writing

An excerpt from THE STRANGERS in Secret Behavior

Great thanks to Keith Newton for including an excerpt from my novel THE STRANGERS in the 2nd issue of Secret Behavior magazine.
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The second issue of Secret Behavior will launch at the New York Art Book Fair at PS1 in Queens. If you are local or visiting NYC please stop by our booth, the fair opens Thurs evening Sept 25th, and it is all day Fri 26th- Sun 28th.

Featured in Secret Behavior Issue 02: Kostas Anagnopoulos, Tom Andes, Morton Bartlett, Lisa Blair, James Brett, Nicola Canavan, John Clang, Victor Cobo, Marilène Coolens & Lisa De Boeck, Jonathan Durbin, TR Ericsson, Farrah Field, Jason Glasser, Nicolai Howalt, Susanna Howe, Rachel Kash, Brian Kenny, Erik Kessels, Eugene Lim, Malerie Marder, Myriam Meloni, Keith Newton, Jason Porter, Jana Romanova, Amanda Ross Ho, Juliana Sabinson, Mathias Svalina, André Viking, Jack Webb, Eric White

Order the issue here: http://secretbehavior.bigcartel.com/product/secret-behavior-issue-02-family

 

“Ursula’s Curse” now up at Dazed

Thanks to Dennis Cooper, my story “Ursula’s Curse” (originally published in The Coming Envelope #9) is up at Dazed Digital as part of their summer long #dazedstates series on American fiction. There’s also an interview with DC and great work by Joyelle McSweeney, Darby Larson, and Frank Hinton.

flying over venice li wei

 

 

Dennis Cooper, the punk pioneer of the written word and Visionaries collaborator, brings his transgressive spirit to Dazed today. There’s an interview with the man himself – “America’s most dangerous writer” – as well as his curated selection of other writers who go against the grain: including Eugene LimFrank Hinton and Joyelle McSweeney with her Oscar Pistorius opera (no, really).

Eugene Lim. Just take it from us when we say: remember that name. The writer’s got countless contributions to anthologies and chapbooks, as well as two novels – Fog & Car and last year’s acclaimed The Strangers – under his belt. What links everything penned by the Brooklynite, however, is their sense of adventure: and not the kind of adventure, as his short story for Dazed would inititally (incorrectly) suggest, that connotes a rollicking science-fiction adventure to the stars and back. It’s best, with Lim, to instead expect the unexpected. Read our online exclusive, “Ursula’s Curse” – taken from the novel that Lim is currently working on – to discover a loosely poetic prose that seems to come from another time altogether. And, in true Cooper tradition, that’s looking forward – not back.

Dennis Cooper: “Eugene Lim is amazing because he’s really adventurous with form and style in this way that I really like, and it’s so refined. It’s so hard to break apart fiction and do something really unusual with it, and to do it so gracefully. Eugene seems to be able to use form in a really exciting way, but he can also just continually make it beautiful. I mean, it’s very poetic; it’s just lovely. He’s a very good writer. I think he’s really special.”

Read the story here, illustrated with fantastic non-photoshopped flight by artist Li Wei.

Some fiction in the latest issue of THE COMING ENVELOPE

Just received thanks to Malcolm Sutton the latest issue of THE COMING ENVELOPE. I’ve work in it along with Kilby Smith-McGregor, S. D. Chrostowska, Thomas Phillips and Jonathan Pappo. My bit, called “Ursula’s Curse,” is an excerpt of a novel-in-slow-progress  in which intergalactic arena combat is imminent and a painter writes the following on her works:

This painting cannot be bought or sold for more than the total wages of three months full-time employment at the minimum wage as determined by the state of New York. If this painting should be sold for greater than this amount, may both the buyer and seller be considered shit by the entire world and by themselves, and may they spend the afterlife sad and angry and hungry and hopeless as poverty makes.

Five Fiction Reviews: Dimock, Saer, Murong, Lispector, Mellis

I reviewed five fiction titles for the latest (and sadly, the last) issue of Harp & Altar: NONE OF THIS IS REAL by Miranda Mellis; A BREATH OF LIFE by Clarice Lispector; LEAVE ME ALONE by Murong Xuecun; SCARS by Juan José Saer; and GEORGE ANDERSON by Peter Dimock.

“None of This Is Real… manages to speak precisely to that helplessness and guilt permeating the simultaneity of the climate-changed, apocalypse-always zeitgeist and the rapturous technowonderful singularity as advertised on your hand-holding device.”

Read the reviews here.

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This great issue of Harp & Altar also has: poetry and fiction by Tom Andes, Jessica Baran, Leopoldine Core, Ian Dreiblatt, Matthew Klane, Linnea Ogden, Jennifer Pilch, Michael Rerick, Jason Snyder, Donna Stonecipher, Sally Van Doren, and Tom Whalen; Jesse Lichtenstein on The Arcadia Project; Bianca Stone on Farrah Field; Michael Newton’s gallery reviews; and art by Adam Stolorow.

An excerpt from THE STRANGERS

I’m happy to have a piece of fiction in the latest issue of The Brooklyn Rail. “Spooky Action at a Distance” is excerpted from a forthcoming novel called THE STRANGERS (Black Square Editions) about several sets of odd twins. Here’s how it starts:

It’s when the cop is punching my face that I make the decision. I decide to go look for my sister. My whole life I’d indulged in a stupid thrill, a very risky habit. In the middle of the night I’d sneak through the town and deface posters of the beloved president. Sometimes just a mustache over his beloved pudgy face. I kept it scatological or primitive. For fifteen years I’d done this and never got caught.

