Susan Stinson on NEPM

Wed 13 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Susan Stinson | Comments Off on Susan Stinson on NEPM | Posted by: Gavin

Every summer our local NPR station, NEPM, does a series on local authors with new books out and this summer one of the writers they are highlighting is Susan Stinson for the first ebook edition of her novel Venus of Chalk:

Northampton’s Susan Stinson wants to add ‘fat lesbian home economist’ to canon of literature themes

Stinson’s new e-book, “Venus of Chalk,” adds a new twist to the classic road-trip novel.

Listen here.

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21 today

Fri 1 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on 21 today | Posted by: Gavin

Apparently we published Ray Vukcevich’s collection Meet Me in the Moon Room 21 years ago today! (Eh, what a year.) Kelly and I were living in Brooklyn and if memory serves* we had a ticker tape parade, handed out exploding comets and moon suits to thousands of readers who danced with us all the way along Atlantic Avenue, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and up to Central Park where the lucky few discovered their suits were real-ish and floated off, I think to the moon. The west coast celebrations, which began in Ray’s hometown of Eugene, were reportedly wilder.

Read: Whisper · No Comet · Mom’s Little Friends

It’s another of those books like Carol Emshwiller’s Carmen Dog which I always find is weirder in its own way than I expect every time I go back to it. Every writer is unique but Ray really writes his own way through things.

And! I’m delighted to say that we just came across copies of the book so it’s available now again from here or Book Moon & so on and so forth for the first time in a couple of years.

The book was one of two we published that year, our first publishing season, woah! — the other book was Kelly’s first collection.

21 years ago in our apartment — very glad that Pathway were doing the actual shipping of books to bookstores and libraries — I had yet to do any royalty statements. Today I’ll start on Jan-Jun 2022 statements and, thanks to readers of the print and ebook editions, I’ll be sending Ray a check: thanks, all!

If you only click one link today and only read one spooky story, read this one: Whisper.

* Wellll

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Ladies of Horror

Thu 30 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Isabel Yap | Comments Off on Ladies of Horror | Posted by: Gavin

Yay! Congratulations Isabel Yap and Hailey Piper whose collections Never Have I Ever and Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy were jointly awarded the 2021 Ladies of Horror Award for Best Collection.

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Locus Reading & Panel

Wed 22 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Jeffrey Ford, Kelly Link, Locus, readings, Sarah Pinsker | Comments Off on Locus Reading & Panel | Posted by: Gavin

As part of the Locus awards readings and celebration, Kelly will do a zoom reading on Thursday June 23 with Michael Swanwick and be on a panel on Connie Willis and Gary K. Wolfe on Saturday, June 25:

Thursday, June 23 – 4 p.m. PDT/7 p.m. ET – Reading: Kelly Link and Michael Swanwick

Saturday, June 25 – 2 p.m. PDT/5 p.m. ET – DONUT SALON: In Conversation: Kelly Link, Connie Willis, and Gary K. Wolfe (bring your own donuts!)

Jeff Ford and Sarah Pinsker are two of the many readers and panellists. Should be fun. I’ve lifted the post from the Locus site so check here for updates.

Event links at Locus Awards Online 2022 will become live at their scheduled time. Here’s the full list of events from Locus:

LOCUS AWARDS SCHEDULE

Wednesday, June 22  –

4:00 p.m. PDT–  Reading: José Pablo Iriarte and Nnedi Okorafor
5:00 p.m. PDT–  Reading: Nalo Hopkinson and Catherynne M. Valente
6:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Fran Wilde

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Thursday, June 23  –

4:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Kelly Link and Michael Swanwick
5:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Suzanne Palmer and Wole Talabi
6:00 p.m. PDT – Reading: Jeffrey Ford and Angela Slatter

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Friday, June 24 –

4:00 p.m PDT – Reading: Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Cat Rambo
5:00 p.m PDT – Reading: John Wiswell and Connie Willis
6:00 p.m PDT – Online Hangout with Connie Willis and Locus folks

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Saturday, June 25 –

10:00 a.m. PDT – PANEL: “Hauntings & Histories” with Akemi Dawn Bowman, TJ Klune, Darcie Little Badger, Sam J. Miller
11:00 p.m. PDT – PANEL: “Power Dynamics in New Worlds” with Daniel Abraham, C.L. Clark, Fonda Lee, Sarah Pinsker
12:00 p.m. PDT – PANEL: “Writing Rules and How to Break Them” with Charlie Jane Anders, Charles Payseur, Sheree Renée Thomas, A.C. Wise
2:00 p.m. PDT – DONUT SALON: In Conversation: Kelly Link, Connie Willis, and Gary K. Wolfe
(bring your own donuts!)

3:00 p.m. PDT – LOCUS AWARDS CEREMONY with MC Connie Willis

 

*Memberships include a set digital subscription to the magazine, from our February 2022 issue (our Year-in-Review issue with Recommended Reading List and Poll and Survey) to August 2022 (with the Locus Awards photo coverage and writeup) and everything in between. Member subscription is non-transferable and does not affect or extend existing subscriptions.

Locus Supports Inclusivity! Thinking of attending? Please do. We encourage people of color, women, people with disabilities, older people, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people to attend. We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, age, size, nationality, religion, culture, education level, and self-identification. Locus associate editor Arley Sorg will serve as our PoC/LGBTQQIA Ombudsman.  Feel free to reach out to him in advance at locus@locusmag.com subject: Arley Ombudsman. Our Code of Conduct is available here: Locus Science Fiction Foundation Code of Conduct.

