Fantastic first review for What I Didn’t See

Tue 3 Aug 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Publishers Weekly loves Karen Joy Fowler’s new collection:

“The bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club goes genre-busting in this engrossing and thought-provoking set of short stories that mix history, sci-fi, and fantasy elements with a strong literary voice. Whether examining the machinations of a Northern California cult, in “Always,” or a vague but obviously horrific violent act in the eerie title story, the PEN/Faulkner finalist displays a gift for thrusting familiar characters into bizarre, off-kilter scenarios. Fowler never strays from the anchor of human emotion that makes her characters so believable, even when chronicling the history of epidemics, ancient archeological digs, single family submersibles, or fallen angels. She even displays a keen understanding of the historical world around Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, in two wonderfully realized historical pieces. Her writing is sharp, playful, and filled with insights into the human condition. The genre shifts might surprise fans of her mainstream hit, but within these pages they’ll find familiar dramas and crises that entertain, illuminate, and question the reality that surrounds us.”
—Publishers Weekly


Holly Black in Texas, MS, AZ

Tue 3 Aug 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Ganked whole cloth from Ms. Black’s lj:

[info]melissa_writing, Kelley Armstrong and Alyson Noel kindly asked me along for a couple of stops on their multi-author, multi-city Smart Chicks Kick It tour. Where I’m going to be is listed below, but look here for the full schedule of everyone and everywhere.

September 13th, 2010 7 PM @ BOOKPEOPLE, Austin, TX
Kelley Armstrong, Melissa Marr, Alyson Noel, Holly Black, Rachel Caine, & Cassandra Clare

September 14th, 2010 7 PM @ B&N THE WOODLANDS, Houston, TX
Kelley Armstrong, Melissa Marr, Alyson Noel, Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Kami Garcia & Rachel Vincent

September 15th, 2010 7PM. Off-site location TBD. Hosted by BLUE WILLOW, Houston, TX
Kelley Armstrong, Melissa Marr, Alyson Noel, Holly Black, Sarah Rees Brennan, Margaret Stohl & Cassandra Clare

September 16th, 2010 6 PM Off-site location TBD. Hosted by LEMURIA BOOKS, Jackson, MS
Kelley Armstrong, Melissa Marr, Alyson Noel, Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Jessica Verday & Sarah Rees Brennan

September 17th, 2010 7PM @ Scottsdale Civic Library Auditorium, hosted by POISONED PEN Phoenix, AZ
Melissa Marr, Alyson Noel, Kelley Armstrong, Holly Black, Sarah Rees Brennan, Kimberly Derting, and Becca Fitzpatrick


Your photos?

Wed 21 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

We’re in the final stages of our new Working Writers Daily Planner and I thought I’d throw out a last minute call for for photos or art. We pay $10 + 1 copy for print + electronic rights. Please post links in the comments but only to art/photos you have rights to, thanks!

Also just added the multiple copy discounts for this one. These were very popular last year as whole workshops and bookclubs and all kind of book-related groups planned out their year together.


Meeks today, more tomorrow

Tue 20 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Today is publication day for Julia Holmes’s excellent debut novel Meeks! If you’re in NYC or environs, there’s an awesome launch party happening at WORD tonight. Do not say we did not warn you! Julia’s reading all over the place (Portland, OR! Boston, MA! More!) and you should attend in your bachelor suit.

Other updates: Kathe Koja and Holly Black are reading in South Carolina this week.

You can now preorder our fall books direct from us! We ship preorders out asap. Those books include Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others (just got an amazing blurb for that!), Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy, A Working Writer’s Daily Planner, and the book that we are just about to send to the printer: Karen Joy Fowler’s stunner of a collection, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories. Ouch, that’s a good one.

We have one more title, a November book, which we haven’t announced yet even though it is getting really damn close but the contract, it could not be agreed upon. But, news should come on that soon, so: yay. And: phew.

Then we have new books which are coming next year all of which will be world-bestriding green-energy fueled juggernauts. Or, at least, great books. Because why do anything else?

Bachelor Suits at 7:30!


Weightless is Featherproof!

Tue 20 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Over on our Weightless ebook store (the best place for indie press ebooks!) we just added half a dozen titles from one of our fave Chicago publishers, Featherproof Books, plus two o/p titles from sf writer Judith Moffett—who was in the right place at the right time when we needed to try adding a few more titles from other people.Weightless is taking off nicely and we should have more addition announcements and so on over there most Tuesdays.


Meeks

Tue 20 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

July 20, 2010 · 9781931520652 · trade paperback / ebook / audiobook

Read: Julia Holmes’s essay in the New York Times magazine, “Upstate, and Back in Time”

A Reader’s Guide to Meeks.

“Julia Holmes takes a page from Suzanne Collins — whose thriller The Hunger Games borrowed from reality TV — by imagining a world where bachelors jockey for mates, becoming laborers if they fail ”until one died of exhaustion or was yanked from the factory floor by the trailing teeth of some awful machine.” In Meeks her main character, shy Ben, appears destined to fail: He can barely talk to women, let alone romance them. Yet even though his fate seems preordained, Meeks, leavened by Holmes’ wit, never becomes grim melodrama.” B+
—Entertainment Weekly

No woman will have Ben without a proper bachelor’s suit . . . and the tailor refuses to make him one. Back from war with a nameless enemy, he’s just discovered that his mother is dead and that his family home has been reassigned by the state. As if that isn’t enough, he must now find a wife, or he’ll be made a civil servant and given a permanent spot in one of the city’s oppressive factories.

Meanwhile, Meeks, a foreigner who lives in the park and imagines he’s a member of the police, is hunted by the overzealous Brothers of Mercy. Meeks’s survival depends on his peculiar friendship with a police captain—but will that be enough to prevent his execution at the annual Independence Day celebration?

A dark satire rendered with all the slapstick humor of a Buster Keaton film, Julia Holmes’s debut novel evokes the strange charm of a Haruki Murakami novel in a dystopic setting reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Meeks portrays a world at once hilarious and disquieting, in which frustrated revolutionaries and hopeful youths suffer alongside the lost and the condemned, just for a chance at the permanent bliss of marriage and a slice of sugar-frosted Independence Day cake.

Read excerpts from Meeks at The Collagist, BenMarcus.net, and Conjunctions.

Locus Recommended Reading · Tiptree Long List

“Meeks is a wild, woolly, sly, gentle and wry first novel. . . . It’s a book whose singular vision keeps returning to me at odd moments, one of the most original and readable novels that’s come my way in a long time.”
—The New York Times Book Review | Editor’s Choice

“The novel is a postmodern parable about American passion and paranoia, like The Great Gatsby as told by Don DeLillo.”
—The New York Observer

“The satire here has plenty of bite, but instead of winking at the reader, Holmes evokes her world with luminous prose.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Holmes is a wonderful writer.”
—The Stranger

“Holmes pares her prose to a pitch-perfect Beckettesque flatness—in a novel so richly engaged, and darkly amused, by the pathos of our contemporary search for love, the narrative authority maintains a wonderfully ironic tightness with a gentle, subtle indulgence for the striking metaphor and the occasional glint of cool wit that makes the reading at once eloquent and understated, edgy and nostalgic.”
—Review of Contemporary Fiction

“A highly imaginative debut finds a stark Darwinian logic in a rigidly hierarchical society. . . . Holmes has fashioned a terrifying and utterly convincing world in which the perfect human being is one stripped of all illusions.”
—Publishers Weekly

Belletrista

Read an interview with Julia on Portland’s Reading Local:

But the farther along you go, the better you understand the world’s weird local laws — even in an entirely invented, contrived world, there’s no tolerance for lies. I think that’s just crazy and delightful.

