printer

Mon 28 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

We have 3 books at the printer(s): Second Line, Interfictions 2, and a new ARC of The Poison Eaters to go out to bookshops next month — got to get the word out!

This post exists because I just noticed the QuickPress option in WordPress — could be trouble!


Would you like some Poison?

Fri 25 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

We have five advance copies of Holly Black’s new collection, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, to go out to readers and bloggers (in the US + Canada, as we don’t have international rights to the book) who will post something about it before it comes out — all the long way away in the future of February 2010.

Interested? Tell us your favorite poison (and why) and we’ll send out five copies to the five shiveriest and scariest!


It’s Not About the Burrito

Thu 24 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Awesome story: social media meets the burrito and Broadway Books lives.

More good book news: from now on the San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller list is the Indie Bestseller list.

We like indie bookshops, too!Buy local


Three Free Hounds

Thu 24 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

We did a member giveaway on LibraryThing and these three lucky readers will be receiving a free copy of Hound for reading and reviewing:

Betty in Smithers, BC (readerbynight)
Yesenia in Elmhurst NY (jesi813)
Belinda in Grand Bay, AL (sadi2forever)

Vincent McCaffrey by you.Kelly and I went to Vincent’s first reading the other night at the Brookline Booksmith in Boston and it was great fun—Vincent turns out to be a great reader and good with a Q&A (lucky for us).

He has a few more readings lined up—and there are some nice reviews coming, so yay for the Hound!

Anyone going to Booksmith readings (for, say, Lorrie Moore!) should note that for afterwards there’s a J.P. Licks just down the street, mmm!


Burn, feed, and boil

Mon 21 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

and now this part of our site has an updated FeedBurner thing, which I don’t really understand the benefit of but it is apparently important. You can subscribe to it on the site or here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/SmallBeerPressNotAJournal


Hound, Brookline, tonight

Mon 21 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

and don’t forget, the very first reading from Hound, Vincent McCaffrey’s debut novel at the Brookline Booksmith (279 Harvard St. Brookline MA 02446 (617) 566-6660) tonight!


Pretty Monsters UK

Mon 21 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

A nice guy called Robert Burdock posted a beautiful pic of the U.K. edition of Pretty Monsters that Canongate are putting out in a couple of weeks and since it’s better than any pic we’d be able to take (well, unless Michael were here), here’s his. We just received copies of the book and it is an art object. If you have the US edition (which won’t be in pb until Next June, sigh) it will be familiar but there are added touches: no dustjacket, new endpapers, sprinkled with monster blood:

Pretty Monsters. Pretty Book by Robert Burdock.


LCRW slipping into the fictionets

Thu 17 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 24 is available at last on Fictionwise.

Which also means it available on Barnes & Noble. Funny. Except, on bn.com it hasn’t quite appeared yet. You can get many old issues (LCRW 15, anyone?) so maybe #24 will pop up there one of these days.

Neither is it available on the Kindle.

Happily, it is still available on paper.


Is small beer obscure?

Thu 17 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Fun, if perhaps rather small beer, conversation (with all the usual hallmarks of a net discussion) on the relative obscurity of the phrase small beer. I am always surprised that it isn’t a better known phrase. One of these days.


Hound – Reviews

Tue 8 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Authors, , , | Posted by: Gavin

Reviews of Hound
by Vincent McCaffrey

“If you favor a leisurely but still intriguing mystery with amiable characters and a devotion to the printed word, Hound will provide a pleasant diversion. As much about books — and love and knowledge and family — as about murder, Hound is the first in McCaffrey’s projected trilogy, and book lovers will eagerly await Henry’s next outing.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“One of the strengths of this book is McCaffrey’s droll description throughout…. As quick as McCaffrey’s wit is, so is his un-saccharine sentimentality…. In the end, that careful attention is what makes Hound evoke such a Jimmy Stewart-movie atmosphere. It wraps up completely like a, yes, package—but an honest one, skillfully wrapped and artfully offered.”
—Rain Taxi

“For the true bibliophile, this is a book you’ll love. McCaffrey peppers his prose with all kinds of allusions and references to books and literature, new and old, classic and arcane, as well as multiple passages of verse. Clearly, as a career bookseller, McCaffrey knows his books.
—The Hippo, NH

