Moon Milk Review

Some pimpage, first: Rae Bryant did a fantastic job with the Moon Milk Review anthology. The book is such a beaut. I got to share the pages with these fine individuals: Lisa Marie Basile, Jennifer Hollie Bowles, Alexandra Chasin, Feng Chen, Alexis Covato, Francis DiClemente, Jim Fuess, Luisa María García Velasco, Roxane Gay, Christine Herzer, Karen Heuler, Scott Alexander Jones, Ben Loory, Jim Meirose, Kristine Ong Muslim, Gary Percesepe, Mark Reep, Laura Ellen Scott, Serena Tome, J. A. Tyler, David Wagoner, Luke Wallin, Ian Watson, Vallie Lynn Watson, David Wolf and Shellie Zacharia.

I graduated Bennington in January. There is some truth to all the MFA smack talk out there, but going to Bennington was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. There aren’t Gordon Lishes and Max Perkinses with gloves up to the elbows, ready to birth your ugly babies. You have to scrub those bloody suckers to gold all by your lonesome these days. With a couple exceptions (you slay me, Cal Morgan!), editors aren’t editors the way they used to be. (Not that I know anything about “used to be,” but I… whatever…) I just learned how to revise myself into another universe–that’s what the MFA did for me. And I got to study with Tom Piazza, Amy Hempel, David Gates and Alice Mattison, each kicking my ass in profound and wonderful ways. And our class bonded tighter than cannibals (that’s taste-likes-chicken tight). And Sven Birkerts stood at the podium at graduation and told us and our families and friends that Jan. 2011 had the best lectures and readings of any class that’s come through Bennington. And I can’t believe next month I won’t be back in Vermont chain smoking, singing at the End of the World, talking about Chris Adrian or Breece D’J Pancake or whoever was the writer blowing our collective minds that term.

Other things… I got a new job as a local editor at Patch. With the newspaper industry dying off, I never thought I’d be a reporter again. And I love reporting. Not necessarily the J-school idea of what journalism should be, but going to the chicken dinner fundraisers, the 5Ks, the planning board meetings and shaking hands and introducing yourself. The “small” stuff, which isn’t small at all. There’s a whole narrative behind a town, and you collect the bits and pieces of it until the history and landscape becomes whole for you. It’s similar to the feeling you get when you’re six months to a year into a first draft of a novel and you’re just living in it. It’s a great place to be.

Paula Bomer. Photo courtesy Bernie Knuckles.

“In New York, people express their social ambition through their family. To me, that’s a corruption. I feel somewhat critical of just wanting the good life; that’s not going to bring you joy. The one PTA meeting I attended was frightening: the people were so cruel. I find petty unkindness more powerful than people want to acknowledge, and it amazes me on a daily basis how people treat one another. Perhaps people feel it’s not significant.”

And:

“We are not what we write. If you’re not being brave as a writer, it’s hard to care.”

The interest in Paula’s book has been overwhelming and wonderful. (I’m down to a single print galley–I’ve never run out of galleys before.)

What gives me pause is that this book almost never came to be. (Paula was under contract with a small press that folded and then started looking for a new home for it.) It’s sort of the same feeling I got when I was able to put out Nick Antosca’s Midnight Picnic. You have these amazing books you want to shove into the world and they very nearly missed being born. It’s frightening, almost. Strike that–not almost. It is frightening.

I have a novel excerpt appearing in the Fall 2010 issue of Fourteen Hills. I’m a longtime admirer of theirs so I’m hyped to be joining to the party.

You can subscribe to Fourteen Hills through their submission form or order individual issues from Small Press Distribution.

The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth

Jernigan by David Gates

Silences by Tillie Olsen

Tell Me A Riddle by Tillie Olsen

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds

Open Secrets by Alice Munro

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks

Run River by Joan Didion

Atlantis: Poems by Mark Doty

A Curtain of Green by Eudora Welty

Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams

Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth

1) Distribute galleys four months before the publication date. Outlets like Publishers Weekly and Booklist will not consider reviewing a book unless they’ve received a galley four months ahead of time.
2) Do not be stingy with galleys.
3) Your cover price should be about 5 times the per-book printing cost.
4) Bookland is a free barcode generator program. Works like a charm.
5) If you want libraries ordering your books, make sure you have a Library of Congress catalog control number.

