The Invisible Valley on Samovar
Fri 30 Mar 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Austin Woerner, excerpts, Su Wei| Posted by: Gavin
This is neat: Samovar magazine is running a bilingual excerpt from Su Wei’s The Invisible Valley, with Austin Woerner’s translation running interspersed with the Chinese original. The excerpt is from the third chapter where hapless teenager Lu is sent to be a cowherd and meets what to him is a very strange group of people:
A Super-Intelligent Infection
Tue 27 Mar 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Abbey Mei Otis, Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Sometimes I get great emails:
“After I read this book, I woke up with bumpy, reddish growths along my spine. They burst, releasing marvels: aliens, robots, prefab houses, vinyl, chainlink, styrofoam, star stuff, tales from the edge of eviction, so many new worlds. Alien Virus Love Disaster is a super-intelligent infection. Let Abbey Mei Otis give you some lumps.”
— Sofia Samatar, author of Tender
Questioning the Paradigms
Tue 20 Mar 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Vandana Singh| Posted by: Gavin
This weekend Vandana Singh was interviewed on the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Podcast, which is featured on Wired. Although it has an odd title which doesn’t really fit the book or author (this is an author who whenever I talk to her she is always juggling 3 different tasks), it’s well worth a listen to try and catch up on some of Vandana’s thinking about the world, Arctic ice, the universe, and writing.
Since it came out last month Vandana’s first North American collection, Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories is shooting like a rocket through the sky and it’s looking increasingly likely that we’ll have to send it to back to the printer — always a cause for celebration! I am pretty optimistic when it comes to print runs:
Spreadsheets: There are 273 preorders for this title that publishes in 62 days.
Me: Everyone’s doing Just-in-Time Ordering these days. Let’s print 5,000!
And sometimes that means going over, oops, and even yet, sometimes the world is hungrier for a book than I expected. In which case everyone from the printer to the distributor to the bookstore to the author will be delighted — except for that period when it’s out of stock at the distributor, hmm.
The reviews have been pouring in from newspapers and magazines large and small:
“There’s a wonderful discordance between the cool, reflective quality of Singh’s prose and the colorful imagery and powerful longing in her narratives” (Washington Post) | “The capstone to this hopeful, enriching collection is the small masterpiece ‘Requiem.'”(Wall Street Journal) | “Rich, dense, and balanced.” (Tor.com) | “Singh’s compassionate imagination and storytelling talents are here clearly on display.” (Intergalactic Medicine Show) | “Singh underscores the ultimate point that stories make the world and the universe has a place for all of them.”(Woven Tale Press) | “Full of risky experiments that turn out beautifully: colorful, emotionally resonant, and consistently entertaining.” (Publishers Weekly [starred review])
And this review by Aditya Desai on Aerogram is particularly fascinating:
Singh is laying the groundwork attempt to re-write the plots of Chosen Ones, dystopian governments, and self-actualizing hero tropes common to Western literature, where the quest for “the meaning of life” is often seeking a single endpoint, an origin. Singh’s characters wish only to know for the sake of knowing. Life isn’t defined by linear time, it is the richness of experience.
And there’s be more reviews coming along soon.
Kelly and I have known Vandana and admired her writing for many years. One of her early stories, “The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet, was published in an anthology Kelly edited, Trampoline. Occasionally we’d run into Vandana at Readercon or at a Boston event and we’d talk about a collection but I don’t think it was until 2015 that I actually got Vandana to send us some stories.
A total bonus of publishing this book has been the reading the two essays Vandana wrote on the intersection of her work as a physics professor and her writing, one for Tor and one for Powell’s. Climate change is a semi-regular cause of personal despair, and these thorough and thoughtful essays are useful bulwarks against that.