Julia picks 5 Recent Reads for Impose Magazine.

An August 2010 Indie Next Notable Book

“Holmes has created a fabulously surreal dystopia where to be married is the only way to find true happiness. Bachelors spend their days cultivating skills to impress ladies in what is essentially a lottery, and if they aren’t successful, they are consigned to a life of civil service–or worse. Darkly comic and lyrical, Meeks provides a unique satirical lens to look at our own changing perceptions of marriage, home life, and success.”
—Emily Pullen, Skylight Books, Los Angeles

Early Reader Reaction:

“Meeks is a feat of desolating literary spellcraft, irresistible for its bleak hilarity and the sere brilliance of Julia Holmes’s prose.”
—Wells Tower (author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned)

“The world of Meeks is cruel, cold, and weird, suffocating in laws so strange they very nearly resemble our own.  Julia Holmes is that rare artist who, with invention and mythology, reveals nothing less than the most secret inner workings of the real world we overlook every day. A masterful debut by a writer of the most forceful originality.”
—Ben Marcus (author of Notable American Women and The Age of Wire and String)

“Oh bachelors, poor bachelors, pining for their pale suits—these needy men, so poignant in their search for wives, will break your heart in twain. Splendid and limping, hilarious and painful, a quiet perfection in its idiosyncrasy, the powerful alternate reality of Meeks is also an unforgettable truth. You’ll never see marriage the same way again.”
—Lydia Millet (author of How the Dead Dream and Oh Pure and Radiant Heart)

“The life of a bachelor is always hard, but in Meeks it’s truly desperate: if you don’t have the right suit then it’s either the Brothers of Mercy or the factories. Julia Holmes’s lucid prose tightens the noose of this curious world around your readerly neck before you even know what’s hit you. An invisible enemy, a pageant, a fashion system whose signification would stymie Roland Barthes, and a society that demands everyone rush quickly to fill their odd social slot, makes Meeks a unique (and uniquely imaginative) nightmare and a severely engrossing read.”
—Brian Evenson (author of  Fugue State and The Open Curtain)

“Pity the young gentleman set loose in this world of cruel tailors, perpetual war, large-scale civic pastry and the untold rivalries of the Bachelor House! With her uncommonly assured first novel, Julia Holmes channels the surreal paranoia of Poe and the dark-comic melodrama of a lost Guy Maddin script. The strangest, most compelling debut you’ll read this year.”
—Mark Binelli (author of Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!)

Cover art © Robyn O’Neil.


Your Very Own Bachelor

Wed 14 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: jedediah

Some exciting updates from the Brothers of Mercy. The launch party for Meeks by Julia Holmes is next Tuesday, July 20th, at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn. To celebrate (and to keep us mindful of our fates, Brothers and Sisters!), a raffle will be held, and with a raffle comes prizes, and oh, what prizes!

Signed copies of Meeks, for starters. And a one-of-a-kind hand-sewn “The Bachelor” action figure. And a piece of original artwork by Robyn O’Neil, “The Hill.” We are especially covetous of this last item, as Robyn O’Neil’s work is strange and haunting stuff, and this piece was created just to mark the publication of Meeks. Robyn’s art has appeared in galleries around the world, and you may have seen it in some other nifty places.

So we are wondering: Which lucky souls will walk away with the loot? Because we can’t keep it for ourselves, sadly…

More details about the event (with link to RSVP) over at the WORD Bookstore site.


Want baby stuff @ Readercon?

Tue 6 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

We have some stuff we’d like to pass on next week at Readercon to anyone in the community who wants it. Post in the comments or send me an email at info at lcrw dot net.

  • some baby clothes for age 6-18 months, mostly girl’s, some random boy’s stuff in there, too.
  • a lovely Graco Baby Swing (with cute owls) given to us by the great Ford family.

Think that’s it. All the clothes are clean, everything’s in good shape. Drop me a line if you’re interested.


Readercon

Tue 6 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Along with 700 other readers, I (Gavin) will be at Readercon this weekend—there’s a small chance Kelly and Ursula will visit. Small. But I will have pictures. I’ll be there with Michael J. DeLuca and maybe a few others (but not Jedediah Berry, who is overseas spreading the good word about The Manual of Detection) shilling for shillings in the dealer’s room and I am on two panels on Friday (one all male, hmm). There’s also a chance I won’t be there later on Saturday, oops, silly me, but I’ll be back Sunday all the way until the bitter 2 PM end.

We will have new new new books and (glorious word) if you come looking for us, as if by magic you will also find the fine folks from ChiZine Publications.

Friday 3:00 PM, Salon G: Panel

The Best of the Small Press.  Michael Dirda, Gavin J. Grant, Sean Wallace, Robert
Freeman Wexler, Rick Wilber (L).

These days, many of the best novels and novellas, collections and anthologies are published by small presses in print runs that may only number in the hundreds. Most of these cannot be found on the shelves of chain bookstores, or even most independent and specialty shops. We’ll highlight the best works recently published by small presses — including many that Readercon attendees may not have heard about.

Friday 8:00 PM, Salon G: Panel

The New and Improved Future of Magazines.  K. Tempest Bradford, Neil Clarke, Liz Gorinsky (L), Gavin J. Grant, Matthew Kressel.

After last year’s “The Future of Magazines” panels, participant K. Tempest Bradford wrote: “The magazines and anthologies that I love tend to have editors who have taken the time to examine themselves or their culture, to expend their knowledge of other people and ways of being, to open their minds. These magazines and anthologies contain far more stories I want to read by authors of many varied backgrounds. As I said, it’s not fully about print vs. online, it’s about better magazines and books.” This time, creators and proponents of both print and online magazines collaborate on determining ways that any genre magazine can create a brighter and better-read future for itself, using Bradford’s comment as a launching point.


Redemption in Indigo

Tue 6 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Books, Karen Lord| Posted by: Gavin

July 2010 | Trade paper · 9781931520669 | ebook · 9781931520959 | audiobook · 200 pp
June 2024: new Del Rey edition.

Carl Brandon Parallax award winner · Mythopoeic Award winner · Crawford Award winner · Frank Collymore Award winner
World Fantasy Award finalist
Longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
Shortlisted for the Guyana Prize for Literature

Karen Lord’s debut novel is an intricately woven tale of adventure, magic, and the power of the human spirit. Paama’s husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parents’ home in the village of Makendha—now he’s disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying ones—the djombi— who present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately, a wrathful djombi with indigo skin believes this power should be his and his alone.