Here are products and services I use for Word Riot and swear by:

1) Offset Paperback Manufacturers
Our wonderful printer is a division of Bertelsmann AG, which also owns Random House. We use their digital printing service. When I received their printing quotes for our first paperback, I was pretty astonished by the low cost. I asked for a sample book to check out the quality and it was fantastic.

You should always do your research on printers and find one your comfortable with. I probably requested quotes and samples from five printers before I decided on OPM. I’ve never looked back.

I know there are a lot of print-on-demand options available and there are ways to use it well (e.g. Electric Literature’s model), but I personally wouldn’t recommend POD. It can be very difficult to get POD books into bookstores and libraries because POD signals “self-published” or “amateur” to them. That’s not to knock self-publishing—I’ve noticed a lot of indie publishing companies have put out books by the publisher that have been very successful and well-received. These books don’t carry a “self-published” stigma because there’s a company behind them with professional printing, distribution and marketing.

POD is cheaper at the outset but I think ultimately you’re not giving your titles an opportunity to be as successful as they could be.

2) Pathway Book Service
Pathway is the only flat-rate distribution service around. What this basically means is that you pay a low monthly fee and they take care of shipping your books to whoever orders them. Pathway makes sure your title is listed in Ingram and Baker & Taylor. You can also go through them for fulfillment to Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Because they’re a distributor, they get a better percentage off of Amazon than you would get on your own with the Amazon Advantage program. Also, because they are fulfilling titles to Amazon for all the publishers they represent, the shipping cost is incredibly cheap.

What I love best about Pathway is their customer service. If I email them, I can expect a response within a few hours. And if I want to know how my titles are selling, their online reports are easy to access and use.

Unlike other distributors, Pathway is not responsible for marketing your title nor do they send out catalogs for the titles they’re distributing. This hasn’t been a problem for me because I feel comfortable handling my own marketing. You might feel differently. I’ve just seen too many distributors close up shop and leave publishers quaking in their boots. With Pathway, I feel comfortable with their years of experience and approach to fulfilling a publisher’s essential need: getting books to stores, libraries and other distributors that order them.

If you are looking for a more traditional distributor that will help with marketing, I’ve heard great things about Small Press Distribution.

3) Submishmash
Submishmash is a free, powerful submissions manager. What’s great about Submishmash is their responsiveness to input from editors and publishers. I think they’ve taken into account every suggestion my editors and I have put forward to them. When literary enthusiasts are software developers, great things happen—Submishmash is one of them.

Check out Adam Robinson’s review of Submishmash on HTMLGIANT.

4) Sigil
Sigil is free, open source ebook design software. If you have basic HTML knowledge, it should be a piece of cake to figure out how to create an EPUB file on Sigil.

5) Google Docs
I use a Google Doc spreadsheet to share sales and royalty information with my authors. It was my way of forcing myself to have an up-to-date record, rather than just updating some spreadsheet on my computer once a month or at royalty check time. When you have somebody else looking over your shoulder, you get to keeping things more tidy. At least I do.

I also use it for any organizational items that require input from both the author and me (e.g. who should galleys, what venues should be approached for readings, etc.)

6) WordPress
WordPress is super adaptable blog software. It’s free and easy to install.

Marketing

1) Sticker Guy
It’s my high school punk rocker coming out: I love vinyl stickers. Sticker Guy has great prices and produce a solid product. When I have a book that I think will benefit from a more guerrilla marketing technique, I always order up some vinyl stickers.

2) Mad Mimi
Mad Mimi is an email marketing service. I don’t send out email newsletters often (once, maybe twice a month) but my email list is pretty large. Mad Mimi offered the best value for the service I was looking for. They’re incredibly easy to use and their tracking stats are very helpful.