You can read some of Vandana’s stories here: Life-pod · Wake-Rider · Ruminations in an Alien Tongue · Ambiguity Machines: An Examination; listen to Vandana on PW Radio with Rose Fox; or read an interview by Kylie Korsnack in the Los Angeles Review of Books: Transcending Boundaries, and of course pick up the book (or DRM-free ebook) here.
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 37
Fri 2 Mar 2018 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin
April 2018. 64 pages. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731470
LCRW is an occasional outburst of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and chocolate. Since here in spring 2018 publishing still seems to exists, LCRW 37 has been published. Release the kraken! Fire off the rockets! Sit on a comfy chair! Read it on the bus! Put the kettle on, love.
Here: Two Poems.
There: Three Poems of the Abyss.
New fiction from Maria Romasco Moore, Leslie Wilber, Howard Waldrop, Izzy Wasserstein, and James Sallis — who returns to LCRW for the first time since LCRW #14. Nicole Kimberling’s column “Sweet, Sweet Side Dish” might be about what you’re thinking of, if you’re thinking of eggplant. Those two, three, three — and then one more — poems are from Holly Day, Juan Martinez, Catherine Rockwood, and Michael Werner.
“Dying Light” by Maria Romasco Moore is on the 2018 Locus Recommended Reading List
Reviewers Say
“Quite a work, and not like anything I’ve recently read.”
— Rich Horton, Locus
Karen Burnham in Locus on Maria Romasco Moore’s “Dying Light” and 2 other stories: “As always with the best of speculative fiction, it is the the newest blend of the oldest ingredients that can move us most deeply.”
“Read it slowly and savor the language.” — SF Revu
“My very favorite story this year may have been another story from a veteran of both SF and Mystery: ‘Dayenu’, by James Sallis, from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. It’s an exceedingly odd and unsettling story, beautifully written, about a veteran of a war and his rehab – from injuries? Or something else done to him? And then about a journey, and his former partners. . . . The story itself a journey somewhere never unexpected.”
— Rich Horton, Locus
Table of Contents
Fiction
Maria Romasco Moore, “Dying Light”
Leslie Wilber, “Time Served”
Howard Waldrop, “Till the Cows Come Home to Roost”
Izzy Wasserstein, “Their Eyes Like Dead Lamps”
James Sallis, “Dayenu”
Nonfiction
Nicole Kimberling, “Sweet, Sweet Side Dish ”
Poetry
Holly Day, Two Poems
Juan Martinez, Three Poems of the Abyss
Catherine Rockwood, Three Poems
Michael Werner, “The Opossum”
Cover photo
Dawn Kimberling
From Three Abyss Poems by Juan Martinez:
The abyss never dreams.
He called late last night
to let you know: He forgot
to throw you a farewell party in this dream he did not have. . . .
Excerpted from “Time Served” by Leslie Wilber:
The first time Annie Savage stole anything, she was eight and living in a group home. She shared a bedroom with two other girls, improbably named Annie too. Maybe you wouldn’t be surprised to learn three young orphans named Annie became obsessed with the musical by the same name. The Annies stuck together, and were a perfect gang. Annie Z was a hulk of a girl, bigger than the other kids by a head and a large sack of flour. When one of the Annies absolutely needed something from any dust-up, Annie Z took it. Annie H’s family was from Mexico, so she was actually called Ana before taking up with the other Annies. She was the prettiest and best-mannered, the type of kid adults trusted, because she brushed her teeth without reminder, won spelling bees and helped with the dishes. Annie H smoothed out trouble the girls had with anyone so big and authoritative that Annie Z couldn’t handle them. My Auntie A was Annie S by this naming convention. She had a knack for being clever, sneaky and invisible. She was their mastermind and a thief. Stealing things started out of a perceived necessity. The Annies believed if one of them was cute enough and charming enough, she’d be adopted by a bazillionaire—as in the musical—and convince him to save the others as well. Annie H was their best bet. The girls began tireless efforts to dress her in the most adorable fashion. . . .
