Aliens, Viruses, Neanderthals, & Shapeshifters

Tue 21 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Today we publish The Bodies of the Ancients, Lydia Millet’s final novel in her middle grade Dissenters series through our Big Mouth House imprint for books for readers of all ages:

It has been fascinating to work with Lydia on these books and to see the fight against global warming used as the basis for a fantasy series. The final volume includes aliens, bugs, neanderthals, changelings, and a few world-shaking surprises for the Sykes family as everything is (well, sort of) tied up. Along with the shapeshifters and magic there is some actual satisfying climate science, of course, since Lydia has worked at the Center for Biological Diversity for many years.

You can start reading the first book in the series, The Fires Beneath the Sea, right now on Wattpad and the second book, The Shimmers in the Night, has just been added. To reintroduce the series on the publication of the final book we have put the whole series on sale for up to 50% off here!


The Bodies of the Ancients

Tue 21 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade cloth · 266 pages · $16.95 · 9781618731289 | ebook · 9781618731296

The Final Dissenters Novel

The Sykes family is faced with revelations from without and within. Whatever happens: nothing will ever be the same again.

How well do you know your family? In the third and final installment in the thrilling Dissenters series, the Sykes family are hoping to enjoy a normal Cape Cod summer. But there are strong and surprising forces lined up against them and there will be unexpected revelations and the highest price will have to be paid.

Cara and her two brothers are hoping life will be a bit calmer now that their mother has come home. No such luck.

Reviews

“Children, adults, and myriad creatures fight the final battle in a war over climate change…. genrewise, the book completely fuses science fiction with fantasy…. relationships are tender. Memorably unusual.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Boston-born novelist Lydia Millet has racked up some serious recognition for her adult books, including the 2003 PEN Center USA Award for Fiction for My Happy Life, also a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her 2009 novel Love in Infant Monkeys.
“In more recent years, Millet, now living in Arizona, has turned to Young Adult fiction. In an eco-fantasy trilogy known as the “Dissenters” series, three siblings — two teens and their younger brother — search for their shapeshifting mother, who has disappeared fighting evil forces that are worsening climate change to try and remake the planet to their liking.
“The series, set in Cape Cod, is published by Small Beer Press of Easthampton.
“In The Bodies of the Ancients, the trilogy’s final book, Cara and her older brother, Max, are momentarily relieved when their mother returns. But new trouble looms: the head evil creature, ‘The Cold One,’ takes over a U.S. Navy submarine and threatens to use its nuclear missiles to destroy vents on the Atlantic floor that would release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
“Battling back are a host of fantastical creatures as well as the three siblings and their mother. Cara, the middle sister, has the ability to “summon,” or see distant places, while her younger brother, Jax, can control others, read minds, even enter the internet with his mind.
“Along with their mother, the three siblings will have to use all their resources to win this final battle against climate change.”
— Steve Pfarrer, Daily Hampshire Gazette

Praise for Lydia Millet’s Dissenters Series:

“Millet’s prose is lyrically evocative (“the rhythmic scoop and splash of their paddles”). A lush and intelligent opener for a topical eco-fantasy series.”
— Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“A thoughtful and thought-provoking beginning to a new fantasy series. The Cape Cod woods, wildlife, and beaches are depicted with loving detail, and the dark forces arrayed against the young protagonists are at once tantalizingly mystifying and alarmingly timely.”
— Patricia McKillip

“Lydia Millet knows the sea like a selkie. The Fires Beneath the Sea smells of salt and tastes of mist, and that beauty speaks as strongly as its story of peril and hope for the future of our fragile world.”
— Kathe Koja (author of Talk)

“Readers will want to leave the lights on well after finishing this book as the detail depicted will create similarities in your mind to Clive Barker’s Abarat books. Readers will likely want Cara on their team as they jump, like Alice down the rabbit hole, through the guide book that turns into a window through another world.” — VOYA

Cover by Sharon McGill.