I'll probably continue to post some more thoughts and advice under the publishing tips tag.]

Every once in awhile I get emails from folks who are gung-ho about starting their own literary magazine/small press and have questions about how to go about pointing their gung-hoatude in the right direction.

This is some advice for those just starting out with a literary venture. I’ll probably be adding to it as things come to mind.

1. Do one thing and do it well

So you want to start a small press, a reading series, a mag that publishes weekly and a lit blog? All excellent goals, but trying to do everything at once will doom your projects. Start off small. Start off slow. Consider which project is the one really scratching at your brain and start with that one. Pour all your creativity and energy into it. Build the reputation of that one project before taking on the next one.

Word Riot started as the lit section of an online music magazine created by Paula Anderson. When Paula took a leave from running the online music mag, I tried to keep both running strong. I couldn’t. I was a 19-year-old college student and I knew that I couldn’t keep up with my school work and both magazines. I liked the music magazine, but I loved Word Riot, so the music magazine died.

My ultimate goal for Word Riot was to turn it into a small press. Fortunately, I knew I had no idea what I was doing and would need to figure out a solid game plan before I took the next step.

2. Research & build your network

You will be lucky if you break-even your first couple years of your literary project. That’s being generous.

I was ready to throw all my energy and extra cash at Word Riot when I got started, but I was also a broke college student so there wasn’t much money to throw. I had to make due with cheap marketing plans and building contacts while I researched printers. I wanted a printer that was high-quality but not a lot of money, and for much of that first year and a half I couldn’t find one that met both requirements. I didn’t compromise. I kept looking.

In the mean time, I kept an eye on what other presses I admired were doing, So New and Future Tense, in particular. Kevin Sampsell graciously took a phone call from me to answer my questions. I bought ISBN numbers (non-negotiable—get them if you’re putting out books or chapbooks). I started producing chapbooks, first with home-printed covers then with professionally printed ones. I got to know more about various kinds of paper than I could possibly have a use for. (Tip to chapbook publishers: fancy paper manufacturers will send you free samples.) I emailed every existing online magazine I could find to exchange links and ask question after question. I emailed authors from these online magazines and invited them to submit to mine.

I was somewhat frustrated—I wanted to publish paperbacks now!—but in that period where all I could do is research and reach out to other literary types, I was building lasting connections. These relationships have become invaluable to me.

For example, David Barringer was one of those writers I read on Nerve and invited to submit to Word Riot. He was the first person I considered a “serious” writer—meaning not a member of the music magazine staff—to send me fiction. That meant something to me. So when David mentioned a short story chapbook proposal for We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things I was all over it. (Side note: seven years later, We Were Ugly is still selling.) And since then I’ve been able to call on David for his awe-inspiring design skills for project after project, all the while watching David’s tremendous growth as a writer.

With another of my writers, Paula Anderson, I got to be present at her funeral as her family and friends read from the chapbook of hers I published. Nothing will ever humble me quite the way that did. (I’ve made all of Paula’s chapbook, Blood Tender, available online. She was a brilliant writer. I think Blood Tender was the first blog published as a book when it came out in 2003, but all my publicity attempts to convince the world of this back then fell flat.)

3. Moderation and patience (a cliche is a cliche because it’s true, which is also a cliche)

Trying to conquer the world in a couple of months will drain your bank account, your sleep and your sanity. If you are starting a small press, don’t commit to more than a few titles in your first year. Keep your print runs small.

There isn’t a lot of public discussion about print runs but many small press publishers will be more than happy to give you some insight on theirs. With Word Riot, I do small print runs of 200-300 at a time and order reprints when the stock runs low. This means I have to order reprints with greater frequency but I’m also keeping my risk low should a title not resonate with an audience the way I expected. I don’t live in fear of returns.

4. Get thee a social media presence

You need to be a Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Fictionaut, the HTMLGIANT comments section, everywhere. Be insightful and interesting, of course, but be out there. If you’re not insightful or interesting, fake it and eventually you’ll figure it out. Just be visible. Independent publishing and online literary culture is more vital and exciting now than I’ve seen since I got started. Be a part of the conversation.