Bursting with humor and rich in fantastic detail, Redemption in Indigo is a clever, contemporary fairy tale that introduces readers to a dynamic new voice in Caribbean literature. Lord’s world of spider tricksters and indigo immortals is inspired in part by a Senegalese folk tale—but Paama’s adventures are fresh, surprising, and utterly original.

Interviews

World SF Blog interview by Chesya Burke · Locus Magazine · Notes from Coode Street podcast

Reviews

Locus: Recommended Reading · Best of the Year

“Filled with witty asides, trickster spiders, poets and one very wise woman, “Redemption in Indigo” is a rare find that you could hand to your child, your mother or your best friend.”
—Washington Post

“The perfect antidote to the formula fantasies currently flooding the market…. Précis fails to do justice to the novel’s depth, beauty and elegant simplicity. Written from the point of view of an omniscient storyteller in the style of an oral narrative, this is a subtle, wise and playful meditation on life and fate.”
—The Guardian

“A clever, exuberant mix of Caribbean and Senegalese influences that balances riotously funny set pieces (many involving talking insects) with serious drama initiated by meddlesome supernatural beings.”
—New York Times

“Lord offers us something vastly unlike the usual cliché-ridden accounts of mortals chosen to exercise enormous power. Redemption in Indigo mentally refreshes readers jaded by Joseph Campbell’s notorious monomyth. The characters of Paama, Ansige, and the indigo-skinned djombi, whose redemption provides the book’s title, help us to enjoy all marginal people’s quests and adventures, in the same way that learning to appreciate one dish from an unfamiliar cuisine helps us to appreciate many others.”
— Nisi Shawl, Tor.com

“Lord’s novel is very sprightly from start to finish, with vivid descriptions, memorable heroes and villains, brisk pacing — and an “authorised” epilogue that raises goosebumps along with expectations for a sequel. Iffy or not, that’s clever storytelling.”
—Caribbean Review of Books

—Read the Introduction and first chapter on Tor.com.
—Karen writes about Paama’s origins for Scalzi’s Big Idea.
—Karen blogged for one of our favorite bookstores, Powell’s.com: Listening to stories. Making a book trailer. Cake! Authenticity. The Muse.
—A report on the book launch in Barbados.
—Audio edition available from Recorded Books.
—Available in the UK from Jo Fletcher Books/Quercus

“Full of sharp insights and humorous asides (“I know your complaint already. You are saying, how do two grown men begin to see talking spiders after only three glasses of spice spirit?”), Redemption extends the Caribbean Island storyteller’s art into the 21st century and hopefully, beyond.”
—Seattle Times

“There’s never a doubt we’re in the hands of a contemporary taleteller with a voice both insouciant and respectful of its sources, and it’s a voice we’d like to hear more from. Redemption in Indigo is wise, funny, and very promising.”
—Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“The seamless weaving of fantasy, folklore, and science creates a speculative text that is diasporic in its dimensions. Most compelling, however, is Lord’s ability to bring the past, present, and future of diasporic narrative together in a way that is not stereotypically timeless but instead innovatively time conscious.”
—Alisa K. Braithwaite, Small Axe

“Redemption in Indigo is a brilliant little gem of a novel, as close to perfect as storytelling can be. It is hard to believe that such an intricate tale could be told in just about 200 pages. It is even harder to believe that this is Karen Lord’s debut given how self-assured the narrative is. But it is extremely easy to see how this book has earned such well-deserved admiration, mine included.”
—The Book Smugglers

“As I read the first pages of Karen Lord’s slim debut novel Redemption in Indigo, I knew I wouldn’t put the book down until the story was finished. A modern retelling of a Senegalese legend, the book is both modern and mystical. There is magic in these pages, both in the story and Lord’s flowing prose. Her narrator is humble, articulate, and wise, and Redemption in Indigo is yet another skillfully told fairy tale (of several this year) that truly transports the reader to another world where spirits take the shape of men and alter lives for better and for worse.”
—LargeHeartedBoy

“Redemption in Indigo is a quick, engaging read, and I expect that most readers will find it a fresh addition to the genre. I’ll certainly be looking forward to Karen Lord’s future books. Should she choose to revisit these characters in particular, I know I’d enjoy it very much.”
—BSC Review

“What if Paradise Lost were recast in an African setting, its themes of rebellion, disobedience, greed, innocence lost, and redemption intact, its trickster characters both earthly and heavenly also intact, but its storyline adjusted to suit a more contemporary audience and adjusted to avoid having the young (or older) skeptic call it a fairy tale?
“Karen Lord’s first novel is unique, warm, funny, and smart, and her speculative imaginings should awaken every fantasy fan’s sense of wonder. It might not make it to a bestseller list, but given time, it might be found on a list of hidden gems—as might whatever Lord writes next.”
—Reflection’s Edge

“A great deal happens in the novel’s relatively short course, but confusion is minimal because Lord has found the ideal voice for the narrator—feminine yet authoritative, amusing yet soothing, omniscient yet humble. This is one of those literary works of which it can be said that not a word should be changed.”
—Booklist *Starred Review*

“Lord’s debut, a retelling of a Senegalese folktale, packs a great deal of subtly alluring storytelling into this small package…. An unnamed narrator, sometimes serious and often mischievous, spins delicate but powerful descriptions of locations, emotions, and the protagonists’ great flaws and great strengths as they interact with family, poets, tricksters, sufferers of tragedy, and—of course—occasional moments of pure chaos.”
—Publishers Weekly *Starred Review*

“The impish love child of Tutuola and Garcia Marquez. Utterly delightful.”
—Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring)

“Adventure, mystery, familial relations, discourse of power, ananse, the spirit world—a difficult mix/transition between conventional ‘plot’/narrative and magical realism—between cooking and xtreme lyric—beyond the boundary of what we conventionally/conveniently think of as ‘Bajam’, as ‘West Indian writing’, but part of and contribution to the ‘new generation’ of Caribbean imprint, pioneered by Lawrence Scott (TT/UK), in development now by Nalo Hopkinson (Guyana/Canada), (Marina Warner’s Indigo too?) and being incremented on/to by this challenging first novel by prize-winning Karen Lord of Barbados.”
—Kamau Brathwaite (Born to Slow Horses)

“Drawing on a multicultural mélange of narrative traditions—both oral and written—this Barbadian author surprises. She tap dances across the conventional, using it to make spirited sounds. She twists out of tired modes: “Once upon a time—but whether a time that was, or a time that is, or a time that is to come, I may not tell.” Then, Lord ends the tale by challenging “those who utterly, utterly fear the dreaded Moral of the Story.” Expect a work that can revive this and other exhausted elements of story.”
—Foreword Reviews

“A book that I consider a classic and everyone should read.”
— Tobias S. Buckell

“If you haven’t read Redemption in Indigo, now’s the time.”
— Kate Elliott

“Read and loved REDEMPTION IN INDIGO by Karen Lord. Can’t wait to read THE GALAXY GAME by Karen Lord, who I will read frankly anything by.”
— Kate Milford, author of The Greenglass House

“Fantastic.”
— Max Gladstone

“This book flat-out blew me away.”
— Jim C. Hines

Karen Lord was born in Barbados in 1968 and decided to explore the world. After completing a science degree at the University of Toronto, she realised that the course she had enjoyed most was History of the English Language. Several degrees, jobs, countries, and years later, she had taught physics, trained soldiers, worked in the Foreign Service, and gained a PhD in sociology of religion. She writes fiction to balance the nonfiction she produces as an academic and research consultant. She lives in Barbados and now uses the internet to explore the world, which is cheaper.

