New review: The Story of How All Animals Are Equal

Just came across a thoughtful review of The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales in The Pleiades Book Review. Jared Wolfe writes, ‘Runkle proves to be a fearless proponent of imaginative power and willingness to push boundaries.’ Buy the book from Brooklyn Arts Press!

Plans

I have new fiction featured in The Collagist! The story, 'Plans', relates yet another wedding disaster excerpted from The Hitch: An Agamist Manifesto, my ongoing material novel (you can learn more about it here!). 

Relationships as Collage

Anna Mebel wrote a new review of The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales for PANK. About the two main characters in the titular story, Mebel says, ‘Runkle finds the tragedy and beauty in such mismatches—he treats relationships as collage.’ She also writes, ‘Runkle mixes fairy tales, love stories, satire, dystopia, prose poems, and careful observations of the ordinary.... The stories in the collection are driven by unfulfilled desire and the weight of unexplained, mysterious pasts.’ You can find the book over at Small Press Distribution.

Impromptu Nancy sez ...

Meeah Williams at sparrowmuffin recently reviewed The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2014). She really captures the collection's spirit with a Joe Brainard-inspired drawing of 'Impromptu Nancy,' who sez: 'Different enough to be worth reading.' You can buy the book from Small Press Distribution!

'Intimate in detail ... wide in scope and variety'

Foreword Reviews has posted a new review of The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales. They describe the collection's stories 'as intimate in detail as they are wide in scope and variety,' and calls them 'vignettes, hints at the lives of characters who come and go throughout the book, often while leaving an indelible mark on the reader.' You can buy the book from Small Press Distribution!

Jan/Feb Bestseller!

The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales spent another two months on Small Press Distribution's Fiction Bestsellers list! Learn more about the book (hanging in there at lucky #13!) HERE.

20. FACE

If you order The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales now, you may be one of the first 50 to get a free broadside of a story featured in the collection. Click HERE to order now!

One of the collection’s 22 stories is titled ‘face’. It’s an attempt to concretize the slippery but all-consuming phenomenon of Facebook, and it does so by starting with the following Stéphane Mallarmé quote:

All earthly existence must ultimately be contained in a book.

The story unfolds around a triangle modeled after the one that is central in the Jean Rhys story, ‘The Lotus’. The triangle consists of

… [A] retired stewardess and a young straight couple who suffer a bit from a case of the hipsters. The couple consists of Poney Marie, a Portlander fresh out of public policy school, and Remy, a young man from a wealthy background who helped develop the book. The retired stewardess, Myrne, is singled out as a political candidate for Poney Marie to mentor and possibly install as a puppet dictator in the newly opened district of the book.

The book refers to that materialized version of Facebook I mentioned. The above excerpt is from a series of blog posts I wrote about ‘face’ when I was deep in the midst of writing it. Not only did I bring in Jean Rhys, I also managed to reference Danielle Steel, Roberto Calasso, and Caitlin Horrocks. To learn more about how ‘The Lotus’ influenced my writing process, you can read those posts here.

And click HERE to order The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales, where you can read the full text of ‘face’!

19. SOCIALITES

‘Socialites’ is a story that first appeared in matchbook, and which I adapted into a broadside for the Queer Communities in Print Portfolio organized by Corinne Teed and Jaime C. Knight for the 2014 SGCI Conference. The portfolio, which includes contributors such as Thea Gahr, Miriam Klein Stahl, Patrick Reed, Edie Fake, Dutes Miller & Stan Shellabarger, and many others, has since gone on to be featured on Printeresting and exhibited at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery in San Francisco and Airspace Gallery in Philadelphia.

When I wrote the story, I was imagining a Paris Hilton-type narrator. Remember her? She’s desperate for you to not forget:

In ‘Socialites’, this narrator takes an anachronistic trip to the Vatican, where she displays a humanoid sort of disconnect, as well as a naïve debauchery characteristic of the rich. 

I thought the Vatican would be an ideally vague sort of setting: an architectural posture of eternity, a symbol of dogma with seediness seeping from beneath, a historical tourist destination stripped of its bloodiest historical contexts. What sort of knowledge did the narrator find there that made her finally feel human, and that caused the laws of the physical world to behave in such startlingly different ways?

If you order The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales from the Brooklyn Arts Press website, not only will you get to read ‘Socialites’, if you’re one of the first 50 who order, you’ll get a free letterpress broadside of one of the book's stories. Get it HERE!

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.

The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales at SPD!

Though its official release date isn't until December 1, you can now find The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales at Small Press Distribution! I once spent a summer helping in SPD's warehouse, where I picked orders and saw a lot of beautiful books. I'm excited to have my book (its cover image was created by the brilliant Alicia DeBrincat) keeping company with the many fantastic titles sitting on those warehouse shelves.

Review from Kirkus!