5. Your printer and your distributor are your life partners

Choose wisely. There’s been many a small (and large, actually) publisher screwed by a bad distribution deal. Find a distributor who is economically sound and responsive to your needs. Same with printers.

Word Riot’s printer is Offset Paperback Manufacturers and our distributor is Pathway Book Service. They are fantastic and I would not still be in business without them—I highly recommend them to everyone. There will be plenty of snafus as you navigate the road to publishing a book. Your printer or distributor should never add to your headache.

6. Start marketing four months ahead of your publication date

You need to have advance review copies and you need to not be stingy with them. Find blogs and magazines you think would be interested in your publication and ask if they would like a galley. Don’t just hurl copies at the biggest book bloggers you can find. They receive more books than they can possibly read. Pitch them on the book. You are passionate about this book or else you wouldn’t be publishing it. Use that passion to get potential reviewers interested in your book.

Many bloggers or reviewers will have specific guidelines about receiving galley copies. Follow them. You’re just wasting their time and yours if you don’t.

Four months sounds like a lot of time. It’s not. Publishers Weekly and Library Journal will not review a book unless they have received a galley copy four months ahead of time. That’s not to say sending galleys guarantees a review, but you want to at least give your book the shot at one.

7. Figure out eBooks

Not just Kindle (you really just need some basic html knowledge to format a Kindle book). Learn how to create EPUB files; Sigil is great free software for building EPUB files. Barnes & Noble is going to open up their nook eBook store later this summer to small publishers. Apple will be opening up iBooks to books with ISBN numbers soon, as well. Digital is a complement to print, but an essential one.

We as independent presses should be at the forefront of new media. We don’t have bureaucratic leviathans. Our strength is that we are agile and innovative, responsive to our authors as well as our customers. We need to be aggressive in the eBook market, and we need to be thinking about how we can advance the medium of digital books.

Cover design by Ryan W. Bradley

Word Riot Press has two fantastic short story collections lined up for late 2010: Look! Look! Feathers by Mike Young and Baby & other stories by Paula Bomer. Paula’s book is now available for pre-order. My one-line pitch on Paula’s collection is that these stories are what happens when Mary Gaitskill characters get married and have kids. Awesome, subversive stuff.

The cover price is $15.95, but we’re selling pre-orders for $12.

Here’s what very important literary folk have to say:

“Words like ‘tough’ and ‘honest’ don’t quite do justice to the fiction of Paula Bomer. These stories bleed, yes, but that’s because they brawl. The real housewives of Bomerworld break themselves and break your heart and yet never completely lose their soulful dignity.”
–Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask

“I love that Paula Bomer writes her characters into difficult situations and does terrible things to them. These stories contain a rare emotional honesty and brutality.”
–Michael Kimball, author of Dear Everybody

“I know I’m reading something really great when I have to stop and put the book down and think for a while before I can pick it up again. This is rare. It also happened at least twice per story in Paula Bomer’s excellent collection, Baby. Buy it, read it, put it down while you admire her skill and charm and honesty, and then pick it back up and continue reading. You might want to leave a page unread, just so it won’t be completely over, at least until she publishes her next collection.”
–Mary Miller, author of Big World.

First Term
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
The Stranger by Albert Camus (Translation by Matthew Ward)
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby
Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game by William Kennedy
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Falconer by John Cheever
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Drown by Junot Diaz
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forester
Affliction by Russell Banks
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
In the Bedroom by Andre Dubus
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
The Wonders of the Invisible by David Gates

Second Term
Ironweed by William Kennedy
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard
What the Living Do by Marie Howe
Maps to Anywhere by Bernard Cooper
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Given Sugar, Given Salt by Jane Hirshfield
Angels by Dennis Johnson
Strike Anywhere by Dean Young
Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
The Safety of Objects by A. M. Homes
Cracks by Sheila Kohler
Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas
Going Places by Leonard Michaels
Corpus Christi by Bret Anthony Johnston
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Like Life by Lorrie Moore
The Woman Who Walked On Water by Lily Tuck
One D.O.A., One On The Way by Mary Robison
The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro
A Better Angel by Chris Adrian
Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich
Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz
Because They Wanted To by Mary Gaitskill
Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill

