The phenomenal Kathie Bergquist (perhaps the coolest person I can call “my former student”) is launching Ms. Fit, a “web ‘zine dedicated to health, fitness, and wellness from a body-positive, LGBT-friendly feminist perspective.” Look, if you know me, you know I’m not the target audience for a fitness magazine, no matter how rad it is. But if you would ever consider running for any reason besides being pursued at gunpoint, and you’re also an interesting, thinking person who wants to put a fork in your eye when trying to read most fitness magazines…well, this is probably going to rock your world, so check it out.
Chicagoans, mark your calendar for next Sunday’s salute to The Beautiful Anthology, co-sponsored by Sunday Salon and The Nervous Breakdown, and look ahead to December 9. for the book fair at The Empty Bottle.
Don’t live in Chicago? PEN USA has one on December 1 for you LA/Palm Springs area people too, with the absurdly funny and bad-ass Tod Goldberg and Maggie Downs.
The Privacy Illusion. It’s funny because it’s terrifying and true.
And yeah, privacy. The plot thickens with this whole Petraeus thing. A “dear Abby” styled letter? Seriously?
On Thursday I flew to and from Minneapolis to attend the Consortium sales conference, where the various indie presses distributed by Consortium pitch their spring titles. I got up at 4:30 to board a flight, and was back at the Minneapolis airport twelve hours later. I felt like George Clooney in that movie. I don’t like to fly, which you wouldn’t know to look at how much time I spend on planes. By the end of the day my back was killing me because Spirit airlines’ seats don’t recline and I was sitting in hotel conference room chairs all day and carrying a gargantuan handbag stuffed with books. But I got to represent some 25 writers, like Stephen Graham Jones and Jen Michalski, and you guys know Rumpus regular Rob Roberge, and presses like Dzanc Books, and its imprints Starcherone, Black Lawrence, and of course Other Voices Books, and talk about how seriously great what these writers and publishers are doing is, to people who actually get paid a salary to be there and listen and give a shit, so it was all pretty fabulous, actually. It was a beautiful day. If someone had told the 22-year-old me that someday this would be my life, I would have thought it sounded cooler than heaven. And I would have been right.
An interview with Dinty W. Moore in the new Bookslut.
Philip Roth claims he’s “done.”
Michael Kimball on Other People. Wow. That scene in Michael’s novel, Us, where the husband and wife start keeping the lights on 24/7 in order to create the illusion of prolonging their time before the wife’s inevitable, zooming death, was one of the most memorable, vivid and harrowing things I’ve ever read, so at this point, Michael has me at hello.
You’re not reading this from Canada. I’m happy for you. For me too.