“Henry Sullivan is just squeaking by as a “book hound,” a wholesale rare book dealer. He scrounges yard and estate sales picking up the odd bibliographic treasure here and there. He thinks he might be onto a second shot at happiness when an ex-girlfriend asks him to appraise a collection of first editions left by her late husband. But when this former love is murdered, Sullivan turns from reading Raymond Chandler to trying to solve the crime himself. With a faster pace tempered by real emotional resonance, Hound is different from John Dunning’s “Bookman” series, yet there is enough behind the scenes information about the rare book trade to appeal to Cliff Janeway fans. (McCaffrey ran an independent bookstore for 30 years, so he knows what he’s talking about.) The tale is packed with references not only to mystery writers like Erle Stanley Gardner, but a variety of others from Charles Dickens to Nevil Shute. McCaffrey even name checks Harlan Ellison as an example of “The good ones are all difficult.” Set in a beautifully-evoked contemporary Boston, the old town soon provides a wealth of other mysteries for Sullivan, like a hidden stash of letters belonging to a flapper adventuress of the 1920s. As with all good books about books (even novels), this one will send you out looking for the other writers discussed.”
—Author Magazine


Read some Hound

Thu 3 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Just added the first two chapters of Hound to the site — the book has a great first line:

Death was, after all, the way Henry made his living.

And the rest is pretty good, too.

Publication day is 9/29 and events are being added: Sunday October 25th at the Mysterious Bookshop in NYC (which will be a big event, more info TK on that) and also that month at RiverRun up in New Hampshire.

You can check out all we have to read on the site in a couple of different categories: everything, novel excerpts,  short stories, and, er, the thus far empty container, reviews (those still have to be portaged over from the old site). And we’ll be adding more as time goes by. But in the meantime, Hound!


Hound, Chapter 1 & Chapter 2

Thu 3 Sep 2009 - Filed under: Free Stuff to Read, Novel Excerpts, , | Posted by: Gavin

From Hound, by Vincent McCaffrey.

Chapter One

Death was, after all, the way Henry made his living.
The books he sold were most often the recent property of people who had died. Book lovers never gave up the good ones without cause. But then, the books which people sold willingly were not the ones Henry really wanted. The monthly public library sales were stacked high with those—the usual titles for a dollar apiece, yesterday’s best sellers, last year’s hot topics.
But not always. Occasionally, some relative—often the child who never cared much for Dad’s preoccupation with medieval history or Mom’s obsession with old cookbooks—would drop the burden their parents had so selfishly placed upon them by dying, and there they would be, in great careless mounds on the folding tables in the library basement or conference room. Always dumped too quickly by a “volunteer” from the “friends” committee, with the old dust jackets tearing one against the other.
Like encounters with sin, Henry had occasions of luck at yard sales, though not often enough to waste a weekend which might better be spent at home reading. His favorite haunts were the estate auctions, and the best of these were the ones held at the very house where the old geezer had kicked the bucket. And there was always that thin network of friends who knew Henry was a bookman—who heard of book lots being sold and passed the word on. Albert, of course, had been a regular source for this, simply because his trash-removal business so often involved houses being sold where the books had accumulated over the years and the dead were recently departed.
Read more


Uncle Wes’s new book

Sun 30 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly’s Uncle Wes, who long-time LCRW readers may remember as the author of an oatmeal cookie recipe a while back, just had has his first book published and even though it’s full of great stories it’s in a very different section of the bookstore than Kelly’s books!

Wes’s book is Cure Constipation Now: A Doctor’s Fiber Therapy to Cleanse and Heal (for Kelly this sort of like a real-life version of Mark Leyner’s My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist) and it just came out in paperback from Berkley. I’m very glad they chose to use a typographical cover instead of something illustrative.

Dr. Wesley Jones, to give him his full title, believes most people in the USA (and Western world) eat too much refined food and need more fiber. Here’s his bio:

He is the founder and senior partner of the Cape Fear Center for Digestive Diseases in Pennsylvania. He is chair of Curamericas Global, Inc., which provides healthcare to Central America, South America, and west African communities. He was awarded the FACP and AGAF awards for his work in the field.