Author photo © Risée N. C. Chaderton.
Cover photo © Corbis.

First Printing: July 6, 2010
Second Printing: December 2010
Third Printing: April 2013

Previously:

Sept. 10, 2010:
Reading with Julia Holmes
McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street, New York, NY

Sept. 12: 2 PM,
Karen read at the Brooklyn Book Festival and signed books at the Small Beer Press table.
Brooklyn Borough Hall
209 Joralemon Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Sept. 14: Reading with Julia Holmes (Meeks)
Greenlight Bookstore
686 Fulton Street
Brooklyn, NY

Online Event
September 24, 2020, 7:30 p.m. EST
Pre-register for the inaugural event of the Strange Light Reading Series hosted by Alexandra Manglis & Yvette Ndlovu with Karen Lord (Redemption in Indigo 10-year anniversary reading) & Tessa Gratton (Night Shine).


Yesterday, we shipped!

Thu 1 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

We have good news: we have copies of Redemption in Indigo and Meeks! Which means that soon enough your local bookstore (and maybe some other retail outlets) will have them, too. Pre-orders (for which: thanks!—and more TK soon about that for Kathe Koja’s book…!) and more review copies have been shipped from the office. Consortium ship out books to stores, soooon. Of course, you can see both authors in New York (and other places!) over the next couple of months. Keep an eye out here (ouch) or see the handy dandy events thingy.

And, also, Ladies and Gents! All this week! Karen Lord has been blogging at one of the biggest bookshops in the universe: Powell’s Books in Portland, OR. Listening to stories. Making a book trailer. Cake! And today: Authenticity.

Ok, another tab to be opened: Edward Gauvin is at Kepler’s Books’s Well-Read Donkey this week writing about talking to himself and then getting to talk to everyone else about G.-O.C. now that A Life on Paper has been published and ways of reading Châteaureynaud.

Lastly, Kathe Koja on writing what you have to at Ramblings of a Tattooed Head.

Next: tea time and wondering if the tea lady will have any of those nice gingery biscuits left by the time she reaches this part of the office.


Indie Bookstore Week

Thu 1 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Independents Week: July 1–7

Celebrate Independents Week with independent businesses across the country—and around the world as the movement grows. If you shop at local independent businesses your purchases help pay the wages of people in your area—who can then afford to buy books: maybe even your book! Check out the American Independent Business Alliance (www.amiba.net) or for more info on this celebration that is becoming more popular each year.

In celebration of Independents Week we’re listing a few favorite bookshops (many more can be found on Indiebound.org and on our website) from our homestate, Massachusetts. It will only take us 49 more years to cover the whole USA!

Boston has a few good bookshops scattered throughout the metropolitan area which makes for a fun day on the T to try to see them all. Start in Coolidge Corner with the Brookline Booksmith (brooklinebooksmith.com) which features a busy reading series, a used book basement, and a staff of engaged and passionate readers. Brookline is also lucky enough to have a full-service kid’s store, the Children’s Book Shop (thechildrensbookshop.net). Also worth a visit is Calamus, a GLBT bookstore (calamusbooks.com)
Over the Charles River in Cambridge at the Harvard Book Store (harvard.com) they also have a used book basement but their new additions don’t just include their well-stocked ground floor, they also have an On Demand book printer where thousands of out of print books are available—and you can print your book there, too! Harvard Square also boasts a lovely kid’s book store, Curious George & Friends (curiousg.com), Schoenhof’s Foreign Books (schoenhofs.com), as well as the one and only Grolier Poetry Bookshop (grolierpoetrybookshop.org). Up Mass. Ave. is another fave, a newish general bookshop the Porter Square Bookshop (portersquarebooks.com) and further out are Newtonville Books (Newtonville, newtonvillebooks.com), Jamaicaway Books and Gifts (Jamaica Plain, jamaicawaybooks.com), Back Pages (Waltham, backpagesbooks.com), and Cornerstone Books (Salem, cornerstonebooks-salem.com).
Out in central Massachusetts there are a cluster of great bookshops not coincidentally near Easthampton—the popularity of books and reading is a big reason why we’re here. Cherry Picked Books (101 Main St, Easthampton, MA) is a good old-fashioned used booksshop and is handy should you need a stack of holiday paperbacks. . . . Broadside Books (Northampton, broadsidebooks.com) like every indie bookshop can get any book within a day or two. Over the Connecticut River, in Amherst, Amherst Books (amherstbooks.com), Food For Thought Books (foodforthoughtbooks.com), and the Eric Carle Museum Bookshop (picturebookart.org/shop) cover all ages, political philosophies and budgets. The Odyssey  Book Shop (S. Hadley, odysseybooks.com) has an impressive first First Editions Club for readers and collectors. The Montague Bookmill (Montague, montaguebookmill.com) is a favorite of everyone we know.
Out in the Berkshires, the Bookloft (Great Barrington, thebookloft.com) also has an On Demand machine which is so popular they have started a print on demand service, Troy Book Makers which nicely turns the publishing wheel back to the period when publishers were booksellers, now booksellers are publishers!


What Are You Wearing?

Thu 24 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: jedediah

What happens when you don’t have the right suit? You don’t get the job. Or find that special someone. Or score a good seat at the execution.

In the world of Meeks, a debut novel by Julia Holmes, young men must find wives (and the right suits) or be doomed to a life of factory work or worse. It’s a dark satire, and it’s a truly funny, truly frightening novel. We are pleased as kids with extra Independence Day cake to be publishing it.

Here’s what you need to know for now:

  • There are bachelor suits and there are mourning suits. What you want is one of those nice bachelor suits.
  • You can read an excerpt from Meeks over at Conjunctions. And another at The Collagist. And one on the website of Ben Marcus, who once said: “Julia Holmes is that rare artist who, with invention and mythology, reveals nothing less than the most secret inner workings of the real world we overlook every day.” Truth.
  • If someone asks whether you’ve heard the story of Captain Meeks, you say: “I have heard it, but it feels good to remember.”
  • On July 20th, to celebrate the publication of Meeks, there will be a party at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn. There will be drinks and there will be Independence Day cake. There may even be auctions. Details here.
  • Julia will also read in New York, NY; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; Boston, MA, and elsewhere. Check our handy calendar so you’re sure not to miss her.
  • Cover art by Robyn O’Neil, perhaps our foremost portraitist of Doomed Young Men.
  • Can’t afford the cookies? Have a mint.

More soon!


Redemption in Video!

Wed 23 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin


Did you know we are publishing Karen Joy Fowler’s next book?

Tue 22 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

It is true! How happy are we? Massively! If happiness were weighed in stars we’d be a black hole!