Third Term
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Mohawk by Richard Russo
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Legs by William Kennedy
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Boomerang by Barry Hannah
Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
Everyman by Philip Roth
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett
Ray by Barry Hannah
The Reserve by Russell Banks
I Married a Communist by Philip Roth
The Unnameable by Samuel Beckett
Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
Don’t Cry by Mary Gaitskill
Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth
Rabbit Redux by John Updike
Hilda and Pearl by Alice Mattison
City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake by Breece D’J Pancake
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

More info at Word Riot.

An Interview With Noah Cicero by Tim Nogaj
An Interview With Christopher Higgs by Andrew Borgstrom
An Interview With Karen Lillis by David Hoenigman
An Interview With Todd Zuniga by Timmy Waldron

Deniability by George Witte

U-Turn by Lisa Lim
The Auctioneers by Jessie Morrison
The King of Schmooze by Daniel Stolar

All the World Was Grey Then Red by Richard Bell
Taking the Sting by Murray Brozinsky
Where the Pain Ends Stefanie Freele
Saving by Gary Moshimer

Bad Cheetah by Andy Henion

Maggots at Work by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
Three Poems by Melanie Browne
A Cigarette’s Worth by Ryan Michael Commins
Two Poems by Tova Gardner
Two Poems by Joe Farley
Two Poems by Ryan Quinn Flanagan
Three Poems by Rene Joy
Two Poems by Lara Konesky
RHYMES by Anthony Madrid
Yann Teirsen uses a lot of accordions in his compositions. by Ananda Osel
Two Poems by Jay Pabarue
Two Poems by t. kilgore splake
Two Poems by Valerie Wetlaufer
Two Poems by Dennis P. Wilken
I don’t know what to do with the warmth by Felicia Zamora
Once by Charlene Zatorski

Excerpt from The Insurgent by Noah Cicero

An Interview With Mark S. Kuhar by David F. Hoenigman
An Interview with Mary Miller by Timmy Waldron
An Interview With Sawako Nakayasu by David F. Hoenigman
An Interview With Shya Scanlon by Timmy Waldron
An Interview With Matthew Simmons by Timmy Waldron

Derek, Dead by Jack Patrick

My Farewell Tour by Richard E. Bowness
Stay Put by Jeff Chon
My Sweet Warrior by David Erlewine
Los Angeles by Mary Miller
Visits by Katie Manderfield
Disco by Richard Owain Roberts
Specifics by N. God Savage
The Sword by Thom Young

The Shine by Jennifer Sullivan

Lumpy Bed by Michael Cuglietta
Two Poems by Brian Fanelli
Tadpole by Jason Fisk
THE EARLY YEARS 1973-2005 by Jason Hardung
daily blackout by Sarah Harste
LA PALMA, CA by Andrew Hilbert
ROCK STAR by Ann Manion
My Mother’s Soup Bowl by Mavis Moog
_Avocado_ by D. Porter
A Story in Five Breath Poems by Patrick T. Randolph
Excerpt from In this alone impulse, by Shya Scanlon
Monday Morning by Stephanie Skaza
NOTHING UNDER OR BETWEEN by Justin Wade Thompson
Untitled by Dean West

Excerpt from A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons

An Interview With Eckhard Gerdes by David Hoenigman
An Interview With Eirik Gumeny by Timmy Waldron
The Definitive Scott McClanahan Interview: Everything else is just an unofficial boring part of Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or Virginia. by Timmy Waldron
Remembering Jim Shepard. Compiled by David F. Hoenigman

Protest! by Steve Finbow, Melissa Mann and Joseph Ridgwell
Review by David Hoenigman

Chablis by Philip Brunetti
Channel Serfs by David Gianatasio
Upon Finding You Alive by Michael K. Meyers
The Difficulty of Endings by Jeff Vande Zande
Point of Detachment by Jessica Vozel

