It's Bigger than Charles Atlas

Metazen (since today is Tuesday) published a story that I wrote with Elizabeth Rawlins called Bigger than Charles Atlas. The story is not at all based on this advertisement since Jesus has nothing to do with Charles Atlas, but there is a sand in the face reference.

We wrote it within personal messsages on Facebook. Metazen has also published such folks as Alexandra Isacson, Howie Good, Mel Bosworth and Jen Michalski.

Here's what they say about themselves:

metazen pub­lishes sto­ries by var­i­ous authors


metazen pub­lishes poems
*

metazen pub­lishes new con­tent every sin­gle day


*

metazen has a schedule:

mon­day- a story is published
tues­day- a story is published
wednes­day- a story is published
thurs­day- a story is published
fri­day- a story is published
sat­ur­day- a ‘lit­er­ary sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon’ is published
sun­day- a “best of metazen” is (usu­ally) published

Screw Iowa? Why?

Screw Iowa is the name of a journal that published two poems ("these days I worry" and "Elementary Physics") of mine. Why is it called that? Find out here.   I think they are fantastic!

Screw Michelle Bachman.

April Wilderness House LIterary Review is out...Early!

It's a great issue! You can read it here

It's interesting and helpful to my own writing to read as much fiction as is submitted. Here's the list of fiction works:

Beverly Jackson - Last Communion

CD Collins - I Am Losing Everything

David Bulley - Confessions on The Verge of Icy Death

DeWitt Henry - A Tribute To “Tornado At The Club,” From Evan S. Connell’s, Mrs.Bridge (As Revised Into The Screenplay, Mr. And Mrs. Bridge, By Ruth Prawer Jhabvala)

F. John Sharp - Billy and Us

Jen Michalski - You Were Only Waiting for This Moment to Arrive

Kirsi Marcus - Nobodies in the Universe

Melissa Studdard - Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: A Creation Story

Mitchell Waldman - The Widow Across the Way

Nathan Graziano - A Long Way from New Hampshire

Rusty Barnes - The Green Man


Josh Howatt's Fault of Frangipani is the winner of our 2010 Checkov Prize

Scrawl: The blog

I’ve been a member of SCRAWL: The Writer’s Asylum for six years. During that time I have completed six full length books or chap books and I credit SCRAWL for some of that output. Work-shopping at SCRAWL has taught me much, made me a better writer. There are many talented poets and writers within SCRAWL,  and these folks are tremendous writers.

Scrawl: the blog will give links, interviews, essays, poems and stories, and basically anything that has to do with the written form. From time to time you’ll meet exciting and relevant guest bloggers. This space will also serve as a “real time” Story Garden, the literary magazine that SCRAWL publishes at irregular intervals.

Our goal is to promote SCRAWL, our writing home, to potential new members who will join us (if they are serious about writing, and all that’s entailed in this critiquing workshop) and to share the talent of our private area of the web, to put it out into the mainstream for everyone to enjoy. I’m confident that they will.

Our current staff is Rusty Barnes, Ken Clark, Brad Green, Richard Lee, Kathleen McCall, Sue Miller, Tori Munn, Mary Corinne Powers and Elizabeth Rawlins. This group is an All-Star team and if you read their bios and their work, you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

Here’s some information about SCRAWL from one of our public pages.

Some more stuff....JMWW Journal plus Six Questions for me.

Jim Harrington is running a blog which asks fiction editors what they look for in a story. It is interesting reading. Today his interview with me is up, but read them all, it's a great guideline for improving your acceptance rate.

JMWW has their Spring Issue out today. And it's all flash fiction. It includes my How to Give Dating Advice as a State Social Worker.

Here's the full line-up. My compliments to editor David Erlewine:

Charles Lennox
Jarrid Deaton
Gary Moshimer
Rusty Barnes
Katrina Gray
Timothy Gager
Seth Fried
Tria Andrews
Damian Dressick
Sheldon Lee Compton
Ethel Rohan
Craig Renfoe, Jr.
Andrew Roe
Kyle Minor
Michael Czyzniejewski
Matt Bell
Edward Mullany
Matthew Salesses
Kevin Wilson
Curtis Smith
Tara Laskowski
Molly Gaudry
Erin Fitzgerald
Meg Pokrass
Roxane Gay
Sam Nam
Robert Swartwood
Scott Garson
Ben Loory

The Price is Right!

My friend, the incredibly lovely,  Molly Gaudry, was rejected from an MFA program and found herself broke-assed and down in the dumps sent out a message: 

* For $1.00, I WILL WRITE YOU A POEM and post it here and on our friend, Facebook. * So here is mine for that ridiculous cheap price.

A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings

for Timothy Gager

What no one knows about old Knut Hamsun

is how handsome he was. Poverty was pretty

when Knut wore her, and like a corner whore

she claimed him as her own--hungry sultress.

Outcasts, vagabonds, aggression. Melancholy

resignation. The themes of his life and work,

according to Nobelprize.org. The Intellectual

Life of Modern America is a rare, gone thing.

Hunger is not. We know it now in every sense

of its belly-aching, tongue-tensed clinging

ringing, hollowed, as whatever pride we had;

I do not lie. Nor do you. We know this, right?

Like that childhood Pan, like that garden, risen

and Grown of the Soil, like a funny Game of Life

with no Sunset because, Under the Autumn Star,

there is a different view, offered by A Wanderer

[who] Plays on Muted Strings while all around

The Wild Chorus, the Children of the Age, the

unhappy inhabitants of Segelfoss Town and their

many ragged Vagabonds, every August, remind us

that if we take it The Road Leads On, and if

we don't The Ring is Closed to those who refuse

to climb in and fight at the height of their sorrow,

their sagging, aging faces power-limned with rage.

