17. HEIR

Champagne, please! Tonight is the release party for my short fiction collection, The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales, out now from Brooklyn Arts Press! Click HERE to order it.

Included is a piece of flash fiction called ‘Heir’, which I adapted into a broadside printed on a manila envelope. The story’s young narrator stalks her uncle at a Salvation Army thrift store and pores over a collection of increasingly haunted objects until she encounters an old woman who may or may not be her grandmother’s ghost.

If you live in Iowa City, drop by the Paper Nest tonight between 5-7 pm, where the 'Heir' broadside will be on display. OR be one of the  first 50 people to order The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales from the Brooklyn Arts Press website, and receive a free letterpress broadside of one of stories featured in the collection. ORDER NOW to get yours!

IT'S OUT!!!

Today is the official release date of The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales! Buy it now from Small Press Distribution!

And if you're in Iowa City, stop by the book's release party at the Paper Nest this Friday, Dec 5 between 5-7 pm. I'll have collages and broadsides of select stories on display and will give a brief, informal reading at around 6. The Paper Nest is at 220 E Washington St, across the alley from Studio 13.

12. THE ONION’S TALE

‘An onion rolls into a natural foods store …’

Thus begins ‘The Onion's Tale’, a flash fiction piece included in The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales, a book you can pre-order HERE.

‘The onion is really cute,’ the story goes, ‘I mean really cute, its face smushed together, one of its eyes squeezed shut in a wink. It even has the most darling little hands, just beginning to nub out from between its skins.’ An ongoing crowd favorite, ‘The Onion’s Tale’ was inspired by a panicky experience inside the smug and predatory lifestyle behemoth, Whole Foods. I also adapted the story to a broadside, which you can read more about here. And GUESS WHAT? The first fifty people to pre-order The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales from the Brooklyn Arts Press website will get a FREE limited-edition broadside from a story in the collection—yours could be 'The Onion's Tale'!

10. I AM SO ALONE

In 2009, Lindsay Lohan granted an interview to Us Weekly where she aired her emotional vulnerability in a way that felt shocking. You can read the full text of the interview—and it really is worth reading—here.

In the interview, Lohan brags about collaborating with J. C. Penney's, admits to getting into it with TV C-Lister Drea de Matteo, and acknowledges being devastated by her breakup with Samantha Ronson. Her career was more freshly in the toilet at the time: it felt like a terrible step to open up to a publication that had thrived on pointing out her every misdeed since she started out as a stage-mom–dominated child star. 

This was the point where I first acknowledged that Lindsay is delusional. I sat down to write a story that encompasses her desperation, and titled it after the Us Weekly cover: ‘I Am So Alone’. Here’s the broadside I adapted from what I wrote:

What sort of world had been built for Lindsay, I wondered, and then I used Millions of Milkshakes as a launchpoint. The planet of ‘I Am So Alone’ consists of a surface made of helium balloons suspended from a central cherry-pit core. The strings that connect the balloons to the pit form the planet’s mantle. By the story’s end, a disoriented narrator (Lindsay) performs a sexualized parlor trick Dina probably taught her at a young age.

Pre-order The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales—the collection that features 'I Am So Alone'—HERE! The first fifty people to order the book from the Brooklyn Arts Press website will receive a free limited-edition broadside adaptation of a story from the collection—and yours could be 'I Am So Alone'!

8. TOY STORY

‘Toy Story’ relates an interaction between two classic toys in their break room. I adapted it into a broadside, which you can learn more about here.

'Toy Story' is also included in my forthcoming Brooklyn Arts Press collection, The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales, which is now available for pre-order. The first 50 people who order from BAP's website will receive a free broadside adaptation of 'Toy Story' or another piece!

Monchichi, based on the early 1980s anthropomorphic monkey-doll phenomenon (spelled Monchhichi), has recently had her heart broken, and melodramatically pokes at her chef salad as she attempts to recover. Here she is in happier times:

Meanwhile, her stickler co-worker, Madball, regales her with libertarian propaganda. His political philosophy is a natural extension of his upbringing as a popular toy that tried to be as gross as possible:

Pre-order The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales HERE.

Printmaking as claiming space

Amze Emmons has posted a write-up over at Printeresting of the recent Queer Communities in Print portfolio exchange that was exhibited at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery in conjunction with the SGC International conference in San Francisco. Check out the photos! 

Participants included Felipe Baeza, Anima Metalica D.J., BOKA (April Katz and JoAnn Boehmer), Emmy Bright, Ian Cozzens, Jill Fitterer, Thea Gahr/Collectiva Cordyceps, Jennifer Hughes, Graham Kolbeins, Delia Kovac, Jaime Knight, Chucha Marquez, Dutes Miller & Stan Shellabarger, Heidi Ratanavanich & Eileen Shumate, Patrick Reed, Gavin Rouille, Nicholas Shick, Miriam Klein Stahl, Corinne Teed, Mary Tremonte, Lena Wolff, and Meg Turner. You can take a closer look at my piece, 'Socialites', here. 