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Not so shoddy

Tue 21 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Not so shoddy | Posted by: Gavin

In preparation for the next issue of LCRW — we’re working on it, but, I’m a little slower than ever — we’ve read most submissions up to about a month ago. Responses, even to stories that are embarrassingly old which I have moved again and again into the maybe stack have either gone out by mail or email.

Reading for the next issue begins when this issue is out, if not before. Turns out reading subs (slowly, meh) on a hammock is one thing I can do these days.

I also tidied up the LCRW subscription page for the first time in a while. Got rid of an html table which was beginning* to look a bit too shoddy.** At some point a proper update is needed but thanks in the meantime to everyone who has ever subscribed through that page. I’ve tested the new version and all the links should work.

Now to the fun part: getting some more chocolate bars in!

* as of 2014 or so
** these yarns (cough) aren’t shoddy, they’re top notch!

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Such a punch!

Mon 20 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Alaya Dawn Johnson, Reviews | Comments Off on Such a punch! | Posted by: Gavin

This week on on Book Riot’s Under the Radar SFF podcast Jenn and Sharifah discuss many interesting books (including Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel) and other things including a review of Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Reconstruction: Stories.

Alaya was recently chosen to co-write the first story in Janelle Monáe’s New York Times bestselling first book The Memory Librarian.

I enjoyed he podcast so much I used the voice memo app on my phone and then the dictation app on my laptop to make this lightly edited transcript. It’s definitely not 100% accurate as I was looking to capture the description of this book I love more than keep it to 100% of what was said. You can listen to the full episode or subscribe here:

Alaya Dawn Johnson is a writer whose career I have been happily following for some times now. This collection is such a punch. From the opening story right on through it is putting you on notice. You’re gonna go some places here and you’re not gonna be able to look away. It’s an amazing collection.
The title story is the last story in the collection and the longest  in the collection. It takes place during the end of the Civil War in the United States. You’re following a black woman who is a laundress, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, and now following a regiment of black soldiers. It’s really good. That character, Sally, is so justifiably angry but one of the through lines of the story is a breakdown of the different kinds of anger and what they do to you and why you cling to them and how they affect you and how you move through the world through these different forms of anger. It’s so insightful and perceptive and so visceral and present.
The first story is such a punch. It’s called “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawaii” and it imagines a world — sort of our time — in which vampires are in charge and have enslaved humanity and put them in camps and are breeding them as a food supply and our main character is an overseer who is a human working for the vampires. So it’s about coercion and collaboration, what does it mean to survive? What does it mean to try to carve out enough power to do the good that you can while knowing that you are perpetuating harm? It’s so intense. It’s beautifully written.
The stories are not easy and I think they’re not supposed to be. I think Johnson is doing so much in here. There’s a huge range of what speculative elements she’s using between the stories and the tones shift and the settings shift. Each story is very different. They are so good. She is such good short story writer — she’s also an excellent novelist — but you really feel the power of her short fiction in this collection. And there’s a really interesting author note at the end.

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Adventurists and Businesses on the Road

Fri 17 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., readings, Richard Butner, Robert Freeman Wexler | Comments Off on Adventurists and Businesses on the Road | Posted by: Gavin

We’re busy with Robert Freeman Wexler setting up readings for his forthcoming novel The Silverberg Business as well as with Richard Butner setting up a couple of NYC area events for The Adventurists.

So far for the very strange historical Texas business book, there are two readings set up — the first at $2 Radio HQ, oh, how I’d love to get there with none other than short story superstar Jeffrey Ford, and ah, now there are 3! A Jo-Beth Cincinnati reading was just finalized. There should be a Chicago reading coming and then, of course, given the Texan nature of the business at hand, events in Austin, Houston, and maybe Galveston. More TK, as I am wont to say.

Aug. 23, 8 p.m. Two Dollar Radio HQ, Columbus, OH — with Jeffrey Ford
Aug. 27, 8 p.m. The Emporium, Yellow Springs, OH
Aug. 29, 7 p.m. Joseph-Beth,  Cincinnati, OH — in conversation with Rebecca Kuder

Richard Butner is leaving North Carolina — but only temporarily! — and will be in NYC at the fabled KGB Bar for the fantastic fiction series with a friend, New York city native, and excellent writer, Veronica Schanoes, and the second over the water (but not very far) in Hoboken, at the outstanding indie bookstore, Little City Books:

Aug 17, 7 p.m. Richard Butner & Veronica Schanoes, KGB Fantastic Fiction, KGB Bar, NYC
Aug 18, 7 p.m. Little City Books, Hoboken, NJ

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6 Months in a Leaky Boat

Wed 15 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bodies, Long Covid, ugh | 6 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

This is a 3-month follow up my March post:

I’m writing from my couch where I’ve been laid up since mid-December with something — most likely post-viral fatigue. In the first week of December I had a small cold(?) and had multiple negative Covid results.

which was a 3-month update on me succumbing to some kind of post-viral something last December. The stunning accuracy of my self-diagnosis is the same as it was then.

Now it’s early summer and as I was then, I’m writing this lying flat on our couch. I can lie around and do a little bit of work but I can’t lift a box of books (ha ha ha. No chance) or do most of the things I’d usually do. I walk around very slowly. My max is about about 200 yards and then I regret having walked so far as going back takes twice as long. If I do anything physical or a lively phone or zoom call that will be me flat on the couch for 2-3 hours (or, worst case: 2-3 days, ugh) doing nothing. I haven’t worked at Book Moon — or the Small Beer office — since December and do I miss it.

I’m taking more vitamins and supplements than I ever have. Do they work? Don’t know. I’ll try just about anything now. Talked to my doc today who’s referring me to a post-COVID clinic in Boston — after previous cardio, rheumatology, and neuro referrals.

