Indie Book Buzz: Akashic

We are knee deep in Indie Book Buzz here at TNBBC. Over the next few weeks, we will be inviting members of the small press publishing houses to share which of their upcoming releases they are most excited about!

This week's picks come from Johanna Ingalls, 

Managing Editor at Akashic Books

The Night of the Rambler by Montague Kobbé 

(forthcoming 9/3/13)

What it’s About

Loosely based on the historical facts surrounding the Anguilla Revolution of 1967, The Night of the Rambler unfolds across the fifteen hours that lapse between the moment when the Anguillan “rebels” board the motorboat that will take them across the strait to St. Kitts, and the break of dawn the following day, when it becomes obvious that the unaccomplished mission will have to be aborted. The novel consciously moves away from the “historical” category, purposely altering at will the sequence of “facts” narrated, collating fully fictional episodes with vaguely accurate anecdotes and replacing the protagonists with fictional characters. At turns highly dramatic and hilarious, Kobbé brings deep honesty to the often-unexamined righteousness of revolution.

Why You Should Read It
Kobbé brings an exciting new voice to the story of the 1967 Anguilla Revolution in his debut novel. This book is funny, poignant, entertaining, and an all-around delight. It’s a great book about the nature of revolutions, which is particularly relevant given recent events in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, etc. It’s historical fiction and alternate reality in the best way—as Kobbé says in his preface, The Night of the Rambler is “a fictionalized and utterly false account of the events that most definitely did not happen on June 9–10, 1967.” Work of fiction or not, this book illuminates the common nature of revolutions great and small.

As Flies to Whatless Boys by Robert Antoni

(forthcoming 9/3/13)

What it’s About

Willy, the narrator of As Flies to Whatless Boys, is traveling from London to Trinidad with “inventor” John Adolphus Etzler in the mid-nineteenth century. Etzler has convinced English working-class families (such as Willy’s) that he has invented machines that use the forces of Mother Nature to ensure no one will have to work, allowing for the creation of a tropical utopian society in the Caribbean. While en route to Trinidad, Willy falls in love with Marguerite Whitechurch, a gentry girl whose lack of vocal cords force her to write to Willy in order to communicate with him. Marguerite and Willy’s love story is interrupted by the ship’s arrival at Port of Spain, where Etzler—who is revealed as a complete charlatan—abandons the group, and it becomes clear that his machines don’t work at all. As the majority of the ship’s passengers—including Willy’s father—are stricken with the “Black Vomit,” Willy must decide whether to return to England with the girl he loves, or to stay in Trinidad with those who he has met along the way.

Why You Should Read It

Robert Antoni has been called the James Joyce of the Caribbean, and this captivating novel proves that he has earned that title. Antoni was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2010 for his work on As Flies to Whatless Boys, and I’m thrilled with this final version of the book. Not only is it an engrossing story, but the book is also aesthetically captivating—Antoni has incorporated a full-color map of Port of Spain, reproductions of fictional newspaper articles, symbols, drawings, and an appendix that points to exclusive online video content. It’s easy to lose yourself within As Flies to Whatless Boys, and that’s entirely because of Antoni’s voice and his vision for this novel.

We Do!: American Leaders Who Believe in Marriage Equality, edited by Jennifer Baumgardner and Madeline M. Kunin 

(forthcoming 10/1/13) 

What it’s About

We Do! demonstrates, through speeches, interviews, and commentary, the encouraging story of American acceptance of gay marriage and the roles that politicians—gay and straight—have played in that history. This movement, like all civil rights movements, began with individuals telling the truth about who they are to a world that doesn’t accept them. It ends with an entire generation of young people who reject blatant civil rights discrimination. From Supervisor Harvey Milk articulating in 1978 why gay people in all fields must be out and visible (“For invisible, we remain in limbo—a myth, a person with no parents, no brothers, no sisters, no friends who are straight, no important positions in employment”); to Governor Andrew Cuomo blinking back tears as he discusses his pride in making gay marriage a reality in New York in 2011; to President Obama’s unprecedented support; and the courage of many other American politicians—We Do! triumphantly chronicles this recent chapter of our history.

