The always-provocative Lidia Yuknavitch kicks off a series from the contributors to Other Voices Books’ Men Undressed: Women Writers and the Male Sexual Experience over at Meredith Resnick’s The Writer’s [Inner] Journey, with a probing look at how internal narratives of death, abuse, addiction and self-destruction impacted her writing and how she transcended self-imposed limits.
Speaking of Lidia, Chiasmus Media (they published my debut novel) is coming out of its hiatus and–seriously–looking for someone to run the show. This isn’t an opportunity that comes along every day. If you love being poor, are smart as hell, have artistic vision and business savvy, are more reliable than a seeing-eye dog, and know how to do tech shit, you should get in touch with them right away, and you should Mean Fucking Business.
In other non-Lidia-Yuknavitch news:
Flavorpill shoots out a dozen excellent choices in indie lit.
Joshua Simpson wins the quite cool Etgar Keret “Something Out of Nothing” art and design contest.
Anna Wood makes a pretty auspicious debut debunking the myths and mysticism of virginity over at The Nervous Breakdown.
Adrienne Rich is dead. Harry Crews is dead. Man. A lot of writers lost their formative influences this week.
Rob Roberge, whose Sunday essay is up today, loves Harry Crews. We’re going to serialize some of Rob’s memoir-in-progress, Your Life in Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, coming up soon. I like the idea of serializing things on Sundays. I’d like to serialize something else, too. If I’ve published you before and you know I like your work, you should email me about this. Really.
The Algonquin Books people made this for Michael Taeckens, upon his departure for Graywolf. It’s pretty freaking adorable. I feel insanely lucky to have hooked up with Algonquin. They’re the complete opposite of snark and disposability over there. In publishing, if anything can be described as a “class act,” you should hold on tight, I think.
My Columbia College Chicago colleague, Nami Mun, who can flashdance like nobody’s business, is getting the 21st Century Award. Um, for her writing, not her dancing. Nami is a brave, beautiful writer. She was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. If you like Stephen’s writing, like Happy Baby, you’d probably also really be into Nami’s novel, Miles from Nowhere, so you should check it out.
Stacy Bierlein frequently sends me texts that make me cackle inappropriately in public, and then crack up to myself for days afterwards. Here, she interviews herself and is snippy about it.
Recently, I posted on Facebook that it turned out I’ve been buying the wrong bra size my entire life. In the same status update, I said my car had just been towed. I got about 50 comments immediately. One of them was about the car. Just saying: next time you need a conversation starter, you want to bring up bras. Someone also linked this. I love Samantha Bee. It’s not a girl crush exactly, but it’s close.
I’m trying to get Richard Nash to make us a little Rumpus video. That’d be fun.
Happy April Fool’s Day. I’m an easy mark. I never know what day it is. But this time, I had to program the date into the Rumpus system to make this stuff go live, so maybe for the first time in my life, I won’t get duped.