Small Beer: we’ve slowed down on publishing — Ayize’s 4th and final Liminal novel, Heroes of an Unknown World, was too much for me this month. It’s needs more energy behind it so we moved it to February. (Don’t ask me why as it’s not us, but the ebook is onsale at a certain website for $1.99.) We’re at the contract stage with a few more 2023/2024 titles and I’m working — even slower than usual — on the new LCRW.

I have no idea of my prognosis. Maybe this is middle age for me or maybe this is long covid. If it’s the latter (I am 2 x vaxxed, 2 x boosted), good golly, wear a mask.

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ETA: thank you for lovely emails, comments, support. I would be completely pancaked out on the floor but for Kelly’s patience, love, and advocacy — please spare her a thought as I lie here, yes, on the damn couch.

 

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Ladies of Horror Fiction Award Nominees

Fri 10 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Isabel Yap | Comments Off on Ladies of Horror Fiction Award Nominees | Posted by: Gavin

Frightfully happy to see Isabel Yap’s Never Have I Ever on the 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Award Nominee list for Best Collection and her story “Syringe” from her collection on the Best Short Fiction list. Congratulations to all the nominees!

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Never Have I Ever Again

Tue 24 May 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Isabel Yap, reprinting! | Comments Off on Never Have I Ever Again | Posted by: Gavin

I’m delighted to report that the second printing of Isabel Yap’s debut collection Never Have I Ever is now starting to wend its way back to bookshops. The book came out last February and has found a very happy readership, no doubt helped by it being a NYPL Best Books for Adults and on both the Locus and Crawford Award shortlists.

It turns out last year I sent eleven books back for reprints — one of those numbers that makes it more obvious why I felt so busy even though we only published six new titles: 4 short story collections and 2 Elizabeth Hand mystery novels in paperback. Even though it takes 2-3 times as long now to get a reprint as it did a year or two ago, running out of books is the best problem to have!

Anyway, here’s to our second reprint of the year — and I’m sending another book back this week and another back next week — may this reprint be the first of many for Never Have I Ever.

Want some more about the book?

• Here’s Isabel Yap interviewed by Megan Kakimoto at Full Stop.
• The Washington Post said the book: “overflows with life and magic, and if you are not familiar with the vibrant literary scene in the Philippines, let this serve as a worthy introduction.”
• And in their starred review Booklist ended by calling it “A joy to read.”
• You can also read some dark and fabulous stories: Good Girls, Milagroso, Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez?
• & that fabulous cover illustration? That’s “Serpent’s Bride” by Alexa Sharpe.
• And here’s Isabel’s site.

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Signed Sofia Samatar Books

Mon 9 May 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar | Comments Off on Signed Sofia Samatar Books | Posted by: Gavin

I wasn’t there so I can’t give the 100% accurate count of books or anything, but Sofia Samatar stopped by Book Moon on Saturday and signed copies her books. Use these links to order signed copies: A Stranger in Olondria, Tender, and The Winged Histories.

Her new book, The White Mosque, comes out in October from Catapult

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Celebrating Spirits Abroad Winning the Ray Bradbury Prize

Wed 4 May 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Zen Cho | Comments Off on Celebrating Spirits Abroad Winning the Ray Bradbury Prize | Posted by: Gavin

I went to look up the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize and discovered that there are at least 3 awards with Ray Bradbury’s name on them. Only fitting as he made so many readers happy with his fantastic stories.

Anyway, we’re very happy that Zen Cho’s delightful collection of stories, Spirits Abroad — which was already a Crawford Award winner in its first Buku Fixi edition — received the LA Times Book Prize/Ray Bradbury Prize at this year’s LA Times Festival of Books.

We have a limited number of bookplates signed by Zen to go with copies at Book Moon.

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Get Lost — and enjoy it

Thu 28 Apr 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Forthcoming, Sarah Pinsker | Comments Off on Get Lost — and enjoy it | Posted by: Gavin

We started this week with the news that Zen Cho’s collection Spirits Abroad had received the Ray Bradbury Prize at the LA Times Book Awards and we’re ending it with news that is perhaps equally exciting: on March 21, 2023, we are going to publish Sarah Pinsker’s second collection, Lost Places.

Since Sarah’s first collection, Philip K. Dick Award winner Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, came out, she has published 2 novels, A Song for the New Day and We Are Satellites, and has written enough short stories for this new collection, including a fabulous story that hasn’t been published elsewhere. What a treat!

It’s already up online at Greedy Reads, bn.com, etc., and some places even have the stand-in title but that’ll get replaced with the actual title soon.

Read more about the book and see the cover here.

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Susan Stinson and Alison Bechdel celebrate the first ebook of Venus in Chalk

Wed 20 Apr 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Book Moon, events, Susan Stinson | Comments Off on Susan Stinson and Alison Bechdel celebrate the first ebook of Venus in Chalk | Posted by: Gavin

Please join us at at 7 p.m. on as we host superstar Alison Bechdel in zoom conversation with Northampton’s own Susan Stinson as they celebrate the first ebook publication of Susan’s novel Venus of Chalk.

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First Trade Review for Heroes

Fri 15 Apr 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett, Reviews | Comments Off on First Trade Review for Heroes | Posted by: Gavin

And it is such a good review! It comes from Publishers Weekly and I could pick out just about any line and put it on a shirt.

We’ve been working with Ayize on these books for the last 10 years and I can’t wait for this final book to come out. Ayize is so skilled at writing knock out action science fiction which also threads together the story of a found family, who are definitely not perfect, but who have their eyes on the prize: a life which is more than just survival for everyone, not just the fortunate/terrible few.

