Three stories at BOMB, two in NOON

Happy to have three stories up on the BOMB Magazine site. On the bottom of the page are links to an interview conducted with my good friend Michael Barron and two poems by Jenny Zhang. (Art by Dominic Fortunato.)

I also have two stories in this year's edition of NOON, alongside some of my favorites, including Lydia Davis, Lincoln Michel, Deb Olin Unferth, Christine Schutt, Anya Yurchyshyn, Brandon Hobson, Clancy Martin, and others.

April 2013 Mix

I made a mix for April with a few nods to summer, as well as two phrases I had not previously known to exist together "Neil Young" and "Dance Mix." Here's the track list (with props/apologies to the Art Decade blog, which I've cribbed from not insignificantly):

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If you missed it, the new spring issue of Gigantic is up, featuring our first all-slush selection of fiction and a specially curated contemporary photography section.

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Three more days and then I'm back to Brooklyn. See you soon!

NOON 2013 Reading & Party

http://www.centerforfiction.org/calendar/a-celebration-of-noon

New Sam Pink books

Sam Pink's new novel Rontel is out from Electric Literature today and due in my inbox any moment now. Excited to read it, and I was happy to buy it and support him.

In other Sam Pink news, my interview with him, "They Tell Me They Thought I Was a Psycho," originally for the Faster Times, is being reprinted in Gerald McClellan Versus Nigel Benn, a new collection of his stories, which I just now read in one sitting. The collection is also available on his blog for free, but the book looks nice, like something you could give to a friend. Only fifty copies are being made.

I Interviewed Julie Hecht for Gigantic

My short interview with one of my favorite contemporary American writers, Julie Hecht, is now up on the Gigantic site. Among the topics discussed: garbage bags, rats, cabs, Mayor Bloomberg, Roz Chast, David Letterman's conversation with George W. Bush, and Woody Allen's "hick girls." You know, all those things we know and love about New York.

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Julie Hecht is the author of Do the Windows Open?, Happy Trails to You, The Unprofessionals, and Was This Man a Genius?: Talks with Andy Kaufman. An excerpt from her book, May I Touch Your Hair?, will be appear in Harper’s Magazine soon.

New Publication

Happy New Year! Here are four very short things/one-liners that just went up on the Wonder tumblr. Thanks to editors Andrew Durbin and Ben Fama for publishing these! Hope you enjoy.

Gigantic Everything Is Coming

Info here:

Launch party here.

Writers Reading Other Writers

Gigantic and The Believer present Writers Reading Other Writers, a night of literary bridges, featuring original and "cover" readings. A part of Lit Crawl NYC 2012.

featuring
+++ Justin Taylor
+++ Catherine Lacey
+++ Sparrow

Saturday, September 15, 2012
7–7:45pm
Botanica Bar (21+)
47 East Houston
NYC
http://goo.gl/maps/rdsCi

http://thegiganticmag.com/
http://believermag.com/

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JUSTIN TAYLOR is the author of The Gospel of Anarchy and Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever. He teaches at the Pratt Institute and lives in Brooklyn. His website is justindtaylor.net.

CATHERINE LACEY is a 2012 NYFA Fiction Fellow and has published fiction and nonfiction in The Believer, the Harper Perennial anthology 40 Stories, The Atlantic, Diagram, Brooklyn Magazine, elimae, and others. She is a founding co-owner of 3B, a bed and breakfast in Brooklyn.

SPARROW lives with his wife in a doublewide trailer in Phoenicia, New York. One of his "jobs" is writing bumper stickers. Probably Sparrow's greatest achievement in life was creating the slogan I'M ALREADY AGAINST THE NEXT WAR. Soft Skull Press has published three of his books, including America: A Prophecy—The Sparrow Reader. The New York Times ran three of his op-ed pieces. Sparrow plays ocarina in the lily-strewn pop band Foamola.

It is a land, if God exists, he created in anger

"Kinski always says it's full of erotic elements. I don't see so much erotic--I see it more full of obscenity. And nature is violent here, base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here--I would see fornication, asphyxiation, choking, and fighting for survival... and growing... rotting away.... The birds don't sing here, they screech.... It is a land, if God exists, he created in anger.... It's the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness, baseness, and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to this enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid, suburban novel, a cheap novel.... And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth, and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here, in the sky, look like a mess.... There is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But, when I say this, I say this all full of admiration of the jungle. It is not that I hate it; I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment." -Werner Herzog, on the making of Fitzcarraldo



And a bonus Herzog rant, this time, on chickens:
Werner Herzog on Chickens from Tom Streithorst on Vimeo.