new LCRW newsletter went out. Maybe with different stuff and maybe some the same.

– Congrats to Deborah Roggie whose story “The Mushroom Duchess” from LCRW 17 is among the stories selected by the Fountain Award jury for the short list. Congrats to all!

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Silly bugger

Mon 15 May 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books, bookshops, Sean Stewart| Posted by: Gavin

Some opinionist at Slate (in an attempt to get web traffic, therefore no link) says indie or local bookshops aren’t that important. We sell a lot of books at Amazon and in the chains but Small Beer Press basically wouldn’t exist without the support of indie bookshops. Park Road Books in Charlotte, NC, has sold 50+ copies of Mockingbird. Bailey/Coy has sold 200+ copies of Stranger Things Happen. These are booksellers who will read a new writer, such as Alan DeNiro, and put his book into customers hands — not everyone, but everyone who might appreciate it. Read more

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Travel Light reviews

Wed 10 May 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Naomi Mitchison| Posted by: Gavin

New review of Travel Light on a Scottish web site. Poke around on the site for a bit, there’s lots of good stuff.

Another great review.

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Fordmania

Mon 1 May 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books, To Read Pile| Posted by: Gavin

More Jeff Fordian news: Gwenda Bond and others are pushing and pulling at The Girl in the Glass all this week at the Lit Blog Coop. Short and punchy, baby.

– Crazy good news as Jeff Ford’s The Girl in the Glass wins the Edgar Award for Best Paperback! World domination beckons as his new collection, The Empire of Ice Cream, is available for all those readers looking to find out more.

– Time travel? Jeff Ford says he can.

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