In which we are awarded!

Sun 1 Nov 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Lovely news from San Jose: Gavin & Kelly have been awarded the World Fantasy Award, Special Award, Professional, for Small Beer Press and Big Mouth House: yay, we say, yay! John Kessel, whose collection we were proud to publish, was on hand to pick up the Howards which seemed appropriate as it is all about the books.

Other winners include: Jeff Ford (twice!), Margo Lanagan—Jeff and Margo: they rule this award!—Rick Bowes, Kij Johnson, Paper Cities (ed. by Ekaterina Sedia), Shaun Tan, and Michael Walsh of Old Earth Books for his two Howard Waldrop collections.

—

Don’t know that we’ll keep counting, but this year we did some gender breakdown of a few of the genre awards and back in August we posted the  World Fantasy Award nominees and the gender breakdown:

  • 26 men
  • 21 women

And the winners  (not counting the two extra Life Achievement Awards to Jane Yolen and Ellen Asher):

  • 6 men (1 AUS, 5 USA)
  • 4 women (1 AUS, 3 USA)

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.


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


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


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)


The Hortlak, part 2

Thu 30 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Frank Marcopolis completes his podcast of Kelly Link’s story “The Hortlak.”

Here’s Part 1.

If you like the free audio stories, check out Frank’s site. He’s podcasting some of his own stuff as well as Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and others.


Ian McDowell’s unique antho

Mon 6 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Want a handwritten story by Kelly about a “rapidly expanding cat”? There’s just over a day left in Ian McDowell’s auction of to benefit his father which includes that and some other exclusives. Here’s the auction and here’s Ian on the book:

Hand-written fiction by NEIL GAIMAN and othersIn 1989, Ian McDowel (MORDRED’S CURSE, MERLIN’S GIFT, “Geraldine” in Poppy Z. Brite’s LOVE IN VEIN) wrote CRAZY CREATIVE WRITING: STORY STARTERS AND WORD BANKS, a reproducable workbook for teachers of grades 1-4, which was published in 1995 by Carson-Dellosa, an educational pubilshing company based in Greensboro, NC.  The book consisted of 30 “Story Starters” — that is, the first paragraphs of stories, such as “Donna was in her room, playing a game on her computer.  Suddenly, a big fat toad hopped out from under the bed and jumped on the monitor.  “Give me a kiss, Cute Stuff,” it said.  “I’m a prince.”  The reader was then instructed to WRITE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT on the ruled lines following the first paragraph, and use as many words as possible from the provided “Word Bank” while doing so.  Each Story Starter was accompanied by an illustration and 12-16 blank lines on which to write, as well as the aforementioned Word Bank.

I’m Ian and will stop talking about myself in the third person now.  In the later 90s, I started pestering various professional writer friends to complete a page in one of my contributor’s copies of this book.  Quite a few complied.  NEIL GAIMAN took the story of the Frog Prince described above.  POPPY Z. BRITE took the story of Abe, the boy who’d always wanted to join the army, in a VERY perverse direction.  Caitlin R. Kiernan wrote a lovely mini-story about Hannah, who woke up one day to find she’d turned into a horrible monster.  Kelly Link wrote about Julia and her rapidly expanding cat, turning it into a mini-epic.  Other contributors included Mehitobel Wilson, Phillip Nutman, Rain Graves, and Rachel Manija Brown.

The stories are short, but they’re original pieces of fiction which will never be published anywhere (I’m pretty sure they can’t be, as the begining of each story, the part I wrote, was Work-for-Hire and presumably still owned by Carson-Dellosa, who would not be pleased with the decidedly adult direction some of these authors took the material).  Neil Gaiman’s, for instance, is 150 words long, and like most of the other contributions, imaginative and laugh-out-loud funny.  Each contribution is in the author’s own hand writing.  You can’t have a more limited edition, or a more unique collectable (and yes, I know “more unique” is a barbarism) than this.


Pretty Locus Monster

Mon 29 Jun 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Pretty MonstersExcellent news! Kelly’s story “Pretty Monsters” received a Locus Award this weekend:

which is awesome!