Why You Should Read It 

The Supreme Court’s recent decision to declare the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional was a huge success for marriage equality activists across the country, and We Do! both documents and celebrates American politicians who have voiced their support for this latest fight for civil rights. Madeline M. Kunin—former governor of Vermont, former deputy secretary of education, and former ambassador to Switzerland—joins Jennifer Baumgardner, award-winning author and activist, to collect these speeches and interviews into one inspiring volume.  

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Johanna Ingalls is the managing editor at Akashic Books where she has worked for over a decade since being rescued from the music industry by Akashic publisher Johnny Temple. A graduate of Barnard College, she currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and their foolishly oversized animals—an Irish Wolfhound named Beckett and a twenty-pound cat named Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Collin Kelley's Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, TNBBC's newest series is a fun, new, literary spin on the ole Would You Rather game. Get to know the authors we love to read in ways no other interviewer has. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20 odd bookish scenarios. And just to spice it up a bit, each author gets to ask their own Would You Rather question to the author who appears after them....

Collin Kelley's

Would You Rather

Would you rather write an entire book with your feet or with your tongue?
My feet. I save my oral skills for other things.

Would you rather have one giant bestseller or a long string of moderate sellers?
A long string of moderate sellers. It’s nearly impossible to duplicate a big, popular bestseller and everything that comes after pales in comparison with readers and critics.

Would you rather be a well-known author now or be considered a literary genius after you’re dead?
Now, damn it! To quote Carrie Fisher, instant gratification takes too long.

Would you rather write a book without using conjunctions or have every sentence of your book begin with one?
Without conjunctions. I’m sort of doing this with some of the dialogue in my Venus Trilogy because some of the characters are French and don’t have full command of the English language. I want their voice to have that stilted quality.

Would you rather have every word of your favorite novel tattooed on your skin or always playing as an audio in the background for the rest of your life?
Tattooed. I think the audio would eventually become boring and monotonous, especially while doing my own writing.

Would you rather write a book you truly believe in and have no one read it or write a crappy book that comprises everything you believe in and have it become an overnight success?
I’m already doing the first and have considered the second.

Would you rather write a plot twist you hated or write a character you hated?
A character I hated. Isn’t that what a good villain is all about?

Would you rather use your skin as paper or your blood as ink?
Skin as paper. For reference, see the Peter Greenaway film “The Pillow Book” starring the incredibly naked Ewan McGregor.

Would you rather become a character in your novel or have your characters escape the page and reenact the novel in real life?
Real life. Especially if I get to have sex with a couple of my characters.

Would you rather write without using punctuation and capitalization or without using words that contained the letter E?
Without punctuation and capitalization. Hey, it worked for Faulkner and e.e. cummings…

Would you rather have schools teach your book or ban your book?
Teach would be nice, but the publicity for having it banned would be fantastic.

Would you rather be forced to listen to Ayn Rand bloviate for an hour or be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas?
Hit me again, Dylan, and put some stank on it!

Would you rather be reduced to speaking only in haiku or be capable of only writing in haiku?
I speak in haiku

Which I would rather not do

But coo coo ca choo

Would you rather be stuck on an island with only the 50 Shades Series or a series in a language you couldn’t read?

I will begrudgingly say 50 Shades, although I can read a little French, so maybe...

Would you rather critics rip your book apart publically or never talk about it at all?
Rip me to shreds. As Mr. Wilde said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Would you rather have everything you think automatically appear on your Twitter feed or have a voice in your head narrate your every move?
I already have voices in my head, so one more won’t hurt.

Would you rather give up your computer or pens and paper?
Pen and paper. Honestly, my handwriting is so bad that I wouldn’t miss it.

