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From Stephen Elliott
...moreElla snorted a last bit of smoke from her nose, like a dragon, and flung her butt in the creek. “That’s not a job, Soph. That’s slavery. There are child labor laws. I bet you could call social services on your mom and they would take you away like that.” Ella snapped her fingers.
Food, drink, fortune-telling, live music…is there anything about the release party for Michelle Tea’s new novel that doesn’t sound amazing?
The book is Mermaid in Chelsea Creek, new from McSweeney’s McMullens; the refreshments are pierogi, chocolate, and cocktails; and the entertainment includes Annah Anti Palindrom, Daniel Handler, and of course, Tea herself.
...moreIf Roxane Gay’s recap didn’t fully satisfy your AWP thirst, get quenched with these snazzy photos of our event with McSweeney’s at 826 Boston headquarters!
...moreIf any Rails Developers out there are looking for part-time (possibility for full-time) work, our friends at McSweeney’s seek help updating and expanding the McSweeney’s iOS App, the Internet Tendency, and their online store.
Also, check out McSweeney’s Garage Sale; they’re selling books and back issues starting at two dollars!
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McSweeney’s & The Rumpus Proudly Present:
Click Here to Purchase Tickets!
Friday, March 8th, 7pm at 826 Boston (3035 Washington St. Roxbury, MA 02119)
Tickets are $5. All proceeds will be donated to 826 Boston!
...moreSpeaking of publishing innovations, SF Weekly‘s current cover story, “Storytelling 10110001101,” by Alee Karim, chronicles some recent forays into spinning narratives in the electronic age.
Karim focuses on two enterprises. The first is Madefire, a company creating interactive comics for the iPhone/iPad that differ markedly from earlier, laughable attempts at “motion comics.” The other is Ying Horowitz & Quinn, which is a supremely lawyery-sounding name for a group of former McSweeney’s employees producing striking digital literature.
...moreCome out this Thursday night to The Makeout Room from 7-10 for McSweeney’s annual Holiday Party!
Tickets can be purchased here and guests receive a free copy of the Believer or Lucky Peach Magazine, treats from Dandelion Chocolate, Tiger Beer, Holiday Eats, and Unquantifiable Entertainment.
...moreNext week, on November 24 and 25, at 5pm, KCRW will be broadcasting (and streaming on KCRW.com) a radio show created by our pal Rickard Parks.
The show was first featured in McSweeney’s and includes helicopter crashes, “murmuring tumors,” and original performances by:
...moreWayne Coyne, Michelle Martin Coyne, Steven Drozd, and Scott Booker (Flaming Lips), Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Eleanor Friedberger (Fiery Furnaces), Jack Hitt (This American Life, Harper’s), Paul F.
Already overwhelmed by thoughts of Thanksgiving?
Want a menu that teeters on the line of conventional and culturally innovative? Look no further than McSweeney’s Thanksgiving Gallimaufry! The online booklet features recipes from their cookbooks, At Home on the Range by novelist and Rumpus contributor Elizabeth Gilbert and Margret Yardley Potter, Mission Street Food and the quarterly food journal Lucky Peach.
...moreMcSweeney’s brand-new poetry series begins tomorrow evening in San Francisco.
The inaugural reading will feature writers Allan Peterson, author of Fragile Acts (a Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection), Rebecca Lindenberg, author of Love: An Index, and Zubair Ahmed, author of the forthcoming City of Rivers.
...moreMcSweeney’s is accepting submissions for their Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award.
“This memorial award is intended to aid a young woman writer of 32 years or younger who both embodies Amanda’s personal strengths—warmth, generosity, a passion for community—and who needs some time to finish a book in progress.”
More information on the contest after the jump:
...moreMcSweeney’s recently published How Music Works, a book by David Byrne that explains all aspects of music, from creation, to distribution, to performance.
In recent years, Byrne has released chapters of the book as individual works: this TED talk about architecture’s effect on music; and this piece for Wired about record distribution, in which he interviews Radiohead about their [then] recent “pay what you wish” release of In Rainbows, as well as explains exactly how the money, in a traditional major label record deal, from an album purchase is distributed.
...moreBeck has announced that his latest album, Song Reader, composed of “twenty songs existing only as individual pieces of sheet music” to be given life by the reader, will be released in December 2012 by McSweeney’s.