Read more


Hounding around

Mon 24 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Having trouble posting the final cover of Vincent McCaffrey’s debut novel, Hound, which is at the printer now. Dur. Will do it later. In the meantime, Vince will be getting out from Avenue Victor Hugo Books for a couple of readings soon. A few more may yet be lined up as this bookselling mystery gets more and more love from the bookselling brethren. Stop in and say hi here:

* Also at the NEIBA author reception:

Amir Aczel, Uranium Wars, Palgrave Macmillan
Michael Buckley, Nerds, Abrams
Crispina ffrench, Sweater Chop Shop, Storey
Ethan Gilsdorf, Fantasy Freaks And Gaming Geeks, The Lyons Press
Joe Hill, Horns, Harper
Katherine Howe, Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Hyperion
Maryalice Huggins, Aesop’s Mirror, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
E. Lockhart, The Treasure Map Of Boys, Delacorte
Loren Long, Otis, Philomel
C. Marina Marchese, Honeybee, Black Dog and Leventhal
Peter McCarty, Jeremy Draws a Monster, Macmillan
Jill McCorkle, Going Away Shoes, Algonquin Books
Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling, St. Martins


Videos, Ask, masquerading

Wed 19 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Remember those videos we posted with Alan DeNiro* and Elizabeth Hand? If you missed them before now you can catch them to IndieBound. Here’s Alan’s interview and Liz’s.

IndieBound is working the social web more and more. They have a new feature on Twitter:

Ask Indie Booksellers on Twitter anything you want to know! Go to AskIndies and the #AskIndies hashtag and a link to your book will be added for you automatically.”

* Alan’s first novel, Total Oblivion, More or Less, is out coming out later this year and it’s a mind-blowing experience. In some way it’s part of the whole post-apocalyptic group of books which sometimes seems like an admission that the author can’t imagine the future and has written a pre-historical novel masquerading as a post-historical novel; except this way they don’t have to research the past, either. But with Total Oblivion, while the past has invaded the present, this is in no way the past: it’s a lightly-outlined changed world where a teenage girl and her family embark on one of the ur-American stories: a trip down the Mississippi. More on it later — and it has a great cover which isn’t showing there yet — but add it to your wishlist now.


Boston apartment

Mon 17 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Ursula at homeKelly and I are looking for an apartment in Boston and we’re throwing it out here in case anyone knows anyone who knows anyone who can help. We have a couple of very specific criteria:

  • must have air conditioning
  • must be on the ground floor or have an elevator
  • wood floors
  • 2 bedrooms (can be tiny as long as living room is big)

We are looking to move in on September 1st and expect to be here for a year or two.

Our dream neighborhoods are Coolidge Corner, Fenway, and Jamaica Plain, but mostly it is important to be near or nearish to Children’s Hospital. (Small Beer Press will stay in Easthampton, though.)

We’re looking on Craigslist and are wandering around but, hey, aren’t questions like this what the internet is best at? Thanks for any help you can give!


Geektastic Rift in Wrong Grave shows Troll’s Eye View?

Thu 13 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd Cover

Kelly’s latest story, “Secret Identity,” can be found in Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci’s excellent new anthology Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd. For bonus points, see if you can spot Kelly (and some of the other writers) on the cover.

There’s nothing else coming out for a bit, but there are a lot of single stories floating around. Previous to Geektastic, “The Cinderella Game” came out this spring in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Troll’s Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales—which was just picked as a read of the month, or some such thing, on Salon.

A couple of other stories just came out in paperback: “The Wrong Grave” in Deborah Noyes’s The Restless Dead, “The Surfer” in Jonathan Strahan’s The Starry Rift, and “Louise’s Ghost” in Peter Straub’s Poe’s Children. In hardcover “Stone Animals” is in another Peter Straub anthology, the fantastic looking 2-volume Library of America irresistible American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940’s Until Now, which comes out in September and looks ripe to be the Halloween present of the season.

Over in the UK, Canongate have a different idea of the perfect Halloween read: they are buying UK rights to Pretty Monsters and will publish it in paperback on October 15, just in time for those who might want to read “Monster” or “The Wrong Grave” on the scariest night of the year. Canongate put out some really wonderful books — such as Ali Smith’s Boy Meets Girl and (maybe, not read it yet) Michel Faber’s The Fire Gospel —  and Kelly is thrilled. Yay! Some readers no doubt read the US edition (which won’t be out in paperback until June 2010) but for a lot of readers this will be the first time they’ve seen the excellent cover to the right there.

Francis Bickmore, senior editor at Canongate, has acquired UK rights to Link’s Pretty Monsters for an undisclosed sum…. Bickmore said: “I’m over the moon that we have lured the maverick literary genius that is Kelly Link to our list, just in time for Hallowe’en. She is one of the best kept secrets of modern writing.”