Nail Polish and Beer by Matt Baker
Firewood by Brad Conlin
Kidney Stones by Scott McClanahan

Three Poems by J. Bradley
pick up line by Jordan Castro
Three Poems by Matthew D’Abate
I HAVE DEVOTED MY LIFE TO THE CLITORIS by Elizabeth Hall
Sunday by Judson Hamilton
whatever makes her happy by Jordan Hanhilammi
Two Poems by Gail D. Kelley
Corporate Casual by Ed Makowski
Two Poems by Casey Quinn
untitled by Dana Roders
6 things i won’t to tell my mother by Tristan Silverman
MOTU Physics Teacher by James Sutherland
Holy Ghosts by Christopher Woods

Fifty Years in Halves by Rae Bryant

Celebration Kick-Off Party
Dennis McGackin Jr Music Program

Sponsored By The Graeme Preston Foundation for Life

The Dennis McGackin Jr Music Program was developed by the Graeme Preston for Life Foundation to inspire kids with music. They have partnered up with the Freehold Borough YMCA and Music University to facilitate a program where children attending the YMCA will have an opportunity to see how music can enrich their lives.

Dennis, known to many as DJ, had a passion for many things but two which really stand out were his love for Freehold and music. Although DJ left us too soon, his passion for music will carry on in the students of this program at the Freehold Borough YMCA.

The Dennis McGackin Jr Music program was implemented to offer children attending the YMCA with the opportunity to experience music by providing lessons from Music University on a weekly basis in continuing twelve week sessions. The children will have supervised practice sessions throughout the week where they can review and master what they have learned in their lessons. By doing this we hope to not only expose children to music but to give them a chance to have a professional teacher guide them to mastering music.

The Dennis McGackin Jr Music Program will inspire and introduce children to music, playing individually or as a group. It will instill a sense of accomplishment with both short and long term goals and benefits that the children can carry throughout all aspects of their life. The Dennis McGackin Jr Music Program will spread the grace of Graeme by positively impacting and enriching the lives of the children of Freehold Borough.

The Grace of Graeme goes on!

Date: Monday January 25, 2010
Time: 5:00-7:00pm
Location: Freehold Borough YMCA Community Center
41 Center Street, suite 2
Freehold, NJ 07728

From the News Transcript article:

Free program to unite children with music

The Graeme Preston Foundation for Life will be providing an instructor and new instruments for the Dennis McGackin Jr. Music Club at the YMCA Community Center, Center Street, Freehold Borough.

The free program, open to anyone in the community, will be held every Wednesday from 4-7 p.m. for 12 weeks from Feb. 3 to April 21. Instruction will be provided to the first 30 children between the ages of 8 and 17 who register for the club.

Lessons will be given on guitar during the first hour, keyboard for the second hour and drums for the third hour.

The YMCA will host the music club’s kickoff celebration party from 5-7 p.m. Jan. 25. The party will include music and refreshments.

The objective of the Dennis McGackin Jr. Music Club is to provide children with the opportunity to experience music by taking lessons and practicing on a weekly basis, thus instilling a sense of accomplishment with short- and long-term benefits, according to a press release.

Lessons will be provided by Steve Kelly of Music University, Freehold Township. The children will be playing individually and as a group.

The Graeme Preston Foundation for Life is funding the program by providing an instructor and new instruments.

The program was created by Kelley Mc- Gackin, Dennis McGackin, Paul Sallee and Scott Preston.

