ARTIFICE 5 IS OFF TO THE PRINTER

You can preview work by A5 contributors Molly Brodak, Laura Kochman, Gabriel Blackwell, and Russ Woods by going to the main site and clicking on the giant red rectangle. Preorders are still open and SHIPPING IS FREE FOR ALL ORDERS PLACED DURING THE NEXT TWO WEEKS.

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THREE NEW ADDITIONS TO THE EDITORIAL STAFF

JESSICA DUTSCHMANN (PR COORDINATOR)
ALBAN FISCHER (CONTENT EDITOR)
JEANNETTE GOMES (ASSISTANT EDITOR)

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I have many more nice things to say about these three majesties than anyone has patience to listen to, so I’ll stick to the basics. Jess has worked extensively on events for public & private nonprofits and knows pretty much everyone everywhere, to say nothing of how much I enjoy and admire her writing (check out her new echap &roaring&roaring). Alban is steadily building an intimidating portfolio of cover designs for publishers like Curbside Splendor, Mud Luscious Press, H_NGM_N BKS, Tiny Hardcore Press, and YesYes Books (his work on Corey Zeller’s Man vs. Sky just slays me, and have you seen Frequencies, Vol. 1?). He’s the sole proprietor over at smooth Grand Rapids pebble trnsfr.  Jeannette has been editing at Love Symbol Press for a while now, and I couldn’t be more excited about bringing on her poetic sensibility (read small breaks of light!), permanent enthusiasm, and intensely sweet disposition.

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Everyone who sent in an application has our thanks, and we’ll respond to all of you in the order we received your emails. Thanks for your patience so far. We will be filling the remaining positions (1 Content Editor + 1 Assistant Editor), over the next several weeks. If you haven’t applied yet and would like to work at Artifice, you still have time! Go here for descriptions of each position and how to apply.

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Once again, those who love Artifice and want to hold it close can take the first step here.

Last Wednesday, Tadd posted a note announcing that Curbside Splendor is taking Artifice on as an imprint, and that I have signed on as editor. Those are true things. Curbside and Artifice are an ideal match, and I couldn’t be more excited about working on the next phase in the expansion of this little magazine.

What changes for you, writers, designers? None, for the moment. Artifice 5 is ready to go to press—Tadd and I have been sending out acceptance letters for a while now—and as soon as it goes, work on 6 will start. Submissions remain open. Those of you who didn’t hear back from us this round, please don’t withdraw. We still have your work and are considering it for the next issue. Thanks to all for your patience.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be filling five new editorial positions at Artifice. We’re looking for people who know what we’ve done so far and what gets us all excited, but who also have clear sight in all directions. We’re looking for people who have some kind of magazine or journal experience. We’re looking for people who live in Chicago, though living somewhere else will not be a dealbreaker in every case.

We need:

- 2 content editors to help with choosing pieces for Artifice 6 and beyond

- 1 PR editor to manage our Facebook and Twitter accounts, pitch and coordinate events, and be the nice one

- 2 assistant editors to screen incoming submissions, stuff envelopes, and surprise us with freakish confidence and ability

Please send letters of interest along with any other material you think might boost your chances to jobs [at] artificemag [dot] com. As is the case with most small literary magazines, right now we can pay our editors only with love and respect and some free stuff.

I want to thank Tadd for the opportunity to continue the work that he and Rebekah started, and the privilege of working alongside him on the forthcoming issue. Also, thanks to Victor David Giron at Curbside Splendor for bringing us on and for all his support. Final thanks to all of you who have ever sent Artifice your writing or bought a copy. More issues and new projects to come.

<3 Peter

For example: Curbside Splendor, that rockstar of Chicago publishing, is taking on Artifice Magazine as an imprint. This will mean better distribution and a more regular schedule, not to mention the fact that the folks at Curbside are awesome to hang out with.