Also in the UK, a little while ago Sarah Waters had a piece in the Graniaud about ghosts and writing her latest novel and gave us a thrill by including one of Kelly’s stories in her list of ten best ghost stories — along with some of Kelly’s own favorite ghost stories, “The Woman in Black,” “The Haunting of Hill House,” “The Monkey’s Paw,” “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and so on.

“The Specialist’s Hat” by Kelly Link
All of Link’s stories are wonderfully odd and original. Some are also quite scary – and this, from her collection Stranger Things Happen, is very scary indeed. It’s the story of 10-year-old twin girls in a haunted American mansion, being instructed by an enigmatic babysitter just what it means to be “dead”.

Meanwhile in Australia, Text are splitting Pretty Monsters into 2 paperbacks and we just got copies of the first one, The Wrong Grave, and it is beautiful. The cover is marbled with silhouettes of crows and beetles and a stag — and they are carried over into the front matter. The second volume comes out later. It’s very exciting to think that it will be piled up in some of the great bookshops we visited in 2006 when Kelly taught at Clarion South: Pulp Fiction and Infinitas in Brisbane and Galaxy in Sydney.

Troll's Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales Cover

The Restless Dead: Ten Original Stories of the Supernatural Cover

The Starry Rift Cover

American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's Until Now Cover


Bearfest

Sun 9 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Easthampton Bear FestEasthampton is having an artbear invasion and it is really cheery to look down from the 11.05 morning zeppelin ride into the office (can’t quite get there for elevensies) and see all the people taking their pictures, reading the signs, sitting on their knees, and so on. They’re really well done—although don’t think we will get one for the office at the auction. Who’d a thunk they’d be so popular?


Interfictions – Bios

Wed 5 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

About the Editors

Delia Sherman considers herself a “recovering academic.” She got her PhD in Renaissance Studies and taught at Boston University and Northeastern, during which time she wrote her first novel, Through a Brazen Mirror. She left the academy in 1993 to write and edit full time, co-editing anthologies of science fiction and fantasy with Terri Windling and Ellen Kushner and serving as a consulting editor at Tor Books. Her other adult novels are The Porcelain Doveand The Fall of the Kings, written with partner Ellen Kushner. In 2006, Viking published her first novel for young readers, Changeling. Her short fiction has appeared most recently in The Faery Reel, Salon Fantastique, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Coyote Road, and The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. She satisfies her continuing desire to teach by serving as an instructor at various writing workshops in the U.S. and Europe, including Odyssey, Wiscon, and Clarion. A founding member of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, she lives in New York City.

Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Although she grew up on the classics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by an Eastern European literary tradition in which the boundaries between realism and the fantastic are often ambiguous. She is completing a PhD in English literature at Boston University, where she teaches classes on fantasy and the gothic. Her short story collection, In the Forest of Forgetting, was published in 2006 by Prime Books. She lives in Boston with her husband Kendrick and daughter Ophelia.

About the Contributors

Karen Jordan Allen spent her mostly happy childhood in rural Indiana. She now lives in Maine with her husband and daughter, a cat, and a rabbit. Her fiction has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Century, A Nightmare’s Dozen, Bruce Coville’s Strange Worlds, Black Gate, First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age, and Asimov’s Science Fiction.

Christopher Barzak spent two years in Japan, teaching English in a suburb of Tokyo, and returned home to Youngstown, Ohio last year. His first novel, One for Sorrow, was published by Bantam Books in August 2007.

K. Tempest Bradford is an Ohio native and alumna of the Clarion West and Online Writing Workshops. She currently lives in New York City (at the very tip-top with the ravens). She spends most of her time trying to find a place with free tea and Internet where she can write.

Matthew Cheney’s work has appeared in One Story, Locus, Web Conjunctions, Rain Taxi, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. His weblog, The Mumpsimus, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2005, and he is the series editor for the annual Best American Fantasyanthology from Prime Books.

Michael J. DeLuca would like to tell you he lives in a cave in Western MA, pronouncing false prophecy in exchange for such essential sustenance as food, water and wireless internet. Unfortunately such caves are few and far between, and often occupied by fearsome squatters, so he advises that you not go looking for him and visit his website instead.

Adrián Ferrero was born in La Plata (República Argentina) and attended the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he is currently doing his PhD. He has published academic articles in compiled editions and journals in his country, the U.S.A., France, Germany, and Spain. Fiction publications include Verse, a collection of short stories, and Cantares, a book of poetry. He is also co-editor of the digital magazine on creative writing Diagonautas.