Looking at those announcement posts we did a while back, it looks like we never made it all the way to September of this year (mmm, autumn!) which is the when when the what all over will be What I Didn’t See and Other Stories. And that what is a stunning collection: heartbreaking and deeply realistic even with their occasional fantastic touches. Did you ever read her story “King Rat” in Trampoline? Egads, it was a killer. Now it has been gathered with eleven others (including one, no, wait, two! Nebula Award winners) and, tra la la, a story that makes its first appearance here.

And how shall this book appear? As a zap-it’s-yours ebook from the usual places and also as a lovely hardcover paper book made from lovely recycled paper. The cover is a collage which is being handmade especially for the book by Brooklyn artist Erica Harris—whom some of you may remember as the artist whose fabulous art graced one of our early books, Carol Emshwiller’s collection, Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories.

We’ll have a preorder page set up soon and or you can order it from Powell’s. Or, wait a bit and see if Karen is reading near you! Karen is one of our favorite readers—or panelist: go see her whenever you can—and we expect to be setting up quite a few West Coast readings and maybe maybe more elsewhere.

Ta da!


Up! Date!

Mon 21 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Everything has slowed down at Small Beer hq due to the summer heat and maybe maybe perhaps that little thing that World Cup. Yay for the future arriving and being able to watch most of the matches on ESPN3—or free at many many bars, mmm. Sadly the White Horse Tavern in Allston was out of Dogfish IPA two days in a row but Troeg’s Hopback Amber was a good substitute.

Congratulations to Gerbrand Bakker (and translator David Colmer and Archipelago Books!) whose novel The Twin just won the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Between that and Tinkers receiving the Pulitzer price it makes for a great year for independent presses!

We have a fun update on Kathe Koja’s book coming later this week. Let’s just say you should order then, not now. Oooh!

What else we’re up to:

Watching the World Cup. No, really, there are 3 games a day at the moment. How is anyone supposed to do anything else but sit in bars, drink, and watch the games? Deadlines? Whoosh!

Also, Kelly‘s about done with her blogging, although she does promise a couple more posts here and at Gwenda’s at a time TBA. Nice to see Gwenda (and some others) poking her head up above the bunkers again. We too watch the True Blood but are a season behind. Ah, DVDs.

Just saw a great review of A Life on Paper on The Agony Column. There’s one way to make sure the rest of G.-O. C’s work gets translated into English:

Châteaureynaud has a backlist for American readers that this book makes enticingly tangible, almost real. His own work is such that it might be subject of one of his stories. This might be all there is, the rest pure fabrication. The unreal, awaiting translation.

Alasdair Gray is interviewed by Jeff VanderMeer on Gray Week at Omnivoracious:

Gray’s new novel, Old Men in Love, is a mash-up of several different voices, creating a narrative through collage. The main text is presented as the posthumous papers of a retired Glaswegian schoolmaster named John Tunnock, seemingly edited by Gray. Tunnock’s a rogue whose exploits often backfire on him, and the novel contains everything from historical fictions set in Renaissance Italy to accounts of how his young mistresses take advantage of him.

Also, Will Self’s Appreciation of Alasdair Gray’s Old Men in Love

And Thursday Extra: Alasdair Gray, Author of Old Men in Love, Recommends Agnes Owens

How awesome was that week? Well, apart from the commenter—who says he’s a big fan of the author—who gave the book 1 star because he can’t read it in the format he wants. Oh well.

Old Men in Love was also reviewed by a long-time reader of Gray’s books, Gerry Donaghy, on Powell’s Review-a-Day:

Clear in this book, as in past volumes, is Gray’s devotion to the idea of the book as an object. Throughout his career he has designed his own books (usually to either save his publisher some cash or collect a second paycheck), and Old Men in Love is no exception. Poorly suited to a Kindle reading experience, it’s filled with various typefaces, ornamental drawings, and Blake-inspired illustrations. Even the boards of the book itself are tooled in silver-looking flake. If eBooks are the future, it looks like Gray is going to go out swinging.

A bit of LCRW news:

Does seem like there was more going on. But somehow the day has passed passed and gone and now it’s either time to see Luis Alberto Urrea at the Harvard Bookstore, or not! And, tomorrow: Colson Whitehead. And, in a few weeks, David Mitchell. Ooh, those lit’ry mens.


Are you a Geoff Ryman superfan?

Mon 21 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

We’d love to hear from you!


Alasdair Gray: out now!

Thu 10 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

At last! We have copies, the author (post office willing) will soon have his copies, lovely people who pre-ordered theirs have their copies, NPR got their copies (and one of our local stations, WBUR, has reprinted that review), NYTimes, and so on, all have their copies, everyone can get copies of Alasdair Gray’s latest novel Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers. Reviewers? Want a copy? Drop us a line!

Fun coming up: Alasdair will be interviewed online. More on that if and when it happens. And, for the nonce, here’s an interview from October on the center of all things internet, The Rumpus.

Also, you can read an excerpt on Scribd. (No, there will not be an ebook although we’ll talk more to Alasdair about that later.)

This book was awesome to publish: not just because I’ve been reading Alasdair’s books for years but it was great to deal with Alasdair—and his lovely secretary, Helen—when things went pear-shaped with the Bloomsbury files. Weeks disappeared. Weeks! But it has (almost!) all come out ok in the end.

One of the parts that was easiest about publishing this book was the flap copy because the UK edition already had copy written by Will Self so we’ll post it here just for all yous:

———–

Alasdair Gray’s new novel, Old Men in Love, exhibits all of those faintly preposterous foibles that make him a writer more loved than prized. The bulk of the text constitutes the posthumous papers of a recondite – yet venal – retired Glaswegian schoolmaster, named John Tunnock (as in the celebrated tea cake), that have, seemingly, been edited and collated by Gray himself.

This literary subterfuge serves to fool no one who needs fooling, yet will satisfy all who believe that the truth can be found more exactly in chance occurrences, serendipity, and the eggy scrapings from the breakfast plates of the neglected, than any crude, linear naturalism.

Tunnock is a beguiling figure, at once feisty and fusty. His historical fictions chivvy us into Periclean Athens, Renaissance Italy and then bury our noses in the ordure of sanctity given off by charismatic Victorian religious sectaries. Excursions into geological time are placed in counterpoint to diaristic jottings describing Tunnock’s own erotic misadventures and the millennial trivia of the Anthony Linton Blair Government’s final five years.

Only Gray can be fecklessly sexy as well as insidiously sagacious. Only Gray can beguile quite so limpidly. If I were a Hollywood screenwriter (which, to the best of my knowledge, I am not), I would pitch the film adaptation of Old Men in Love thus: ‘Imagine Lanark meets Something Leather, with a kind of Poor Things feel to it…’ By this I mean to convey to this novel’s readers that Alasdair Gray remains, first and foremost, entirely sui generis. He’s the very best Alasdair Gray that we have, and we should cherish his works accordingly.

———–

Get your copy here!


Signed Cloud & Ashes

Wed 9 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

After WisCon we have a few signed copies of Cloud & Ashes up for grabs. Someone asked if this book will be paperbacked and the answer is a definite: not sure! Maybe maybe. Maybe just Unleaving by itself. Still thinking it over.