“Song Reader is an experiment in what an album can be at the end of 2012—an alternative that enlists the listener in the tone of every track, and that’s as visually absorbing as a dozen gatefold LPs put together.”
...moreWith time waning in the electoral race between Obama and Romney, the lack of energy and enthusiasm is striking.
Obama’s reelection seems to be met with the proverbial sound of crickets chirping — a sound indicative of apparent voter apathy. Disillusioned by unmet expectations, and unimpressed by what this president has delivered while in office, those who got him into office in the first place seem to have thrown in the towel and are standing idly by this time round.
...moreEarlier this week, McSweeney’s published an excerpt from the next installment in its Voice of Witness book series.
In case you’re unfamiliar, Voice of Witness—which also functions as a nonprofit—produces works that call attention to social injustices carried out on international and domestic scales.
...moreMcSweeney’s is throwing a release party for John Brandon’s newest novel, A Million Heavens.
The event will feature the author and musical accompaniment. Monday, July 30th, 6:30pm at Amnesia (853 Valencia). FREE.
...moreIn a thought-provoking Daily Beast essay about Daniel Tosh’s “rape joke” at the Laugh Factory, Rumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist clarifies the distinction between using humor “to cope or to point out the absurdity of a situation” and making a joke to humiliate, threaten, or assert power over another person.
...moreMcSweeney’s interviews Rebecca Lindenberg about her first book Love, an Index, making poetry out of Facebook statuses, “maximalism,” and more.
“I think there is a general misconception that you write poems because you ‘have something to say.’ I think, actually, that you write poems because you have something echoing around in the bone-dome of your skull that you cannot say.
...moreUR Chicago interviews McSweeney’s editor Eli Horowitz in anticipation of his appearance at Columbia’s Story Week. Horowitz offers thoughts on publication, his book The Clock Without a Face, Adam Levin bobbleheads, and being inspired by facts.
“Just doing something out of pure imagination is confusing and almost a little scary to me.
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I was somewhere in a big room in an old apartment in New York. The room was in a brownstone, or limestone, and had what appeared to be twenty-foot-high ceilings. There were baroque moldings around the ceilings, around the tops of the radiator covers and on the mantelpiece.
...moreMcSweeney’s interviews Diane Williams, author of this month’s Rumpus Book Club selection, Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty. Williams discusses the humor in her short story collection, being read to as a child, and contemporaries versus dead heroes.
“Elemental and timeless.
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Rumpus Book Club author Adam Levin’s highly anticipated new book, Hot Pink, is coming out from McSweeney’s. We’ve got an exclusive look at all three covers. Take a closer look after the jump:
...moreThere’s a series of articles published by McSweeney’s that is re-contextualizing the state of the publishing industry. These essays are set out to address the facts which are often obscured by the fraught and perilous language abundant in the publishing industry dialogue, constantly warning us of its impending doom.
...moreVia McSweeneys:
“When me get back to apartment, after cookie binge, me can’t stand looking in mirror—fur matted with chocolate-chip smears and infested with crumbs. Me try but me never able to wash all of them out. Me don’t think me is monster.
...moreMcSweeney’s and David Chang’s new hunger-inducing venture, Lucky Peach, is out now. Check out the McSweeney’s attention in the Wall Street Journal.
The first issue is ramen-themed. Being that there’s some sort of transitive property of common interest among those who like food, indie publishing and technology—Lucky Peach will also come in the form of an ipad app (coming next month).
...moreMcSweeney’s is expanding evermore, this time to include a readership of youngsters and their literary-minded parents.
This month they are coming out with McMullens, their children’s book imprint, set to publish around 12 books a year. In true McSweeney’s form, the books will have that small-press specialness and dust-jackets-that-turn-into-double-sided-posters style surprises.
...moreVoices of Witness, the nonprofit bookseries imprint of McSweeney’s has a new book coming out in July but you can pre-order it now!
Patriot Acts: Narrratives of Post-9/11 Injustice compiles the narratives from those afflicted by the slew of injustices after 9/11.
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John Sayles is a force of nature, a do-it-yourself renaissance man—director, actor, screenwriter, script doctor, novelist.
Adam Levin, author of the former Rumpus Book Club selection, The Instructions has won the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award! Congratulations to Adam (and McSweeney’s)!
...moreOur friends over at McSweeney’s have sent us a picture of the cover art for the soon-to-be-released A Moment in the Sun, by John Sayles:
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