Colin Greenland is English: born in Dover, educated at Oxford, with homes in Cambridge and the Peak District. His books include Finding Helen and the space opera trilogy that began with the multi-award winning Take Back Plenty. He lives with Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Csilla Kleinheincz is a Hungarian-Vietnamese fantasy writer living in Erkel, Hungary. Besides translating classics of fantasy, such as Peter S. Beagle’s works, she works as an editor at Delta Vision, a major Hungarian fantasy publisher. Her first novel, published in 2005, and most of her short stories are part of Hungarian slipstream literature.

Joy Marchand lives in a lopsided, historic rowhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. In the last two years she’s shifted her focus from short stories to longer works, and she’s currently writing a series of linked urban legends for her interstitial novel-within-a-novel set in the Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas. .

Holly Phillips is the author of the award-winning story collection In the Palace of Repose. She lives in the mountains of western Canada.

Rachel Pollack is the author of 30 books of fiction and non-fiction, including the award-winning novels Unquenchable Fire and Godmother Night. She is also a poet and a visual artist, creator of the Shining Tribe Tarot deck. She lives online and offline in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Veronica Schanoes is a writer and a scholar with a particular interest in fairy tales and genre theory. Her work has appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Trunk Stories, Endicott Studio, and Jabberwocky.

Léa Silhol was born in Africa and grew up in Europe, but considers herself a “citizen of the world.” She is considered one of the leading writers in fantasy in the French language, with four short stories collections and a novel, La Sève et le Givre, which won the Fantasy Merlin Award in 2003.

Jon Singer grew up in Brooklyn, NY, wanting to be a scientist. That didn’t work out, but he is now semi-officially a Mad Scientist, which may even be better. You can find some of his work here.

Vandana Singh is an Indian speculative fiction writer born and raised in New Delhi. She lives in the Boston area, where she also teaches college physics and has published a children’s book:Younguncle Comes to Town (Viking 2006).

Anna Tambour currently lives in the Australian bush with a large family of other species, including one man. Her collection, Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales &, and her novel,Spotted Lily, are Locus Recommended Reading List selections. Her website is Anna Tambour and Others and she blogs at medlarcomfits.blogspot.com.

Mikal Trimm has sold works of speculative fiction and poetry to a number of venues in the past few years. Recent or upcoming stories may be found in Weird Tales, Black Gate, Postscripts, Polyphony 6, and Shadowed Realms. He maintains a web presence (for no apparent reason) here.

Catherynne M. Valente is the author of the Orphan’s Tales series, as well as The Labyrinth,Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword, and four books of poetry, Music of a Proto-Suicide, Apocrypha, The Descent of Inanna, and Oracles. She has been nominated for the Rhysling and Spectrum Awards as well as the Pushcart Prize. She was born in the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in Ohio with her two dogs.

Leslie What is a Nebula Award-winning author who writes short stories, essays, and novels. Visit Whatworld.


One day one day

Wed 5 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Gillian Welch performs at the Newport Folk Festival.Gillian Welch will release another CD and we will get the drinks in and crank up the music player (pre-apocalyse: some kind of electronic music machine; post-apocalypse: add some time for winding up the Victrola).

Until that long awaited day—and, hey, Gillian, if records and CDs and so on are no longer your thing, no worries!—NPR have posted a recording of her set at the Newport Folk Festival. No cover of “Black Star” this time, but enough to keep us happy. Besides, at the other end of the spectrum, the cover of “White Rabbit” is pretty decent.

Also available on that site: a whole lot of good stuff (surrounded by many so-so’s. No doubt YMMV).

Neko Case, aw. Also: Mavis Staples, Iron and Wine, Sonic Youth, Metric, many more.


Kelly Link Bio

Wed 5 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Authors, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

a short biography of Ms. Kelly Link

Kelly Link’s debut collection, Stranger Things Happen, was a Firecracker nominee, a Village Voice Favorite Book and a Salon Book of the Year — Salon called the collection “…an alchemical mixture of Borges, Raymond Chandler, and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Stories from the collection have won the Nebula, the James Tiptree Jr., and the World Fantasy Awards.

Her second collection, Magic for Beginners, was a Book Sense pick (and a Best of Book Sense pick); and selected for best of the year lists byTime Magazine, Salon, Boldtype, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Capitol Times. It was published in paperback by Harcourt.