For another example: Peter Jurmu is coming on as an editor. Peter’s worked as fiction editor at Redivider and Catch Up Magazine. He’s been working with me on Artifice 5, and he’ll be taking over as Ed-in-Chief for Issue 6. I’m pretty thrilled to have him come on our staff. He’s a fantastic editor and, like the folks at Curbside, a lot of fun to hang out with.

As for me, I’ll be hanging back a bit, working on Artifice Books, helping out occasionally with the magazine. I love this magazine, but I never intended it to be my project alone. I’m sincerely grateful for the people on staff and on our board who have helped out over the years: Ian McCarty, Alvilde Falck, Kaisa Cummings, Laura Donnelly, Roxane Gay, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Elizabeth Lyons, Colin Raymond, and Kathleen Rooney. And particularly to Rebekah Silverman, who started Artifice Magazine with me, and helped make it so much of what it is, and what it will continue to be. I am glad that I have been able to be part of such an exciting project, and I am glad that it will continue to have a life outside of any one person.

The difference between nationalism and national pride seems vague at best. Like many online natives, I find nationalism to be a stale and musty concept. National borders don’t impact my life in any significant way. By opening my laptop, I am given access to communicate with every English speaking nation on Earth.

In ‘real life’, my social group is multicultural and multi-ethnic. For the most part, we lean towards a cynical consensus on matters like the Royal Family, the Conservative Party and ‘traditional’ British values. Within our group, I’ve certainly never felt compelled to identify myself as British or English, let alone debate the semantics of their difference. Yet in this Olympic fortnight, that same social group has been caught in a maelstrom of national pride.

Pride is a messy, inarticulate emotion. This is well evidenced in the nonsense lyrics of U2’s classic power ballad Pride (In the Name of Love). The song is supposedly about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I for one did not realise.

In researching this article, I conducted a few interviews with my friends. When I challenged them to justify their pride for our Olympic athletes, they unanimously resorted to tautology. They are proud because they are. Obviously. As I probed further, they began to distinguish between the notions of individual pride and collective pride. Most concluded that pride on someone else’s behalf is no more than happiness. Undoubtedly, this capacity for compassion is crucial to proper moral and human behaviours, but it also carries a rather dangerous implication, since pride for some necessarily means shame for others.

Other friends took a different line when pressed, becoming strictly analytical. One explained that his taxes have contributed towards the funding of each athlete’s training. He is therefore somehow complicit in the success of that individual/team, even if only by the most tenuous extension.

We know that pride can be blinding. We learned that in Nazi Germany. We learned that in Iraq. We learned that in Penn State. Watch here as young, bright minds riot in support of a paedophile.

In this fortnight, there has been no mention of this danger. Here, The Independent run an article lambasting Morrissey for pointing out the jingoism surrounding Olympic euphoria. He is labelled a sensationalist for noting the lack of a dissenting voice in the national press.

Somehow, international competition justifies what is no more than a tribal and territorial response. To be part of something, to know ones place: it all somehow enforces the prized maxim of the western world – Know Thyself. A wisdom that refutes space for abstraction. A wisdom too stubborn to not understand. Know Thyself and with that pride, you shall never have to be humble enough to concede, wise enough to relinquish, or small enough to be lost. You are what you are. Don’t you ever go trying to change.

Pride can be a force for good. When uniting an oppressed people, there’s a lot of emotional force that pride can harness. Otherwise, idgi.

Richard’s literary persona is demure and composed, his reading voice is a balmy lullaby. Here, he reads Frank Hinton’s ‘Something Pure and Good’ from her collection, I Don’t Respect Female Expression.

In many ways, Richard is the literary antithesis to Steve Roggenbuck’s brand of hyper-positivity. Despite this, the two are friends. Steve appears regularly on Richard’s tumblr and they recently performed together in Seattle. I spoke to Richard about his connection to the Pop Serial collective.

Artifice

• Do you feel part of the Pop Serial group? Stephen [Tully Dierks] has been a big fan of your work for a long time.