New broadside for Queer Communities in Print

I letterpress printed a broadside for the Queer Communities in Print portfolio exchange at the upcoming 2014 SGC International Conference in San Francisco. A limited number are available for purchase at Big Cartel, and you can view the prints made by all the exchange participants at an exhibit starting March 20 at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery. 

'Socialites' is a short story that revolves around an anachronistic trip to the Vatican by the publicly rich. The piece captures their humanoid sort of disconnect, their simultaneous ignorance and omnipotence, and the naive way in which they're debauched. There is an aesthetic tension between Xerox and fine press (partly because of a bad lockup after a long night at the press!), and between a Futurist/Constructivist geometry and the medieval feel of colors like brown, red, black, and white. Collaged strips of found paper invoke light: sun-bleached cardstock, the gray haze of the photocopier bed, and rows of embossed circles like dressing-room vanity lights. 'Socialites' will also be featured in my short story collection forthcoming from Brooklyn Arts Press.

Writing for Visual & Material Genres

I'm really excited to teach a class at the UI Center for the Book this Spring: Creative Writing for Book Arts: Writing for Visual & Material Genres. The interdisciplinary class is for both writers and visual artists, and asks how material and visual forms present, comment on, and/or merge with textual content. In what ways do we balance readability and individual expression when writing and designing published forms? The class will emphasize tactility and mark making, looking at literature as a physical process, as well as a material product. It will explore a variety of book-related genres and media, including broadsides, chapbooks, concrete poetry, comics, zines, and artist’s books.

Above is a poster I letterpress printed to promote the class. I used craft foam, a scratch-negative photopolymer plate, a found copperplate block, and metal type (see the lockup below, thanks to Pamela Olson!).

LOOK!

My broadsides are now for sale over at Big Cartel. Go get 'em here!

New work in The Chariton Review

The Spring 2013 issue of The Chariton Review features five poems I wrote and adapted to broadsides. You can subscribe to the magazine here—the new issue, edited by James D'Agostino, looks great. To see some of the broadsides, visit my website. 

Mission Creek Book Fair this Saturday!

This Saturday, April 6, is the Mission Creek Book Fair, and I'll be sitting at a table with some comics and broadsides (including this Mission Creek collaboration with Roxane Gay). I'll be sharing a table with fellow cartoonist and UICB student Cody Gieselman (who recently posted this essay on SIFT's blog). If you're in Iowa City this weekend, come by The Mill (120 E Burlington St) some time between 11-7.

Broadside with Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is reading this Tuesday as part of Iowa City's Mission Creek Festival, along with John D'Agata and Andre Perry at Prairie Lights. I collaborated with Roxane on this broadside featuring her short story, "What Long Legs Mean," which will be available for sale at the reading. Printed using handset type at the UI Center for the Book, the broadside is printed on repurposed manila folders and posterboard. To see other broadsides I've printed, click here. The reading starts at 7 and is free.

Photos from SH IFTS

Here are some photos of the broadsides I had on display at Berkeley's James Rowland Shop a couple weeks ago. The space seemed made for them! To read their text, visit my website. 

Flash Wednesday.8

Here's one last June installment of Flash Wednesday! I made a broadside of this story, which is the title piece for my art show this Friday at James Rowland Shop. Check out the broadside here. 

Shifts

My shift starts at 8:30. Belladon’s starts at 11. Sometimes we trade shifts, but always, always, we stay within the realm of our own.

The way Belladon does his job is like this: he struts. He’s majestic in his brown paper briefs, a grease spot marking the very nose of their slope. My uniform—which I wear even when I work the 11—my uniform is more modest: a burgundy velvet cloak. The way I do my job is still unclear.

Sometimes working the 11 makes me feel foreign, Belladon tells me. And when we trade shifts, it feels like I’m coming home. Belladon lies a lot. That’s how he gets me to take his shift.

The cook is sorting through tubs of coleslaw with a Sharpie, hastening their expiry dates with crunching strokes of his wrist. Is it a wrist? No. It’s the graceless place where his hand meets his arm, a collision.

Lately, we’ve noticed groundcherries poking out from between the tubs of coleslaw, finishing off their growth with husky bobs. Belladon says it’s because we’ve stopped ordering sauerkraut. The stink kept the weeds at bay.

I’ve never felt foreign, exactly, here inside my cloak, but then I’ve never felt the urge to strut either. Whether I’m the 8:30 or the 11, it’s always been Belladon’s body that explains my own.

**********

Belladon has stopped wearing his briefs. Are you working the 8:30? I ask. He tells me no. We’ve created a new shift, he says, to fill in the gap between the shifts that already exist.

And there’s no uniform?

More like there’s no copyright. We’ve bumped up its expiry date. The sight of a naked man has finally surpassed being embarrassing.

I shuck a groundcherry and pop it in my mouth. I study Belladon’s penis, which is thin and craggy, like a long shred of cabbage. The cook unloads chestnuts from a grease-stained paper bag. The place where his hand meets his arm crackles.

