Flash Fiction in Flapperhouse

The lovely Flapperhouse published my flash story, The Playground, in their Fall 2015 issue, and you can now read it online, here. So excited for this pub, as it marks my return to fiction, my primary game.

Poems in Menacing Hedge

Thrilled that Menacing Hedge published an excerpt from my chapbook, The Birth Creatures, in its Fall 2015 issue. Check it out, alongside some other great work, here.

2015 Book Roundup

New year, aka, time to throw a book list wrap-up at you.

Fiction highlights were Amelia Gray's new one, Gutshot, which I'm fairly sure I can credit with kicking my ass back into fiction-writing gear, and beginning Karl Ove Knausgaard's opus, My Struggle, which I think most people either love or hate for its painstaking attention to mundane detail. I don't know what it says about me, but I love it and can't wait for the U.S release of all its volumes. Poetry is, as usual, all over the map, but a standout for me was discovering the badass that is Cate Marvin. Similarly, with chapbooks, Amorak Huey's The Insomniac Circus slayed me with its cleverness. I often have a hard time finding nonfiction that blows me away. Jan Bondeson's Buried Alive was great for its subject matter and intrigued me enough to want to read more on the longstanding fear of being buried alive. Five Days at Memorial also drew me in - a good work of journalism that isn't totally without bias, but that doesn't overtly try to lead the reader to one conclusion or another.

Seeing as I did not meet any 2015 reading goals, I'll merely set out to have a literary and fulfilling 2016. :D

Fiction

Three Hundred Million – Blake Butler

The Poorhouse Fair – John Updike

Umbrella – Will Self

The Strange Library – Haruki Murakami

My Struggle: Book 1 – Karl Ove Knausgaard

My Struggle: Book 2 – Karl Ove Knausgaard

Gutshot – Amelia Gray

Against the Country – Ben Metcalf

Binary Star – Sarah Gerard

Can’t and Won’t – Lydia Davis

The Cure for Suicide – Jesse Ball

The Heart Goes Last – Margaret Atwood

Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel

Slade House – David Mitchell

New American Stories – Ben Marcus

In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods – Matt Bell

Poetry

One Thousand Things Worth Knowing – Paul Muldoon

Strike/Slip – Don McKay

The Glacier’s Wake – Katy Didden

Twigs and Knucklebones – Sarah Lindsay

Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower – Sarah Lindsay

Strike Sparks: Selected Poems – Sharon Olds

The Keys to the Jail – Keetje Kuipers

Gurlesque – Lara Glenum

Not For Mothers Only – Rebecca Wolff

[insert] boy – Danez Smith

Heliopause – Heather Christle

Deep Lane – Mark Doty

Count the Waves – Sandra Beasley

The Bone Folders – T.A. Noonan

Confluence – Sandra Marchetti

Stationed Near the Gateway – Margaret Bashaar

The Lunatic – Charles Simic

Apocryphal – Lisa Marie Basile

Oracle – Cate Marvin

New Exercises – Franck Andre Jamme

The Last Two Seconds – Mary Jo Bang

World’s Tallest Disaster – Cate Marvin

Given – Arielle Greenberg

Satellite – Matthew Rohrer

Fragment of the Head of a Queen – Cate Marvin

Mr. West – Sarah Blake

The Poem She Didn’t Write and Other Poems – Olena Kalytiak Davis

Erratic Facts – Kay Ryan

Non-Fiction

Deep Down Dark – Hector Tobar

Buried Alive – Jan Bondeson

Gods, Graves, and Scholars – C.W. Ceram

Yes Please – Amy Poehler

About Town: TNY and the World It Made: Ben Yagoda

Zine – Pagan Kennedy

Missoula – John Krakauer

The Bone Woman – Clea Koff

The Seven Good Years – Etgar Keret

Word Nerd – John D. Williams

The Invisible Sex – J.M. Adovasio

The Other Serious – Christy Wampole

Five Days at Memorial – Sheri Fink

Chapbooks

The Hows and Whys of My Failures – Dan Nowak

The Insomniac Circus – Amorak Huey

Mutant Neuron Codex Swarm – Juliet Cook and Robert Cole

Incident Reports – Caitlin Thomson

Blinded By Clouds – Risa Denenberg

war/lock – Lisa Marie Basille

wingless, scorched, and beautiful – Allie Marini Batts

Strangest Sea – Ariana den Bleyker

The Sheep Stealer – Jenn Blair

Orphans Burning Orphans – Gene Kwak

My Mother’s Child – Pamela Taylor

Traveling – M. Mack