Cutting and pasting from the gender and country breakdown of previous posts: who are they, where do they come from?

Winners (if a person is in a category twice they were counted twice. Numbers are hopefully accurate):

  • 10 men (USA)
  • 3 women (USA)

Nominees:

  • 50 men (32 USA, 9 UK, 6 AUS, 3 CAN)
  • 16 women (14 USA, 1 UK, 1 AUS)

Podcast of “The Hortlak”

Thu 25 Jun 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

magic for beginnersBy Frank Marcopolis courtesy of Creative Commons. He’s split the story into two: part one is here, part 2 TK.

“Can Erik and Batu revolutionize convenience retail? And what about all those zombies? ”
– Is the All-Night Convenience a metaphor for life itself? If so, how?
– What other symbols are used in the story (if any)?
– Is a new style of retail, one that will usher in a revolutionary era, on the horizon?
– Do you believe in ghosts? Zombies? Dog ghosts? Why or why not?
– Do you sleep in pajamas?
– What themes/issues/whatevers from the story do YOU want to talk about?

I’d love to know your thoughts. Listen to the story, and let’s discuss in the comments section.


Award Season: Locus

Wed 27 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Almost forgot one of the award lists that came out recently: way back in April (where’s the telescope? Who can look back that far?) the finalists for the Locus Awards were announced. A bit of a disappointment in the collection department that John Kessel or Ben Rosenbaum didn’t get nominated, c’est la vie with awards seasons though.

Here’s the Small Beeriana-connected stuff (a bit of a reach, but Kelly still works here) and it was nice that the final Year’s Best volume received a nod:

Carrying on from the gender and country breakdown of previous lists: who are they, where do they come from?

Finalists (if a person is in a category twice they were counted twice. Numbers are hopefully accurate):

  • 50 men (32 USA, 9 UK, 6 AUS, 3 CAN)
  • 16 women (14 USA, 1 UK, 1 AUS)

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
5 men (2 UK, 3 USA)

FANTASY NOVEL
3 men (3 USA)
2 women (2 USA)

FIRST NOVEL
4 men (1 UK, 3 USA)
1 woman (1 USA)

YOUNG-ADULT NOVEL
4 men (1 CAN, 1 UK, 2 USA)
1 woman (1 AUS)

NOVELLA
4 men (2 UK, 1 USA, 1 CAN)
2 women (2 USA)

NOVELETTE
4 men (1 UK, 2 USA, 1 CAN)
1 woman (1 USA)

SHORT STORY
3 men (3 USA)
3 women (3 USA)

ANTHOLOGY
5 men (3 USA, 2 AUS)
2 women (2 USA)

COLLECTION
4 men (4 USA)
1 woman (1 USA)

EDITOR
4 men (3 USA, 1 AUS)
1 woman (1 USA)

ARTIST
5 men (4 USA, 1 AUS)

NON-FICTION/ART BOOK
4 men (2 USA, 1 UK, 1 AUS)
2 women (1 USA, 1 UK)


Small Beer, little baby

Wed 20 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant are the proud parents of a baby. Ursula Annabel Link Grant, originally due on June 16, showed up three and a half months early. Born in February 2009, they weighed 1 lb 9 ounces and has spent the last three months in the neonatal intensive care unit at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass.
We expect to bring Ursula, who is currently well over 4 lbs, home in about two weeks. Right now we’re very thankful for the fabulous NICU nurses and doctors, the Ronald McDonald House in Springfield, the support of our friends and family, and also that we have health insurance.

Small Beer Press’s generous parental leave policies mean that Kelly and Gavin will take some time off in the next year or two. The latest issue of LCRW has been delayed until summer but otherwise everything should remain on schedule. Because premature babies don’t travel well, our travel schedule will be curtailed for the foreseeable future. We will post pictures in a couple of weeks.


Animaux de pierre

Tue 12 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Looks like Kelly’s story “Stone Animals” is a nominee for le Prix Imaginales in the Nouvelle category, yay!

