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Day 6 (of showing love for Austin writers/artists/musicians before we head to the Mile High City) features Sarah Janczak. Sarah may live in Austin, BUT WE WENT TO THE SAME HIGH SCHOOL IN CANANDAIGUA, NY. Just try to say our town's name out loud, I dare you. Sarah is not only a guru at what she does for her day job, which is fancy, she's a GODDAMN PHILANTHROPIST. She's also a poet. Here's her poem "Somewhere Over Nevada I Realize" in th Tupelo Quarterly.

#sarah janczak #tupelo quarterly #austin #canandigua #poetry

Day 5 of showing love for Austin writers/artists/musicians before we head to the Mile High City is about Annette Lucksinger. Before we moved to Austin, all I knew of Annette was that she was one of my husband's favorite professors at St. Edward's University. Since then, I've drank her husband's homemade beer, dug in the dirt with her son, and been really excited about her book, EXPLORING AUSTIN WITH KIDS--a great resource for anybody with little ones. Here's a link to an interview w/ Annette. Consider it an antidote to all that Vice crap.

#austin #exploring austin with kids #kids #annette lucksinger #st. edward's university #that dude at vice who writes about austin can suck it

Day 4 of showing love for Austin writers/artists/musicians before we head to the Mile High City is about Olivia O'Neal & Sugar Mama's Bakeshop. You might know Olivia from Cupcake Wars (which she won, duh) or, you know, MAKING KAYNE WEST'S BIRTHDAY CAKE (for reals), but if you are ever in Austin, holy shit should you eat her cupcakes. I know how that sounds. But she makes this chocolate spice cupcake that is--I still dream about the first time I had it. Every other cupcake you've had is garbage compared to hers. This is a fact. Here's Sugar Mama's audition tape for Cupcake Wars (WEIRD AL CHOSE HER AS THE WINNER!)

#austin #sugar mama's #cupcakes #weird al #cupcake wars #kayne west

Day 3 of showing love for Austin writers/artists/musicians while we're still at sea level is about my friend, Ray Shea. When I read his essay, "Fat Guy," online at Hobart, one of my first reactions was: THIS IS IMPORTANT. Because it is.

#hobart #not the city in australia #ray shea

Day 2 (of bragging about Austin folks before we head to the Mile High City) features Alyssa Harad, who I first met one of the earliest Austin Lit Ladies gatherings. She is a FIERCE advocate for women's rights, an exquisite writer, and a genuinely nice person (on Twitter and in real life). Here's a clip of her reading the first chapter of COMING TO MY SENSES, which the Dallas Morning News described as "word sorcery, layering one scented note of description atop another, until the reader is afloat in a sea of sensations ranging from louche to pristine. One is ridiculously tempted to put one's nose to the printed page and sniff, as if the paper might somehow carry the scents that would complete the experience of reading about perfumes.”

#alyssa harad #austin #coming to my senses

We're leaving Texas, for good, in two weeks. Each day we're still at sea level I thought I'd share something from one of the Austin writers/artists/musicians I've been lucky to hang with here. To start things off: the very sleeveless and awesome Tyler Gobble. His first book, MORE WRECK MORE WRECK, will be out from Coconut Books in the fall. I've linked to a poem of his I dig called "Sure You Understand." My two favorite lines: "Wow is a long word if you sustain it" & "You can’t fit the moon into enough poems"

#tyler gobble #big lucks #poetry #coconut books

free-parking-blog

crocket

Richard Brautigan, “I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone,” 1969

jessstoner

This was one of two "readings" at my wedding. The other was a monolgue from When Harry Met Sally.

tetw

by Jess Stoner

Modern dentistry does wonders for a rotten molar or a cracked bicuspid—it’s modern dental insurance that falls short.

While the young men who attended Texas Boys State worked hard to address some of the most important issues facing our state, it was often at the expense of the women they didn't have to face.

I wrote a thing about Texas Boys State, a prestigious program that some of the attendees I spoke to wished would live up to its reputation. Because the young Texans who designed images of women in bikinis as party logos, delivered campaign speeches touting "Cold Beer and Titties," and created a party platform that forces teenage mothers to identify themselves to their neighbors, "like sex offenders," sure aren't doing it any favors.

#texas #texas boys state #boys state #sexism

I don't. But I might as well. I just ate cheese curds and a bread bowl and mini-snickers for Xmas breakfast.