Here’s that first review:

Therapist and theologian Jama-Everett takes his group of Black superheroes from 1970s London to contemporary Morocco in the fascinating and action-packed final Liminal novel (after The Liminal War). Liminals possess supernatural powers, among them central figure Taggert’s ability to manipulate DNA to harm and heal; his adopted daughter Prentis’s empathy with animals; and wind spirit A.C.’s power over the elements. Taggert and his seven major allies must finally defeat the beautiful but monstrous Alters, who work to drive all of humanity to lemming-like suicide by creating a physically and spiritually depressed new world. In breathlessly paced adventures told from ever-shifting perspectives, Jama-Everett celebrates the power of family, community, and music to unite peoples and combat entropy, using dramatic flashbacks to illustrate the salvific power of self-sacrifice for a greater good. His fictionalization of the role psychedelics (here “manna,” the food of the gods) can play in mental health and clear conviction that writing can heal those whom mainstream culture has ignored add depth to the rip-roaring action. Series fans and new readers alike are sure to be drawn in.

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Local Boy Makes Good

Fri 25 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Richard Butner | Comments Off on Local Boy Makes Good | Posted by: Gavin

Richard Butner has been localized in the Raleigh area for some years — you can see pictures of him there and even in some other places here — although it’s our local paper here in Western Mass., the Daily Hampshire Gazette, that has a great review of The Adventurists today:

an excellent new collection of short stories . . . Butner, who lives in North Carolina, livens his writing with wry humor and moments of absurdity and surrealism, but his stories also explore the fraying of friendships and the sense of loss that the passage of time can bring.

What also anchors the 16 stories in the collection is Butner’s crisp, understated prose, a style that lets him quickly segue from straightforward descriptions of everyday life to off-kilter narratives.

I recommend the book, mais oui, and also subscribing to your local paper if possible!

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NoWP 2022

Thu 24 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bodies, events, Long Covid, meh, the world | Comments Off on NoWP 2022 | Posted by: Gavin

I’m sorry not to be at AWP (ha) this week.

tl:dr I am out sick

Longer version:

I like tabling. I like talking to people about books, selling some, surprising people with LCRW (a paper zine? What?!), and the accessibility of being right there for people to ask questions about Small Beer/publishing/whatever. I like wandering the book fair and buying books and magazines from publishers new and old. I like going to an occasional panel and some readings — I especially like putting on or being involved with other presses putting on an offsite reading — and I really enjoy catching up with people I know, meeting new people, all that.

If we were there . . . we’d have a stack of Richard Butner’s new collection The Adventurists — it’s so good! It came out this week! We’d have books by Small Beer authors who are at the big show: Sofia Samatar’s world bestriding A Stranger in Olondria and her collection Tender; Juan Martinez’s Best Worst American — one of his stories is soon to be read on Selected Shorts at Symphony Space; and Elwin Cotman’s NPR Best of the Year Dance on Saturday. And we’d have all those pretty books in that picture below that came out oh just quite recently.

We aren’t there for 2 reasons: the first is Covid — which as far as I know I have never had. I have had all 3 of my vaccines. I’m delighted that AWP required vaccinations and masks. Science, FTW! But the idea of being in a book fair with up to 3,000 people is too much for me. Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (updated 3/24/22) has the US covid fatality rate at 1.2%. The deaths are mostly among the unvaccinated and the immunocompromised — but risking my (and by extension my family’s) life on someone else’s masking choice when there is a 1 in 100 chance we might die is too high for me.

I am sorry not to be at AWP, but: I haven’t even been to the Small Beer office or Book Moon in more than 3 months because the second reason we’re not there is that I am out sick.

I’m writing from my couch where I’ve been laid up since mid-December with something — most likely post-viral fatigue. In the first week of December I had a small cold(?) and had multiple negative Covid results. A week later I was in the ER. I’m improving — at a glacial rate. I have only left the house since then to see the doctor. I lie around all day, do a little work, watch Abbot Elementary and Better Things and sometimes read (including, for my sins, twitter) — although that brain fog made fiction too hard for a bit. So please accept my apologies for being slow at everything, including email. In early December I was running up the stairs from the Book Moon basement carrying boxes of books. Now a zoom conversation leaves me exhausted. (As in: I will lie flat for 3 hours and do nothing.)

Ugh, I did not want to have to write this but since I am missing a very enjoyable event and have been down for 3 months it seemed like time. I am 51 (when did that happen?) and despite having to lie around all the time (walking is a lot; running is woah so very far away) I feel very lucky, very well looked after at home. I’m not really looking for feedback — unless you have a similar experience with post-viral fatigue — and I apologize in advance for not keeping up as I’ve used much of today’s energy to write this. Although my prognosis is unclear, if all goes as it seems it might, it looks like I will be healthy again by summertime. Fingers crossed!

And if you just can’t help yourself and must buy some books, why, stop by here. Or: we have a tiny, mighty bookshop, Book Moon, with fabulous booksellers who can help you out Monday-to-Saturday 10-6.

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Happy Adventurists Day!

Tue 22 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Butner, Publication day | Comments Off on Happy Adventurists Day! | Posted by: Gavin

Happy publication day to Richard Butner whose debut collection The Adventurists comes out today and should be available at all your favorite indie (and other) bookshops! If you’d like a taster,  you can read or listen to Ash City Stomp [audio], or read Circa, or read Under Green which was just published this month in Uncanny.

It’s been fun to see the wide variety of places these stories were first published in: from Crimewave (“Holderhaven”) to F&SF (“Give Up”), LCRW (“Pete and Earl) to Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology, (“Horses Blow Up Dog City”) — and of course there are a good number of new stories in the book. The first story, “Adventure,” also appears in the new issue of The Deadlands which came out three days ago. That story just gets better every time I read it.