In other news, we just received a copy of the Recorded Books audio version of Pretty Monsters and it is tres jolie. It can be downloaded from various sites or gotten from your library: encourage them to stock it on CD, or Playaway—a fave version of some people we know who love to go hiking and listen to books.


Get your summer read on

Mon 4 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Benjamin Parzybok, CouchAwesome news: Couch is on the Spring/Summer 2009 Indie Next List for Reading Groups. We’ll have a reading guide for Couch up within the next few weeks and if anyone wants to contribute, you know what to do. We haven’t seen the paper version of the list yet, but we like that Couch is in #9—and that the recommendation comes from Florida, yeah! (That’s a long way for a Portland-based couch to travel….)

Other recs include a couple of Kelly’s fave books, Molly Gloss’s bestseller The Hearts of Horses and Tana French’s In the Woods, and, in the YA guide, Kelly’s collection!

9. Couch by Benjamin Parzybok
“Couch follows the quirky journey of Thom, Erik, and Tree as they venture into the unknown at the behest of a magical, orange couch, which has its own plan for their previously boring lives. Parzybok’s colorful characters, striking humor, and eccentric magical realism offer up an adventuresome read.” –Christian Crider, Inkwood Books, Tampa, FL

The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss
(Mariner Books, $13.95,  / 0547085753)
“Molly Gloss tells a heartwarming story of a young woman who earns her way as a ‘horse gentler’ on the eastern Oregon frontier during the early 1900s.” –Sandra Palmer, Wy’east Book Shoppe & Art Gallery, Welches, OR

In the Woods: A Novel by Tana French
“This is a contemporary murder mystery set in Ireland with just the right hint of spookiness and great layers of psychological suspense, as a pair of detectives seek to solve the murder of a young girl in an ancient stand of woods. The current murder is foreshadowed by a crime against three young children many years ago that may hold a key to the new mystery.” –Sandra Palmer, Wy’east Book Shoppe & Art Gallery, Welches, OR

And here are some suggestions of great titles for reading groups of younger readers…

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson

Chains by Laurie Halse AndersonThe Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Pretty Monsters: Stories by Kelly Link, Shaun Tan (illus.)


Unicorns

Sat 2 May 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Seeker's Bane CoverKelly wanted to note that while Gavin is off not shipping and reading Libba Bray’s Going Bovine she has been busy re-reading for the nth time P. C. Hodgell’s The God Stalker Chronicles (two separate novels, God Stalk and its sequel Dark of the Moon) and Seeker’s Bane (two separate novels,  Seekers Mask and its sequel To Ride a Rathorn) which Baen books recently reprinted. For which: yay and thanks! And, also, there must be more in this series, right?

A few of Kelly’s favorite books are here and occasionally she adds books to LibraryThing (but the widget links to Amazon, meh).

Armor-plated unicorns!


The Faery Handbag on BBC7 (for 6 more days)

Mon 16 Feb 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Listen to “The Faery Handbag” (“A distraught young woman reveals how she has lost both her boyfriend and grandmother to a magical handbag.”) on BBC 7’s Fantastic Journeys. It’s live for 6 more days.


The Faery Handbag on BBC Radio 7

Mon 9 Feb 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Next Sunday at 6.30 PM GST, BBC Radio 7 will air their adaptation of Kelly’s story “The Faery Handbag.” (It also re-airs at 00:30 that night.) We’re very excited and curious to see what it will sound like!

“The Faery Handbag” is the third (of four) episodes in a show called Fantastic Journeys—you can go and listen (for another 6 days) to the current show, “Fifty Cents,” by Tim Powers and James Blaylock.


Locus, Hugos

Tue 3 Feb 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Looks like the 2008 Locus Recommended Reading List is out and it includes some of our books. If you’re so inclined, you can vote for these in the Locus Poll (soon) and the Hugos (now). (Don’t forget Couch!)

Also on the list were The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 2008 as well as Kelly‘s collection Pretty Monsters, and the title stories, “Pretty Monsters” and “The Surfer.”