Would you rather write an entire novel standing on your tippy-toes or laying down flat on your back?
I’ve been told I do some of my best work on my back.

Would you rather read naked in front of a packed room or have no one show up to your reading?
I think there would be an empty room in either scenario.

Would you rather read a book that is written poorly but has an excellent story, or read one with weak content but is written well? 

Excellent story. I’ve written plenty of mainstream and self-published books that aren’t very well written but have a helluva story to tell.

And here's Collin's response to the Kathe Koja's question from last week:

Would you rather read all day or write all day?

Read all day, write all night. 

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 Check back next week to see what Les Plesko would rather

and see his answer to Collin's question:

From the Fringe science lab: Would you trade places with your bestselling author alternate universe self if it meant never seeing your own world again (not to mention trapping your doppelganger in a place where they don’t belong)?

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Collin Kelley is the author of the novels Conquering Venus (2009, Vanilla Heart Publishing) and Remain In Light (2011, Vanilla Heart Publishing), which was the runner-up for the 2013 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Fiction and a 2012 finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction. His poetry collections include Better To Travel (2003, iUniverse), Slow To Burn (2006, MetroMania Press), After the Poison (2008, Finishing Line Press) and Render (2013, Sibling Rivalry Press). Kelley is also the author of the short story collection, Kiss Shot (2012, Amazon Kindle Exclusive). A recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year Award, Deep South Festival of Writers Award and Goodreads Poetry Award, Kelley’s poetry, essays and interviews have appeared in magazines, journals and anthologies around the world. He lives in Atlanta, GA. For more information, visit www.collinkelley.com.

Indie Book Buzz: Black Balloon Publishing

We are knee deep in Indie Book Buzz here at TNBBC. Over the next few weeks, we will be inviting members of the small press publishing houses to share which of their upcoming releases they are most excited about!

This week's picks come from Missi Smith, 

Assistant Publicist at 45^th Parallel Communications.

And Every Day Was Overcast: An Illustrated Novel by Paul Kwiatkowski

Published by Black Balloon Publishing
October 2013

What is it about?  Drugs, teenage cruelty, wonder, and the screenflickering worlds of Predator and Married . . . With Children shape and warp the narrator’s developing sense of self in author and photographer Paul Kwiatkowski’s debut. Paul Kwiatkowski’s arresting photographs amplify his novel of profound vision and vulnerability, drawing the reader through adventures and misadventures, from an ill-fated LSD trip on an island of castaway rabbits to the devastating specter of HIV and AIDS. And Every Day Was Overcast, an extraordinary alchemy of photography and fiction, gracefully illuminates the narrator’s travesties and triumphs of forging emotional connections and his own brutal longings for love.

Why am I excited to be publishing it?  At Black Balloon Publishing we champion the unwieldy and the unclassifiable, and this unique take on the novel is already receiving media buzz for its originality and compelling artistry. The American Life’s Ira Glass, and photographers Alec Soth and Doug Rickard have already praised And Every Day Was Overcast.  In the book, Paul boldly captures the vacancy of teen angst and heats it up, setting it in South Florida amongst ruin and stagnation.  Everyone experiences adolescence; few are willing to share meditations that inform identity during those years. 

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Missi Smith is an Assistant Publicist at 45^th Parallel Communications, the publicity and marketing firm representing Black Balloon Publishing.

The Audio Series: Matt Rowan

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen." is an incredibly special one for us. Hatched in a NYC club during BEA week, this feature requires more work of the author than any of the ones that have come before. And that makes it all the more sweeter when you see, or rather, hear them read excerpts from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.


Today, Matt Rowan reads a few short stories from his collection Why God Why, which released this year by Love Symbol Press. Matt Rowan is a writer and editor living in Chicago, IL. He co-edits Untoward Magazine and assists with The Anthology of Chicago. His work can be found in Artifice, SmokeLong Quarterly, Alice Blue Review and Cloud Rodeo, among others.

