Events!
Hi! I'm doing a few readings & panels, and so I've set up a page for these over here.
Today's Best Index Cards About Sharing Stuff on Social Media
I'm taking a social-media break and had some thoughts on how weird it is that so much of my headspace, and so much of the stuff I jot and share fairly regularly on social media, lives in a space that is not actually mine, is really mostly out of my control, and yet feels super personal in a way that is maybe not super comfortable.
(The cards above are like a baby version of the much better, much more precise ideas articulated in Sofia Samatar's Why You Left Social Media)
Social Media Off Social Media
I'm taking a social media break, but I love to doodle, and I love to post stuff, so I'm back to posting things here, for a while.
Neukom!!!
Hi! I'm thrilled to share that Best Worst American won the Neukom Institute Literary Award for debut speculative fiction. Details available here.
All of my AWP events on an index card for some reason
Here is everything I am doing at AWP 2018 in Tampa w/ some added doodles and commentary. Are you going to be there? I'd love to see you! Please stop and say hello.
2018 Events
Here's where I'll be! If you're around please stop in and say hi:
Thursday, February 1, 7 pm: Whitman College Visiting Writers Series (Walla Walla, WA)
Wednesday, February 28, 7:30 pm: Barrie Jean Borrich's Apocalypse, Darling launch, with Christine Rice Tara Betts, and T Clutch Fleischmann (Women & Children First, Chicago, IL)
Tuesday, March 6: 7:30 pm: Quickies! (Innertown Pub, Chicago, IL)
TAMPA/AWP Stuff:
Wednesday, March 7, 6 pm: NU's MA/MFA in Creative Writing's AWP Reading, with Paula Carter, Goldie Goldbloom, Juan Martinez, Simone Muench, Carrie Muehle, Aram Mrojan, and Ankar Thakkar (The Attic, Tampa, FL)
Thursday, March 8, 9 am: Defeating Writer's Block: Techniques for Breaking Through, with Jean Kwok, Mira Jacobs, Elizabeth L. Silver, and Sari Wilson (AWP panel, Tampa, FL)
Friday, March 9, 10:30 am - 11:00 am: Small Beer Press table signing (table 406, AWP, Tampa, FL)
Friday, March 9 7:00pm-9:00pm: AWP Reading/Rock Show/Dance Party (Ella's Americana Folk Art Cafe, Tampa, FL)
Monday, March 19, 7 pm: Alumni Reading Series (Black Mountain Institute, UNLV, Las Vegas, NV)
Monday, April 16: YZ Chin's Though I Get Home Chicago book launch (Unabridged Books, Chicago, IL)
More Chicago Events
Here's where I'll be and what I'll be doing in the next few weeks:
Thursday, 7:30 pm 9/14/17 at Women & Children First: A conversation with Jimin Han about her novel A Small Revolution. Facebook event page here.
Friday, 7:00 pm 9/15/17 at Volumes Cafe: The Hullaboo! at Volumes Cafe, with "Trivia, Drunk Spelling Bee, Haiku Smackdown, Bibliomancy, and More -- With Prizes!" with a bunch of awesome writers. Facebook event page here.
Thursday, 8:15 pm 9/21/17 at Women & Children First: Panel on the best books of 2017 so far, and part of the Andersonville Lit Crawl, with another bunch of awesome writers. More info here.
Monday, 7:00 pm 10/2/17 at the Public House Theatre: We Read Banned Books, an ACLU benefit, with music & some terrific Chicago writers. More info here.
Thursday, 5:00 pm 10/19/17 at the American Writers Museum: Authors Brenda Lozano and Juan Martinez in Conversation, part of the Lit & Luz Festival. More info here
Friday, 6:30 pm 10/20/17 at the Hideout: 20x20 Chicago How does it work? More info here.
Two More Events
This week! On Friday it's in Chicago & on Saturday it's Brooklyn (all promotional material copied and pasted from the respective Facebook events pages in the interest of expedience & clarity & laziness):
- Friday June 23 7 pm at the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square: MA/MFA Graduate and Faculty Reading Northwestern University MA/MFA program graduates J-L Deher-Lesaint, Virginia Rice Smith, and Cathy Beres, and fiction faculty Juan Martinez and Christine Sneed will read from recent works of prose and poetry. (Facebook event page)
- Satuday June 24 7 pm at Spoonbill & Sugartown: Join us Spoonbill & Sugartown, Booksellers for a night of celebrating highly unusual debut fiction! Of Juan Martinez’s story collection Best Worst American, Booklist calls it “idiosyncratic” and “bluntly funny.” Etgar Keret says more simply: “I loved it,” while Kelly Link praises Martinez as “the master of the absurd.” Kirkus Reviews calls Jimin Han’s novel A Small Revolution “intriguing,” “suspenseful,” and “eerily timeless.” The late James Salter says Paul Cohen’s novel The Glamshack is “powerful” and “unusual.” From spooky Japanese girl ghosts to a hostage crisis that erupts from a love triangle to an a doomed affair that evokes the tragedy of the Plains Indian Wars, each of these debuts take unconventional approaches to universal stories. Martinez, Han, and Cohen will talk about their long journeys toward authorhood, their artistic choices, and what they’re working on now. (Facebook event page)
Try Anything
The freaking New York Times wrote a super nice, super generous review of Best Worst American. I'm thrilled, beyond thrilled, particularly about the reviewer's appreciation of "Northern," my favorite story in the collection and its "botched buttock-surgery" angle. Also thrilled that the wonderful art for the review prominently features the kitten poster art from Best Worst American's "Your Significant Other's Kitten Poster."
OK, no. The reviewer didn't say people had to buy 500 copies of the book. But please do so anyway, preferably via your favorite indie bookstore or via Small Beer Press directly.
"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!
