"The abyss broke your microwave..."
Hi! The Rumpus just published my poem, Tap.
The abyss broke your microwave...
Tap is part of this ongoing series, which started for unclear reasons shortly after November 8 2016. "Tap," a sad and weird poem, is of course not at all inspired by this sad, weird tweet:
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
Evanston & Arkansas Lit Festivals
Hi! Do you live in or near Little Rock, Arkansas? Or maybe you're in Evanston or close to Evanston? I'll be reading and talking and signing books in those places super soon alongside some amazing writers. Please come and say hi. The details (lifted straight from the festival brochures) follow below:
- Masters of Form / Little Rock, AR (Saturday, April 29, 11:30 a.m., Arkansas Studies Institute, Room 124): John Kessel's The Moon & The Other is "reminiscent of Huxley's best work, and the emphasis on gender politics puts it in dialog with the masterpieces of Le Guin, Delany, and Russ," according to Hugo– and Nebula Award–winning author Kim Stanley Robinson. Kelly Link calls Juan Martinez "a master of the absurd" while Kirkus Reviews says his Best Worst American features "twenty-four semi-existential short stories that have appeared in McSweeney's and Selected Shorts" injecting "absurdity into everyday life and humor into the phantasmagorical."
- In Celebration of the Short Story / Evanston,, IL (Monday, May 8, 2017, 6:00pm, Bookends & Beginnings, 1712 Sherman Avenue, Alley #1): Two locally based fiction writers and Northwestern creative writing professors, Juan Martinez and Christine Sneed, will read from their new story collections, Best Worst American and The Virginity of Famous Men, and discuss what they see as the rewards and pleasures of reading and writing short-form fiction.
If My Book Were on Monkeybicycle...
...Actually Best Worst American is up there, right now, as part of Monkeybicycle's If My Book series. Go there to see me compare Best Worst American to
- A chatty co-worker!
- A fancy single-serve coffee-pod flavor!
- A friendly doctor!
- A weird spot on your arm!
Readings & Signings & AWP Panels!
I'm going to AWP in Washington DC and doing two panels, plus a signing, plus a reading for Best Worst American and would love to see you and talk with you at one of them. Or at all of them! Seriously. I'm also reading in Chicago and in Little Rock.
Here's where I'll be:
- Signing! Thursday, February 9, 10:00 am-10:30 am: At the AWP Small Beer Press table (Washington, DC)
- Talking!/Paneling! Saturday, February 11, 12:00pm-1:15pm, At this panel: "Immigrants/Children of Immigrants: a Non-traditional Path to a Writing Career" (with Ken Chen, Monica Youn, Marie Myung-OK Lee, and Irina Reyn). Location: Liberty Salon N, O, & P, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Four (Washington, DC)
- Talking!/Paneling! Saturday, February 11, 4:30pm-5:45pm, At this panel: "The Short Story as Laboratory" (with Lesley Nneka Arimah, Carmen Maria Machado, Kendra Fortmeyer, and Sofia Samatar) Location: Marquis Salon 9 & 10, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Two
- Reading! (with Kelly Freaking Link!) Saturday, February 11, 6:00pm-8:00pm at Politics and Prose (Facebook event page here) (Washington DC)
- Reading! Thursday, February 16, 7:30pm-9:30pm at Women and Children First (Facebook event page here) (Chicago IL)
- Reading! Monday, February 27 at 6:30pm at Curbside Books and Records (More info here, Facebook event page here) (Chicago IL)
- Talking! in April at the Arkansas Literary Festival (Little Rock AR)
I'm so sorry for all the self-promotion! The robot says if I don't self-promote the h*ck out of this book he will do something unspeakable with this pencil. Blame the robot don't blame me. The robot demands that you buy 500 copies of my book thank you.
The final cover!
Hi! Small Beer Press just revealed the new cover for my book and it is a red-white-and-blue(-and- black) thing of beauty. Also: I've been collecting their titles for years, so it's a special and weird thrill to realize that the book will have so much awesome company. Super excited.
