News, publications and blog for the author of AM/PM (Featherproof Books) and Museum of the Weird (FC2).
I’m in Chicago. Last night there was a storm that shook the house and flooded the streets. This afternoon, Zach and I went to yoga and balanced it out by eating a box of shells and cheese with a can of chili in about 45 seconds. I want to barf, but instead I’m going to go to a party at the Poetry Foundation.
well anyway later
Friends Mary and Zach came to town for a few days of fun. Mary is moving to LA and needed a place to put her cats up. We ate breakfast tacos and scones and Mary held my hand and repaired my glasses. I made them each a smoothie with bananas and guava and crushed nilla wafers for their trip out of town.
patron saint of burritos
I’ve been feeling a bit down lately. Today I ran on a treadmill while watching a television show featuring a bear in a cage. I watched the bear walking back and forth in its cage and thought to myself, Does that bear shit in the woods? (By “lately” I mean “for the past seventeen years.”) Oh, but then I found a nice blog and it cheered me. I’m gonna turn slacks into shorts in her honor.
Soon, I’ll take a trip to Albuquerque with my girl Lesley. She just texted to say that the DQ has mini-size now so we can do cool treats on the hour. Things are looking up.
SUCH BEAUTY.
My favorite parts of AWP included but were not limited to reading at the zoo (stories by Mike and Tim were highlights), reading at the literature party (holy crowd), then putting on my flats and dancing (always dance when the DJ brings groupies), sitting next to Jamie at the JMWW reading and hearing his good news, feeling like I was in many warm rooms with people I love both personally and professionally, saying hello to folks from FC2 and hearing their work, having a great meeting with Emily about the book, hangouts with old friends Tom and Charlie and new friend Amina, getting to know a few very kind and solicitous District residents (though what’s up with your waitresses, really), and seeing old friends from acronyms ASU and TSU and experiencing major hugs with my girls Mary and Lindsay and Jac and Sarah and Wolfe and seeing but not spending enough time seeing Zach and Aaron and Elizabeth and Matt and Gene and Jenny and Sasha and Molly and I missed doing some stuff and did some other stuff and found a cheese plate and there was simultaneously not enough time and far too much time with the cheese plate. Now I’m back home where it’s a temperature that properly sustains human life. As soon as I got back, my body put roots into the ground. I have eaten three tacos in two days and slept 12 hours. Good to see y’all. Back to work, y’all.
The UA Press catalog is out, and with it, the cover of Museum of the Weird. The art is by Zach Dodson, who is half of the team at Featherproof and designed everything about AM/PM.
September 2010
(The above is actually the next-to-last draft, which is the last draft I have in high res. Behind the scenes! It smells like bananas back here. Anyway check out the catalog if you’d like to see the final colors, which are pretty much the same but with a black line on the plaque and a slightly deeper sea green in the background.)
Not to get too sentimental about Zach, who is away from the Internet this week because a swimming pool in Arizona was calling, but I really couldn’t be more pleased with the way the cover turned out, and I’m grateful to FC2 for allowing me to work with my friend, who is a genius, and perfectly captured the menagerie feeling of the book. You might think it is difficult to make the distinction between a plate of hair and a trichobezoar, but Dodson makes it simple. I am a factory that produces only excitement.
I’ve got meatloaf in the oven. It’s making the house smell nice.
The Chicago trip was crazy fun as anticipated. On Monday, I got in early and took one of those naps that divides one day into two. When I woke up, Blake was there and Zach took us to Mr. Pollo where we ate good chicken and two different types of plantains. We met Ally at No Coast and friends began to filter in, Angeline and Johnny and Jac and Mary and Lindsay among them. I met Kathryn Regina and Sam Pink, who each read funny and good words. It was a small room and a standing crowd, which gave it a party feel, like everyone just happened to stop talking to listen to someone tell a story. The mic was doing some reverb stuff the whole time, but my story was supposed to be kind of awkward and overloud so I tried to work with it. Blake read from “The Ruined Child,” one of my favorites from Scorch Atlas. A band played, a dance party broke out, a hole appeared in my jeans. We went to a late-night Mexican place that served a small plate of meat with a corn tortilla warm over top as an appetizer, and brought us a dish of limes when they saw we had beers. I leave Texas and eat nothing but Mexican food, go figure.