There are a ton of great books on the list, some of which are pasted below. Since we stopped reading for The Year’s Best in late November, and we usually read most of the material for the book from November to January, this list is certainly not exclusive. The Amazon links below are cut (libraries and indie bookshops are it) and the cut’n’paste was done on the fly, so it’s a sample of stuff we liked, but very messy!

Read more


Reading postponed

Wed 7 Jan 2009 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Hey, due to inclement weather (2″ of ice and more falling from the ice hills masquerading as clouds above) Kelly’s reading in Portsmouth tonight has been postponed until March 11th. Sorry!


Pandemonium tonight

Tue 25 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Tonight we’ll be in Boston with Benjamin Parzybok for his reading at 7 PM at Pandemonium Books (ok, Cambridge) then Ben will take his tour back to the west coast. So far no one on the east coast has brought a couch to a reading. Boston couch carriers, represent! (We do have some nice pics of couches, will get those online soon.)

Kelly is being interviewed by Lizzie Skurnick at the 21st Annual Indie and Small Press Fair in a couple of weeks in NYC:

Sat. Dec 6th, 5:00 PM: Author and Indie Publisher Kelly Link interviewed by Lizzie Skurnick
Kelly Link has built a serious cult following with her uncanny and affecting fiction. She flirts with fable, fantasy, and horror and stands among the best of short-story writers. After two collections, Link’s new book, Pretty Monsters, is targeted at young adults — though she hasn’t turned down her sublime strangeness one bit. Link is also the co-publisher of Small Beer Press. Lizzie Skurnick is a writer, editor, poet, and, according to Forbes.com, “one of the smartest bloggers on the Web.”

The Table of Contents for Jonathan Strahan’s The Best SF and Fantasy of the Year Vol. 3 is out and includes Joan Aiken’s “Goblin Music” from The Serial Garden, the title story of Pretty Monsters. Looks like another great book in the series.

Ben Rosenbaum interviewed on Sci Fi Wire (is there a Fantasy Wire?):

“My feeling, after reading Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, that its protagonists, the Dashwoods, have so much verve, aplomb and admirable self-control that they are a bit underchallenged by merely arranging for matrimony in Georgian England, and that if, say, they were living on the body of a colossal naked giant who was living on a fractal series of ever-larger naked giants…”

Wish Christopher Barzak’s new book a happy birthday!

Shelf Awareness had a note on Powell’s new solar array which will provide 25% of the power for their warehouse—another reason to support this amazing indie bookstore. In our town there’s a fantastic toy store, A2Z, which installed something like 40 panels to (again) provide about 25% of their power. You can see a snapshot of the power generation system every 15 minutes or so—not quite yet as it’s a bit dark and rainy here this morning.


Cream City Review competition

Sat 15 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly, along with Lee Martin and Arielle Greenberg, is one of the judges for the Cream City Review writing contest:

Deadline for current year’s contest: December 20.
Fee: $15/story (no longer than 30 pages) or 3-5 poems, payable to Cream City Review
Each entrance fee includes the Spring 2009 cream city review wherein the winners will be published.

Prize: $1,000.00 plus publication.

Address your submission to one of the following:

The A. David Schwartz Fiction Prize
The Beau Boudreaux Poetry Prize
or The David B. Saunders Award for Creative Nonfiction

and send your entry to:
cream city review
Department of English
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
PO Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53201

Submissions must be typed, double-spaced, and include the author’s name and address plus an SASE (for results only). Simultaneous submissions are acceptable as long as cream city review is notified in the event the manuscript is accepted elsewhere. The reading fee, however, is non-refundable.


Fri 14 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

We just got a draft of the cover of the next LCRW from Kevin Huizenga and it is all the happy we hoped it would be.

Tonight at his reading at Powell’s, Ben Parzybok isn’t promising anything, but may take off his clothes, run screaming, or just do some gentle knee bends. (For his reading at Amherst Books, we’re going to give free copies of the book to anyone who brings a couch!)