#oregon trail

tetw

As chosen by Molly McArdle

We asked Molly McArdle, writer, editor, reading machine, reviewer, and brains behind the excellent The Rumpus tumblr to pick ten favourites essays from 2013. This is what she chose:

How to be a Stuffed Animal by Frances Stonor Saunders - The fire that destroyed P. T. Barnum’s American Museum was the spectacle to end all spectacles… Out in the Great Alone by Brian Phillips - The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race pushes participants to the brink on an unforgiving trek to the end of the world… Girls in the Grass by Angela Sebastian - …it’s the word “sis” that sends me into giggles, because “sis” is me. This summer I will have a sister. Here Comes Everybody by Miriam Markowitz - Women writers are far outnumbered by men in magazines and book reviews, but why? Emancipation by Casey Cep - Each tree and farm, street and courthouse of my home county rests on shallow-buried stories of slavery and Civil War The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia by Jean Friedman-Rudovsky - For a while, the residents of Manitoba Colony thought demons were raping the town’s women. There was no other explanation. Teach Me How to Speak by Soleil Ho - Though it was just an errant eruption from some distant undergrad’s laptop, the music bounced off the facades of the buildings around me, gaining more and more volume with each leap. A Tooth for a Tooth by Jess Stoner - Modern dentistry does wonders for a rotten molar or a cracked bicuspid—it’s modern dental insurance that falls short. The Forgetting Tree by Rae Paris - Because on your day I ate fried scallops, drank wine, tucked your name under my greasy napkin, explained to my job how productive I was this year. This year, every day you were dead. How to Slowly Kill Yourself in America by Kiese Laymon - I’m a walking regret, a truth-teller, a liar, a survivor, a frowning ellipsis, a witness, a dreamer, a teacher, a student, a joker, a writer whose eyes stay red, and I’m a child of this nation. Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott - This child of New York is always running before she walks. She likes being first — the first to be born, the first to go to school, the first to make the honor roll…

Make sure you check out Molly’s site for stacks of great writing and reviews, or head to the The Rumpus tumblr for all kinds of literary goodness.

jessstoner

So happy excited to be on this list.

#the rumpus #essays #molly mcardle

At American Short Fiction, we asked our staff to recommend books they were planning on gifting/getting/and just straight up buying for themselves this holiday season. Well, some of the kindle versions of these books are on sale for super cheap. Here's the deals:

Ethan Rutherford's The Peripatetic Coffin for $1.99 (The title story was first published in ASF).

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk for $2.99.

Alissa Nutting's Tampa for $2.99.

Some other great deals include

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (am practically speed-reading it now, so good) for $3.99.

Kiese Laymon's Long Division for $1.99.

Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station for $3.99.

Francine Prose's Anne Frank for $1.99. (Francine makes a guest appearance in Sabrina Orah Mark's "Are You My Mother" in the newest issue of ASF).

Karl Taro Greenfeld's Triburbia is only $1.99.

Scott McLanahan's Crapalachia is only $2.99.

Roxane Gay's essay collection Bad Feminist is available for pre-order for only $3.99. (You can read Roxane in Issue #55 of ASF).

Elizabeth Ellen's Fast Machine is part of an awesome in-print bundle deal at Hobart. (Which includes my book too!) (EE's also in ASF #55)

Shawn Vestal's Godforsaken Idaho is only $5.99. (Shawn's in ASF #48)

#asf #american short fiction #books #favorites

"... no, you can’t pass off people crying on the side of the road as a happy ending. Try again."

Melinda Moustakis' new ASF series, "If You Lived Here," begins with a conversation with Danielle Evans about the landscape of adolescence, putting characters in confined spaces, and "Waffle House" endings.

#Melinda Moustakis #Danielle Evans #Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self #American Short Fiction #If You Lived Here

dictionaryofobscuresorrows

rigor samsa

n. a kind of psychological exoskeleton that can protect you from pain and contain your anxieties, but always ends up cracking under pressure or hollowed out by time—and will keep growing back again and again, until you develop a more sophisticated emotional structure, held up by a strong and flexible spine, built less like a fortress than a cluster of treehouses.

newsweekscience

Kickstarter (Draft) of the Day: Help non-profit organization COBRA rebuild it’s home and base of operations, Cobra Island, which was destroyed by the terrorist militia GI JOE.