Kelly is an editor for the Online Writing Workshop and has been a reader and judge for various literary awards. With Gavin J. Grant and Ellen Datlow she edits The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (St. Martin’s Press). She also edited the anthology, Trampoline.

Kelly has visited a number of schools and workshops including Stonecoast in Maine, Washington University, Yale, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, Brookdale Community College, Brookdale, NJ, Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, NC, the Imagination Workshop at Cleveland State University, New England Institute of Art & Communications, Brookline, MA, Clarion East at Michigan State University, Clarion West in Seattle, WA, and Clarion South in Brisbane, Australia.

Kelly lives in Northampton, MA. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Kelly and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, publish a twice-yearly zine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet — as well as books — as Small Beer Press.

Low resolution (for web use only) author photos. Links below are for high-resolution print-ready versions.(T-shirt — always — Gama-Go.)

Credit: Courtesy of the author.

Click here for hi-res download

Click here for hi-res download

Click here for hi-res download

Kelly Link is represented by:

Renee Zuckerbrot
Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency
115 West 29th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10001
(212) 967-0072
(212) 967-0073
renee@rzagency.com

Foreign Rights:

Jenny Meyer
Jenny Meyer Literary Agency, Inc.
115 West 29th St., 10th Flr
NY, NY 10001
(212) 564-9898

Asia:
Whitney Lee
The Fielding Agency, LLC.
269 South Beverly Drive, #341
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
310.276.7517

Film rights:

Sarah Self
The Gersh Agency
41 Madison Avenue, 33rd Floor
New York, NY 10010


Kelly and friend pose at a Japanese subway stop (1998)


Award Season: World Fantasy nominees

Tue 4 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Kessel, Baum PlanHey, lovely news today from the World Fantasy Award people. John Kessel’s terrific mashup “Pride and Prometheus” from the January 2008 issue of F&SF and reprinted in his collection, The Baum Plan, picked up another award nomination, as did the last volume of The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, and Kelly & Gavin were nominated for Small Beer & Big Mouth (what a pairing!).

Congratulations to all the nominees! It is an honor to be nominated. Before posting the whole list, here’s a quick gender breakdown to follow up on previous award posts:

  • 26 men
  • 21 women

Novel
The House of the Stag, Kage Baker (Tor)
The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (Morrow)
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury)
Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory (Del Rey)
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin; Knopf)

Novella
“Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel”, Peter S. Beagle (Strange Roads)
“If Angels Fight”, Richard Bowes (F&SF 2/08)
“The Overseer”, Albert Cowdrey (F&SF 3/08)
“Odd and the Frost Giants”, Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury; HarperCollins)
“Good Boy”, Nisi Shawl (Filter House)

Short Story
“Caverns of Mystery”, Kage Baker (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy)
“26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss”, Kij Johnson (Asimov’s 7/08)
“Pride and Prometheus”, John Kessel (F&SF 1/08)
“Our Man in the Sudan”, Sarah Pinborough (The Second Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories)
“A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica”, Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld 5/08)

Anthology
The Living Dead, John Joseph Adams, ed. (Night Shade Books)
The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Del Rey)
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008: Twenty-First Annual Collection, Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, & Gavin J. Grant, eds. (St. Martin’s)
Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, Ekaterina Sedia, ed. (Senses Five Press)
Steampunk, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, eds. (Tachyon Publications)

Pretty MonstersCollection
Strange Roads, Peter S. Beagle (DreamHaven Books)
The Drowned Life, Jeffrey Ford (HarperPerennial)
Pretty Monsters, Kelly Link (Viking)
Filter House, Nisi Shawl (Aqueduct Press)
Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan (Allen & Unwin; Scholastic ’09)

Artist
Kinuko Y. Craft
Janet Chui
Stephan Martinière
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

Special Award—Professional
Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant (for Small Beer Press and Big Mouth House)
Farah Mendlesohn (for The Rhetorics of Fantasy)
Stephen H. Segal & Ann VanderMeer (for Weird Tales)
Jerad Walters (for A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft)
Jacob Weisman (for Tachyon Publications)

Special Award—Non-professional
Edith L. Crowe (for her work with The Mythopoeic Society)
John Klima (for Electric Velocipede)
Elise Matthesen (for setting out to inspire and for serving as inspiration for works of poetry, fantasy, and SF over the last decade through her jewelry-making and her “artist’s challenges.”)
Sean Wallace, Neil Clarke, & Nick Mamatas (for Clarkesworld)
Michael Walsh (for Howard Waldrop collections from Old Earth Books)