We’ll have more about the book soon. All the pre-orders were sent out this week — thank you! Some are delivered, some still on their way — sorry about that, I usually try and have them arrive by or before publication day. But we did include a bonus book where we could so maybe that will make up a little.

The Adventurists is available with a lovely felted-paper cover and also as a DRM-free ebook from Weightless — and maybe a DRM’d edition everywhere.

Richard, who was just at ICFA this weekend, will be doing a couple of North Carolina readings — pre-order your signed copies here:

April 2, 6 p.m. Richard Butner, John Kessel, & Wilton Barnhardt, So and So Books, Raleigh, NC

May 17, 6 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, NC

And we’ll have more reviews and stories online and things to talk about in coming weeks. Kelly has been planning this for years and it is just great to have this book out. Enjoy!

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Prix Bob Morane Finalist

Mon 14 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Carol Emshwiller | Comments Off on Prix Bob Morane Finalist | Posted by: Gavin

Lovely to see in Locus that the French edition of Carol Emshwiller’s novel The Mount published by Argyll éditions is a Prix Bob Morane Finalist. We’ve had low stock on our edition for a while on this one — I was going to reset it at some point but got distracted so one of these Sunday afternoons I’ll get that done — but we always keep copies of the cheap, handy, and very portable Penguin Firebird mass market edition in stock at Book Moon.

Should you read it? On io9 MaryKate Jasper and Charlie Jane Anders have it on a list that says yes: 10 Ultra-Weird Science Fiction Novels that Became Required Reading.

The Mount was one of the first books we published that picked up a major award. Kelly’s stories had received awards before her collection was published in 2001 and, of course, so had some of Carol’s stories that were collected in the second of her books we published in 2002, Report to the Men’s Club — she played off Kafka’s A Report to an Academy for her collection title — what a book that is! Even if you just read the first (“Grandma”) and last (“After All”) stories, you’re going away a winner. These two books by Carol (our 3rd and 4th published titles) comprise the whole of our second year of book publishing — we also did 2 chapbooks and 2 issues of LCRW.

Both Carol’s novel The Mount and her collection Report to the Men’s Club were finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award and The Mount was the winner. It was also a Nebula finalist, an Impac Award nominee, and included in Best of the Year lists by Locus, Village Voice, and Book Magazine. and you can Read Chapter One here. Maybe it will add the Prix Bob Morane, maybe not, as with many awards, it is an honor that the book is nominated, congratulations Argyll éditions!

I still miss Carol. She was incredibly fun to work with — even if I spent the next decade asking her if she had more work and she kept ignoring me — and while writing this I was delighted to be reminded of Matt Cheney’s 90th birthday present to Carol, the Carol Emshwiller project.

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“the strangest book I’ve ever read”

Fri 11 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Crowley, Robert Freeman Wexler | Comments Off on “the strangest book I’ve ever read” | Posted by: Gavin

Well here’s a fine thing that should set many a Small Beer reader’s Spider senses tingling: John Crowley — whose own new novel Flint and Mirror comes out next month from Tor — sent along this note after reading an early copy of Robert Freeman Wexler’s forthcoming novel, The Silverberg Business:

“Certainly the strangest book I’ve ever read, and strangeness is a thing that I take to. The grotesque horrors, the impossibilities, the shifting scenes, Silverberg’s skull, the skull-heads, the wooden house that turns into a mansion without the detective finding it particularly odd. It is in fact a book not like anything I’ve ever read.”
— John Crowley, author of Little, Big

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So and So

Wed 9 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., events, Richard Butner | Comments Off on So and So | Posted by: Gavin

If you’re in the Raleigh, NC, area, the Triad, North Carolina, the southeastern part of the USA, in other words, somewhat close by, please do plan to head to So and So Books on Saturday, April 2, at 6 p.m. where Richard Butner will be reading from his new story collection, The Adventurists, and will be in conversation with John Kessel. Introductions by Wilton Barnhardt.

Refreshments provided by Anisette.

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Venus of Chalk ebook

Fri 4 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., ebooks, Susan Stinson, Weightless Books | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

I’m happy to say that next month we’re adding another Susan Stinson novel, Venus of Chalk, to our list. First published in 2004 by Firebrand Books this will be the first ebook edition. Susan lives near us in Western Mass and to keep it really local here’s a word on it from another fabulous and famous local author, Lesléa Newman, author of Heather Has Two Mommies,

“Carline is brave, strong and beautiful, just like Susan Stinson’s writing. As a reader, I was fascinated by Carline’s journey; as a writer I was dazzled by the language in which it was told.”

And here’s more about the book:

In Susan Stinson’s shimmering second novel, three friends drive from Massachusetts to Texas to unload an old bus, and in the process become the selves they were meant to be.

Carline’s life is settled and happy: she has a great home with her partner, Lillian, and a job she loves as the editor of a respected pamphlet series, The Modern Homemaker. But after an unpleasant harassment experience in her home town, when her aunt calls from Texas she surprises herself as much as anyone and says yes to the opportunity to accompany two friends across the country in an old bus. Stinson’s always sensual and humorous writing tingles on the page and nothing is quite what’s expected as Carline sews her way across the country and makes notes for her new pamphlet, “How to Ride a Bus.”

Venus of Chalk was a finalist for the Lambda Literary and Benjamin Franklin awards, and a Top 10 Publishing Triangle lesbian book of the year.

It comes out April 5th and is available to preorder now — DRM-free of course! — on Weightless now and will be available at all the usual ebookstores.

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New Month, New Book

Wed 2 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Richard Butner | Comments Off on New Month, New Book | Posted by: Gavin

This month we’ll publish our first title of 2022, Richard Butner’s long awaited debut The Adventurists. We have copies going out to reviewers and so on now and the cover, by Wesley Allsbrook, on the felted paper is is a beautiful thing to behold.