The Oregonian writes about moving a couch:

Ten years ago, Benjamin Parzybok and Laura Moulton bought a couch at the William Temple House thrift store. They didn’t have a truck or enough money to pay anyone to help them move it and started carrying it down Northwest 23rd Avenue.

Parzybok and Moulton had to go about 14 blocks, “and it was a really heavy couch,” Parzybok said. The couple had to stop and rest every half-block or so, and what better place to rest than on the couch?

People stopped. They talked. They offered to help. This being Portland, they asked if moving the couch was some kind of performance art.

Pretty Monsters is on one of the best reading lists around, The Winter ’08 /’09 Children’s Indie Next List, at #9:

“You’ll find a little bit of everything in this book, from a mother-daughter team of ghost collectors to a cult-like organization waiting for aliens to return to Earth. Kelly Link gives us great stories in this collection — a wonderful (and thought-provoking) read.”
–Samuel Morris Barker, Summer’s Stories, Kendallville, IN

Miette reads “The Specialist’s Hat” for her Bedtime Story podcast.

Read “The Specialist’s Hat”? How about “El Sombrero del Especialista“? Traducción: Hernán Ortiz y Viviana Trujillo. Presentado en Descarga Fractal:

“Cuando estás Muerta,” dice Samantha, “no tienes que lavarte los dientes…”
“Cuando estás Muerta,” dice Claire, “vives en una caja, y siempre está oscuro, pero nunca tienes miedo.”


Fri 14 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

We just got a draft of the cover of the next LCRW from Kevin Huizenga and it is all the happy we hoped it would be.

Tonight at his reading at Powell’s, Ben Parzybok isn’t promising anything, but may take off his clothes, run screaming, or just do some gentle knee bends. (For his reading at Amherst Books, we’re going to give free copies of the book to anyone who brings a couch!)

The Oregonian writes about moving a couch:

Ten years ago, Benjamin Parzybok and Laura Moulton bought a couch at the William Temple House thrift store. They didn’t have a truck or enough money to pay anyone to help them move it and started carrying it down Northwest 23rd Avenue.

Parzybok and Moulton had to go about 14 blocks, “and it was a really heavy couch,” Parzybok said. The couple had to stop and rest every half-block or so, and what better place to rest than on the couch?

People stopped. They talked. They offered to help. This being Portland, they asked if moving the couch was some kind of performance art.

Pretty Monsters is on one of the best reading lists around, The Winter ’08 /’09 Children’s Indie Next List, at #9:

“You’ll find a little bit of everything in this book, from a mother-daughter team of ghost collectors to a cult-like organization waiting for aliens to return to Earth. Kelly Link gives us great stories in this collection — a wonderful (and thought-provoking) read.”
–Samuel Morris Barker, Summer’s Stories, Kendallville, IN

Miette reads “The Specialist’s Hat” for her Bedtime Story podcast.

Read “The Specialist’s Hat”? How about “El Sombrero del Especialista“? Traducción: Hernán Ortiz y Viviana Trujillo. Presentado en Descarga Fractal:

“Cuando estás Muerta,” dice Samantha, “no tienes que lavarte los dientes…”
“Cuando estás Muerta,” dice Claire, “vives en una caja, y siempre está oscuro, pero nunca tienes miedo.”


Tue 11 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Listen to Ben Parzybok on kboo.fm today at 1.30 EST (10.30 PST).