Click the soundcloud files below to experience Why God Why as read by Matt Rowan:

The word on Why God Why:

Why God Why is a collection of bizarre, hilarious, occasionally touching and occasionally creepy flash fiction pieces.

"Matt Rowan writes as if he'd spent the past several years living inside a Russell Edson poem. Hands come from the sky to offer uninterpretable signs, superheroes with terrible powers make peace with themselves, public speakers demonstrate their insect-enlarging guns (necessary for world peace!) or declare that we must defeat the menace of the bats by becoming bats ourselves. The stories move with so much weird energy that we get the impression that, rather than ending, we are watching them shake themselves apart, or explode." - James Tadd Adcox, author of The Map of the System of Human Knowledge
*lifted with love from goodreads

CCLaP; Sad Robot Stories

It's time for another celebration! 

Another CCLaP book is born and I am so happy to share it with you!

Today, Mason Johnson's Sad Robot Stories is released into the world for the first time ever as an honest-to-goodness novella, and I cannot tell you how excited I am about it. A long while ago, I stumbled across Mason and the original self published, crayon illustrated, and totally self-navigable version of this book. I dug on it super hard core then, and I have to tell you, I didn't think it was possible, but I love it one hundred times more now that CCLaP got their hands all in it (although I do really miss those adorably horrendous illustrations!).

The general consensus was that the apocalypse had made everything considerably quieter.

Robot disagreed.

It tells the story of Robot, who is one of millions of androids on an Earth that recently saw the extinction of human life. While Robot's mechanical brothers and sisters seem happy, Robot finds himself lost and missing the only friend he had, a human named Mike whose family accepted Robot as a piece of their personal puzzle. Without both the mistakes and the capacity for miracles that define human civilization, is civilization even worth having? Explore this question in the hilarious yet heartbreaking full-length debut of popular Chicago performer Mason Johnson. A Kurt Vonnegut for the 21st century, his answers are simultaneously droll, surprising and touching, and will make you rethink the limits of what a storyteller can accomplish within science fiction. 

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Early reviewers were falling in love with Robot, check it out:

Gaspers Block  says “Sad Robot Stories … reads more like fable and allegory than campy science fiction. It may playfully explore a host of complex, timely issues, such as the mechanization of the workforce, gender nonconformity, and the looming threat of extinction... at its core it's about the magic of storytelling, a celebration of how the best stories, the "honest" stories, can make us feel whole, sustain us, connect us, and give us hope--even in our darkest hour.”

Beach Sloth wants you to know that “Mason Johnson understands what it means to be human... ‘Sad Robot Stories’ is a story about faith, love, and finding one’s inner humanity.”

Digital Sextant calls it “ ...a beautiful little gem...”

Silent Lucidity admits that “Not since R. Daneel Olivaw, first introduced in Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, have I fallen in love with a robot...”

Chicago Literati made this comparison “If David Lynch were to develop a dystopian retelling of Pinocchio, it would be like Mason Johnson’s Sad Robot Stories.”

Love at First Book laughed and cried... “The book opens up with (a) how-can-you-not-be-hooked first line..”

And goodreads users Paula Swafford says “Johnson’s description of Robot’s siblings in the post-catastrophe world was entertaining.” and Dr. Lamb calls it “..a story about growth and about what it means to be a human...”

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Just in case these amazing reviews don't convince you, we were lucky enough to have the following websites post excerpts. You know, so you could read the awesome for yourself:

Little Fiction excerpts Cats and creates this awesome fan art poster

and 

This Blog Will Save Your Life excerpts Dream

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I've really enjoyed pitching around Sad Robot Stories for a variety of reasons. It's the best apocalypse-novella-with-heart I've ever read, it's got one of the coolest and saddest robots I've ever met, and its author is made of awesome-sauce. Mason makes everything funner. (Yes I just used a non-word. Shuddup.) If you are anywhere near the Chicago area this month, you should totally find your way to one of his readings. And if you do, be sure to tell me about it, and know that I will be most jealous of you!