About the Author

Lydia Millet is the author of many novels for adult readers, including My Happy Life, which won the PEN-USA Award for Fiction in 2003, and Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, about the scientists who designed the first atomic bomb, which was shortlisted for the UK’s Arthur C. Clarke Prize. She has also written three books for children in her Dissenters series. She has taught at Columbia University and the University of Arizona and now works as a writer and editor at an endangered-species protection group called the Center for Biological Diversity.


Ampara Dávila

Fri 17 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

From the Paris Review:

“Born in the town of Pinos in the state of Zacatecas, Dávila published her first book of stories, Tiempo destrozado—from which “Moses and Gaspar” is taken—with the prestigious Fondo de Cultura Económica in 1959. During the previous decade, she had published several volumes of poetry, but it was fiction that made her name. Her stories immediately commanded respect, and it’s hard to overstate how grudgingly such respect was granted to women in that era: Tiempo destrozado was published barely six years after women in Mexico were granted suffrage. The 1950s were a rich decade of Mexican literature only peppered with female names, such as Rosario Castellanos and Elena Garro—heavyweights who nevertheless had to fight against being overshadowed by male colleagues and partners. Dávila herself was secretary to the great Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes, and Reyes opened literary circles to her and encouraged her to publish her stories. At the same time, we shouldn’t reduce Dávila’s history to the male figures who helped smooth her access to the patriarchal milieu: she built herself a literary career in willful defiance of both peers and parents who believed that it was absurd for a woman to move to Mexico City from the provinces in hopes of pursuing such a vocation.”

Read More

[h/t as ever to Christopher Brown]


Roses Are Red

Tue 14 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Best Worst American cover - Violets are violet
Today is the day
We publish Juan Martinez

At AWP this past weekend more than one person came up, looked at Juan Martinez’s debut collection Best Worst American, and thought it had something to do with HMH’s Best American Short Stories which in itself was hilarious and gave me an idea for a new series of books — which we will not be publishing. AWP also turns out to be a great place to have a Juan Martinez book as he has graduated from a couple of universities and taught at a couple more. So many people came by either looking for him or the book. At least I could always help with the latter — even on Saturday when I was pretty much a zombie.

If you’re reading about this book for the first time, try this:

— so many short stories in one place I cannot list them all*
— also pointed out to me this weekend: none of these stories have been published in magazines in the sci-fi or whatevs genre
— 2 of these stories were read on NPR’s Selected Shorts

— Juan read the title story at Politics & Prose this weekend and it was hilarious
— Chicago people: don’t miss his reading on Thursday night
— Chicago people: if you do miss his reading on Thursday night, here is your second chance: Feb. 27, 6:30 p.m. Curbside Splendor Happy Hour Swill (with Kathleen Rooney)
— A. M. Dellamonica on Tor.com captures the range of the book: “out of the realm of the mildly disturbing, into something colder, more unequivocally horrifying…. stories run from the darkly absurd to finely-honed depictions of American immigrants’ experiences.”
— But what if you are just looking for, you know, weird stuff? Nisi Shawl says at the Seattle Review of Books that you will be ok: “Weirdness builds upon delectable weirdness throughout the whole book.”

You can get your print copy here (sorry, no signed copies in stock from AWP as sold them all! — but you can order them from W&CF above) or the ebook here. Enjoy!

* Ok, so there is a list, aka the TOC, here.


Best Worst American

Tue 14 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 200 pages · $16 · 9781618731241 | ebook · 9781618731258

Imaginary countries. Real countries. The best and worst of both in short, cutting, refreshing stories.

Winner of the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction (video)
Chicago Review of Books Best Fiction of 2017

Read an Interview: The Rumpus

These are the best Americans, the worst Americans. In these stories (these cities, these people) there are labyrinths, rivers, wildernesses. Voices sound slightly different than expected. There’s humor, but it’s going to hurt.

In “On Paradise,” a petshop manager flies with his cat to Las Vegas to meet his long-lost mother and grandmother, only to find that the women look exactly like they did forty years before. In “The Spooky Japanese Girl is There For You,” the spooky Japanese girl (a ghost) is there for you, then she is not.

