“This Jealous Earth is the first publication of Midwestern Gothic’s newest endeavor, the micro-press MG Press. Our goal runs parallel to that of the journal — highlight Midwestern authors — but differs only in the focus: in this case, book-length fiction with a singular point of view that really worms and worries around the foundation of all things Midwestern.”
-Robert James Russell on Scott Dominic Carpenter’s THIS JEALOUS EARTH (MG Press)
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/11asMBe
“Richard Calder creates a cataclysmic future where the difference between nature, technology, reality, time, life, death, and imagination all swirl and blend together, becoming more and more indistinct as the narrative unravels at a dizzying pace only to somehow come back together as something both magnificent and visceral.”
-Eddy Rathke on Richard Calder’s DEAD TRILOGY (St. Martin’s Griffin)
Read more of Eddy’s recommendation at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/14D5hjs
“When I got Vampire Conditions in the mail last week, I sat down just to take a quick look and ended up reading the whole damn thing straight though to the end.”
-Matthew Savoca on Brian Allen Carr’s VAMPIRE CONDITIONS (Holler Presents)
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/TleIAn
“The idea of autobiography, as I understand it, is that something happens in a person’s life and then it happens again in a book. For me, the creation of a book can never be the representation of something that has already happened. The creation of the book is itself the thing that is happening. I make my life happen when I write, in the same way I make my life happen when I read a book, or walk to the corner, or have a conversation with my wife or kids, or eat a taco. I understand the notion that a page of words can somehow represent past events, but I don’t think I want to participate in that notion.”
-Ken Sparling in an interview about HUSH UP AND LISTEN STINKY POO BUTT (Artistically Declined Press)
Read the rest of the interview at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/XcnMnw
“Ultimately, it’s Geddes’s empathy and clear-eyed, comedic vision that makes Magical Teenage Princess stand apart. Like us, his characters are magical and flawed, strange constructs of ghost eras and selves.”
-TJ Sandel on Luke Geddes’s I AM A MAGICAL TEENAGE PRINCESS (Chomu Press)
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/WHbmHI
“As we collect the remnants of family and fate, ‘bees and rag-winged dragonflies,’ the splinters of the woods, Arlene Kim hands us a blade. To cut ourselves ‘out from the belly of home.’”
-Rachelle Cruz on Arlene Kim’s WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO OUR EARS TO MAKE US HEAR ECHOES? (Milkweed Editions)
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/Vw5tvX
“That’s the fun part about experimental literature (which is really just plain old literature), though: there are few things more exhilarating than watching someone break rules and not only get away with it, but pull it off. Ken Sparling does that in spades.”
-Dave K. on Ken Sparling’s DAD SAYS HE SAW YOU AT THE MALL (MudLuscious Press)
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/U2DiHZ
“I do draw on my life experiences in my work. Not as much as some might think, but a fair amount. I’m sure we all must to an extent… . I’m fascinated by that fact, and even more fascinated and eager to discover what my experiences look, feel, taste, sound like in only the way I can experience them. In order to truly do this, you have to share it with others in whatever you can.”
-Sheldon Lee Compton in an interview with Robert Vaughan, on THE SAME TERRIBLE STORM (Foxhead Books)
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/Uaxv0G
“Every time I write, I’m trying to run away from the careful plot, but the plot drags me back in. It’s like one of those bungee runs or the third Godfather.”
-Amelia Gray in an interview with Colin Winnette. Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/Tg1AMW
“And as I sat there reading, my car forgotten, the people around me just noise, the world Stern created began to collapse and my heart collapsed with it. All that reality she wove so tightly together, making a world like one I would dream of if I only knew to dream that way, began to unravel and it hurt. It hit me hard, harder than I expected.”
-Eddy Rathke on Lindsay Stern’s TOWN OF SHADOWS (Scrambler Books)
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/WCqKoR
“The Hiram Poetry Review has sharpened my senses with regard to poetry in the present day — its appearance in times contemporary. Once a year, it is a chance to observe the fashion and manners of today’s emerging writers. Without reservation, I suggest contacting Dr. Greenwood to purchase the most recent HPR, Issue Seventy-Three. You’ll also be happy to find that nearly all past issues are archived at HPR’s website.”
-Charles Parsons on HIRAM POETRY REVIEW
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/U2rQfo
“For me, this is the real magic of Kundera’s writing. Kundera writes a number of intricate characters that are all extremely interconnected in a very short space. But, that alone would not be as impressive if it was not for how these intricacies and interactions come off. Really, everyone ends up looking pretty idiotic. After all, all human beings are inherently ridiculous. It is only when we are full of our own self-importance that we don’t see that.”
-David S. Atkinson on Milan Kundera’s THE FAREWELL WALTZ (Harper Perennial)
Read more of David’s recommendation at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/13buYGX
“My workshop mates tossed out the expected names like Garcia Marquez, Borges, Saunders, Bender, Barthelme and Bukowski and Carver, Hemingway and Nabokov and Kafka. My underarms ran with sweat. When my turn came, I wanted to express my individuality, and maybe my mental stamina too, so I said that I liked Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Cue the crickets and the blank stares.”
-Joe Kapitan on Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED (Signet Classics)
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/Xaemcj
“I have had a very tumultuous relationship with sleep and my bed. Dreams, though, we’ve always been on the same team. But the bed, it can be a lonely place, often a haunted place, a crippling and emotional place. Now, if I were to try to explain what my bed means to me, I’d probably just hand someone The Way We Sleep. It really covers everything, even the things that haven’t happened to me. It’s beautiful and grotesque and touching and tragic and funny and playful and philosophical and magical.”
-Eddy Rathke on C. James Bye’s and Jessa Bye’s THE WAY WE SLEEP (Curbside Splendor)
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/WUe0bp
“Something that I work on with my writing is the idea of an all-powerful being—God or whatever, just the notion of that sort of existence and what it means to my existence. The Curtain is the thing that is obscuring what’s really there, but it also is what’s really there. So it’s both things. It’s the boundary, but it’s also the thing beyond the boundary.”
-Kim Parko, in an interview with Megan Apert, on CURE ALL (Caketrain)
Read more at The Lit Pub: http://bit.ly/WLXqt9
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