An Interview With Jeffrey Lewis by David F. Hoenigman
An Interview With t. kilgore splake by David F. Hoenigman

Kamby Bolongo Mean River by Robert Lopez
Review by John Madera

Just ’Cause You’re Paranoid… by Joe Clifford
The Switch by Abby Rotstein

“Não há Antídoto para Esse Veneno.” by Shane Cohn
Brotherly Love by Matthew Dexter
Eyes Turned Skywards by Ryan Dilbert
Three Days by HV Whitehead

The Cape by Z.Z. Boone
A Happier Tree by Patrick Allen Carberry
Penumbra by Rachel Ephraim

Five Poems by Holly Day
Six Poems by Doug Draime
The Broken Faucet by Meighan Freiling
Jazzmeen Autry by Nicole Gervasio
Two Poems by Lauren Hewitt
Six Poems by Kayla Kane
Bathroom Crucifix by Carolynn Kingyens
Three Poems by Donnelle McGee
Three Poems by Corey Mesler
Know Youth by Nicholas Miriello
Two Poems by Dave Morrison
Four Poems by Cole Nowicki
Two Poems by Christopher Pryor
the sound by Ellyette Sakas
Two Poems by Steve Subrizi

Water Signs by David Gianatasio
Out of Sorts by Rose Sullivan

I’ve been reluctant in the past to do major site overhauls, design or technical, because I sort of like the idea of Word Riot as the (dirty) old man of the lit scene. I want us to remain dependable and ever-present. I sort of like that our layout is a cobbled-out version of whatever HTML and PHP I’ve pieced together over the years. I think it makes the site quirky and unique but also familiar.

I’ve been wondering if it makes more sense to have the site based on a WordPress platform rather than the Jackie-half-brained content management system. But part of the joy that is my crappy hand-code-and-paste-into-the-MySQL-database work flow is I can get my hands dirty and make sure formatting is exactly how I want it to be.

I also wouldn’t want the old URLs to change since authors have their pieces linked on their own sites and the URLs have authority in Google for being up so long yada yada… I think having some sort of hybrid platform is going to be where WR is headed.

</existential lit editor crisis>

Anyway, I’d love to hear any and all thoughts on Word Riot, what we’re doing right, what we should be doing right but aren’t, etc. Seriously. Lay it on me.

“These are power words that Jackie Corley writes. Come screaming atcha from inside your head, a white hot poker stuck in your mind’s eye. Emotion raw and real, honest as it gets. … Words as emotions transcending literal meaning to an inner storm of feeling. Where it hurts, or where there is love, lust, desire, longing. A bursting forth of the moment, the augenblink. All of that, being young and feeling old. Feeling all of it slip sliding away like quicksand, and drowning in our own unfulfilled needs.”

FRIDAY JULY 31, 2009
IRISH PUB – 10PM – 12AM
Mary Miller, Elizabeth Ellen, Andrea Kneeland, Kate Wyer, Barry Graham

SATURDAY AUGUST 1, 2009
BOARDWALK PAVILLION
(next to bally’s – across from memorial)
6PM-8PM
Kevin Michaels, Timothy Gager, Robert Lopez, Joe Salvatore, Timmy Waldron Scott McClanahan, Justin Sirois, Jackie Corley

SUNDAY AUGUST 2, 2009
(tentative)
Curtis Smith, Randall Brown, Amanda Nazario, Lydia Copeland, Erin Pringle, Lane Falcon

—-

Lee Rourke interviewed me at 3:AM Magazine. I love 3:AM so I was really excited about this interview.

Eyeshot was definitely a big inspiration for me as Word Riot was getting started, so I’m sad to see it go.

photo credit: Lauren Vallese June 2009

Press Release

Middletown, NJ — Punk rock-spirited independent publisher Word Riot Press will release What’s Your Exit?: A Literary Detour through New Jersey in May 2010.

The anthology, edited by Alicia A. Beale and Joe Vallese, will include feature new and previously published work from over 40 writers.  Among the book’s contributors are Joyce Carol Oates , Tom Perrotta, Robert Pinsky, Jason Biggs, J. Robert Lennon, Alicia Ostriker,  Paul Lisicky , Louise de Salvo, Donna Steiner, Joe Weil, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Lee Klein, Suzanne Paola, James Richardson, Susan Fox Rogers, Gerald Stern, JC Todd, BJ Ward, and Sung J. Woo.

What’s Your Exit? will be comprised of contemporary literary fiction, memoir, and poetry about, inspired by, and representative of the Garden State.  Themes of family, friendship, travel, culture, sexuality, love, fear, violence, nostalgia, and longing populate the anthology, which features writers and styles as eclectic and beautiful, and as unnerving and mysterious and bold as the place that unites them in this work.