Richard Chiem

• I owe a lot to Stephen and Pop Serial. He was one of the first people to solicit my work. I remember at the time, how excited and honored I felt. I think for me, it always comes down to the work ethic and how people behave. I love what’s going on right now, and I agree with Steve Roggenbuck, that not everyone needs to be prolific, but I am tired of being lazy. I never want to be lazy another day in my life, unless it’s with loved ones. I think I fear, but only a little, being grouped with other Gen Ys. I think Gen Ys are called spoiled and lazy a lot. I want to be able to help. Help what? I am not sure, but I know I want to be able to.

Like Roggenbuck, Richard dropped out of writing school, feeling aversion to the culture of coasting by, on the ‘little nods’ from professors. Where he might differ stylistically from other Pop Serial contributors, Dierks clearly recognises some unity in Richard’s work ethic and good tempered spirit.

Richard certainly does not come across as lazy. He is the founding editor of vertebrae, a journal of art and poetry. In the last twenty-four months, he has been published widely, appearing in issues Two and Three of the seminal journal, Pop Serial and our own Artifice 4. In the time I have known him, Richard has authored two ebooks, What if, Wendy (Pangur Ban Party, 2010) and the exceptional Oh No Everything Is Wet Now (Magic Helicopter Press, 2011), a multimedia collage co-authored with Ana Carrete, a fellow Pop Serial writer.

In 2011, Richard moved to Seattle to live with Frances Dinger, another member of the Pop Serial community. We discussed how this move affected his work.

Richard Chiem

• Well, in San Diego, aside from Ana [Carrete], I felt like I was a lone wolf in a way. There were writers there, but they were all old school and highly academic. I feel if writers come to San Diego, it’s to get away or something. In Seattle, I feel like every other person is a writer, which made things more competitive at first for me, but then I realized it was more important to kind of slow down and step back and know the most important thing was to be human.

Though Richard can now speak positively about his decision to move on from writing school, he recounts the period immediately after as one of severe depression. During this period, he wrote the majority of what became the short-story collection, You Private Person (Scrambler Books, 2012). We spoke about his motivations that produced this work.

Artifice

• Is there a theme to the collection? Some overall thing to be taken away?

Richard Chiem

• Perhaps survival; the young surviving. I was definitely trying to see if I could survive without academia and I knew the only way to do that was hard work and being human. I hope that reflects in the book. How to be human, however strangely.

Artifice

• Are you a private person?

Richard Chiem

• I grew up as a private person, I think. I am definitely an introverted person that likes to take risks and sometimes those risks are simply talking to other people. But I don’t know, after middle school or so, I became more confident and excited for conversation. I try to never feel embarrassed, which is hard to get away from, but when I manage it, it feels like skateboarding or something. How about you?

Artifice

• My instinct was to reply that I was. But it wouldn’t be true.

Richard Chiem

• Yeah, me too. I think more than anything, I am more disciplined now, which causes me to stay in more often. I don’t think it makes me more private though. I enjoy the things I don’t share equally to those things that I do share.

Artifice

• Do you feel your book is something intimate that you’re sharing?

Richard Chiem

• Yeah, I think it has to be, or else it’s not worth putting out. […] I’m proud but I don’t think that’s the point. I am very eager to keep going. I just don’t want to get too caught up in the celebration. Like, I don’t think it’s time to celebrate yet. I would rather use the merit for fuel.

Artifice

• Is there anything you read/listened to while putting You Private Person together? Anything that influenced the way it was composed?

Richard Chiem

• Movies actually had more of an impact. They’re more like weirdly inspired by things. ‘What If, Wendy’ is actually my own fan fiction of Half Nelson. ‘Planet B Boy’ is titled after the documentary of the same name. ‘Cutty’ is my fan fiction of The Wire.

Artifice

• Can you see yourself writing professionally?

Richard Chiem

• That is the goal, yes. I just have to put the work in. There are examples to follow, Tao just being one of them, Blake Butler another [Blake has written one of three blurbs to You Private Person].

Artifice

• Have you met Tao or Blake?