You can get a sneak peak at the book in the new March/April issue of Uncanny Magazine which just went out and among many tasty things includes a new Butner story, Under Green.

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Spirits Abroad a finalist for the Bradbury Prize

Wed 23 Feb 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Zen Cho | Comments Off on Spirits Abroad a finalist for the Bradbury Prize | Posted by: Gavin

Delighted to see that Zen Cho’s collection Spirits Abroad is one of 5 finalists for the Bradbury Prize — “The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction, sponsored by the Ray Bradbury Foundation, honors and extends Bradbury’s literary legacy by celebrating and elevating the writers working in his field today. Bradbury always made his own rules, writing across specific genre boundaries throughout his career.”

I have been mailing copies to various LA Times prizes for years and I am happy to see the continued crossover between the Fiction and the Bradbury Prize. I’m also interested to see all the other books up for the various awards — and I’m sorry I won’t be making the trek to the LA Times Book Fest. Kelly has been and Jed once tabled there for Small Beer Press. One of these years I’d like to get footsore and hot and talk to a million people there. One of these years. As ever, congratulations to all the finalists, thanks for the judges who read all the books, and thanks for Ray, for the stories and for passing on the joy.

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Retro Neo Noir

Tue 22 Feb 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Robert Wexler | Comments Off on Retro Neo Noir | Posted by: Gavin

J. Robert Lennon just sent along after reading Robert Freeman Wexler’s original and unexpected Western detective novel — with just a hint of WHAT!? — which comes out in August when up here in the northern hemisphere we’re all going to be baking and it will be just the right temperature to read The Silverberg Business:

“This philosophical Jewish-Texan retro-neo-noir — at once detective story, western, and ambling picaresque — is populated by a memorable cast of schemers, toughs, and oddballs, and rendered with a keen eye and ear for detail.”

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Good Weekend for Never Have I Ever

Mon 14 Feb 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Isabel Yap | Comments Off on Good Weekend for Never Have I Ever | Posted by: Gavin

Congratulations to Isabel Yap whose debut collection Never Have I Ever received a Stabby Award this weekend! That was a new award for me and I’m delighted to discover it this way.

Then I read that Never was shortlisted for the 2022 Crawford Award “presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for a first book of fantasy.” Usman T. Malik won the award for his collection Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan (Kitab) and E. Lily Yu’s novel On Fragile Waves (Erewhon) was the other runner-up. Congratulations all — and may all weekends be as fun!

The news comes in slightly too late to go on the cover of the second printing of the book — it is back at the printer slowly making its way through the general slowdown and will be back in stock oh in a blink of an eye (as slowed down to last weeks and weeks).

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On Publishing Angélica Gorodischer

Mon 7 Feb 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Amalia Gladhart, Angelica Gorodischer, remembering, Sue Burke, Ursula K. Le Guin | Comments Off on On Publishing Angélica Gorodischer | Posted by: Gavin

On Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022 I was incredibly sorry to read in an email from Amalia Gladhart, who translated Trafalgar for us as well as Jaguars’ Tomb for Vanderbilt UP, that Argentinean author Angélica Gorodischer had died at her home in Rosario at the age of 93. Here’s a link to the obituary Amalia sent.

We published the first three of Angélica’s books to be translated into English: Kalpa Imperial (translated by Ursula K. Le Guin) in 2003, followed by Trafalgar (translated by Amalia Gladhart) in 2013, and Prodigies (translated by Sue Burke) in 2015.

Publishing Angélica’s books — and meeting her when she came up to the WisCon conference in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2003 — have been one of the highlights of our work here at the press. Kelly and I publishing Angélica’s books in our third season put Small Beer onto a different plane and meant that we could from our early years use Kalpa Imperial to show that we had very broad horizons in our sights. Angélica was exceedingly generous to share her books with us and we very appreciative. The story of how we came to publish the books, while not as interesting as any of Angélica’s own wide ranging stories, shows a little of how publishing works, with a drop of luck, much hard work and juggling, and a little of being in the right place at the right time.

In 1998 Kelly read and admired a section of Kalpa Imperial, The End of a Dynasty, or The Natural History of Ferrets, in the anthology Starlight 2, edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, which had been translated by Ursula K. Le Guin. This was not the first translation of Angélica’s work into English. According to this useful site, Alberto Manguel translated “Man’s Dwelling Place” for his anthology Other Fires: Short Fiction by Latin American Women (Three Rivers, 1985); four of her stories were translated (by Monica Bruno, Mary G. Berg, and two by Lorraine Elena Roses) for the 1991 White Pine Press anthology, Secret Weavers, edited by Marjorie Agosin; and Diana L. Vélez translated “Camera Obscura” for Latin American Literary Review, 19 (37).

At some point after reading Starlight 2, Kelly wondered if Ursula had translated more of Angélica’s work. We had met Ursula once or twice at WisCon, an annual feminist science-fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin, which we all loved and so we sent her a letter. I am still amazed at the response.

At this point, the two of us had published four books through Small Beer: in 2001, Kelly’s first collection, Stranger Things Happen and Ray Vukcevich’s collection Meet Me in the Moon Room, and in 2002, two books by Carol Emshwiller, a novel, The Mount, and a collection, Report to the Men’s Club. While talking to Carol we found out that Ursula was a big fan of Carol’s books and asked Ursula if she would blurb one of Carol’s books — Ursula said she could not . . . because she admired Carol (here’s her review of Ledoyt) so much that she had just asked Carol to blurb one of her books. So when we wrote, rather out of the blue, asking about Kalpa Imperial we had at least corresponded a little and at some point I’d been brave enough to buy her a bourbon in Madison. (Ursula and Angélica were both smart, no nonsense, and more than a little bit terrifying.)