Topics for Kelly?

Wed 9 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly’s blog tour is under way and if you have any topic requests for later in the week please post in the comments!

Here’s the tour so far. (Today’s is a book giveaway, so go sign up for that, or you can get your copy from Powell’s who have it in stock now.)

Updated with links to posts:

The Cozy Reader — on writing and not writing
Forever Young — a continuation of the above
Parajunkee’s View — paranormal monsters
Reviews by Brooke — lists!
Anna’s Book Blog — reading as a writer
Books By Their Cover — short review + interview
Fantasy &  SciFi Lovin’ News & Reviews — story idea generation
Monster Librarian — interview
Fantasy Book Critic — Kelly interviews N.K. Jemisin
Word for Teens — on Diana Wynne Jones
The Compulsive Reader — go make a zine!
TBA: Bookchickcity.com


Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers

Tue 8 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

June 8, 2010:
9781931520690 · Trade cloth · 6 x 9 · 312 pp

Beautifully designed by the author and printed in two colors: you have to handle this book to believe how beautiful it is. See the title page and first couple of chapters here.

Small Beer Press are delighted to publish the first US edition (updated with the author’s corrections from the UK edition) of Alasdair Gray’s latest novel, Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers, a unique melding of humor and metafiction that at once hearkens back to Laurence Sterne yet sits beside today’s literary mash-ups with equal comfort. Old Men in Love is smart, down-to-earth, funny, bawdy, politically inspired, dark, multi-layered, and filled with the kind of intertextual play that Gray delights in.

As with Gray’s previous novel Poor Things, several partial narratives are presented together. Here the conceit is that they were all discovered in the papers of the late John Tunnock, a retired Glasgow teacher who started a number of novels in settings as varied as Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Victorian Somerset, and Britain under New Labour. Fifty percent is fact and the rest is possible, but it must be read to be believed.

Old Men in Love on Omnivoracious: First, Jeff VanderMeer interviews Alasdair Gray, then Will Self’s Appreciation from the dustjacket, and finally an excerpt from the Introduction by Lady Sara Sim-Jaeger.

Also: a wonderful recent interview with Alasdair Gray by Ari Messer on The Rumpus.

Reviews

“God bless visionary eccentrics. . . . In today’s case, I am lavishing thanks not only for the existence of Alasdair Gray, our present-day reigning literary eccentric, but also for his marvelous invention, John Tunnock:  crabby and crabbed, quintessentially Scottish misanthrope, unsung and deceased novelist, surname-sharer with a teacake, “hero,” if I may be so bold, of Old Men in Love.”
—Paul Di Filippo, Barnes and Noble Review

“Like the best of Gray’s work, Old Men in Love is funny and profane, but with a shuddering anger to the politics. Despite its swinging widely through time and space to portray men in power, their vulnerabilities and the perils of unchecked desire, perhaps the novel’s best section is its most mundane and personal: Gray’s portrayal of John Tunnock as a young boy trying to find his (lonely) place in working-class Glasgow. With a dead mother and a father he never knew, he’s left to two plucky maiden aunts. His coming of age includes sherry, comic book superheroines in very tight costumes, his discovery of pornography and being discovered with pornography by his schoolmaster. He was even watching Only Uncensored Anime Porn Allowed.

About the Author—Gerry Donaghy, Powells.com“What makes reading Alasdair Gray worthwhile is that, though he may not always be a successful literary stylist, he repeatedly manages to articulate our innate need to be creative and the despair that comes with the inability to successfully express ourselves. He also reminds us that often our ideals exceed our actions and abilities. More than once, he’s introduced his novels with the exhortation, “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation,” and it’s this optimism, in the face of sometimes overwhelming odds, that keeps me coming back to this author.””
—Jessa Crispin, NPR (Read a short excerpt on NPR)

Alasdair Gray, born 1934, is a painter certificated by Glasgow Art School. Unable to live by one art he became jack of several and Old Men in Love is his 19th book. In The Dublin Independent Lawrence Sterne says it will swim down the gutter of time with the legation of Moses and A Tale of A Tub. Says Urquhart of Cromarty in The Scots Magazine, Relish the cheese-like brain that feeds you with these trifling jollities. Dr Samuel Johnson in The Rambler writes, Never has penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment been so happily disguised. Sidney Workman in the Epilogue says This book should not be read. In this blurb Alasdair Gray writes, Old Men in Love is bound to sell well because everyone now feels old after 25 so all youngsters are interested in what comes next.

Reactions to the British edition:

“Beautiful, inventive, ambitious and nuts.”—The Times (London)

“The culmination of a lifetime spent honing his unique ideas and approach.”
—New Statesman

“That very rare bird among contemporary British writers—a genuine experimentalist. The influence of James Joyce, and Lauren Sterne, is very evident, but Gray does not seem merely derivative from these masters. He is very much his own man.”
—David Lodge

“This is one of Alasdair Gray’s best novels. (…) A preoccupation with the true meaning of democratic accountability is one of several themes uniting these linked stories. Freedom, including artistic freedom, is at the core of Old Men in Love. Gray is sly and witty, but also, and more impressively, he writes with stylish honesty. Presented as a schoolteacher’s book, Old Men in Love has a didactic tone at times, but gets away with it. (…) Postmodern it may be, but this is clearly a work by a lover of Dickens, Scott, James Hogg and John Galt. Its rewardingly readable narratives owe as much to the narrative quirkiness of the great age of 19th-century fiction as to today’s tricksiness. Old Men in Love shows Gray’s old strengths confidently renascent.”
—Robert Crawford, The Independent

“Waywardness is central to this novel’s artistic vision; waywardness, rather than rebellion in the Romantic style. (…) Once again, in this ingenious, engaging novel, Alasdair Gray has struck a blow for an altogether more meaningful sort of freedom.”
—Michael Kerrigan, Times Literary Supplement

Read more


Old LCRWs getting lighter and cheaper

Tue 8 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

We’ve just added LCRW 16, LCRW 17 and LCRW 18 to Weightless and dropped the price of LCRW ebooks to $2.99! Woot! Cough! Exclamation!

Also of LCRW interest: a review of LCRW 24 from Ray Garraty in Russia (and in Russian).

More ebookery: we just added Part 2 of Astrid Amara’s The Archer’s Heart on Weightless. What are we talking about? Here, go get Part 1: serialized fiction, it’s Weightlessed!

Travel Light is now available as an ebook for the very first time. It is an awesome book that you should have read when you’re 10. In fact, if you are 10, read it now. If you are not 10, read it anyway. And, isn’t that the best title ever of a book to read as an ebook? Oh sure, our paperback has the gorgeous Kevin Huizenga cover but you know, travel light. Of course if you’re hauling around some huge ebook reader maybe that isn’t travelling so light.

At some point we will probably offload all our ebooks to Weightless—which is growing along nicely. (And we’re very happy that those 2 million iPad readers will be able to read PDFs on it now. We make pretty pages and want you to enjoy them as well as the stories on them.) Anyway, so tell us if you think the offloading of ebooks to the other site is s a good or bad idea.