These refreshing and invigorating stories of displacement, exile, and identity, of men who find themselves confused by the presence or absence of extraordinary women, jump up, demand to be read, and send the reader back to the earth changed: reminded from these short stories how big the world is.

Nate Corddry read “Customer Service at the Karaoke Don Quixote” on Selected Shorts.
Cristin Milioti read “Best Worst American” on Selected Shorts.

Interviews

Supermarkets, Capes, and Secret Societies: Vol. 1 Brooklyn

New City Lit Interview: Obsessed with the Impossible

Read

Research Notes on Necessary Fiction.

Reviews & Praise for Juan Martinez’s stories:

“Martinez offers two dozen short stories driven by a provocative sense of estrangement, suspense, and subtle, absurd humor, delivering truly new ways to read the world.”

“In his longest and best stories, Martinez mines both the small details and the large absurdities of life to show us our own strange world in a new way.”
— Lincoln Michel, New York Times Book Review

“What a short story collection! Martinez takes us across the country (and possible countries) in these brisk tales that range from sci-fi and horror to realism and metafiction.” —Adam Morgan, “The Best Fiction Books of 2017 So Far,” Chicago Review of Books

“Best Worst American will draw in readers looking for a hit of everything they never knew they wanted, whether it’s whimsical reflections on whether dolphins are bigger jerks, in the grand scheme, than the lead singers of rock bands, depictions of the romantic failures of professional lawn mowers, or even rants on the rarely-considered concept of hobbledehoydom.
“Entering Martinez’s sphere of influence with optimism: you will emerge changed by his imagination, ready to see the world in a different light.”
— A. M. Dellamonica, Tor.com

“Weirdness builds upon delectable weirdness throughout the whole book.”
— Nisi Shawl, Seattle Review of Books

“In a podcast conversation about this book’s title story, Israeli writer Etgar Keret praises the suspense Martinez builds by packing scenes with high emotion while withholding information from the reader. This disorienting energy infuses many of the two-dozen short stories collected here, including “Roadblock,” which opens with a pyromaniac aunt and a series of suspicious airplane accidents. Martinez parlays this odd sense of estrangement and tension into subtle, absurd humor. In “Well Tended,” the narrator finds himself caring for a missing neighbor’s houseplants, and he winds up alone in a room with them, watering can in hand, with the ridiculous sensation of being ignored by the plants. Other stories are more bluntly funny, like “Your Significant Other’s Kitten Poster,” which deciphers the contents of innocuous wall hangings and closes with a hilariously violent encounter with a professor in a pool hall. Throughout, Martinez reimagines urban landscapes like Orlando as hellish and spectacular, “lakes afire with reflected light,” and the “aggressively ethnic streets of Culver City.” In his idiosyncratic approach to fiction, Martinez delivers truly new ways to read the world.”
— Booklist

“Juan Martinez’s Best Worst American is a set of subtly connected, hilariously smart stories that present a chaotic, absurd, yet strikingly familiar world.”
— The Arkansas International

“A master of the absurd who serves up contemporary American life in rare, blistering slices.”
— Kelly Link, Get in Trouble

“Twenty-four semiexistential short stories that have appeared in the likes of McSweeney’s and Selected Shorts from Colombia-born writer Martinez. The author has an interesting way of injecting absurdity into everyday life and humor into the phantasmagorical in this wide-ranging, mostly engaging collection of tall tales. . . . there are also occasional moments of grace. . . . Some are just flat-out funny. . . . Martinez even makes the frightening funny. . . . promising debut collection of short stories, some unique in their execution.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“These 24 wide-ranging stories are the gut-punch kind: intense, innovative tales that skew your vision for the rest of the day. Martinez writes with a sharp eye and a sharp tongue, and his characters — often alone and unloved, often haunted — are worthy observers of both the horrors and wonders of this world.”
— Rebecca Makkai, Music for Wartime

