Newsbits

* Guest post up at Emerging Writers Network for Short Story Month. There've been lots of great ones at EWN this month, by Dan Wickett and Stacy Musynski and others. Mine's on "Ghosts and Lovers," a story from Joanna Howard's recent collection, On a Winding Stair.

* Little 'pensee' up at The Laughing Yeti, Shome Dasgupta's Writers on Reading project. Words by Matt Bell and Brian Evenson went up in the days after mine. (I've been returning to this site; it's sort of addictive.)

Unofficial Acknowledgements Page for American Gymnopédies

So: American Gymnopédies is here. It's sold out again (for now?), but for anyone who got one, copies should arrive by Tuesday.

Some public thanks here for my editor/publisher, Molly Gaudry @ WWP. I read it through, the collection, for the first time this morning, and I realized something—maybe something obvious but something I hadn't fully realized before: what you get in the case of something like this, if you're the writer, is not all yours. MG brought to this thing ambition, investment, big talent. She's been a visioner. Heart MG.

Others who need to be upped for contributions or involvements big or small: David McNamara at sunnyoutside, James Ullmer, who did the cover and interior art, Pia Ehrhardt, Jim Heynen, Michael Martone, David McLendon, Sara Lippmann, Peter Cole, J.A. Tyler, and all the editors of the mags in which some of the Gymnos were first published—though the editors, except for Corium, do get thanked in the pages (thnx Corium).

Today I'm a happy boy.

Next in line for the WWP Very Short Fiction series: Pedro Ponce, with Alien Autopsy, and Kathy Fish, with Foreign Film. I've taught stories from both of these collections. Believe this: I'll be the first one ordering them.

Have You Heard the Zeppeliny Four-Tet Remix of Madvillian's "Great Day"?

That's a good song for.....

The Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions 2010

Brian Evenson is a god.

Ravi Mangla is a comet.

Lisa Lim is a midnight movie. (is that graphic not a big step up?)

Two random enticements:

* included in this year's list is one that makes Hint Fiction seem verbose. A four-word story that I think kicks the ass of Hemingway's famous six-word one.

* included also is a story that could not have been chosen for the flatmancrooked anthology, Not about Vampires.

Sentence about a Sentence I Love @ Big Other

You might recognize this sentence.

In Fairness

I hit The Faster Times pretty hard for its ranking of lit mags a couple of wks ago.

Lincoln Michel, the author of that ranking, has revised the original post. The ranking has become a simple list of mags, and there's a pretty straightforward acknowledgement as to the arbitrariness of the cut-off point.

So uh--no further complaints.....

Are we on the internet, or are we on the internet?

One Thing

I just want to say one thing about Susan Steinberg's story "Cowboys," in the Spring issue of American Short Fiction.

1. This is great!


"I am still able to lie there nights. But I am unable to do much more than that.

Meaning I am still able to lie there nights, but I am unable to stick around in the mornings.

Meaning I am unable to lie there pretending I want what it is certain women want.

Because of this and because of that. And I cannot pretend to be anything other than the result of this and that."


1. This is great!


"...The doctor had been up all night.

Trying to save your father, he said.

To no avail, he said, and I wondered at the word avail, wondered if the doctor got to be a doctor because of whatever it was he had that made him use the word avail."


1. This is great!


"A man I knew in Warrensburg, Missouri, a man I knew from the job I needed to quit, had been bitten by a brown recluse. He'd rolled over it one night in bed and got bitten in the ass. When he told me the story I laughed. I was like, Why were you naked? He was like, Wrong question. Because he was trying to tell me the bite dissolved the skin on his ass. Because he was trying to tell me that this just wasn't right.

The technical term is necrotized.

The point is I was not always serious.

No, the point is we're limited."


1. This is great!


"There is no intentional meaning in this story.

I would not subject you to intentional meaning.

I would not subject you to some grand scheme."


1. This is great!


2. Okay--a few other things.


3. Those quotes? Those are just from the first five pages. There are five more. And I could have quoted stuff just as good from the first five. Easily. There are enough good sentences in this story to last you all year--if you read w/ your flashlight in bed.


4. I guess I make myself clear but just to be sure: you have to fucking read this story.


5. And one more thing: Susan Steinberg, if you're out there, if you've figured out a way to get Google Alert to separate you from all the other Susan Steinbergs in the world: please send something to Wigleaf! We can't give you that dollar appreciation which is so nice--which I don't mean to knock--but we can love you. We're good at loving people. And is there ever enough love?

Robley Wilson @ Wigleaf

The story is "Bears."

Dawn Raffel had a great post about him @ EWN towards the end of last year. In it she calls him "one of the under-sung heroes of American fiction."

Hobart GREAT OUTDOORS / extras

Number 11 hasn't shown up in the mailbox yet (one of the chief bummers of not going to AWP....), but the issue is loaded and the traditional 'Bonus/Extras' update just went live on the Hobart website.

I did, on command, an 'extra' outdoors gymno (my cont. to #11 being gymnos for Duluth, Big Sur and Mississippi River).

Tim Jones-Yelvington supplied the place, Champaign-Urbana. Thnx Tim!

David Erlewine, M.T. Fallon, Molly Gaudry and Laura Ellen Scott each flipped me a word to use. Thnx D, M, M and L!

p.s. points if you can guess which words were supplied, and double secret bonus points if you can guess by which person.

Official Statement

Mary Timony seems a little fucked up in this one. Wigleaf hearts Mary Timony.