Ursula’s agent at the time was the late Linn Prentis of the Virginia Kidd Agency — who was a mixed blessing. She was willing to work with our tiny press but between her office having work done on it and not everyone being on the same computer system it took three months for the manuscript to be sent to us and the final deal — our first translation contracts — wasn’t concluded until January 2003. Here’s the Publishers Lunch announcement:

We were planning on publishing in August of that year — as we’d done for our first two seasons — but then an unmissable opportunity came up: the possibility that Angélica could attend WisCon on the Memorial Day weekend in May 2003. Suddenly everything was moving very fast. Fortunately for my monolingual self, Angélica’s English was strong: “I can make myself understood and I can understand your Scotch English. Je parle Français aussi.” (I read in the one of the obituaries that her 1988 Fulbright Scholarship allowed her to participate in the University of Iowa International Writing Program and she also taught at the University of Northern Colorado.)

She could do more than make herself understood. She was sharp and funny and sometimes returned emailed after trips to Ecuador or Bolivia (“where I thought I was going to die: 4,500m above sea level!”) and I learned that she too loved Carol’s books — I had mailed her our first four books and we were both delighted they arrived. The mail to Argentina then seemed to be about as reliable as the present day USPS.

And then the US started another war and we were all thrown for a loop (again).

However she was worried at the speed we were working.

She was right.

Our proofreader turned in a workmanlike job and after all the changes had been entered I sent the book to the printer. There’s nothing quite like having an internationally acclaimed award-winning author fly in from Argentina and when you meet for the first time she sits you down in an empty ballroom to show you the typos in her first book translated into English that you have just published.

Our printer also shifted the ship date at the last minute without telling us and we almost didn’t get books to the convention. For some reason they also individually shrink wrapped every copy. Ugh. It was both a fantastic and miserably stressful weekend and I learned that all that “extra time” in publishing schedules is very necessary.

By a happy coincidence in 2003 another of Angélica’s short stories, “The Violet Embryos” translated by Sara Irausquin, was published in the anthology Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain (Wesleyan UP).

In the run up to the actual publication date of Kalpa Imperial, a bilingual friend of ours from the KGB Bar Fantastic Fiction reading series, Gabriel Mesa, offered to interview Angélica for the website Fantastic Metropolis. You can read the interview here which captures some of Angélica’s vivacity.

The book found many friends at independent bookshops and a few months later it was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. It was easy to be enthusiastic about, as I loved it so much.

Being a very small press, I struggled with how we could afford more translations of Angélica’s work. I knew I wanted to read them but I didn’t know enough about the industry to even know where to begin. So I put a tiny line on our website saying that we were always looking for more translations of Angélica’s work. A couple of people contacted us over the years, usually grad students, to see if we had any funding or if they could work with us. My (ongoing) problem was that I have to read the full book before I can tell if I’m going to publish it so I could not read just a chapter or two. Early as 2003, two books were especially recommended to me: a short story collection, Trafalgar, and a novel, Prodigies. Both of them were said to be very different from Kalpa Imperial which only deepened my interest.

In 2011 I discovered something which made it much less likely that we would be able to publish another of Angélica’s books. All the checks we had sent to her agent from 2004 – 2011 had been cashed but none of the money had been sent on. I was truly horrified — I can still hardly believe it. I can see how easily it happened — many international editions don’t earn out their advances and I trusted the agent, of course, so I never checked with Angélica to see if she was receiving the money.

When I found out from the agent by email she replied saying how expensive it was (as it still is) to send money to Argentina, but that was no excuse. Despite my pushing, nothing happened until the agent retired and someone else took over that we were able to make any headway. I had given up on the agent by then and the Argentinean government had made it easier to send money into the country so I was able to send everything owed to Angélica. At some later time, the agency paid the press back for the unsent royalties — minus their percentage. Anyway, she was a good agent for a lot of people for many years and had done good work for Angélica at first.

Then, as I was trying to get information from the agent about the unpaid royalties, came the news that Angélica was going to be awarded a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Awards at their November 2011 convention — a lovely prize for a writer who had dipped in and out of many genres and who received many awards: here are a few from her extended bio:

1964 “Vea & Lea” award, III contest of detective stories
1965 “Club del Orden” award
1984 “Más Allá” award; “Poblet” award, “Premoi Konex”
1984-85 Emecé award
1985 “Sigfried Radaelli Club de los Trece”
1986 Gilgamesh (Spain)
1991 Gilgamesh (Spain)
1994 “Platinum Konex”
1996 “Dignity” award granted by the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights for works and activity in women’s rights
1998 Silvina Bullrich award, granted by the Argentina Writers’ Society to the best novel written by a woman during the three precedent years
2000: “Esteban Echeverría”
2007: Premio ILCH, California
2014: Konex Career Award
2017: Honorary Doctorate, National University of Cuyo
2018: Prix Imaginales for Kalpa Imperial
2018: Grand Prize for Artistic Career from the National Fund for the Arts for her contribution to Argentine culture.

At first it seemed the organization was going to bring Angélica in to receive the award in person but it did not work out. Another translator, Edward Gauvin, who had translated French author Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s stories in a collection, A Life on Paper, was good enough to collect the award in her place. This is the speech Angélica sent:

As you may see, I am not here, but just now, at this exact moment I am in Rosario, very far away from here but thinking of you all, and I wonder: what are they thinking now? Are they happy to be here? Yes. I know you are, and then, of course, I am happy too. And I feel immensely grateful. This Award is very important to me. It comes to my hands at the right moment. At eighty-three years old, I can count so many blessings: my husband, my sons, my daughter, my grandsons and my granddaughter, and my accomplices: the words I put in my thirty books of narrative. As Jorge Luis Borges said once I am condemned to the Spanish words. And I am trying to say in my poor English that I feel happy and joyful and that I send you my love and my gratitude. Thank you.