Updated Reading Schedule

March 25, 2010 Salem, Ma

Cornerstone Books, Salem, ma

Cornerstone Books, 7 PM
45 Lafayette St,
Salem, Ma.
Thursday Theater of Words and Music
Featuring with Gloria Mindock



April 2, 2010 Cambridge, Massachusetts

Hosting and reading at The Dire Literary Series, 8 PM

Out of the Blue Art Gallery

106 Prospect Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Featuring: Jane Roper, Adam Gallari and Sean Patrick Hill





April 10, 2010 Boston, Massachusetts

Boston National Poetry Month Festival, 12:30 PM

Boston Public Library, Copley Square

Large Auditorium

Boston, Massachusetts

Featuring over 100 poets on April 10th and 11th





April 11, 2009. Red Bank, NJ

The River Read Series, 2 PM

The Dublin House,

30 Monmouth Street, Red Bank, NJ 07701


Featuring with Steve Peacock





April 21, 2010 Cambridge, Ma

Cervena Barva 5th Anniversary Party, 7 PM

Pierre Menard Gallery

10 Arrow St,

Cambridge, Ma.

Featuring with Andrey Gritsman and Jana Kiely




May 7, 2010 Cambridge, Massachusetts

Hosting and reading at The Dire Literary Series, 8 PM

Out of the Blue Art Gallery

106 Prospect Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Featuring: Jon Papernick, Tara Masih and Matt Jasper




May 13, 2010 Boston, Massachusetts

Reading at Axiom Poetry Series, 7 PM

Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media

141 Green Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Reading with: Daniel Hudon and Ian Poole




May 17, 2010 Cambridge, Massachusetts

Reading at Four Stories Series, 7 PM (music starts at 6)

The Enormous Room

569 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Reading with: Shankar Vedantam, Lauren Mackler, Naoe Suzuki and Joanna Smith Rakoff

The theme of the evening will be "Me, Myself, and I: Stories of Solitude, Solipsism, and Individuality,"





May 19, 2010 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Reading at New Yinzer Series, 8 PM

Modern Foundations

4919 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, PA

Reading with: TBA


_________________________________________________
Future Series Appearances

June 19, 2010. Baltimore, MD
510 Reading Series
Minás Gallery, 815 W. 36th Street

June 26, 2010. WBZ News Radio, 1030-AM Boston
Appearing as guest of Jordan Rich's Book Club show

November 13, 2010. Somerville, Ma.
Somerville News Writers Festival

Last Night's Webcast

Here's the replay of last night's show where Jon Konrath, Ben Mack, Fiona Helmsley, Aaron Carnes and I discuss...

1. Air in the Paragraph Line 13   

2. Why Fiona Helmsley has her name.
3. When the Kindle is good to electrocute yourself?
4. Why have porn on the kindle when you can already see it on your watch?
5. The official way Amazon ratings are like NFL quarterback ratings and how to spend all your money to get your book rated #12 for five minutes.
6. Marketing of books and how setting up flame wars on-line can sell them.
7. When you might say, "Don't do me any favors by buying my book."
8. SST Records and how getting Henry Rollins to submit to AITPL series would increase sales.
9. The official listener count being 17 and if they all buy the book none of the money will go to charity.
10. Insights to our stories included in Air in the Paragraph Line.
11. Why Super Salad doesn't suck.
12. Are Pushcart nominations sad?
14. Jon Konrath's "My Friend the Jihadist" is based on a real life terrorist that Jon had been in contact with over reviews of the band Slayer. The FBI contacted Jon about him.
15. John Sheppard's dad building a house with no right angles.
16. Pete Townsend's research and how it may be used for a theme for the next Air in the Paragraph Line and about other themed issues.
17. Frequent rude interruptions to actually sell the book. How could they!

Tonight at 11 o'clock EST, Air in the Paragraph Line Authors pimp #13

You can listen in (either live or listen to the archive later) at the following URL:

http://attendthisevent.com/?eventid=11623593

We are having a web teleconference event - a chat with several of the
Air in the Paragraph Line #13 authors. We'll be chatting about our
stories, our other writing, and what we'll possibly do with our lives
now that the Olympics are over and we have nothing to drunkenly blabber
about for another two years.

Authors including John Sheppard, Joshua Citrak, Daniel Crocker, Timothy Gager, Nathan Graziano, Hassan Riaz, Todd Taylor, Robert Howington, and Ben Mack.

Bowling, Fried Chicken, Coffee, Pregnancy...a new story published--and this post sets a record for links.

Rusty Barnes is the author of Breaking It Down the Commander In Chief of Night Train Magazine and the originator of a side project, Fried Chicken and Coffee which had taken on of life of it's own and soon will be putting out poetry chapbooks. (Not your ordinary Kinkos (poor) or small press (good) but really great high quality chapbooks). Fried Chicken and Coffee describes itself as a blogazine of rural literature, Appalachian literature and off-on commentary, reviews and rants. While you're there enter the Barry Hannah Memorial Competition.
So how is this my news? Today my story Tenth Frame Spare appears from out of the mountain mist, so have a beer and go bowling but don't break any of the lane rules.

March is in like a rat or a new poem (at Gutter Eloquence)

I'm in Gutter Eloquence 8 with a poem Boston to Providence   along with some names I know: Karl Koweski, Justin Hyde, Rob Plath, Puma Perl and Catfish McDaris to name just a few.