You can now purchase a gorgeous, hand-made hard cover edition of Sad Robot Stories on CCLaP's website. 

What are you waiting for? Go and get it now. You can thank me later! 

Indie Spotlight: Claudia Zuluaga

It's always fascinating to hear about the inspiration behind a book, whether the story was inspired by an author's personal past, a favorite book, a song they loved, or something spun out of their own imagination. 

Today, author Claudia Zuluaga shares the inspiration behind her book Fort Starlight, and explains why she tends to write about characters who find themselves isolated, no matter if that isolation is physical or mental...

Fort Starlight / Engine Books, September 2013

“Broke and stranded in a half-finished tract house in a swamp, Ida Overdorff discovers the strange community around her—a millionaire living in a tree house, two feral child thieves. Ida clings to her dream of returning to New York while weathering storms both meteorological and emotional, and comes to understand that nobody’s luck—even hers—is all bad.”

Just before my sixteenth birthday, my parents moved, taking my younger sister and me from a suburb of New York to a town in South Florida. Our five older siblings were old enough that they didn’t need to live at home, so we left them behind. Years before, my parents had invested in a piece of land with some money they had somehow scraped together. The South Florida town was expanding into the wilderness, and though the land wasn’t worth much, it was enough that they’d been able to trade it toward the cost of a villa in a new development.

It wasn’t so much of a culture shock as a ‘no culture’ shock, as we moved in the middle of the summer to a community that only had a few inhabitants.  It was a relief when school started, but it didn’t change the fact that everything was so spread apart. And quiet. I was afraid of the silence, of all that it made me feel. I wasn’t yet formed; I didn’t know who I was. The open sky and the silence, silence, silence didn’t help me to see who I could be. I was overwhelmed by the religiosity, the heat, the long stretches of emptiness that made me fear the worst about myself and my future, and there was nothing to distract or dilute. College wasn’t my family culture, so that never seemed an option. I plotted my escape to parts more populous, thinking I would start my life when that happened.  And I did escape and did start a life.

The conviction that I had to leave in order to make a life for myself was based on an illusion, of course, because you can’t really get away from yourself. By leaving and choosing to be around lots of people, I wasn’t evolving any faster; I merely distracted myself with noise. 

In Fort Starlight, Ida Overdorff is alone and isolated from other people, from civilized comforts, and from her own aspirations. She is hot and dirty and afraid, and the worst thoughts she has about herself seem to manifest as her only companions in the unfinished house where she manages to survive. She is flawed in what feel like particularly hopeless ways. She never knew how she might fit into the world, and when she arrives in Fort Starlight, the world, as she knows it, vanishes.  It is just her and humidity and sun and wild animals. There isn’t even a mirror. In this isolation, she can either self-destruct or turn this predicament into an opportunity to finally define herself. 

The intensity of her isolation, really being stuck with her rawest self, finally moves Ida from self-pity to more productive thoughts. And Ida soon discovers that, despite first appearances, she is not all alone in Fort Starlight. She is, in fact, part of a tiny community, and they are all connected through their individual struggles.

I always knew that I’d write about the town as I first saw it and felt it. It was so haunting: the scattered houses in various stages of construction, the specter of a place that does not yet exist.  Of course, it is no longer that place. I wish I could see it again, just as it was, to experience the place as the mother/writer/teacher that I am now.

My fictional characters are always isolated, literally or figuratively. I believe so completely in the power of that moment when you have to face the very thing you want to avoid, and putting my people into those dangerous moments is probably why I write fiction in the first place.