And here is Gauvin’s speech on accepting the award:

Any committee (or convention) that gives a prize like this to a person like this needs no reminder of the kind I’m about to give, so let me position this as preaching to the choir rather as a pat on its back, or a collective prayer. Angélica Gorodischer has been given a tremendous honor but one that I hope will serve to take her a step further down the trail first blazed eight years ago by the publication of Ursula K. Le Guin’s translation of Kalpa Imperial by Small Beer Press, Angélica’s publisher and mine.

Giving her this award is a little like hanging a medal round the tip of the iceberg whose other nine-tenths I hope one see the light of English day. By a curious metonymy of publishing economies, single books sometimes stand in for entire bodies of work. In the worst cases, single authors are allowed to stand in for entire countries or languages, as if the attention span of English-speaking readers were not enough to hold more than one complicated, funny-sounding name in its mind at a time. Or, as if with such an award, we Anglophones deigned to notice the rest of a world with a nod and now owed no more. We in this room know better.

Let fantasy, which draws already from so many folkloric world traditions, truly become world fantasy. Thank you.

At yet the same time, I received an email from a writer and translator, Amalia Gladhart, an Associate Professor of Spanish Department of Romance Languages. Amalia had translated two books by Ecuadorian writer Alicia Yánez Cossío (The Potbellied Virgin, UT Press, 2006, and Beyond the Islands, UNO Press, 2011) and after reading Kalpa Imperial and finding the note on our website, she contacted us about translating Trafalgar. She had been in touch with Angélica, had begun translating Trafalgar, and was heading to Rosario to teach so would be able to go over her translation directly. I was delighted and when she sent me the translation I was enamored of the strangeness of the book in which an intergalactic salesman tells stories of his travels to his friends back in a coffeeshop in Rosario.

We placed some of the stories in magazines (The Sense of the Circle [interview],  The Best Day of the Year, Trafalgar and Josefina) and published the book in 2013. The colors in the cover came out muddier than the sharp piece of art we had selected. Our then printer didn’t agree with us and would not reprint so we did not work with them again. Despite the muddy cover, much to my relief, Angélica was very pleased and Amalia translated her letter on receipt of the books:

Dear Gavin: I received the copies of Trafalgar, just marvelous. The first thing I did was to caress them, because they are so beautiful that they call to the hand and the eye. What a fine object, so attractive, so precious. Afterwards, of course, with great feeling I began to turn the pages and, as always, I was stunned by Amalia’s expert translation. Well, everything is perfect, and I am very happy, very moved, and Amalia and I are planning public presentations and dialogues in bookstores, the College of Translators, etc., here in Rosario, to make the book known. Many thanks for everything and let’s keep in touch as in the past.
With warm greetings,
hugs,
Angélica

In 2020 Trafalgar was reprinted in the UK as part of a new Penguin Classics line and I very much like the presentation and the quotes they’ve used:

“A novel that is unlike anything I’ve ever read, one part pulp adventure to one part realistic depiction of the affluent, nearly-idle bourgeoisie, but always leaning more towards the former in its inventiveness and pure sense of fun.” — Los Angeles Review of Books

In an email in 2004, Ursula had said she was reading Prodigies and found it “fascinating and extremely difficult.” In his 2003 interview, Gabriel Mesa had asked Angélica:

Q. If after KALPA you had to choose another of your novels to be translated into English, which would it be?

A: PRODIGIOS, always PRODIGIOS which I believe is the best thing I have ever written in my life. Of course no one would read it because it is a difficult text.

A few months after Trafalgar came out we were approached by another writer translator, Sue Burke, to see if we were still interested in a translation of that very novel, Prodigies. An American, she was then living in Madrid and her most recent translation was Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Science Fiction (Sportula, 2013). Given that Angélica thought it was the best thing she had written, how could I resist? I may have ignored the last line in her answer above.

Prodigies is as promised, a slim, fabulous, somewhat difficult novel. We placed excerpts in the journals Eleven Eleven and Spolia Magazine. Reading it is like diving into a dream, with sentences and paragraphs that leave no room for coming up for air so the reader has to go with it or drown.

Angélica wrote around thirty books and so far Prodigies is the last translation of her work we’ve published — but never say never. Amalia Gladhart translated the dark, recursive, and fascinatingly structured Jaguars’ Tomb for Vanderbilt UP and Angélica’s name is now well enough known in the Anglophone world that I expect there will be more translations, perhaps published by us, perhaps elsewhere. Having more than one publisher means there is more than one team of publicists and editors talking up the books and there is more chance the books will find readers.

We were incredibly fortunate to work with Angélica — and her three translators — on these three books. I send my sympathies and condolences to Angélica’s family and those who knew and loved her and I am grateful that we have her books.

More

website

El Pais obituary

Locus obituary

Sofia Samatar on Kalpa Imperial

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Not Entirely Comfortable

Thu 20 Jan 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Richard Butner | Comments Off on Not Entirely Comfortable | Posted by: Gavin

Another strong trade review came in for Richard Butner’s forthcoming debut collection, The Adventurists, this one from ALA’s Booklist which spotlights a few stories and like all of us who enjoy the book try and capture something of the author’s play with time and memory and then declares it:

“A worthwhile collection of not entirely comfortable stories exploring the past, the present, and the future.”

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