Richard Chiem

• Not Blake but I met Tao once, I think back in 2010. He was on tour in San Diego and crashed at my place. It was a big deal for me to meet him. When I started to read Tao Lin, I thought ‘cool, another asian male writer’. Maybe it means something to me because I am American born, but my parents were and are foreigners.

Stephen Dierks’ has repeatedly stated his belief that ‘alt lit’ was founded on a connection of people who felt an affinity to Lin’s writing. Richard identifies himself as among these writers. Scrambler Books have previously published fellow Pop Serial contributors, Kendra Grant Malone (Everything is Quiet, 2010) and Matthew Savoca (long love poem with descriptive title, 2010). In addition, they will be issuing the first English translation of Luna Miguel’s poetry (Bluebird and Other Tattoos, 2012). I asked Richard how the Scrambler connection came about.

Richard Chiem

• I sent Jeremy [Spencer] my manuscript I think back in 2010 and he rejected it first. But I think, something like six or seven months after the rejection, he asked for it again and by that time, the collection was way different. There were more stories and I knew what I wanted to do with the collection. Right before my move to Seattle, like almost a year ago, Jeremy sent me word that he would love to publish it, which was one of the best emails I’ve ever gotten.

Artifice

• Are you pleased with the cover? What say did you have in that?

Richard Chiem

• I contacted Mark Leidner, being a big fan of his poetry and collages, and asked him if he could do me the honor of making a cover for YPP. The final cover was actually the second attempt from Mark. The first one was amazing too, but we were worried about copyright issues because it had an image of Princess Diana in front of a galaxy. I am eternally grateful to Mark.

Artifice

• Do you have anything planned for launch night?

Richard Chiem

• Haha I actually haven’t thought of the actual book release party thing. I have some close friends here [Seattle] that I would love to celebrate with but there is no clear picture of what it’s going to look like or what venue.

For Richard, writing is life, an on-going project. We spoke about the possibility of his next book.

Artifice

• What have you been working on since you completed YPP?

Richard Chiem

• I’ve been working on a novel, tentatively titled, ‘Any Place I Hang Myself Is Home’.

Artifice

• How is that experience coming out of writing shorter fiction?

Richard Chiem

• No doubt, writing a novel is one of the hardest things. It has to do with me figuring out what I want.

Artifice

• Will there be a connection between the novel and any of the stories from YPP?

Richard Chiem

• All the characters are from the same universe, but I don’t think anyone will ever meet. But maybe. I like breaking my own rules.

You Private Person is due to release in September. Here is its trailer.

In the brewing process, much like the writing process, you start out by reading. Books on home brewing are beginning to rival books of poetry in my house. You read and you read and you especially read the old guys’ stuff, in this case as in literature hundreds of years old, and then you try to forget that and read what the new people are doing, which is often strange and exciting and collaborative. The way that the internet is bringing together writers across continents mirrors the way the internet has enabled collaborative brewing to flourish. 

In particular, I see easy comparisons between the hypercurrent use of google docs to create multimedia pieces of writing and the brewing world’s new fascination with using nearly anything they can to make newer, weirder beers. This doesn’t always work but is somehow always exciting. 

Once you’ve got your recipe figured out and you sit down and brew or write, the metaphor starts to break down. Writers tend to edit compulsively, especially in the current era where ink doesn’t really matter and hands don’t really cramp up so much. With beer, once it’s in the bottle or keg it’s brewing in, it has to sit untouched for three weeks. How much can your work change if it sits for three weeks? How much do you ferment over that time?

Some beer challenges for your writing:

1. Belgian Challenge– Write a piece you were planning on writing. Collect newspaper articles for three weeks once it is done. After three weeks use random bits of the articles in your already-written piece of writing. This is like the open-vat Belgian beers, which ferment and brew with no lids on the vats, allowing wild yeast in to build flavor.

2. German Challenge– Use only forms for three weeks, or one ‘brewing cycle’. The Reinheitsgebot was a law in Germany which forbid using any ingredients in beer except water, barley and hops. 