I reach around inside my cloak for my penis. All I can feel is forest, cicada shrieks, the lusty smell of dusk. I stagger, I tear at the night. I brush past a halo of pubic hair, push into the thicket, further until I trip on a freshly cut stump. Horror is lush in my throat. This, I think, is the nature of doom: the restless mortar between plastic tubs of slop.

Broadsides on display this Friday at JRS

I'm moving to Iowa this fall to study at UI Center for the Book, and so am getting ready to say goodbye—for now—to the Bay. If you're in the area this Friday, June 29, come say hi/bye at James Rowland Shop in Berkeley, where, for one night only, they'll be showing a collection of broadsides I letterpress printed. Each one features an original short story or poem, is printed on re-purposed office supplies, and will be selling for cheap! The show, titled             SH IFTS, will be up from 7-10 pm, and there will be pizza and drinks! James Rowland Shop is located at 2447 Dwight Way at Telegraph. 

Flash Wednesday.7

If last week's Flash Wednesday was (allegedly!) about Tom Cruise, this one's (allegedly!) about Lindsey Lohan. To see a letterpress broadside of this story, click here!

I Am So Alone

When I walk, my feet squeak between the balloons that form the surface of this earth: blue and pink and milky yellow. Squeak. Sometimes I fear I’ll fall right through, and feel the slime-coated grit of the stone in the middle, the cherry pit to which the balloons are tethered. I work my tongue around inside my mouth, trying to make myself a map. What else can I do, when beyond each step lies a bog—cleavage squeaking—a bog that longs to absorb what’s left of my career? Squeak.

Toothpaste. Sometimes I find it clinging to the ground, dulling the colored mounds as I stumble my way toward the club. I wonder if I forgot to rinse. My gums taste dry: some blood, maybe, a speck of cocaine. But no sign of mint. I work my tongue around some more. I run my fingers—squeak—along the chalky gunk on the ground. Tastes like melted ice cream. Wait. That’s not the club I’m headed toward—it’s the soda shop. And who’s that outside smoking? Fuck, it’s Drea de Matteo.

BAM! She puts out her smoke on a pink balloon, right at its apex, where all its color gathers in a nipple. It shrivels and gasses down a crevasse, and the whole front corner of the soda shop—which was built on this pink balloon—the whole front corner crashes, fizzes, crumbles in a pile. I wait for her to say Come at me, bitch—this is what she always says when she sees me. Instead, she sneers and tells me the power’s out. I watch the empty calories—sorbets, goo ripples, sickly speckled mint—flow out from the rubble in rivulets, pastels veining out across the blistery land.

The thing is, I think I’ve almost got it. My tongue learns from its mistakes, working nonstop, cartographing a path of minimal humiliation. Come at me, bitch, Drea finally says, and to stall for more time, I tell her I’ve been approached by JC Penney to create a fashion line. What the fuck did you just say? She’s so quick to judge. Just like every other person on this earth, she’s planted herself between my happiness and me. In a flash, I envision the pulp, the place between the pit and the skin, the mantle made up of thousands of tautly white strings. This is where the vitamins are. I place my lips in my palm, pucker them so as to birth a map. As Drea claws at my hair, I hold out my hand with a look of triumph. Lying in my palm, cradled by the graceful swoop of my lifeline: a cherry stem in a perfect knot. 

Kelsey Street Broadside!

The Contemporary Writers Series at Mills College hosts poets Renee Gladman and Rena Rosenwasser tonight in celebration of Kelsey Street Press. Emji Spero and I, with assistance from Lara Durback, designed a broadside featuring both Gladman's and Rosenwasser's work. The letterpress broadside is structured as a diptych that displays excerpts from each writer and incorporates chance elements: on Gladman's side, a gouache wash (shown at left) and on Rosenwasser's, a splash of India ink. The broadside is part of a series the Mills College Book Art department produces in conjunction with CWS. It will be for sale tonight at the reading, which starts at 5:30 pm and takes place in the Mills Hall Living Room. 

I put on the best clothes I own and passed hors d'oeuvres

I just finished this broadside, which is a heavily fictionalized account of catering a children's birthday party. I wrote the piece last year, and, in a way, it prefigures the wedding reviews I've been writing for this blog: it's told from the point of view of an acerbic caterer and highlights the more sinister aspects of ritual. It does, however, run a little more freely into the realm of the absurd. I'm not sure how I feel about the visual results—I tend toward a cleaner aesthetic. The content of this piece, though, is so chaotic and debauched, I figured it was a good excuse to lay it on thick. To see more broadsides, visit my website.

An onion rolls into a natural foods store . . .

I recently finished printing a broadside that features the story of a cute little onion lost in the vast, chaotic hell of Whole Foods. You can look at it here.

A broadside, in case you're wondering, is a print where text takes precedent over image, sometimes to the point where words and letters loosen a bit from their meanings. My broadsides are less experimental than many in that I pretty much stick to blocks of prose. But I still love the tension that happens between a story's content and the contexts that form around its visual presentation.

There are a bunch of other broadsides posted over at my website.