The next day, I went to H&M and Kyle Beachy‘s class at the Art Institute, where I read from AM/PM and a new story and his smart students asked me good questions. We talked about artists and the Internet, blogs, David Foster Wallace, Wittgenstein, and ritual. I could tell that Kyle is a smart teacher and a good one. Then I went back to H&M, then Angeline and Johnny took me to eat the greatest chicken pot pie made by human hands and then it was off to Quickies, where I read with a whole host of excellent folk and nearly all of the Dollar Store Tour roster, including Aaron and Caroline, plus Richard Thomas, who I had met the night before. Lindsay Hunter read a hilarious story and made everyone excited that Featherproof is doing her book next year. I read over the allotted five minutes and they whistled me off the stage but I fought hard and took Hunter’s whistle away and threw an elbow at Hamilton.
In the morning, I had brunch with Zach, Mary, Blake, and Aaron. I ate salmon and regretted it later when I sat on an airplane next to a man wearing a weightlifter’s tank top and shorts and smelling distinctly like a squat rack.
I’m glad to have an excuse to go to Chicago more often than once a year. I do think that if I lived there, I would spend all my money on good food and all my time at the gym, working it off. Speaking of, it turns out that cumin in the glaze is a nice touch for meatloaf.
A drum circle seems to have broken out under my window. I think it’s important for me to write some fiction tonight.
Man seriously, sometimes I think about completing years of training and dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Adobe Creative Suite and becoming a graphic designer. It’s real fun to do; I like fonts. I could only do it for a living if someone wanted to pay me $65k to screw around and make one smallish poster every two months. I think it can happen. I’m going to move to California in advance.
The poster’s almost done for Five Things. I took a vintage photo and did the old-school cut out thing like in old ads when they had scissors and not the Adobe Creative Suite. I just have to wait on one band to confirm, and then Zach (an actual designer with some ideas about art) will put a logo on it for me (impossible in Picasa, impossible without thumbs) and then I will send it to my venue man Warren and he will have it made into a poster! It takes a village for me to get anything done.
My friend Meagan and I came up with our roller girl names in Eugene while reading a package of bacon: Side Meat and Fatty Part. We have this move where we hold hands and do a clothesline maneuver on unsuspecting members of the opposing team and audience. Say “Fatty Part” out loud. It has a good sound.
I’m thinking of organizing an offsite reading/party for the Texas Book Festival. Trouble is it’s Oct 31-Nov1 and I might have to compete with every Halloween party in town. I could set out bowls of cold spaghetti and peeled grapes.
If you're looking for exhilirating feelings, try running on a moving walkway
I’m home and now my luggage is home as well. We arrived separately. Turkish spent a couple days peeing on the rug I’d been meaning to throw away. Fortunately it was sitting on linoleum and I was able to scrub for a few hours and get all the dried stuff off the floor.
Excitement: A very kind review from Molly Templeton in the Eugene Weekly. My conversation with Zach is up over at Powell’s Books. He’s real funny. He’s working on a surprise that will be in the next Take The Handle and I cannot wait to look at it. Also, my Recommended Reading list is up. I talk about the golden age of children’s lit and then I give a posthumous shout-out to Shirley Jackson.
After a little worth-it wait, SKINEMAX I is alive and intense. The animation’s killing me. I want a bigger screen to look at it.
Featherproof Books is excited, no, totally pumped, to announce our biggest event the year: The Dollar Store Summer Mega Tour! That’s right, we’re taking this renowned reading series on the road: packing 7+ of our beloved writers in a van, buying tons of dollar store junk, and hitting 11 cities in 14 days.
For three years, The Dollar Store has sold out its hometown venue with its blue-collar literature, absurdist humor, and a circus of junk. This summer, Zach Dodson, co-founder of featherproof books, will host a month long Dollar Store tour that kicks off June 28th, and will hit Austin, on Sunday July 5th at 8 PM , at Scoot Inn.
Austin, Sunday July 5th
8pm, $1
Scoot Inn
1308 E. 4th Street @ Navasota
Austin, TX 78702
Stealing from the improv community’s bag of tricks, The Dollar Store uses a “suggestion” for the pieces performed in the show. Each writer or comedian is given an item purchased at a local dollar store (mundane to insane) and a month to craft a story that involves the item as directly or obliquely as the performer wishes. The show has been featured on National Public Radio and in newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times.