Introducing Georges-Olivier

Mon 7 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Today we’re celebrating the publication of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s first book in English, A Life on Paper: Stories, translated by Edward Gauvin. Obviously we will be watching the New York Times bestseller list closely this week because this book is a surefire hit: not only is it a translation, it’s a short story collection. Last week’s bestseller list contained four collections (one translated from Basque, one Welsh) and two anthologies—one of the usual sex+drugs+rocknroll stories and the other an anthology of Czech novellas. So the national appetite is whetted for a collection such as A Life on Paper, which introduces one of France’s premiere masters of the form. Run to the store! Or, download it now.

Edward Gauvin first brought Châteaureynaud to our attention a couple of years ago with a small chapbook of three stories, Trois Contes (One Horse Town), and he continued to keep us up to date with his doings. There had been a story published here, a story there, had we seen that Châteaureynaud won another award, let me tell you about this great and weird novel he just published. He sent us some pictures of the author (see below—and we realized that this was the French Vonnegut) and a few of his French book covers. Eventually we clued in to the fact that we are publishers and here was a fantastic French author whose work hadn’t been published in ye olde English language. At that point we broke out the checkbook and acquired the book. We also realized that Châteaureynaud’s face was about the best cover possible for this book. There’s a face that says I’ve got stories to tell.

Publishing a translation of 22 stories taken from half a dozen different collections whose rights are owned by three different publishers and the author has been . . . interesting! The easiest part was working with Brian Evenson who wrote the excellent Foreword to the collection. The more difficult part was that thing about the three publishers and so on. However, that’s where the French Publishers’ Agency comes in. The lovely people there worked with us on all those contracts (and the revisions, the endless revisions!) with Actes Sud, Grasset, and Juilliard, and without them it’s unlikely that this book would have made it to publication here in the USA. They also worked with us and Edward on applying for a couple of different grants—which very much helped with the costs; and one of the grants may be used for Châteaureynaud’s next book instead of this one. Because it turns out that some of Châteaureynaud’s work is connected and if you read some of these stories they help set up the world of some of his novels. Which is something we’re looking forward to getting to once Edward sends us the translation. Of course, Edward is off in Belgium on a Fulbright, but we’re hoping he won’t be so enamored of the Belgian beer and books that he will forget his US readers patiently waiting for the next Châteaureynaud.

So in the meantime, we’re proud to present our second translation—Kalpa Imperial by Argentinean writer Angélica Gorodischer and translated by Ursula K. Le Guin being the first—and newest collection of short stories: A Life on Paper. As usual for us, this book crosses many genre borders so no doubt in some bookshops you will find it shelved in fiction and in others you’ll find it in science fiction. The one given is that you should go out and find it!


Kelly’s going on a blog tour

Tue 1 Jun 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Pretty MonstersNext week the paperback of Kelly’s collection Pretty Monsters comes out from Penguin and since she won’t be going out on tour (maybe she will for the theoretical next book—which, to forestall questions, isn’t written, scheduled, etc.), instead she is going out into the Great Tubes of the Internets for a tour of the far horizons of Bloglandia. The paperback (just to complicate the lives of blibliographers) has one extra story, “The Cinderella Game”—originally published in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Troll’s Eye View anthology—and is sitting here looking very pretty and proud.

Also, I think about four of these sites are giving away copies of Pretty Monsters so please do add these to reading calendar for next week:

June 7: Thecozyreader.com
June 8: Foreveryalit.com
June 8: Parajunkee.com
June 9: Reviewsbybrooke.blogspot.com
June 10: Annavivian.blogspot.com
June 11: Booksbytheircover.blogspot.com
June 14: Fantasy &  SciFi Lovin’ News & Reviews
June 15: Monsterlibrarian.com
June 15: Bookchickcity.com
June 16: Fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com
June 17: Wordforteens.blogspot.com
June 18: Thecompulsivereader.com


Wanted: list of any sf+f stories set in Tokyo

Sat 29 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Mari Kotani and the rest of the women who are running this year’s Japanese science fiction convention are looking for any stories (science fiction or fantasy) set in Tokyo. Help? Ideas? Lists?


Wiscon/Laurie Marks

Sat 29 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Hey, I’m at WisCon—hello lovely Madison! If you’re here and want to donate to help Laurie J. Marks’s wife Deb Mensinger’s liver transplant we have a donation box at our table in the dealers’ room. As well as some books and all that stuff—and not just from us!

ETA: We raised $200 and sent it on to Laurie and Deb, thanks to everyone who donated.


A Life on Paper: Stories

Tue 25 May 2010 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

May 25, 2010 · 9781931520621 · ebook available
Translated by Edward Gauvin

Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award Winner
Best Translated Book Award Shortlist

“The celebrated Châteaureynaud, who over the course of a distinguished career has created short tales that are not exactly contes cruels but which linger on the edge of darkness and absurdity.”
—New York Times

Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is well known to readers of French literature. This comprehensive collection—the first to be translated into English—introduces a distinct and dynamic voice to the Anglophone world. In many ways, Châteaureynaud is France’s own Kurt Vonnegut, and his stories are as familiar as they are fantastic.

Read:

A Life on Paper presents characters who struggle to communicate across the boundaries of the living and the dead, the past and the present, the real and the more-than-real. A young husband struggles with self-doubt and an ungainly set of angel wings in “Icarus Saved from the Skies,” even as his wife encourages him to embrace his transformation. In the title story, a father’s obsession with his daughter leads him to keep her life captured in 93,284 unchanging photographs. While Châteaureynaud’s stories examine the diffidence and cruelty we are sometimes capable of, they also highlight the humanity in the strangest of us and our deep appreciation for the mysterious.

Reviews

“Châteaureynaud is a master craftsman, encapsulating weighty themes with pith and heart. In his hands, the short story is a Gothic cathedral whittled from a wine cork.”
—The Believer

“Châteaureynaud celebrates the quiet, hidden beauties of the world and the objects or knowledge we hold tight like talismans to protect us from its losses and horrors.”
—The Quarterly Conversation

“Châteaureynaud makes expert thematic use of both light and shadow to reveal his fantastical realms of wonder and fear. His unassuming prose startles as it entrances, holding readers on the edge of elegantly rendered, fantastical dream-worlds while all at once alluding to their more nightmarish qualities. In the style of Kafka and Poe, Châteaureynaud makes the supernatural seem not only present, but ubiquitous, inclined to encroach at any moment on the humdrum lives of unsuspecting mortals. More sinister than fairy tales, yet not quite definable as horror stories, Châteaureynaud’s whimsical writings leave one unsettled and alert, appreciating anew the possibilities of the chilly night air while simultaneously feeling the urge to draw nearer to the fire—just in case.”
—Catherine Bailey, Three Percent

“The collection will perhaps appeal especially to those who enjoy their fiction short and concise, not to mention intense and decidedly peculiar. If you . . . are interested in dream-logic, fantastic situations, the unexplainable and/or macabre . . . this volume delivers again and again.”
—Neon Magazine

