American Short Fiction 25th Anniversary Issue Now Available
Amazed and a bit abashed to see my name on the truly eye-popping list of writers with work in this not-to-be-missed issue. Did I mention that the cover is shiny? Buy it here.
Cobalt Volume 4 now available
Cobalt Volume 4 is now out in the world, and it contains not one but two of my pieces (finalists for the Zora Neale Hurston Fiction Prize and the Frank McCourt Creative Nonfiction Prize respectively), as well as a cornucopia of other great writing. Check it out here!
Emily Awarded American Short(er) Fiction Prize
The fabulous Amelia Gray selected me as one of the prize winners in this year's American Short(er) Fiction Prize. You can read about the piece and the other winners here.
Cobalt Review Frank McCourt Creative Nonfiction Prize Finalist
I was a finalist in this year's Frank McCourt Creative Nonfiction Prize at Cobalt Review. You can see the full list of finalist and winners here.
Reading at Quiet Lightning, May 2nd!
I'll be reading with Quiet Lightning, the Bay Area's glorious "literary mixtape" on May 2nd, 7:30 pm, at the 41 Ross (that's 41 Ross Alley, San Francisco, CA, for those of you keeping score at home). It is going to be an amazing show, and probably my last reading in the Bay for a while, so I'd love to see you there! More details available here: http://quietlightning.org/
Cobalt Review Zora Neale Hurston Fiction Writing Prize Finalist
I was selected as one of this year's Zora Neale Hurston Fiction Writing Prize finalists at Cobalt Review. You can read the full list of finalists here.
Great Divide reviewed at Heavy Feather
Michael Martrich wrote a totally gorgeous and insightful review of Great Divide that make me feel like this book-writing racket isn't so bad. It's really more of an essay about the oceanic nature of the twentieth-first-century end times, if that sweetens the pot for anyone. Read it here!
ENTER>text book now available!
ENTER>text is one of the most innovative and exciting reading series in LA or anywhere else, and I am endlessly grateful to the curators (Henry Hoke and Marco DiDomenico) for letting me be part of it. Now, the first three years in the life of the series have been documented in this totally gorgeous book that you can actually own all for yourself.
The book features contributions from Samantha Cohen, Emerson Whitney, Yelena Gluzman & Jen Hofer, Saehee Cho, Janice Lee & Laura Vena, Diana Arterian, Amy Howden-Chapman, Joseph Mosconi, Emily Kiernan, Kenyatta A C Hinkle, UNFO (Amanda AckermanHarold AbramowitzAndrea Quaid), Stacy Elaine, Karen Adelman, Beau Rice, Emma Zakes Green, Claire Cronin & Meriwether Clarke, Stephen van Dyck, Sam Bloch with Mark Gerard & Ilya Mxx, Matias Viegener, Jonathan Ade, Sallie Merkel, Km Bradford, Sarah Petersen and Carol Cheh. Full of entrancing photos by Jason Gutierrez and Mark Bernal.
Each copy also includes limited-edition insertions from two of the contributors. As you can see, this is no excuse not to buy this beauty. Do so here.
Interview about Great Divide at fwriction: review
I had a great conversation with Diana Arterian about the origin and evolution of Great Divide. She asked great questions that made me think about the book from new angles, and I made some jokes. Read it here!
Submissions now open for Backyard #3: Green
Backyard #3:Green:
April 19th, 2015
Submit your work here!
This one if for the witchy, the newbies, the jealous, and the ill (or the merely ill-advised). This is a broad kind of theme, but it is springtime, and that means it is time for fresh adventures--no time to think this through, we want work right off the vine. We are open to poems about dark dirt and new seeds, outrageous love songs, stories of being too young to know how much trouble you’re in.
Bring the monsters winter made in you and see how they take to the sunlight.
Backyard reading series this Sunday!
Backyard 2: The Gentleman's Companion
- Sunday, January 18th
- 4:30 pm
- 917 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94710
- (Follow signs to back gate. Do not knock on front door.)
- Free, though donations of cash or beer will be accepted.
- Gate opens at 4:30, readings commence at 5:00, conspicuous consumption and rubbing of tweed-clad elbows follow. Ornate foods and surprising cocktails will be served.
- Internet RSVP at: https://www.facebook.com/events/1555477884710104/
Theme
The Gentleman's Companion is a two-book set my father gave me. First printed in 1939, and written by presumed gentleman Charles H. Baker Jr., the set bears the tagline "Around The World With Jigger, Beaker And Flask." One volume proclaims itself "An Exotic Drinking Book," the other "An Exotic Cookery Book." That second one is dedicated to the author's own digestive tract. Between (strong, strange, and often off-putting) recipes are accounts of the author's extensive travels; there are encounters with Hemingway and Faulkner, dangerous run-ins with natural forces in unfamiliar places, and a heavy dose of self-assured American imperialist racism.
Taking this nostalgic, offensive, and beguiling document as inspiration, this reading will explore the theme of gentlemen and what it might mean to share the company of one. What defines a gentleman…money, position, character? What becomes of the people the gentleman encounters, employs, or exploits? What happens when the gentleman leaves the manor and heads out into the delicate, complicated, and ungentle world?
Reader Bios
Liz Acosta is a pink haired feminist from Los Angeles who is currently terrorizing the streets of San Francisco with her refusal to let catcallers get away with being jerks. When she's not breathing fire, Liz likes to write about the struggle of learning to love again after the trauma of childhood abuse. Don't worry, she's not totally mopey though…she likes to ride her bike around the city pretending she's in the Death Star trench scene from "Star Wars" and she is almost exclusively powered by coffee and male tears.
MK Chavez is the author of Virgin Eyes (Zeitgeist Press) Visitation, Next Exit #9 (with John Sweet) and Pinnacle (Kendra Steiner Editions.) Recent and upcoming work can be found in Eleven Eleven, This is Poetry, Culture Magazine and Zone 3. She has been a fellow at Squaw Valley Writers Conference, Antioch Writers Workshop and VONA. She is co-founder/co-curator of the Berkeley based monthly reading series Lyrics & Dirges and one of the organizers of the Berkeley Poetry Festival.
Peter Tieryas Liu is the author of Watering Heaven (Signal 8 Press, 2012), and Bald New World (Perfect Edge Books, June 2014). Bald New World was recently nominated for the Folio Prize, listed as one of Buzzfeed's 15 Highly Anticipated Books of 2014, and was one of the Best Books of Summer 2014 from Publisher Weekly in a star review. He has a variety of work published in places like the Evergreen Review, Gargoyle, Indiana Review, Kyoto Journal, New Letters, and ZYZZYVA. He has also worked as a technical writer for LucasArts, the gaming division of LucasFilm.
Joe Trinkle lives in Philadelphia. He attended Kutztown University of Pennsylvania for Writing and was a founding member of the Allentown Writers Workshop. His work has appeared in places such as Pear Noir!, Birkensnake, Atticus Review, The Bygone Bureau, Crack the Spine, New Fraktur Arts Journal, and elsewhere.