Claudia Zuluaga was born in White Plains, NY, grew up both there and Port St. Lucie, Florida, and now lives in New Jersey.  Her fiction has appeared in Narrative Magazine, JMWW, and Lost Magazine, and was included in Dzanc Books' Best of the Web series. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Short Stories. Claudia is a full time Lecturer in the English department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

Kathe Koja's Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, TNBBC's newest series is a fun, new, literary spin on the ole Would You Rather game. Get to know the authors we love to read in ways no other interviewer has. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20 odd bookish scenarios. And just to spice it up a bit, each author gets to ask their own Would You Rather question to the author who appears after them....

Kathe Koja's 

Would You Rather

photo by Rick Lieder

Would you rather write an entire book with your feet or with your tongue?

Tongue = verbal.

Would you rather have one giant bestseller or a long string of moderate sellers?

Strings last longer than giants do.

Would you rather be a well known author now or be considered a literary genius after you’re dead?

Rather the work be known now AND remembered. The author part is nice but not necessary.

Would you rather write a book without using conjunctions or have every sentence of your book begin with one?

The latter, absolutely.

Would you rather have every word of your favorite novel tattooed on your skin or always playing as an audio in the background for the rest of your life?

Skin, because skin changes, scars might alter the text, surgeries edit, etc. Background noise = hell.

Would you rather write a book you truly believe in and have no one read it or write a crappy book that comprises everything you believe in and have it become an overnight success?

Ewwww. Belief please!

Would you rather write a plot twist you hated or write a character you hated?

I can’t hate my characters and write about them, they’d become cardboard figures without any feeling or depth. I have indeed written plot twists I “hated” in the sense that, oh, I wish this wasn’t going to happen to you, Mr. Character, but that’s the way the story’s going, so what must be must be. Sometimes these events surprise me too.

Would you rather use your skin as paper or your blood as ink?

Blood. Heartfelt.

Would you rather become a character in your novel or have your characters escape the page and reenact the novel in real life?

Oh, the latter please! Is this possible? Can we do it with other people’s books too!?

Would you rather write without using punctuation and capitalization or without using words that contained the letter E?

Love the E. Goodbye, semicolons.

Would you rather have schools teach your book or ban your book?

Depends on the school.

Would you rather be forced to listen to Ayn Rand bloviate for an hour or be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas?

Dylan all the way.

Would you rather be reduced to speaking only in haiku or be capable of only writing in haiku?

Five syllables is

A hindrance, but in books it

Would hurt so much more.

Would you rather be stuck on an island with only the 50 Shades Series or one that was written in a language you couldn't read?

Language that I couldn't read - I'd have plenty of time to puzzle it out, and leave the island (if I left!) in better linguistic shape than I landed.

Would you rather critics rip your book apart publically or never talk about it at all?

It’s always nice to be noticed.

Would you rather have everything you think automatically appear on your Twitter feed or have a voice in your head narrate your every move?

Both are hellish. Abstain!

Would you rather give up your computer or pens and paper?

Oh, so complementary! A sad question. In the end, paper and pencils win for ease of operation.

Would you rather write an entire novel standing on your tippy-toes or laying down flat on your back?

Toes.

Would you rather read naked in front of a packed room or have no one show up to your reading?

Depends what I was reading.

Would you rather read a book that is written poorly but has an excellent story, or read one with weak content but is written well? 

Well-written all the way. can’t read the other kind, like eating gravel ice cream, keep cracking teeth, gagging, etc.

And here is Kathe's response to the question Kelly Davio asked her last week:

Would you rather have to use profanity on every page of your book, or nowhere in your book?

 Every.

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Check back next week to see what Collin Kelley would rather

 and see her answer to Kathe's question:

Would you rather read all day or write all day?

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Kathe Koja is a writer and event creator/producer based in Detroit. Her fifteenth novel, THE MERCURY WALTZ, sequel to the critically-acclaimed UNDER THE POPPY, is scheduled for fall 2013, as is a short fiction collection, GONE TO EXTREMES. UNDER THE POPPY's immersive theatrical performance premiered earlier this year. 