Excerpted from “Their Eyes Like Dead Lamps” by Izzy Wasserstein:
I saw the car coming from a long way off, first as a line of dust up along the ridge, then bending its way forward, disappearing and reappearing behind the hills. A black sedan, gleaming in the late afternoon sun, the kind of car only city people owned, all but useless in the winter. Most people along the banks of the Marais des Cygnes River had trucks, and the cars you saw were old and rusted and not bothered about the dirt that caked their sides. This car had the look of people who bothered. . . .
About these Authors
Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Tampa Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, and her books include Walking Twin Cities, Music Theory for Dummies, and Ugly Girl.
Juan Martinez lives in Chicago where he is an assistant professor at Northwestern University. His work has been collected in Best Worst American and has appeared in Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s, Huizache, Ecotone, Mississippi Review, NPR’s Selected Shorts, and elsewhere and is forthcoming in the anthology Who Will Speak for America? Visit and say hi at fulmerford.com.
Maria Romasco Moore’s stories have appeared in Unstuck, Interfictions, and Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction. Her flash fiction collection, Ghostographs, is forthcoming from Rose Metal Press. She is an alumni of the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop and holds an MFA in Fiction from Southern Illinois University.
Catherine Rockwood is an early-modernist and lapsed (alas) martial artist. She lives near Boston with her family. Poems in concis, the Fem, The Rise Up Review, Liminality, and elsewhere. Reviews and essays in Strange Horizons, Rain Taxi, and Tin House.
Best known for the Lew Griffin series and Drive, Jim Sallis has published 17 novels, multiple collections of stories and essays, four collections of poetry, a landmark biography of Chester Himes, and a translation of Raymond Queneau’s novel Saint Glinglin. He’s received a lifetime achievement award from Bouchercon, the Hammett award for literary excellence in crime writing, and the Grand Prix de Littérature policière.
Nicole Kimberling lives in Bellingham, Washington, with her wife, Dawn Kimberling. She is a professional cook and amateur life coach. Her first novel, Turnskin, won the Lambda Literary Award for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. She is also the author of the Bellingham Mystery Series.
Howard Waldrop, born in Mississippi and now living in Austin, Texas, is an American iconoclast. His highly original books include Them Bones and A Dozen Tough Jobs, and the collections Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, Night of the Cooters, Other Worlds, Better Lives, Things Will Never Be the Same, and Horse of a Different Color. He won the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards for his novelette “The Ugly Chickens.”
Izzy Wasserstein teaches writing and literature at a midwestern university, and writes poetry and fiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Pseudopod, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere. She shares a home with her spouse and their animal companions. She’s a graduate of Clarion West and likes to slowly run long distances.
Michael Werner’s work has been recognized with a Troubadour International Poetry Prize and an American Academy of Poets honorary prize. He has taught history, Latin American studies, and human rights at Moravian College, Iowa State University, and Laney College, among others. He was editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Mexico: History, Society, and Culture, which Choice named one of the academic books of the year. He presently lives in Jerusalem.
Leslie Wilber is a former newspaper reporter and current bicycle mechanic. She tinkers with words and bikes in Denver.
All That and All That and All That
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is texty. This is issue number 37, Spring (Northern Hemisphere), 2018. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731470. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow.
Prime quotes from Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
LCRW is (usually) published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · smallbeerpress@gmail.com · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. twitter.com/smallbeerpress
Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com), 21 Conz St., Northampton, MA 01060. 413-585-0414.
Subscriptions: $20/4 issues (see page 45 for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c.
Contents © 2018 the authors. Cover photo © 2018 by Dawn Kimberling. All rights reserved. Thank you, skilled authors and artists. Raise a glass of your favorite beverage with us as we celebrate Jeffrey Ford’s A Natural History of Hell winning a World Fantasy Award. And, a glass raised to the memory of Ursula K. Le Guin. And a glass and these walking shoes to every march there is against guns and fascism.
Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. Peace.