This last month was, as I mentioned in my previous post, a tough one, but I have many reasons to be happy. Some of those reasons came to me in the mailbox lately, and I thought I’d share them with you, too.

Punch-Outs & Love: History-on-Strings by Red Shuttleworth

Is there anything better than getting a surprise chapbook in the mail? Red Shuttleworth sent me an inscribed copy of this beautiful book last week, and I devoured it. Red Shuttleworth is the read deal; his poems have grit and grime and all the heart in the world. No one writes the American West like Red.

After Alluvium by Thom Dawkins 

I had the good fortune to read this book while it was in its developmental stages, and as lovely as it was then, After Alluvium is even more striking in this slimmed-down version. I love Thom Dawkins’s ear for the poetic line, and his surprising musicality that reminds me, in its way, of Anne Sexton’s.

The Bible By Gregory Sherl by Gregory Sherl

I wish this book were in print now so that it could make you happy, too. Gregory Sherl is one of my favorite LAR poets (in fact, we’re quite proud that we were his first publication way back in our sixth issue), and I’ve been something of a proud poetic auntie watching his career grow. This new manuscript, which I highly encourage a publisher out there to accept right away, is a heartbreaker. For a sneak peek, you’ll just have to order a copy of LAR Issue 12, which will feature a poem from this collection.

Then there are the things I expect in the mailbox soon-ish, which are making me happy before the fact:

Sex With Buildings by Stephanie Barbé Hammer 

Stephanie Hammer is one of the smartest women I know, and I cannot wait to see what she’s done with her first poetry chapbook. With Stephanie’s exuberant imagination and the brains to back it up, I fully expect this chapbook to be killer.

Surrounded by Water by Stefanie Freele 

Stefanie Freele, our Fiction Editor at the Los Angeles Review, is already an important voice in the flash fiction world, and her second short story collection, just released form Press 53, will only solidify that position.

A Real Emotional Girl by Tanya Chernov

My writing partner and best poetic bud Tanya is expecting her first book this September. I’ve had the pleasure of reading is book throughout its development over the past few years, and I cannot wait to the rest of the world to read it, too.

I had high hopes for April. I’d been cruising right along with the last of the major revisions to my novel-in-progress, bringing to an end a years-long writing process. My agent was headed to town toward the end of the month, and I’d planned to have a completed manuscript ready to hand to him in person. The sun was even starting to peek out in the Pacific Northwest. Things were looking pretty good for April until the evening of the 4th, when I returned home from teaching a class and discovered that someone had kicked down the door of my home.

I still don’t know how to write about this. In fact, I feel rather sick trying to tell the story at all. But the scene that followed was what you might expect–I raced around from room to room to discover what had been stolen. Computer, check. Jewelry, check. Family heirlooms, check. Everything of any monetary value had been taken. Quite a few things of irreplaceable sentimental value, too. Then there were the odd things: a stick of deodorant. A can of pepper spray I’d taken off my keychain before air travel. A battered suitcase that I’d dragged all over at least five countries. The more I looked through my home, the more details of my personal life I discovered had been rifled through. I turned on every light in the house, and I let them burn all night.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the mid-2000s, I read an article that would change my life. That sounds terribly cheesy, but it’s true. I’d opened up Slate Magazine (this is back when I still read Slate–a bygone era when the “Arts” section wasn’t completely taken up with musings on popular television shows, but actually talked about culture from time to time) and found an article on small press books. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the greatest dangers in my going to any kind of literary conference (or, if I’m being honest, to the book store) is the sheer quantity of books I’m likely to lug home. Even if I’m trying to budget, I’m likely to come back laden down with titles. Even at my poorest times in my life, owning books was a priority. I’d willingly eat top ramen for the foreseeable future if it meant I had books in hand. Coming back from the AWP conference in Chicago, then, it wasn’t a surprise that my bags were far overweight, and that the good people of the O’Hare Airport were treated to the sight of my crouching awkwardly on the ground, rearranging my luggage until I could get the heaviest books in my carry-on. You don’t even want to know about the process of getting that carry-on into the overhead bin.

I’ve been delightedly working my way through that tower of books and literary journals in the days since returning home. Because I’ve been thinking so much about fiction lately (which is, I suppose, appropriate: I’ve been working through revisions to my novel-in-progress this week), I dove into the novels first.

And then I was very confused. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m back from five hectic but fantastic days at the AWP conference in Chicago. Those who went (and even those who didn’t go) are likely tired of hearing about the conference and the book fair, but I felt the need to throw my hat into the round-up ring: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s just a week away, folks. AWP’s 2012 conference in Chicago. By far, my favorite part of the conference is always the book fair. The panels and readings and off-site events in overly crowded (read: fire hazard, microbiologically menacing) venues are all well and good, but I love meeting other writers, picking up books that I’ve either been dying to read or that I’m hearing of for the first time, and getting a little star-struck and tittering like a little kid as some of my literary idols walk by.

I and the other editors of The Los Angeles Review will be holding court at Red Hen Press‘s booth in the book fair, and I’m already excited about meeting everyone who comes into Red Hen vortex. But I’m also looking forward to walking the book fair by myself. It’s a good chance to get my head out of our work at LAR and to see all the amazing stuff that’s going on in the small press world.