A Short Thank-You Note to Trump
So the photo below is me right after I took the oath of citizenship, which happened yesterday, a Tuesday, which meant we had to leave our baby with the sitter. The baby's an American. So is my wife. So, for that matter, is pretty much my whole immediate family. I was the hold out.
I'm pretty sure I was eligible for at least three years. I had been meaning to do it, but we were traveling a lot (we moved from Vegas to the Pacific Northwest to Amish country to Chicago) and the application is $680 -- a deal and a privilege, to be sure. You can't put a price on citizenship. But you can totally keep meaning to do it later because $680 feels like a lot.
And then you have an insane spray-tanned caricature spewing rhetoric so hateful, so inconsistent and bizarre, that you start laughing, and then worrying when half the country takes the joke seriously. And then the joke gets to be the presidential nominee of a major political party. That's when $680 feels like a bargain.
So thank you, Donald J. Trump. You're what it took for me and for (I'm guessing) thousands of others like me to take the not-insignificant leap from permanent resident to citizen.
In the elevator to the courthouse, a man saw a bunch of us in the elevator clutching our appointment letters. He said, "Trump, huh?"
We all nodded.
He said, "You're going to vote? You got to vote."
All of us nodded -- all of us, an elevator stuffed with nervous soon-to-be-citizens all worried we forgot some important document (the green card? the letter? were we supposed to bring our old passports?). But yes, we all said we were going to vote.
Against you.
We took the oath. The judge welcomed us, told us that the US was lucky to have us, that to swear allegiance to the US did not mean we abandoned the culture and the food and everything we hold dear from our old life. It was all moving, way more moving than I thought it would be.
I've been here for years. I've always enjoyed the privilege of the observer, an embedded outsider. I'd been holding on to that feeling forever, of being in the US and very much loving it but also not quite belonging, or thinking I did not quite belong. That feeling's gone, but it will come back, I'm sure. But still: what has replaced it is just as light, just as freeing, just as wonderful, just as strange. This judge made all of us feel truly welcomed.
The voter registration folk waited right outside the court. I filled out the form. It took all of five minutes.
The Collection is Forthcoming!
Hi! My story collection Best Worst American will come out in February 2017 out of the amazing Small Beer Press: check it out! You can pre-order it at their site, so why not go there and order 500 copies? The tentative cover is below.
"Northern" in the Fall 2015 issue of Huizache!
Hi! I'm thrilled and proud that my story "Northern" found an awesome home in the Fall 2015 issue of Huizache, and just and thrilled to be in such good company. Seriously daring, urgent, amazing writing in here -- please pick up a copy!
"Missed Tickets" in The Cossack Review
Hi! I'm super thrilled that The Cossack Review published a short creepy thing of mine. It's in the magazine's fourth print issue. Please buy 500 copies.
Lily, Story Consultant
"Debtor" in Ecotone's Migration Issue
Two Pieces in TriQuarterly
I Read!
Great Beginnings!
And here's the full interview of Keret and Tinti talking about the stories in the episode, mine included.).
You can get to the actual MP3 of the episode here, where Cristin Milioti does an awesome job reading the piece.
Progress Report!
Here's what is currently on our coffee table: the rough draft of my novel. Most of the rough draft is staying, the stuff on the left -- maybe 3/5, maybe even 3/4. The stuff on the right is going away. The stuff that is staying is about to go through some major, major rewriting.
The chucking/major-rewriting is what you do -- what everyone does -- so the following remains a mystery:
- Why I somehow assume (and always assume) that whatever I write is going to emerge as this brilliant and perfect thing the first time around.
- Why -- even though I somehow know 1. is never going to happen -- I hope no one else will notice, which is also never the case.
- Why I despair when facing 1. & 2., even though it always happens, and then temporarily give up on the thing.
- Why I end up forgetting that there are ways one goes about fixing, finessing, and making something not-currently-awesome into something awesome -- and that they are not terribly mysterious, or even that laborious.
- Why I will forget this entire cycle the next time around.
Too Many Blue Shoes!