Kirkus feels mixed about The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales—but their confusion is the best kind possible: 'Runkle creates an array of worlds that will at different times surprise, confuse and entertain,' they write. And if you cherry-pick the good parts, you get, 'Highly imaginative & uncanny ... told with fresh, stunning language.'

The book drops December 1, but you can pre-order it now over at Brooklyn Arts Press. The first 50 who pre-order will get a free letterpress broadside of one of the book's 22 stories!

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'!

11. A FABLE IN SERVICE OF HASTENING THE END OF ALL BORDERS

Told in the second person, ‘A Fable in Service of Hastening the End of All Borders’ asks the reader imagine working as a teenage grocery bagger at a dreamlike Canadian borderland supermarket. The strip mall that houses the supermarket suffers a constant onslaught of drastic transformations: the manager begins building a transparent dome that straddles the border; the subsized housing where the protagonist grew up is demolished; a studly co-worker opens a male brothel; the frozen yogurt shop revamps itself as a smoothie bar; a barbecue champion and an entrepreneur toting a portable rock wall both set up shop in the parking lot. All the while, the bagger struggles with bulimia and grows increasingly obsessed with miniatures.

A finalist for the Calvino Prize, ‘A Fable in Service of Hastening the End of All Borders’ is featured in my forthcoming fiction collection, The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales. Click HERE to pre-order it for only $15.95!

7. THE STORY OF HOW ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL

The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales is due out December 1! Meanwhile, though, you can pre-order it HERE. 

The book's Orwell-inspired title story appeared earlier this year in Grist 7. A depressed narrator engages in a power struggle with a strong-willed fashion design student who he platonically shares a bed with. The narrator watches Lena try on different animal identities as she sews clothes inspired by farm animals, adopts and discards—then rediscovers—a Pomeranian, and incongruously dresses as Jessica Rabbit for Halloween. At night, they re-equalize:

We slept in a Murphy bed that never went up. There were hooks mounted on the wall above it, with hats piled thick enough to keep the bed from lifting. The mattress was too short—if we extended our legs, our feet made contact with an icy iron bar at the foot of the bed. I imagined us as batteries recharging, the cold shock pushing exhaustion up through our bodies and sparking dreams. 

Sometimes Lena made animal sounds in her sleep. I would break the iron current then, and cuddle. We’d be warm together, my knees locked into the back of hers. Of course this place is haunted, she’d say, with all those hats falling on the bed all the time. She’d say it like it was my fault, but most of the hats were hers.

Things become tense as the narrator grows jealous of Lena’s other relationships. He finds himself mirroring her tyrannical personality, the thing that drew him to her in the first place:

Lena was eight days older than me, and shared her birthday with Hitler. I shared mine with Saddam Hussein. We had a joint birthday party where we spent the day in bed. We read to each other, played cards, and gossiped. We took turns going to the store for more champagne. When it got dark, we took a nap, then got up and went out dancing. She brought home an NPR reporter who said he couldn’t take her home because his house was being painted.  

That means he has a girlfriend, I told her. 

Whatever, she said. It’s my birthday. 

 It’s my birthday, too, I said, and refused to yield the bed. 

As the narrator’s depression deepens, the rainy season sets in, and Lena obsessively listens to Prince’s ’17 Days’, a song that tonally syncs with the story’s up-tempo sadness. Because the Artist is such a freak about copyright issues, I can’t post the video here, but hopefully this link will stay up for awhile: http://www.wat.tv/video/prince-17-days-3oo43_3mbzf_.html

One time Lena said, Prince is such a man. 

Prince wears mascara, I said. 

I don’t mean a man like macho. I mean a man like human. Listen: there’s nothing animal in Prince’s world. It’s all artifice and emotion. 

I moved a beret from the bed to the hat rack.  

All you ever listen to is this one song, I said, and it’s the b-side to ‘When Doves Cry’. That’s maybe the most animal song ever. 

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 makeup—really?), 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: 

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 …

'Socialites' featured at matchbook

Check out 'Socialites'—the short story I just featured on a letterpress broadside—over at matchbook, a journal dedicated to brief narrative.

The Story of How All Animals Are Equal

Grist is offering their new issue for only $12 during their Hot Off the Press Sale. Order it at its discount price and read 'The Story of How All Animals Are Equal', a short fiction piece that will be featured in my collection forthcoming from Brooklyn Arts Press. 

Coldfront's Song of the Week: "Pipeline"

I wrote about Depeche Mode's "Pipeline" for Coldfront Magazine's Song of the Week series. "Pipeline" is a song that inspired my story "Warmth", which first ran in The Collagist (along with an interview where I talk more about "Pipeline"). "Warmth" will be featured in my fiction collection forthcoming this fall from Brooklyn Arts Press—the resident press at Song of the Week right now. So dig around and listen to what other BAP writers picked!