The tour will include the following authors: Amelia Gray (AM/PM, Featherproof, 5 Things Austin reading series) Aaron Burch (Hobart), Caroline Picard (Green Lantern Press, The Parlor reading series), Zach Dodson (boring, boring, boring, Featherproof, the Show ‘n Tell Series), Mary Hamilton, (Quickies! reading series) Jac Jemc ( My Only Wife, Dzanc Books), and Blake Butler (Scorch Atlas, Featherproof, Ever, Calamari, Lamination Colony). It will also feature local Austin writers Ryan Markel and Owen Egerton.
These performers can’t wait to hit Austin as they spread dollar store junk throughout the United States. Zach Dodson, as well as the other touring performers are available for interviews. More information for the Dollar Store reading series can be found at www.dollarstoreshow.com.
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Featherproof Books is excited, no, totally pumped, to announce our biggest event the year: The Dollar Store Summer Mega Tour! That’s right, we’re taking this renowned reading series on the road: packing 7+ of our beloved writers in a van, buying tons of dollar store junk, and hitting 11 cities in 14 days.
For three years, The Dollar Store has sold out its hometown venue with its blue-collar literature, absurdist humor, and a circus of junk. This summer, Zach Dodson, co-founder of featherproof books, will host a month long Dollar Store tour that kicks off June 28th, and will hit Austin, on Sunday July 5th at 8 PM , at Scoot Inn.
Austin, Sunday July 5th
8pm, $1
Scoot Inn
1308 E. 4th Street @ Navasota
Austin, TX 78702
Stealing from the improv community’s bag of tricks, The Dollar Store uses a “suggestion” for the pieces performed in the show. Each writer or comedian is given an item purchased at a local dollar store (mundane to insane) and a month to craft a story that involves the item as directly or obliquely as the performer wishes. The show has been featured on National Public Radio and in newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times.
The tour will include the following authors: Amelia Gray (AM/PM, Featherproof, 5 Things Austin reading series) Aaron Burch (Hobart), Caroline Picard (Green Lantern Press, The Parlor reading series), Zach Dodson (boring, boring, boring, Featherproof, the Show ‘n Tell Series), Mary Hamilton, (Quickies! reading series) Jac Jemc ( My Only Wife, Dzanc Books), and Blake Butler (Scorch Atlas, Featherproof, Ever, Calamari, Lamination Colony). It will also feature local Austin writers Ryan Markel and Owen Egerton.
These performers can’t wait to hit Austin as they spread dollar store junk throughout the United States. Zach Dodson, as well as the other touring performers are available for interviews. More information for the Dollar Store reading series can be found at www.dollarstoreshow.com.
Featherproof Books is excited, no, totally pumped, to announce our biggest event the year: The Dollar Store Summer Mega Tour! That’s right, we’re taking this renowned reading series on the road: packing 7+ of our beloved writers in a van, buying tons of dollar store junk, and hitting 11 cities in 14 days.
For three years, The Dollar Store has sold out its hometown venue with its blue-collar literature, absurdist humor, and a circus of junk. This summer, Zach Dodson, co-founder of featherproof books, will host a month long Dollar Store tour that kicks off June 28th, and will hit Austin, on Sunday July 5th at 8 PM , at Scoot Inn.
Austin, Sunday July 5th
8pm, $1
Scoot Inn
1308 E. 4th Street @ Navasota
Austin, TX 78702
Stealing from the improv community’s bag of tricks, The Dollar Store uses a “suggestion” for the pieces performed in the show. Each writer or comedian is given an item purchased at a local dollar store (mundane to insane) and a month to craft a story that involves the item as directly or obliquely as the performer wishes. The show has been featured on National Public Radio and in newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times.
The tour will include the following authors: Amelia Gray (AM/PM, Featherproof, 5 Things Austin reading series) Aaron Burch (Hobart), Caroline Picard (Green Lantern Press, The Parlor reading series), Zach Dodson (boring, boring, boring, Featherproof, the Show ‘n Tell Series), Mary Hamilton, (Quickies! reading series) Jac Jemc ( My Only Wife, Dzanc Books), and Blake Butler (Scorch Atlas, Featherproof, Ever, Calamari, Lamination Colony). It will also feature local Austin writers Ryan Markel and Owen Egerton.
These performers can’t wait to hit Austin as they spread dollar store junk throughout the United States. Zach Dodson, as well as the other touring performers are available for interviews. More information for the Dollar Store reading series can be found at www.dollarstoreshow.com.
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