“Châteaureynaud’s stories are disorienting, bizarre, mythical. The stories don’t end with epiphanies or a tidy wrapping-up. Some of the endings are abrupt, even unsatisfying; they feel more like a beginning. So what? A Life on Paper is fantastic in both meanings: it’s fantastic, as in strange, unreal, weird, imaginary; and it’s fantastic, as in absolutely fucking awesome. People will call A Life on Paper magical realism. A few will call it irrealism. I don’t care what you call it. I just want you to read it.”
—Bookslut

“Both classic and modern, strange and simple, Châteaureynaud’s stories remind not only of Vonnegut but of Gogol and Kafka. What’s endearing about the stories is the amount of tenderness running through them. Even in stories about bizarre cruelty (the title story tells of a father who had his daughter photographed a dozen times a day for her entire life), affection provides the glue.”
—Time Out Chicago

“A Life on Paper is a brief selection from more than thirty years of fiction. Châteaureynaud has a backlist for American readers that this book makes enticingly tangible, almost real. His own work is such that it might be subject of one of his stories. This might be all there is, the rest pure fabrication. The unreal, awaiting translation.”
—Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column

“These 22 curious tales verging on the perverse will strike new English readers of Châteaureynaud’s work as a wonderful find. Beautiful prose featuring ingenuous protagonists and clever, unexpected forays into horror are the hallmarks of these mischievous stories.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is 63 and has never published a book in English until now. A Life on Paper: Selected Stories, brilliantly translated by Edward Gauvin, opens the door at last. . . . Nothing matters in this book unless it has been told, everything is told. Open this book.”
—John Clute, Strange Horizons

“Châteaureynaud’s dance steps are so nimble that he seems, without effort, to show us what is best in others.”
—Brooklyn Rail

“Châteaureynaud has sometimes been called the Kurt Vonnegut of France. However, this collection of 22 of Châteaureynaud’s stories—which are often other-worldly and not infrequently unsettling—may speak to some readers more directly of Kafka.”
—Christian Science Monitor

“As weird as they are elegant, as delicious as they are unsettling, these fables place Châteaureynaud in the secret brotherhood that has only exemplars, no definition: Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Nathanael West, Aimee Bender. We are lucky indeed to have them, in a very skilled translation.”
—John Crowley (Little, Big)

Table of Contents

Foreword by Brian Evenson
A Citizen Speaks
A Life on Paper
Come Out, Come Out
Icarus Saved from the Skies
The Only Mortal
The Peacocks
Unlivable
A Room on the Abyss
The Gulf of the Years
The Dolceola Player
The Pest
Delaunay the Broker
The Excursion
La Tête
The Styx
The Beautiful Coalwoman — podcast
A City of Museums — author reading (in French)
The Guardicci Masterpiece
Écorcheville
Sweet Street
The Bronze Schoolboy
The Pavilion and the Linden
Another Story

Paper edition printed on recycled paper by Thomson-Shore of Dexter, Michigan.
Text set in Centaur 12 pt.

Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is the author of nine novels, two young adult novels, and over one hundred short stories. Despite a lifelong fear of flying, he has been to Peru—his only time on a plane—and lived to pen a travel memoir about the experience. He is the recipient of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle (for short stories), Prix Giono, Prix Valéry Larbaud, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. His work has been translated into fourteen languages.

Born in Paris in 1947, Châteaureynaud was a solitary child who became a voracious and unprejudiced reader, ingesting Treasure Island as avidly as Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He studied English at the Sorbonne, discovering Stevenson, Shelley, Stoker, and Wells, and later took a degree in library science from the École Nationale Supérieure des Bibliothèques. In 1968, he embarked on a series of odd jobs—including antiques dealer, auto assembly line laborer—that comprised, in his words, an “apprenticeship in human nature,” cementing his sympathy for the marginal, outcast figures who would become his luckless, well-meaning, Everyman heroes and narrators. Grasset published his first collection in 1973, Le fou dans la chaloupe.

With novelist Hubert Haddad, and fellow Goncourt winners Frédéric Tristan and sinologist Jean Lévi, Châteaureynaud is a founding member of the contemporary movement La Nouvelle Fiction: “New” because it rose up against the prevailingly minimalist and confessional tendencies (autofiction) of recent French writing, seeking to rouse it from what critic Jean-Luc Moreau called “the slumber of psychological realism,” and to restore myth, fable, and fairy tale to a place of primacy in fiction.

In 1983 and 1990, Châteaureynaud was a representative of the Foreign Services Ministry to Quebec and then to Greece. He has been consistently involved with the Centre National du Livre and the SGDL (Société des Gens de Lettres de France). He plays an active part in fostering new talent, serving on the juries of such diverse prizes as the Fondation BNP-Paribas Young Writers Award, the international Prix Prométhée de la nouvelle, the Prix Renaudot, and the Prix Renaissance. Châteaureynaud sees his enthusiastic participation in these institutions as a way of repaying the literary community that has allowed him the luxury of dedication to his craft. An Officier des Arts et Lettres of France, he is currently the editorial director of foreign literature at Editions Dumerchez. In 2006, he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.

Edward Gauvin has published Châteaureynaud’s work in AGNI Online, The Southern Review, Conjunctions, Harvard Review, Words Without Borders, LCRW, Postscripts, Epiphany, The Café Irreal, Eleven Eleven, Sentence, and The Brooklyn Rail. A graduate of the Iowa Workshop, he has received a Fulbright grant as well as fellowships from the Centre National du Livre, the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and the Clarion Foundation and residencies from the Maison des Écritures Midi-Pyrénées, Ledig House, and the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Other translations of his have been featured or are forthcoming in PEN America, Tin House, Interfictions 2, Subtropics, Silk Road, Two Lines, and Absinthe. A consulting editor for graphic literature at Words Without Borders, he translates comics for Archaia, First Second, and Tokyopop. He has lived in Austin, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, New York, Taipei, and Amiens, France.

A Life on Paper: Stories was published with the support of the French Voices program:

Cet ouvrage, publié dans le cadre d’un programme d’aide à la publication, bénéficie du soutien du Ministère des Affaires éstrangères et du Service Culturel de l’Ambassade de France aux Etats-Unis. This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.

This work, published as part of a program providing publication assistance, received financial support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).


Tonight: Wrrock! Tomorrow: Bea (not Arthur)

Tue 25 May 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Tonight we are in Brooklyn at the Wrrrrrrrrrrrock ON Rock n Roll Show which our pals at Two Dollar Radio put together. It’s a party, a show, a fundraiser, a raising of hell. We hope to exchange deafened nods with you there!

Then: tomorrow we are at BookExpo New York. The new, slim-lined edition (i.e. Honey, they shrank the show!). We shrank it, too, and have a shelf of books (and some giveaways, natch) in the Consortium area, Booth 4511. Drop by and say Hi! Julia Holmes, debut author of Meeks will be there and on Thursday (as subscribers to our nifty Events Calendar will already know) Delia Sherman, co-editor of Interfictions 2 will be signing that there book: Table 1, 10:30 AM.

Later on the week: Jed Berry goes to Bloody Words (no, really!) and Gavin goes to WisCon. Irregular mailing of books may result (although there are peeps in the office: Michael! Cristi! Maybe More!) and email will be a Shambles. (Yes, email will resemble an area of York.)

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