LCRW & Chuao Special

Tue 4 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 24We just mailed out the last of the subscriber‘s copies of LCRW 24 (thanks to the amazing intern team of: Michael, Paul, Felice, Kristen, and Abram!) and subscribers did not in fact get the Spicy Maya bar we promised: instead we sent out the Firecracker because it is at once fantastic and also weird and wonderful. It’s a dark chocolate bar with chipotle (mm), salt (mmm), and popping candy. What?! Yes. Feeling the popping candy go off in the middle of the deep dark chocolate is like eating the stars at night.

We have one bar left then new subscribers will get something else. And sharp-eyed readers will note that in the pic to the right there is a coupon from Chuao Chocolatiers especially for LCRW subscribers for 20% off online purchases: LCRW and the unexpected extra chocolatey goodness bonus! We recommend moving phasers to Stock Up.


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 24

Mon 3 Aug 2009 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

stapled · 8.5 x 7 · 60pp

This zine was made in the spring and summer of 2009 by Gavin J. Grant, Kelly Link, Jedediah Berry, Michael J. DeLuca, Sara Majka, Paul Bozzo, Kristen Evans, and Faune Albert, and put back from June to July by the best reason Gavin & Kelly have ever had: Ursula Annabel Link Grant, born February 23rd, 2009. Our deepest thanks go to everyone at Baystate Medical Center and the Ronald McDonald House in Springfield, Mass.

Fiction
Alexander Lamb, “Eleven Orchid Street”
Liz Williams, “Dusking”
Jasmine Hammer, “Tornado Juice”
J. W. M. Morgan, “Superfather”
Dicky Murphy, “The Magician’s Umbrella”
Alissa Nutting, “Leave the Dead to the Living”
Eve Tushnet, “A Story Like Mine”
Dennis Danvers, “The Broken Dream Factory”
Anya Groner, “The Magician’s Keeper”

Nonfiction
Gwenda Bond, “Dear Aunt Gwenda”

Poetry
Neile Graham, “Machrie Moore”
Marina Rubin, “Bordeaux, And Other Mysteries”

Comics
Abby Denson, “Heady’s Crush”

Cover

Matthew Kirby

Reviews: SF Revu. Ray Garraty/Endless Falls Up (from Russia).

“I’ve only recently become something of a fan of LCRW; it’s a literary magazine with beautiful production values; impeccable layout and the guts of the thing are good too: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, a comic by Abby Denson, and quirky spot illos by Anna Sears. It’s made me want to start reading new short fiction again, and I’m always really excited when it appears in my mailbox because it’s never hit a wrong note with me. Lovely as ever (and congrats to Gavin & Kelly on their best reason to miss a deadline!)”
—Xerography Debt

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No.24, July 2009 . 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, 150 Pleasant St., Easthampton, MA 01027 · info@smallbeerpress.com · https://smallbeerpress.com/category/lcrw

Subscriptions: $5 per single issue or $20/4. Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library and institutional subscriptions available through EBSCO.

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.


Other Cities – Bradley Denton quote (pt. 4)

Mon 3 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

Other Cities, a Chapbook
Benjamin Rosenbaum

Quoting Mr. Denton:

Dear Ben,

Which was just a quick way of saying:

The eloquence and poignancy of each of these stories astonished me. “The City of Peace,” alone, is enough to make one weep. But when read as a whole, Other Cities is not only harrowing, but exhilarating. It’s a fearless exploration into both the heart of darkness and the soul of hope. Here, despair and joy are neither opposites nor antagonists — but husband and wife, brother and sister, yin and yang. In these Cities of Humanity, you won’t meet one without meeting the other.

— Bradley Denton


Other Cities – Bradley Denton quote (pt. 3)

Mon 3 Aug 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin


Other Cities, a Chapbook
Benjamin Rosenbaum

Quoting Mr. Denton:

Dear Ben,

Unfortunately, I’m an atheist, so someone might accuse me of dishonest deity interjection (thus casting a cloud of doubt over the entire sentence). Another problem is that “My God, these are beautiful” is quite short . . . and a proper blurb, particularly for stories as fine as those in Other Cities, should be long enough to be quoted with ellipses . . . like so . . . thus suggesting that the blurber had so many good things to say that they wouldn’t all fit . . . and that some of the best ones had to be left out.