Indie Book Buzz: Arsenal Pulp

We are knee deep in Indie Book Buzz here at TNBBC. Over the next few weeks, we will be inviting members of the small press publishing houses to share which of their upcoming releases they are most excited about!

This week's picks come from Missi Smith, 

Assistant Publicist at 45^th Parallel Communications.

The Trial of Pope Bendict:  Joseph Ratzinger and the Vatican’s Assault on Reason, Compassion, and Human Dignity
by Daniel Gawthrop

Published by Arsenal Pulp Press

What is it about?  The Trial of Pope Benedict is an extensively researched work of a conscientious objector who has lapsed from the Catholic Church – but remains culturally tied to many of the Catholic traditions that informed his early years.  Now, an openly gay atheist, author Daniel Gawthrop examines Joseph Ratzinger’s career not long after the Pope’s resignation made history in the Catholic Church.   Gawthrop crafts a necessary and powerful critique of the most powerful religious institution in the world and argues that in light of scandals the Church and Ratzinger’s responsibility as a world leader, diplomatic immunity leaves silence where there should be explanations and accountability.

Why am I excited to be publishing it?  This book suits one of the key goals at Arsenal Pulp Press: to produce literature that traverses uncharted territories while challenging, stimulating, and asking probing questions about the world around us. Neither a hateful diatribe nor a knee-jerk response to headlines, The Trial of Pope Benedict carefully and intelligently illuminates Ratzinger’s outdated, aggressive positions on women and homosexuality, as well as his profound silence on the Church’s recent financial and sex scandal crises.  The Trial of Pope Benedict bravely gives voice to those who have been marginalized and victimized by the very institution in which they hold trust and faith.  It considers the potential for change in the Catholic Church and suggests how the newly appointed Pope Francis could move the Church into a more compassionate, reasonable, and accepting institution.

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Missi Smith is an Assistant Publicist at 45^th Parallel Communications, the publicity and marketing firm representing Arsenal Pulp Press.

The Audio Series: Jessica Westhead

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen." is an incredibly special one for us. Hatched in a NYC club during BEA week, this feature requires more work of the author than any of the ones that have come before. And that makes it all the more sweeter when you see, or rather, hear them read excerpts from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.


Today, Jessica Westhead reads from her 2011 short story collection And Also Sharks, which was a a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book and a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Short Fiction Prize. Jessica lives in Toronto, Canada. Her short fiction has appeared in major literary journals in Canada and the US, and her novel Pulpy & Midge was published by Coach House Books in 2007. She was shortlisted for the 2009 CBC Literary Awards and selected for the 2011 Journey Prize anthology.

Click the soundcloud file below to experience And Also Sharks as read by Jessica Westhead:

The word on And Also Sharks:

The forlornly funny stories in And Also Sharks celebrate the socially awkward, the insecure, the unfulfilled, and the obsessed. A disgruntled follower of a self-esteem blog posts a rambling critical comment. On the hunt for the perfect coffee table, a pregnant woman and her husband stop to visit his terminally ill ex-wife. The office cat lady reluctantly joins her fellow employees' crusade to cheer up their dying co-worker. A man grieving his wife's miscarriages follows his deluded friend on a stealth photo-taking mission at the Auto Show. A shoplifter creates her own narrative with stolen anecdotes and a kidnapped baby. In this collection, society's misfits and losers are portrayed sympathetically, and sometimes even heroically. As desperately as these characters long to fit in, they also take pride in what sets them apart.
*lifted with love from goodreads

FOUR FATHERS interview series: Dave Housley

It's the fourth and final installment of our four-part author interview series! We partnered with Cobalt Press, a brand spanking new small press publisher, to help spread the word about their kickstarter event for FOUR FATHERS, a collection of fatherly essays and stories by contributing authors Tom Williams, Ben Tanzer, BL Pawelek, and Dave Housley. (The kickstarter event closes on Monday. Feel free to check it out and if you are so inclined, throw a few bucks at it. You know you want to. Would I steer you wrong?)