“I feel sure that some smart and appreciative person will praise Juan Martinez for his ‘skewed vision,’ but Martinez’s view of the world is startlingly clear. It’s just that the rest of us haven’t caught up yet. Deep and comic and deeply comic, his is a collection of wonders for any human to enjoy.”—Jack Pendarvis

“Juan Martinez’s Best Worst American is filled with droll, cunning, funny, and formally innovative stories that fall somewhere between stand-up comedy and literary fiction. These excellent works mark him as a writer both to read and watch.”
— Tom Bissell

“A little out of the ordinary…. He takes this very unnatural environment and changes it into a landscape.”
— Hannah Tinti

“I loved it.”
— Etgar Keret

Table of Contents

Roadblock
Strangers on Vacation: Snapshots
Machulín In L.A.
On Paradise
Domokun in Fremont
The Women Who Talk To Themselves
Customer Service at the Karaoke Don Quixote
Your Significant Other’s Kitten Poster
Well Tended
Souvenirs from Ganymede
The Coca-Cola Executive in the Zapatoca Outhouse
Correspondences between the Lower World and Old Men in Pinstripe Suits
The Lead Singer Is Distracting Me
Errands
Liner Notes for Renegade, the Opening Sequence
Hobbledehoydom
My Sister’s Knees
The Spooky Japanese Girl Is There For You
Big Wheel, Boiling Hot
After The End Of The World: A Capsule Review
Debtor
Forsaken, the Crew Awaited News from the People Below
Northern
Best Worst American

About the Author

Juan Martinez was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia, and has since lived in Orlando, Florida, and Las Vegas, Nevada. He now lives in Chicago with his wife, the writer Sarah Kokernot, and their son and two cats. He’s an assistant professor at Northwestern University. His work and has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s, Ecotone, Huizache, TriQuarterly, Conjunctions, the Cossack Review, the Santa Monica Review, National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts, Norton’s Sudden Fiction Latino, and elsewhere. Visit and say hi at fulmerford.com.


AWP 2017, Before

Wed 8 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

We’ve arrived in DC — where democracy is taking a beating, fingers crossed it will survive — and tomorrow the whole AWP shebang begins. Our books are still in transit due to the ice storm that hit the northeast. With luck I’ll be getting them today and by tomorrow there will be a lovely table (110-T, come on by and say hello) full of books all neatly set up and ready for dispersement into the world.

There are approximately four quadrillions readings and parties going on in the next few days. Here are a few Small Beer-related or -adjacent during the conference and then on Saturday at 6 pm we have a reading with Kelly Link & Juan Martinez at Politics and Prose.

Thursday
Signing at the Small Beer Press table: 110-T (on the edge, near Tin House)
10:00am to 10:30am Juan Martinez
10:30am to 11:00am Sofia Samatar
11:00am to 11:30am Kelly Link 

Thursday, February 9, 2017

1:30 pm to 2:45 pm

Marquis Salon 7 & 8, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Two

R205. The Political Woman: Historical Novelists Reimagine and Reclaim Women’s Place in Politics. (, , , , ) While rarely central and often discounted, women have always played a role in politics. In this panel, historical novelists discuss how and why they chose to unearth and reimagine the lost and untold stories of women in politics. What are the risks and rewards of using fiction to place women at the center of political narratives? What liberties are novelists compelled, or unwilling, to take with the historical record?

4:30 pm to 5:45 pm

Ballroom A, Washington Convention Center, Level Three

R282. Jennifer Egan, Karen Joy Fowler, and Hannah Tinti: A Reading and Conversation, Sponsored by Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau. (, , , ) This event will bring together three engaging contemporary female writers to read and discuss their craft. Jennifer Egan is the author of five books, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel A Visit From the Goon Squad. Karen Joy Fowler is the author of nine books, including We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Hannah Tinti is the author of three books, including The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, which will be published in 2017.
Saturday, February 11, 2017 View Full Schedule

12:00 pm to 1:15 pm

Liberty Salon N, O, & P, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Four

S181. Immigrants/Children of Immigrants: A Nontraditional Path to a Writing Career . (,  ,  ,  ,  ) Not only do you not have an uncle in publishing or see people from the neighborhood get MFAs, immigrants and children of immigrants are inculcated to opt for “safe,” “secure,” often well-paying jobs; a writing career may seem like an unimaginable luxury or a fantasy. This panel of working writers looks at both psychic and structural issues that add a special challenge for writers from immigrant families.