There’s one big problem with the book fair, though: the fact that you can walk up to a table you’re genuinely interested in, start looking at books, and be stared at so bleakly by a seated, wordless intern–one who’s either hung over or bound by a vow of silence–that you drop the book you had in hand and run for more promising territory. Maybe I watch too many horror films, but anybody sitting on a folding metal chair with a lowered head looks a little too much like the creepy girl from the movie The Ring.

But there are some very bright spots in the book fair–safe havens with friendly people, good books, and plenty of opportunities to have conversations with literary folk: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always enjoyed reading the Google search terms that direct people to my blog. One of my favorite Google referrals of all time was “trying to contact the version of me who lives on another planet.” I was sorry that my blog would have been of little help for that Google user, but not a little amused that someone out there was researching such an important topic. But at least once per day, I see some permutation of the question “how do I withdraw a piece from Submishmash?” or “what does it mean when my submission’s status is marked In Progress?” in this blog’s search results. If there are that many of you with questions about navigating submission managers, I think it’s time for a little public service announcement about all things Submishmash (a.k.a. Submittable).

First, a disclaimer: this is one lowly editor’s advice about how to understand and approach Submishmash/Submittable. Not all editors are the same in the ways they run their publications; while I am trying to give the most broad advice possible, I can’t speak for everyone in publishing. I also do not have complete and unending knowledge about the intricacies of Submishmash, as I do not work for them.

Okay. Are we good? Let’s talk about those little status indicators you see to the right of your submissions list. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the New Year weekend, I decided to take on Jeffrey Eugenides’s new book, The Marriage Plot. I’d been hearing buzz about it for some time, and had been told it was an Important Book. I’m not always so fond of the chosen ones of literary fiction (let’s face it: they’re pretty much always white men), but I gave this book a go. It was an interesting read, but less because of it’s incredibly predicable plot than because of Eugenides’s deeply strange characterization choices.

Let’s get the elephant in the room taken care of first: The Marriage Plot may just as well have been called Jonathan Franzen’s Plot. Eugenides essentially reconstructed Franzen’s Freedom–college-aged kid are all sleeping with one another, but they want to be sleeping with different people. None of the sleeping with turns out to be very satisfactory, and everyone is having crises about this sleeping-with situation. That’s all. Eugenides does toss in a little lightweight literary theory and cuts out the saggy middle-aged bits that Franzen includes, but we’re looking as the same, fundamental book.

But whereas there are authors–like Franzen–who put their characters through grave trouble and suffering of all kinds, then allow the characters to escape, grow, and triumph in some small way, there are also authors–like Eugenides–who put their characters through troubles, and then proceed to mock them; not only is The Marriage Plot a low-calorie version of Freedom, it’s also pretty snide. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was studying Medieval Literature at Oxford (I just rewrote that phrase about 20 different times in an attempt to make myself sound less obnoxious. This is the best version I came up with), I was surrounded by people who had a wide variety of motivations for studying the time period. I thought it would be cool to learn to read Middle English and to spend an intensive period of time learning about the English mystery plays. A small handful of my compatriots–well, fellow American expatriates in our big communal house in Shoe Lane–had other interests, including but not limited to feigning British accents to take back home with them to Kansas or Iowa (nearly everyone in the house but me, the lone Californian, seemed to be from Kansas or Iowa) or scouring the Oxfam shops to find tweed coats with elbow patches and pairs of flat-front pants to make themselves look scholarly.

I was chatting with one such guy–who I’m fairly sure ended up a local Republican politician somewhere in Kansas or Iowa–one morning before a lecture we were about to hear on medieval monasticism. He told me that he had entertained the idea of becoming a monk, but sighed and said that “the monastery just isn’t what it used to be. It’s so service-oriented these days.” I had to chuckle. Of course, my KansIowan classmate wouldn’t be any Abelard, able to keep a lovely lady on hand in the back room while he philosophized the day away. He would have to work with the poor, with the indigent, with the sick. Not what it used to be indeed.

But if I’m honest, I’d have to admit that I too had had a fascination with cloistered life. In fact, I think many of the young women with whom I grew up in a highly religious community felt, at one time or another, that if there were some sort of Protestant version of nuns, we’d sign ourselves up. While I no longer align myself with any religious group, I still understand the draw of that sense of purpose, of contemplation, of service, and of love. Of a radical commitment to an ideal rather than to the proscriptive path of marriage and family.

It was with that sense of fascination with the cloistered life that I found Mary Johnson’s new memoir, An Unquenchable Thirst. While I’m not generally a great reader of memoir, I practically gorged myself on this book. Johnson tells a fascinating story of growing from a young college student into a novice, a postulant, an avowed sister in the Missionaries of Charity–the order of nuns founded by Mother Theresa. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking lately about how much time I and other writer-types spend yakking away about our writing and about our industry. Of course, we spend a huge amount of time working on our books and trying to bring them to market, so it makes sense that we would want to talk shop now and then. The problem, though, is that it sometimes seems that writers and readers exist as different species: one creates the work with a great deal of fanfare and bloggery, and then the nameless, faceless other devours it in some dark corner of the universe. But when we writers are doing our jobs properly, we’re also readers. Big readers. I’m a firm believer that a writer who doesn’t spend at least as much time reading as scribbling isn’t serious about the work. If you want to make good books, you have to experience books. Read the rest of this entry »