3. American Challenge– Collaborate and get out into your culture. American craft brewers have tried very hard to create and reinvent the culture surrounding brewing, which was basically destroyed by prohibition. In a way, the internet became a prohibition for writers, as bookstores failed dramatically. What is occurring now is a double renaissance. Get into it.

Artifice loves it when our friends get up to interesting projects, and we especially love projects that include non-traditional book tours, fantastic illustrations, and a weird, dark sense of humor. This post concludes a month of virtual book tours for The New York Stories, which is a collection by Ben Tanzer, illustrated by Laura Szumowski. The New York Stories was recently published by the Chicago Center for Literature & Photography (CCLaP) as a hand-bound, special edition (vellum illustration pages, faux-suede covers, and external Coptic stitching, oh my!), available now for $50.

The type for The New York Stories is creatively laid out in a condensed square format, with the text running like a magazine: two justified columns set close together. Szumowski’s illustrations leading into the stories are apt, tone-setting introductions to Tanzer’s acerbic, dark texts. Kids watch Mermaids and get into trouble, while adults ignore their problems at Thirsty’s bar. The New York Stories hits you with a never-ending series of gut-dropping moments; when you think that something awful might have happened but you try and hope for the best, Tanzer shows that it’s probably better to expect the worst. It’s a dark world where parents can’t be trusted with their friends’ children, and the children can’t be trusted with each other.

We hope you check out a few more of the interesting book tour stops (e.g. you can hear Ben reading a story over at Curbside Splendor, or listen to Ben and Laura chatting with Another Chicago Magazine). Here at Artifice, though, we give you a conversation about book production, comics, illustration challenges, the paranormal, and inanimate objects with personality.

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N.B. This interview is compiled from separate email correspondences, and was conducted between Chicago and London.

Artifice: Ben and Laura, can you describe the process of working with each other to develop the illustrations? How did you get in touch? How much contact did the two of you have before getting started?

Ben Tanzer: I would really like this answer to be so much cooler than it is. But, I sort of knew Laura personally from different readings and other events, had compulsively zipped around her website, though not in any stalkerish kind of way, really, and was a fan of her and her work and style. That said, it was CCLaPs idea to bring our work together and I think it was a terrific one. For me anyway. Laura may find herself increasingly dismayed by the whole thing and is merely keeping-up a happy face for our public appearances.

Laura Szumowski: I was originally approached by Jason Pettus, the publisher, about an illustration project he had in mind. He sent me one of Ben’s stories, The Babysitter, and I loved it.

Originally, Jason wanted me to do something along the lines of Jay Ryan, style wise, but when I talked with Ben, he mentioned Deer Hunter and First Blood as visual inspiration. My instincts from reading the stories agreed with Ben, so I did a few drawings to see what he thought. He said great, keep going– it was as simple as that. Not a whole lot of interaction, nothing too specific. He was comfortable with me taking artistic license, and I think was interested to see what I would draw from his writing.

Artifice: How many illustrations were done for each story, and/or how did you both narrow the choices down to just one or two?

Ben: This may be less than cool as well. Wow I suck. That said, I felt like this was less of a collaborative effort than an interpretive one. Meaning, this wasn’t a project where I worked with someone from the start to create something together. Instead, the stories were done and I treated it like Laura was being asked to respond to them. I really trust Jason’s artistic vision and design sense, and so I decided to mostly stay out of the process and see where Laura went with it. What is so exciting for me, was what she picked to highlight and how she did that all of which is very kick-ass.

Laura: I did two illustrations for each of the 17 stories; one chapter head plus a second drawing. I also did six full-color illustrations that appear throughout the book. It was difficult to narrow it down to two or three images per story, sometimes there were so many things I wanted to illustrate! My process involved reading through the stories several times: first to get an overall feel for the story, second to highlight key words or characters and make notes, third to narrow down and select the specific imagery to present. I think people might be surprised how thorough I am with this process, and how much thought and attention goes into it. At the same time, it is admittedly up to my own discretion and whims what ultimately becomes an illustration.