On the other hand, “My God, these are beautiful,” although blasphemous and short, is true and concise. It’s also an improvement over my first draft:

“Holy shit!”

— Bradley Denton

Order here or send a check or a money order using this form.



Broken Mirrors Press

Mon 3 Aug 2009 - Filed under: smallbeer, | Posted by: Gavin

In the 1990s the world was blessed by the appearance of a damn fine magazine named Crank! Due to the usual reasons — ruinous distribution, incredibly high editorial and production standards, a serious lack of personal inherited wealth — it all came to an end with issue no. 8.

We managed to get our hands on some back issues and they are $6 a pop.We’ll occasionally bring them to sell at book fairs or conventions, if that’s your thing.

~ Prices include first class or media mail shipping. ~

Crank! No. 1




 No. 1
$6
A.A. Attanasio
Michael Blumlein
Robert Devereaux
Gwyneth Jones
Garry Kilworth
Jonathan Lethem
Rosaleen Love
Carter Scholz

 

Crank! No. 2




 No. 2
$6
David R. Bunch
Carol Emshwiller
Jonathan Lethem
Gerald B. Stephenson
Gene Wolfe
Crank! No. 3
No. 3
$6
Brian Aldiss
Chan Davis
Ursula K. Le Guin
Jonathan Lethem
Katherine MacLean
Crank! No. 6
No. 4
$6
Terry Bisson
R.A. Lafferty
Lisa Tuttle
A.A. Attanasio
David R. Bunch
Jonathan Lethem
Crank! No. 6
No. 6
$6
James Blaylock
Karen Joy Fowler
Michael Kandel
Jonathan Lethem
Carter Scholz
Crank! No. 7
No. 7
$6
James Blaylock
A.M. Dellamonica
Eliot Fintushel
R.A. Lafferty
Crank! No. 6
No. 8
$6
James Blaylock
Eliot Fintushel
Carol Emshwiller
The Magic Spectacles: a novel by
James Blaylock. Appears in three parts in Crank! 6, 7, & 8.

Limited Editions

Fri 31 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

Small Beer Press limited editions
Available from this website and a few select bookshops.

+++++++++

July 2005
Kelly Link
Magic for Beginners
illustrated by Shelley Jackson
edition of 150

Magic for Beginners is the highly anticipated second collection by Kelly Link, the author of the cult favorite collection Stranger Things Happen. As the title suggests, this is an engaging, funny, and magical selection of stories about haunted convenience stores, husbands and wives, rabbits, zombies, weekly apocalyptic poker parties, witches, superheroes, marriages, and cannons, and includes several stories original to the collection. Stories from Magic for Beginners have previously been published in McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, Conjunctions, and The Dark.

Hand-numbered and signed by the author and illustrator and includes two tipped-in plates: an enlargement of the title story illustration and a color reproduction of the trade dustjacket painting by Shelley Jackson which is based on “Lady with an Ermine” by Leonardo da Vinci held in The Czartoryskich Museum in Krakow. Printed by Thomson-Shore of Dexter, MI, on 70# Finch Opaque Cream White Smooth paper, with 80# Oatmeal Rainbow Endpapers, Smyth Sewn in Cobalt Blue Pearl Linen Cloth, with a ribbon to keep your place.

Accompanied by a deck of poker cards backed with the cover illustration and illustrated with Shelley Jackson’s interior illustrations.

$100

+++++++++

July 2005

Maureen F. McHugh
Mothers & Other Monsters
edition of 150

Maureen F. McHugh is the author of four acclaimed novels. 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. Now, in her long-awaited first collection, McHugh’s subtle talents illuminate the relationship between parents and children from angles that everyone — mother or father, daughter or son — can relate to. These are beautiful stories about the ways in which social and technological shifts impact family dynamics.

Signed and hand-numbered by the author includes five poems not in the trade edition. This edition also includes a tipped-in print of Judith Anderson photographed in the role of Medea by Erwin Blumenfeld. Printed by Thomson-Shore of Dexter, Michigan, on 70# Finch Opaque Cream White Smooth paper, with 80# Red Rainbow Endpapers, Smyth Sewn in Pearl Linen Cloth. We have included a ribbon to keep your place.

$100

+++++++++

Order Both

$175

+++++++++

Prices include shipping.



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