4:30 pm to 5:45 pm

Marquis Salon 9 & 10, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Two

S271. The Short Story as Laboratory. (,  ,  ,  ,  ) What does short fiction allow? The form is beloved by science fiction writers, who use it to test out hypothetical futures; what does it offer writers who are doing other kinds of testing, related to emotional transitions, marginality, and migration? Is the short story an inherently border form? This panel considers these questions, the challenge of putting a set of experiments into a collection, and the tension between the laboratory and the completed book.

Saturday
6 pm
Kelly Link and Juan Martinez
Politics & Prose Bookstore, 5015 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008 Get Directions
Kelly Link will read with Juan Martinez (Best Worst American) at the most excellent Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse. This event is free to attend with no reservation required. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis. Click here for more information.


Free Getaway to Another Land

Mon 6 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Do you want your first chance at a freebie? We just added Sarah Rees Brennan’s forthcoming YA novel In Other Lands to LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer list.

What’s it all about? Well, Holly Black — author of The Darkest Part of the Forest and many other fabulous books — put it this way: “A subversive, sneaky, glorious tale of magic, longing, and growing into your wings.”

You’re not going to want to miss this!


We Will Know You By Your Friday Afternoon Executive Orders

Fri 3 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

And will be unimpressed with your chaos, bombast, and moral weakness. That the Democratic Party are not impeaching this President yet is astounding. That the “Republican Party” accept their “President’s” actions: his racist Executive Orders, his racist and lying advisor and press secretary, his not recording his calls to Vladimir Putin, his insulting of allies, his emolument-clause twisting actions show that they are power hungry dogs willing to tear the country to pieces if only they can hold on to power for a moment longer.

Our town was supposed to get 51 refugees this year. There has been so much prepwork done for these 51 people — out of 60,000,000 displaced people. This anti-humanist “government” is a disgrace.

Here’s to the people who have been, are, and will continue to volunteer, march, and fight for actual freedom and the welcoming principles this country has (at least supposedly) espoused.

As well as all that: we publish extremely good books and here are a few spots in the world where they are being enjoyed:

— We published but five books last year and four of them are on the Locus Recommended Reading List. No stories from LCRW, which I’d disagree with, as would be expected of any editor. But I tend to think LCRW is one of the best zines out there and one I consistently read (for), so there’s my 2 cents.

— Over on Tor.com Juan Martinez writes about George Saunders’s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline for “The One Book That Unstuck My Writing”

“I owe so much of my writing life to George Saunders that even this introductory bit is lifted from him, I just realized, even as I started writing it. Because I was going to begin by sharing how often I fantasized about meeting writers I admired, and it’s super common, this fantasy—writers meeting their idols, and then the idol recognizes your genius and you become best buds, and the idol lifts you from whatever dire circumstances you happen to be in, and your life is perfect from then on. I totally wanted to start with that—with confessing how often I thought of meeting Saunders—before I realized why I wanted to start with that.”

— a profile of the indomitable Ursula K. Le Guin by David Larsen in New Zealand’s The Listener:

“Words Are My Matter demonstrates, among other things, the difference between a hectoring sermon and a ­memorable oration – notably in the text of her instantly viral 2014 speech on freedom, in which she lambasts profit-driven corporate publishing. ‘Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings.'”

       


Lauren Beukes says:

Thu 2 Feb 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

of Sofia Samatar’s Tender:

“Equal parts brutal and beautiful, flinty, and acrobatic, Samatar’s stories explore lesser known territories of the imagination. The results chime with all the strangeness of dream and the dark-hearted truth of fairytale. I loved it.”

Yay!