Laura Szumowski’s studio in Chicago.

Artifice: Laura, you recently made a great short video on the basics of the illustration process for The New York Stories. Can you share a little bit more about how are the illustrations were printed? Offset or screenprint? Did you have a hand in the book production / printing / binding process? Where was that done?

Laura: I’m pretty sure they’re printed using inkjet, the small print run champion. Offset or screenprint (or a combination with letterpress) would have been amazing, but for an edition of 100, these weren’t feasible options. I had nothing to do with the production of the book, though, that was all handled by Jason.

Ben: The illustrations are printed onto photo paper at a commercial printing service, then glued onto vellum sheets that are bound within the manuscript. I had no hand in any of that and while I am thrilled by the whole project and whatever role I played in it, I am starting to think that I may not have done so much and am now riding the coattails of my shockingly creative counterparts.

Artifice: Laura’s style for The New York Stories is a little bit like that of the Hernandez brothers, and these illustrations all have their own really distinct personalities, like characters in Love & Rockets. It can always be a difficult balance ‘showing’ faces and characters that an author has taken pains to describe in the text. Art book publishers since the mid nineteenth century have struggled with this (Stéphane Mallarmé, Ambroise Vollard, etc). Did you both discuss this—the depiction of people/characters to illustrate your stories, rather than personality-less inanimate objects—before the project started? 

Ben: We really didn’t. And one of the funny things, is that with certain drawings, there is a weird sort of kismet in her work on this project, which is not something I generally subscribe to. For example there is an image from “The Neighborhood” [also titled "The Babysitter"] where Laura drew a series of teenagers from the story and it was shocking to me how well she captured not just how I described them in the piece, but the actual teenagers I based them on from the neighborhood I grew-up in. I don’t think every artist that I ever work with will quite see the images in my head like she has, than again I don’t know how she did so and I am beginning to wonder if her gifts extend to the paranormal.

Laura: I’m a fan of the Hernandez brothers, so I appreciate the comparison, but I had another comics artist in mind. As I read Ben’s stories, my mind kept finding connections to Daniel Clowes. His drawings are often commonplace, almost boring (no pun intended) characters and places that simultaneously have a haunted, dark, twisted or grotesque quality that I both love and thought would do well to emulate the mood of The New York Stories.

I’m not familiar with the history, but you make an interesting point about showing faces. To be honest, it never occurred to me not to do it. In fact, because Ben was so specific in some of his physical descriptions, I saw it as an exciting challenge to illustrate the characters in the stories. Much of my [other] work involves internal anatomy and inanimate objects, so I don’t often get the opportunity to draw people and faces.

To me, even the inanimate objects I chose to illustrate have a great deal of personality to them. The cigarette burning in the ashtray, the IV bag, they’re all remnants of the lives they inhabit. I don’t think Ben and I ever discussed faces or character depiction, but I would love to hear his perspective.

Artifice: Laura, how does this project fit in with your larger body of work? I know you mainly focus on educational texts and illustration for ZMK Press, so what prompted you to pursue illustration for a work of fiction? The narratives in New York Stories are quite dark, and I think you matched that tone with your illustrations, but it is quite different from your books like Cycling or Tip of the Iceberg, which feature drawings that are more lighthearted and irreverent. Do you think the drawings you made for The New York Stories are related to your other book work, or are they a separate entity? 

Laura: While I consider this project separate from my larger body of work, illustrating The New York Stories took me down a new path, artistically. It’s odd, but before Jason approached me about this project, I didn’t think of myself as an illustrator. I write and illustrate nonfiction books about women’s health, but for me writing and illustrating were always locked together. Don’t ask me why, it was just a weird mental glitch. I absolutely loved having the sole duty of illustrator– this is like the sweet treat at the end of a meal in my own work (the meal being extensive research and composition). I also really enjoyed the challenge. What I like most of all is getting to know material and then problem solving the best way of framing it with illustration. Whether that’s lighthearted or dark, I find both equally gratifying.