Yesterday, we featured Tom Williams interviewing fellow contributor BL Pawelek.

Today, Dave Housely takes on BL Pawelek's questions:

The Four Fathers Interview Series:

Dave Housley

BL Pawelek: Have you ever been fired from a job? What did you do?

Dave Housely: I’ve only been fired from one job, and it was the first job I ever had, cutting the lawn for the man who is now my father in law. I was maybe twelve, and wanted money for, I don’t know, Van Halen records and popsicles. My father hooked me up with this job cutting the yard for my now father in law. I think I did that for a summer. My main memory is of this German shepherd who I remember as being about ten feet tall, who would stalk from window to window and bark furiously at me as I was doing the parts where the yard abutted the house. I was terrified of that dog, and apparently did a less than stellar job, because the next summer I was unceremoniously replaced by a kid from their neighborhood. I remember thinking, huh, that’s odd. It was the first time I had an inkling that maybe I had done a lousy job at something, and been kind of lazy, and it had cost me. I was so scared of that dog, though – a dog that my wife says was actually quite small for a shepherd (a fact that is in dispute, because I remember all ten feet of that dog snapping at my through the window) that it was fine with me. I was probably hoping to get a glimpse of the woman who is now my wife, but all I got was that terrifying, gigantic dog. 

BP: If you had a million dollars to spend on one food and eat it, what would it be?

DH: This is a very odd question. I would probably buy one million dollars worth of El Pollo Rico Peruvian chicken from Washington, DC. We used to live about a mile from that place, and moved to Pennsylvania five years ago, and it’s still one of the things I miss most about DC. If I had one million dollars I would open up an El Pollo Rico in my house and eat it for the rest of my life.

BP: When were you no longer a boy, but a man?

DH: I have a distinct memory of waking up maybe a month after starting my first real job and having this sense of dread that I had to go to work and I didn’t have a choice and this was pretty much how it was going to be for the rest of my life. I guess that’s a really depressing way to look at that transition, but I do think of that as a kind of coming of age lightbulb moment. That first month was kind of a novelty and a relief – I had a real job, after all, which was something we all wanted at that time (fresh out of college, sleeping on a friend’s couch in Alexandria, Virginia). But that idea of permanence hadn’t yet been processed in my brain, I suppose, until that morning. All of the sudden, I realized there wasn’t a finish line here – no graduation, no summer vacation – just getting out of bed and driving around the beltway and sitting in this office and doing my work.

A lot of what I’m writing about, still, is people coming to grips with that idea that the years of potential – in FOUR FATHERS it’s expressed as the idea that “anything can happen” – are essentially over, that the things that can happen are limited now, decisions have been made and paths chosen. For a lot of people, I think having children cements that idea, and it can be a hard thing to come to grips with. See how I bring the book back into that question? Marketing!

BP: Why did you want to have a kid like me?

DH: Shit just got REAL, Pawelek! This is a really tough question to answer. Wow, can I quote a Todd Parr book? At the risk of being totally corny, there’s a book about adoption that he wrote and it answers that question pretty nicely (our son, Ben, is adopted). This is the parents talking to the kid about why they’ve adopted him/her: “Because you needed somebody to love you, and we had love to give.” That’s better than any five thousand words I could write on it, I think.

BP: How much money is enough money?

DH: Everybody only needs enough money to purchase a lifetime supply of Peruvian chicken, the estimated cost of which is roughly one million dollars. 

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Dave Housley is the author of the story collections "If I Knew the Way, I Would Take You Home," forthcoming from Dzanc, and "Ryan Seacrest is Famous." His work has appeared in The Collagist, Hobart, Mid-American Review, Nerve, Wigleaf, and some other places. He's one of the founding editors and fiction editors and all around do-stuff people at Barrelhouse magazine (barrelhousemag.com). He lives in State College, PA with his wife Lori and son Ben.