The cop is working me over pretty good. I’ve never taken a punch before. I worry about my brain and whether he’ll bust something inside me and I’ll die slowly as things that aren’t supposed to meet mix inside my sloshy guts. I’m a wet animal and I’m weeping like a child and very ashamed that I am and I’m scared.

Read the rest.

New story called “Booster Rockets” in latest FENCE

i’m happy to have a new story called “Booster Rockets” in the latest issue of FENCE magazine. here’s how it starts:

I was coming from a haircut and I was upset. I had just spent a lot of money on the haircut but I didn’t have a lot of money. It’s not because I’m vain but looking good is important to me. Anyway I was walking across Washington Square Park and I was not happy. I was pissed off. I wasn’t crying or raving or anything like that, just cranky, because I’d taken a chance on a new hair cutter and just then I thought she’d fucked it all up, not done what I wanted her to do, what I’d told her to do. A little bit later, a few days later or even the very next day, I realized it was actually a very nice haircut, that I liked what she’d done, and I kept going back to her for several more years…

pick up a copy here why not.

AN ATTEMPT AT EXHAUSTING A PLACE IN PARIS by georges perec

i’ve a review of this perec gem in Jacket2. an issue devoted to the stroll. edited by corey frost and louis bury.

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris was written by Georges Perec during a gray Parisian weekend in October 1974. The stated intention was to “describe … that which is generally not taken note of, that which is not noticed, that which has no importance: what happens when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds.” A nonambulatory flâneur, Perec sets himself up at a cafe in Place Saint-Sulpice to do as his directive epigraph of Life: A User’s Manualorders us to do also: “Look with all your eyes, look.”

https://jacket2.org/reviews/detour-more-traditional-paths-composition

From STRANGE TWINS

Thanks to Douglas Messerli for publishing an excerpt from a novel-in-slow-progress currently called STRANGE TWINS at his EXPLORINGfictions:

How I got the job is an interesting story. Like all her hires, I was recruited. It was when my twin brother invited me to a party.

A self-help book my brother had secretly ghost-written was having a launch party in the old-fashioned pomp and gilt of the Hotel Europa downtown. Its publisher was projecting tremendous sales so had spared no expense. I’d no idea what I was walking into (my brother had called a few days prior, surprising me with an invite), and so when I arrived and saw that I’d misjudged the event’s size and glitter by several orders of magnitude, I realized it was going to be difficult to get any time at all with my brother, the epicenter of the maelstrom, whose tuxedo’d point from the mezzanine balcony I could amusedly observe drawing the aim of scheming vectors and incurring trails of vaporous gossip. Also, I was painfully underdressed. So I was both relieved and delighted when, twenty minutes later, he spotted me and instead of waving or just blowing me a kiss, immediately made his way over.

read more…


new fiction in the current DENVER QUARTERLY

i’m happy to have an excerpt from a novel-in-progress (tentatively titled STRANGE TWINS) in the current Denver Quarterly

Μu’nisah drove us on her motorcycle where the city met the water and down the concrete and synthetic coastline, finally stopping by the ports. She got off and led me to the docks where a very large but somehow familiar-looking ship was moored.

“Do you recognize it? “Mu’nisah asked.

“Yes, but I can’t quite place it.”

“It’s the one where your sister works.”

“Ah ha! Yes, that’s it. But. How do you know about that?”

“Your sister and I are good friends. She’s never mentioned me?”

Embarrassed I had to admit, “The truth is, my sister and I are no longer very close. We used to be. But since we moved to the city, I hardly see her. For some reason we’ve begun to stay out of each other’s way, as if we don’t want to know too much about the other.”

“I see,” Mu’nisah said. “Well, your sister got permission for us to come on board tonight. You’ll have to thank her next time you see her.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’ll remember to do that.”

To read the rest  …why not find a copy at your local library?

mlp {first year} anthology

i’ve a story in an anthology put out by mudluscious press, collecting its first year of excellent chapbooks. includes ken baumann, shane jones, jimmy chen, brandi wells, blake butler, nick antosca, sam pink, james chapman, colin bassett, michael kimball, jac jemc, kim chinquee, kim parko, norman lock, randall brown, brian evenson, michael stewart, peter markus, ken sparling, aaron burch, david ohle, matthew savoca, p. h. madore, johannes göransson, charles lennox, ryan call, elizabeth ellen, molly gaudry, kevin wilson, mary hamilton, craig davis, kendra grant malone, lavie tidhar, lily hoang, mark baumer, ben tanzer, krammer abrahams, joshua cohen, c. l. bledsoe, joanna ruocco, josh maday, & michael martone.

pick it up from mlp.

Sleepingfish 8

I’ve a bit in the new Sleepingfish — edited by Derek White & Gary Lutz — along with Ryan Call, Anna DeForest, Sasha Fletcher, Nina Shope, Rachel May, David McLendon, The Brothers Goat, Lito Elio Porto, Adam Weinstein, Diane Williams, Dennis Cooper, Elliott Stevens, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Alec Niedenthal, Amelia Gray, Matt Bell, Eduardo Recife, David Ohle, Evelyn Hampton, Émilie Notéris, Ottessa Moshfegh, Cooper Renner, Christine Schutt, M. T. Fallon, Daniel Grandbois, Julie Doxsee, Terese Svoboda, Blake Butler, Stephen Gropp-Hess & Ali Aktan Aşkın.

Buy it from Calamari Press.

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