Artifice: Do you think either of you will pursue other similar book illustration projects? And/or what projects are you working on right now? What’s next?

Ben: I would love to. One of my long-time fantasies is working on a graphic novel with someone, and it developing it from scratch. This conversation has come up with a couple of different publishers, but it hasn’t happened yet. I would also like to do a short story collection as the writer Joe Meno did where a different artist illustrates each of the different stories, and I have had this discussion with a publisher as well, but there has been no action on this project as of yet either. I am hopeful though. Just as I am hopeful that my next novel, Orphans, which was a conscious effort to do something in the science fiction genre is really coming out next spring. All of which makes me sound like a fairly big loser though I in no way intended for that happen when I began to answer the question.

Laura: Yes, I would love to do more illustration projects! I’ve just finished updating Tip of the Iceberg: A Book About the Clitoris, the first title in my series of women’s health guidebooks. It’s now in its third printing, and has been expanded by 16 pages including a historical timeline of the vibrator, which I am particularly fond of.

I have a few different projects in the works. To start, I’ll be adding to the women’s health series with a book about fertility awareness. I’m also excited to be working on my first graphic novel, a story I’m collaborating with my dad to create. It’s about his experiences growing up in Delray, a Polish-Hungarian neighborhood in Detroit.

Julia Hendrickson is reading Color Plates by Adam Golaski (Rose Metal Press, 2010), a collection of short stories that recreate the narratives behind the Impressionist paintings of Édouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and Edgar Degas; and is about to crack open Marcel Proust’s Days of Reading, in a tiny beautiful edition from Penguin’s Great Ideas Series.

She’s also reading The Studio, which is part of Whitechapel’s Documents of Contemporary Art series. It’s an interesting compilation of essays on the subject of the artist’s studio, put together by Jens Hoffmann. Some of the texts are only loosely related to the theme, but it’s historically useful and a diverse read; an answer and a challenge to the recent Studio Reader.

James Tadd Adcox just finished I Love Science, and plans to say nice things about it in some public forum. It really is a fantastic book. He’s also reading Darcie Dennigan’s Madame X, Joshua Young’s To the Chapel of Light, and Emily Kendal Frey & Zachary Schomburg’s OK, Goodnight.

Kaisa Cummings is reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck right now. Summer is a good time for big literary commitments like that.

Russ Woods, who tends to dip in and out of books a lot, is currently reading Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel, A Journey Around My Room by Xavier de Maistre, The Malady of the Century by Jon Leon, and Issue 3.1 of Gigantic Sequins.

Alex Allison is reading The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood, and received and spun through the excellent I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur by Mathias Svalina. He intends to heavily steal from both books in the future.

Meghan Lamb is reading Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles. She would like to note that it makes her sad thinking about covert masturbation, flaccid penises, and sickness as a metaphor for all things (all subjects that she can never get enough of, it would appear).

Matt Rowan is reading Iceberg by Paul Kavanagh (“a really wonderful story with all the really excellent fantasy of a Roald Dahl novel but something much more sinister, as well”);

God Bless America: Stories by Steve Almond (“like reading George Saunders mixed with Jim Shepard. Does that make sense? Doesn’t matter. Almond’s got his finger on the pulse of what shapes and sizes we Americans come in. It’s nice to see a collection with a title that’s paradoxically satirical and sincere at the same time. “);

Why They Cried by Jim Hanas (“a surprisingly fun collection of stories, interesting reading it alongside Steve Almond – for both their similarities and the definite stylistic distinctions”);

Letters From Robots by Diana Salier  (“Diana does fractured prose poetry – if I’m not totally mislabeling her work – as well as anyone. Tons of lyricism. Turns of phrase that ring in your ear”);

and Revelation by Colin Winnette (“Colin has this amazing way with words. Truly admirable. Very enviable. That bastard’s done it again”).