  • SciFi Dimensions is having their annual auction—so you can go pick up some good books and support the site, including Couch and The King’s Last Song.
  • Tamora Pierce on Pretty Monsters; PM is a Staff Pick at Powell’s; Creative Commons blog; what about that YA label; a book collector writes about PM and The Serial Garden;  an illustration for Stranger Things Happen.
  • A week late: slow zombies, please: “Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.”
  • Go on: declare yourself Indiebound.
  • Leslie & the Badgers “Old Timers” is sweet.
  • Garrison Keillor (sorry Alan!) gives the Pres-Elect some good advice.
  • A review of LCRW 21 on Xerography Debt. The good news from Davida is that the print edition will keep going by partnering with Microcosm for printing and distribution (so keep sending zines in for review!):
  • “I very much enjoyed reading LCRW #21; it’s primarily fiction but also includes poetry, nonfiction, and comics. The layout and design is impeccable: crisp, clean, beautifully formatted. Carol Emshwiller is a regular contributor and the material itself covers a wide range, from odd boarding schools to a strange co-worker writing code (I don’t want to say much more for fear of giving it away), and there isn’t a single wrong note in here.”
  • Michelle Tea, Jess Arndt, Andrea Lawlor, Miel Rose, Sara Jaffe read in Northampton on Friday, 11/14, 8 PM, at Pride & Joy.

Circuit City: why does none of the coverage of CC’s bankruptcy cover the part where they fired all their long-term staff and hired people who didn’t know anything about what they were selling and sales, duh, fell?

Duh again: The government doesn’t want to prop up the car companies: yay! These same companies have been selling more fuel-efficient cars in Asia and Europe than here. And now they’re surprised to find that this may have been a mistake.


Tue 11 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Listen to Ben Parzybok on kboo.fm today at 1.30 EST (10.30 PST).

  • SciFi Dimensions is having their annual auction—so you can go pick up some good books and support the site, including Couch and The King’s Last Song.
  • Tamora Pierce on Pretty Monsters; PM is a Staff Pick at Powell’s; Creative Commons blog; what about that YA label; a book collector writes about PM and The Serial Garden;  an illustration for Stranger Things Happen.
  • A week late: slow zombies, please: “Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.”
  • Go on: declare yourself Indiebound.
  • Leslie & the Badgers “Old Timers” is sweet.
  • Garrison Keillor (sorry Alan!) gives the Pres-Elect some good advice.
  • A review of LCRW 21 on Xerography Debt. The good news from Davida is that the print edition will keep going by partnering with Microcosm for printing and distribution (so keep sending zines in for review!):
  • “I very much enjoyed reading LCRW #21; it’s primarily fiction but also includes poetry, nonfiction, and comics. The layout and design is impeccable: crisp, clean, beautifully formatted. Carol Emshwiller is a regular contributor and the material itself covers a wide range, from odd boarding schools to a strange co-worker writing code (I don’t want to say much more for fear of giving it away), and there isn’t a single wrong note in here.”
  • Michelle Tea, Jess Arndt, Andrea Lawlor, Miel Rose, Sara Jaffe read in Northampton on Friday, 11/14, 8 PM, at Pride & Joy.

Circuit City: why does none of the coverage of CC’s bankruptcy cover the part where they fired all their long-term staff and hired people who didn’t know anything about what they were selling and sales, duh, fell?

Duh again: The government doesn’t want to prop up the car companies: yay! These same companies have been selling more fuel-efficient cars in Asia and Europe than here. And now they’re surprised to find that this may have been a mistake.


Kelly in France

Thu 6 Nov 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Wonderful news from France: La Juene Detective et Autres Histoires Estranges received the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for Nouvelle Etrangere. The translator, Michelle Charrier, also won an award:

4) Nouvelle étrangère
 ► La Jeune détective et autres histoires étranges (recueil) de Kelly Link (Denoël)

6) Prix Jacques Chambon de la traduction
► Michelle Charrier pour La Jeune détective et autres histoires étranges (de Kelly Link) (Denoël)

Everything about this edition is great: the story titles (“Plans d’urgence antizombies”), the cover, everything. It’s a mix of stories from Kelly’s first two collections and it means that Pretty Monsters will probably come out over there soon.

There’s a new interview with Kelly in BoldType:

BT: What was the first story that truly scared you?

KL: . . . My sister and I both loved a picture book called Teeny Tiny and the Witch Woman. There was a drawing of a house in a forest surrounded by a fence made of human bones, and another drawing of the witch’s long, long fingers reaching out toward the bed where Teeny Tiny was supposed to be sleeping. We spent a lot of time poring over those pages. There was another picture book written and illustrated by Tomi Ungerer, called The Beast of Monsieur Racine, and we loved finding all of the bizarre details in the illustrations — a man with an axe stuck in his head in a crowd scene; a woman with a green face.

