Monday, September 29, 2014

5. PRIDE GOETH BEFORE

‘Pride Goeth Before’ is basically an altar boy memoir, as much as that’s possible—the performative nature of the role being one that lends itself better to fiction. The narrator’s rival/inspiration is an off-Broadway belter gigging as cantor whose carefully crafted femininity perturbs the congregation. An earlier version of the piece appeared in the debut issue of Mixed Fruit (check it out on page 11), and it continues to evolve. In the very first drafts of the story, the cantor’s owlness was much more explicit—she actually shape-shifted and flew around the rafters

Serving as an altar boy was such a formative experience, it continues to be a theme I can’t escape. I’m currently making an artist’s book called Catholics, where my bizarre altar boyhood is a major theme. Catholics won’t be done until Spring 2015, though, so meanwhile get your dose by pre-ordering The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales HERE.

Monday, September 22, 2014

4. THE BANSHEES

The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales, my forthcoming short story collection from Brooklyn Arts Press (pre-order it HERE!), features a cover image created by artist Alicia DeBrincat. The first thing I thought of when I saw it was ‘The Banshees’.


‘The Banshees’ is a story that explores a love triangle between three disaffected girls who are renegotiating their identities as punks. Spoiler alert: at the end of the story, Siouxsie Sioux—‘a throatfully cawing black-haired sun’—has a cameo, and she’s pissed, which makes everyone really uncomfortable. Watch this and imagine:


And here’s my own collage to accompany ‘The Banshees’:


My collage, awkwardly craftsy, is not afraid of being literal (Sharpied-on Siouxsie makeupreally?), whereas DeBrincat’s cover image, while it may use ‘The Banshees’ as a launching point, works to embody the character of the whole collection. 

The book comes out December 1, and you can pre-order it HERE. Ok, here's one more: 


Monday, September 15, 2014

3. GRIDLOCK

‘Gridlock’ has a history—an early draft of the story first appeared back in the early 2000s in the zine Glossolalia. That zine’s creator and publisher, Sarah McCarry, has since gone on to prove herself a publishing virtuoso: the second installment of her All Our Pretty Songs YA trilogy, titled Dirty Wings, came out earlier this year to rave reviews. The ingenious creative nonfiction chapbook series she edits and produces, Guillotine, has brought to light obscure musings from writers ranging from Bojan Louis to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to Mimi Thi Nguyen and Golnar Nikpour. And her blog, The Rejectionist, which sprang from her travails as a publishing-industry workhorse, continues to draw a devoted readership.

‘Gridlock’ has evolved a bit since it first appeared in Glossolalia—although its core remains: two women stagnate in a parked car at a gas stationeither one year in the future or one dimension to the left—and perhaps, more than anything else, it’s an erotic tension that keeps them both there. A later version of the story has since been featured in Metazen, and an even further evolved version appears in The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales, which you can pre-order HERE.

Meanwhile, enjoy the following two inescapable songs, which lilt forth from the gas station speakers at polarly inopportune times:



Wednesday, September 10, 2014

2. THE TACO GROUP

‘The Taco Group’ relates the tale of a post-apocalyptic kaffeeklatsch dedicated to founding a utopian city on the ashes of the city that came before. Unfortunately, the group devolves into Real Housewives-style infighting, and their often conflicting visions never get off the ground.

According to my artist’s statement, the story was inspired by a bunch of junk: 
... a couple of business cards I’d saved (one for a company that referred to itself as a Group, the other from a man I met in a sauna who asked for help building a virtual city), a book of baby names (the androgynous, melodramatic ones that are now popular), a shredded Styrofoam cup I passed on the street (peeled and cut in a way that resembled the Eye of Horus), the tangible comfort I feel when I see a taco buffet (it’s been too long).
I wrote the artist’s statement to accompany a performance I adapted from the story for the Breaking Ranks Reading & Exhibition held at the Headlands Center for the Arts. In addition to the artist’s statement, I letterpress printed a progress report, assembled a slideshow bordering on rudimentary animation, and handcrafted a taco buffet made of paper, glue, Mylar, and polymer clay.

Click HERE to pre-order The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales—a fiction collection that features ‘The Taco Group’ along with 21 other stories.

Friday, September 5, 2014

1. SPIEL

I’ll spend the next couple months posting about the 22 stories featured in my forthcoming fiction collection, The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales (which you can pre-order HERE!). 

The first story on deck is called ‘Spiel’, and it first appeared in Wigleaf. I made an accompanying collage that employs the dreaded Comic Sans—the perfect typeface to embody that place where kitsch becomes so sickly, the sugar self-combusts and an unexpected bitterness creeps in. Perfect for a shopkeeper narrator with a cynical relationship to her wares. Read the story here. And stay tuned for more …