#cal morgan

[electricliterature]

"Disappearing Dad Disorder" excerpted from YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE by Alexandra Kleeman

Recommended by Harper

Excerpted from You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine

Issue No. 170

I had started dating C a couple years ago, during the fall when fathers began vanishing from out of their comfortable, middle-class homes. For the first few weeks, local newscasters read out the list of the newly vanished each night along with the location in which they were last seen, and it sounded like they were reading from a master catalogue of legitimate, reasonable names, names like “Peter” and “Steve.” Ted Hartwell, Matt Skofield, Dennis Galp. None of them knew each other, and there was nothing to link them except that they were all equally average. Telephone poles and store windows went white with fliers depicting men in interchangeable hairstyles, clad in polo shirts, all traces of fun leeched from their faces long ago. They wore confused expressions in the pictures selected by their family members, as if none of their kin had cared to warn them that photographs were going to be taken. Their confusion made it seem as though they had been lost for a long time, much longer than they had been gone.

Read the full story here!

Read Electric Literature's interview with Alexandra Kleeman here.

About the Author

Alexandra Kleeman is a writer and scholar based in Brooklyn, NY.  Her short fiction has appeared in journals such as The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, Conjunctions, BOMB, Gulf Coast, and is forthcoming in Guernica. Her nonfiction has appeared in Tin House and Golden Handcuffs Review, and is forthcoming in n+1. She received her MFA in fiction from Columbia University, and has received grants and scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Santa Fe Art Institute. She is currently completing a PhD in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley.

About the Guest Editor

Cal Morgan is executive editor at Harper, editorial director at Harper Perennial, and board chair at The Center for Fiction.

HarperCollins Publishers is one of the world’s leading English-language publishers. Founded by brothers James and John Harper in New York City in 1817 as J. and J. Harper, later Harper & Brothers, today HarperCollins is a broad-based publisher with strengths in literary and commercial fiction, narrative nonfiction, children’s books, cookbooks, business books, mystery, romance, pop culture, design, health, and religious and spiritual books. Its authors include winners of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal, and the Caldecott Medal.

"Disappearing Dad Disorder" is excerpted from YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE by Alexandra Kleeman by permission of the author. Copyright © 2015 Alexandra Kleenman. All rights reserved.

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[harperperennial]

Our editorial director, ladies and gentlemen.

[karanablue]

[calmorgan]

how it began

For years the air above the earth had begun sagging, suffused by a nameless, ageless eye of light. This light had swelled above the buildings. It caked on any object underneath.

This light, unlike most other light, outside itself could not be seen, could not be felt impressed upon each inch of air and body. It had no length, no temperature, no speed.

Each day the light grew gently thicker, purer. Each day still felt the same. Its presence rode in ridges on the faces of the hours and in silent hair all down all arms.

At night the light would be called dark. Among the dark the people staggered, aligned upon the air with hidden halls. In hidden halls they bumped and built their homes.

Each of these homes, no matter how small, held at least several outlets, doors, and bulbs. In each home, as well, several people, each fit with further holes inside them too.

Through these holes the light could enter, thereby: naming, thereby: age. Inside the light and homes the people made more people. The light, unlike the people, went on and on.

--Blake Butler, There Is No Year

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Anis Shivani: Interview with Cal Morgan, Editor of Harper Perennial.

Shivani: You have mentioned several short story collections. Are you planning to increase that emphasis?

 Morgan: We're in a desperate, possibly foolish love affair with the short story. Last year we had a campaign called Summer of the Short Story, and we published six new collections along with a series of new collections of classic shorts we had in our backlist. The blog I mentioned, www.fiftytwostories.com, is a way of bringing attention to both our own writers and new writers who submit their work to us. I think some of the young writers I've heard from through the blog will go on to have really great careers.

One reason to be interested in the short story is that it's a form many talented authors explore early on--and I always hope they continue to write stories throughout their careers because it's such a rich and challenging form. And I think there's a lot of excitement about the form in the cultural dialogue these days--people debating form versus style, processing influences and exploring new shapes--and I find that exciting.

[fwriction]

Need a little Willa Cather in your life? I know I do. Today's Story of the Day comes from Fifty-Two Stories, which is a fantastic resource for writers and readers alike. If you need more Willa, IndieBound has you covered. For now, enjoy "The Sculptor's Funeral":

"Just then a distant whistle sounded, and there was a shuffling of feet on the platform. A number of lanky boys of all ages appeared as suddenly and slimily as eels wakened by the crack of thunder; some came from the waiting-room, where they had been warming themselves by the red stove, or half asleep on the slat benches; others uncoiled themselves from baggage trucks or slid out of express wagons. Two clambered down from the driver’s seat of a hearse that stood backed up against the siding. They straightened their stooping shoulders and lifted their heads, and a flash of momentary animation kindled their dull eyes at that cold, vibrant scream, the world-wide call for men. It stirred them like the note of a trumpet; just as it had often stirred the man who was coming home to-night, in his boyhood."

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As you can tell, if you've visited Story of the Day: I love Fifty-Two Stories, and all the great writing Harper Perennial has been publishing.