Green Man Review likes Pretty Monsters and Amazon chose it as one of the Best Teen Books of ’08.


Kelly and Holly Black in Albany on Sunday

Sat 25 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly and Holly Black will be taking a late autumn trip out to Albany, NY, tomorrow to read at Flights of Fantasy Bookshop at 4 PM or so. This Kelly’s last reading for a bit—you can order signed copies of Pretty Monsters from Flights of Fantasy or here.

“The Specialist’s Hat” is up for discussion at A Curious Singularity and recent Pretty Monsters reviews include two gazettes: the Montreal Gazette (Claude Lalumiere likes the weirder stories) and the Oklahoma Gazette (says, as part of a Halloween roundup, “She’s a true original”). The Brooklyn Paper has a piece on Brooklyn girls (see the comments for those who take things a mite seriously) and what they read:

Books: When Brooklyn girls hit the books, they devour the surreal short stories of contemporary writers like Kelly Link — whose latest is “Pretty Monsters.” “Whenever people buy her book, they smile at the cash register like they are buying some delicious type of ice cream or something,” said Emily Vaughn of Community Bookstore in Park Slope.


Kelly interview in PW

Mon 20 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Quick update on the new book. We are still (behind with) shipping copies (with buttons, stickers, &c.):

You can hear Kelly talk about her new book on Penguin’s Pretty Monsters page.

PW’s Rose Fox interviews Kelly in her Nuts and Bolts column:

In young adult books, there’s a sense of immediacy, of urgency. The stakes are high, which is something that’s often true in fantasy and science fiction as well. Are you the heroine or hero of a young adult novel, or a fantasy novel? You may well be the chosen one. Dragons or vampires are drawn to you. There are portals into other worlds that only you can access.

There was a review in Bookslut:

Pretty Monsters collects several previously published stories along with a new tale in a package that is directed at teens. Rounding out the title are illustrations from Shaun Tan whose own iconic and unusual vision of the world is a perfect match for Link’s. This is a perfect match of author and illustrator and a great introduction to an author who will be loved by teen readers.

A review in Time Out Chicago:

If her past books make up a haunted house, Pretty Monsters is more of a fun house. Of course, that means it’s still a lot of fun.


Listening while driving

Wed 8 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Went to Brooklyn to the Community Bookstore for Kelly’s reading, met lots of good people there and found that the store is as good as ever: they have a huge and tempting NYRB section, comfy seats, piles of interesting books not seen on other bookstore tables, and these people know books. Wish it were our local bookshop. But we have good ones here, so la. Also found there is a huge ad for Pretty Monsters in The Believer and one in The New Yorker (wow!).

Got to listen to the debate on the radio on the way back up to Northampton, which is one of the best car inventions there is, although there are some that aren’t that much, you can learn about it at this news online. Apparently Obama seemed to be debating the Penguin (“Eh? eh?”). These debates are completely misnamed. They should be renamed Presidential Candidates’ Talking Points as there’s so little actual debate. What about just letting the two of them have at each other and see if a discussion ensues? Sure, they must find each other tiresome, but Mr. V. Putin isn’t going to accept ” Two-minute answers, followed by one-minute discussion for each question.”

At some point as President one of these guys is going to have to actually get off the script and it would be nice to see them doing so. Obama at least tried to have a conversation a couple of times but apparently that’s not allowed to happen.

As for there only being 3 debates for the Presidency and 1 for the VP slot, there’s more debate at the average 7-11 over who should have slushees and who should have ice cream. Bah.

It was fascinating to listen to the debates and then to the various call-in shows as we avoided road works somewhere in the depths of Connecticut. No one seemed persuaded by the other guy and Obama seems to be taking the high road, so got to love that. One more debate to go, then 2 weeks of these two guys playing nice to each other and Palin doing all the mud-slinging, then it will all be over. Can’t wait.


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