An index in the back of the anthology will list the collected works by Parkway and Turnpike exits, an homage to the traditional way Jersey folk identify and relate to one another—the simple but loaded inquiry, “What exit?”

“We want What’s Your Exit? to be our gift to New Jersey,” said Vallese, a Palisades Park native and undergraduate writing teacher at New York University.

After developing their vision for the anthology, Beale and Vallese sought a New Jersey-based publisher equally enthusiastic about the scope of the project.

“We believe Word Riot Press is a company with the passion and literary aesthetics to propel this book in both a profitable and artistic direction,” said Beale, a Long Branch native.

Word Riot Press publisher Jackie Corley, a New Jersey resident, sees the book’s publication as a milestone for the company.  “Up until this point, we have mainly published small paperbacks by rising literary notables, such as Nick Antosca, Kevin Sampsell and David Barringer,” Corley said. “An anthology of this range, with such an impressive collection of established and up-and-coming authors represents an exciting step in our growth.”

INTERVIEWS
An Interview With Gary J. Shipley by David F. Hoenigman
An Interview With Yuri Kageyama by David F. Hoenigman
An Interview With Shelley Stout by Laura McDonald

FLASH FICTION
Bottle Rocket Fight by R. Neal Bonser
Movement by Kathy Conde
Taking the cinder path down to the sea by Sarah Hilary
Fallen Oranges by Victoria Melekian
Wait Till the Bogeyman Comes for You by Kristopher Monroe
Shubhangi by Tirumal Mundargi
Jesus Rocks by Emma Pattee
A Fall Sunday by Vinoad Senguttuvan
[ in the cold, when the night changes with Jimmy ] by J. A. Tyler
Please don’t be upset. by Brandi Wells

SHORT STORIES
Legacy by Grant Bergland
The Teacher by Wyatt Bonikowski
A Brilliant Compromise by Sean M. Lawrence
Christmas in Mexico by Jennifer Shumate
That Something We Needed by Casey Wiley

POETRY
Two Poems by Craig Awmiller
Two Poems by Jeremy D. Campbell
Sadie by Jesse Fourmy
Untitled by Andrew Hilbert
Three Poems by David LaBounty
Gödel and Einstein by J. Richard McLaughlin
Three Poems by Simon Perchik
Cào: An Etymology by Caleb Powell
GUARDIAN ANGEL by Mather Schneider
Two Poems by Leon Ivan Snow
Four Poems by Audri Sousa
After the Meal by Joseph R. Trombatore
Two Poems by Cody Wiewandt

CREATIVE NON-FICTION
Drafts by Michael Dean Anthony
The Meredith Letters by Jennifer Ruden

EXPERIMENTAL
WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO BE by David Gianatasio
The Unmetaphysical Megalocardia of Jevan South by Brett Adkins and Paul Albano

REVIEWS
The Falcon Waiting by Gregg Glory | Review by John Petrolino
Monkeybicycle 6 | Review by Timmy Waldron

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“Here is a collection perfectly shaped, with a strong, punch of a first story, “Amanda”, that perfectly sets the dark, funny tone for the book. …

“Throughout the collection, Waldron’s characters exhibit a simmering wrongness and inevitable falling apart. Whereas Cormac McCarthy’s work always portrays an aspect of chaos theory, Waldron’s stories better exemplify the theory of entropy. …

“World Takes represents how independent presses can do more than publish books that are too experimental (although many of these stories are formally interesting, for sure) for the major publishers, but also can publish books that make you think, “why doesn’t this guy have a major publisher?” (Elizabeth Ellen does that to me.) And the answer to that would be that they can’t publish every good thing out there, can they? That all presses are run by humans, and many a press will pass up, wrongly, a very good book. I have no idea whether or not Waldron tried to get a major publisher in the first place, but that is’t totally my point. What I mean to emphasize here is how Indie Presses can be of a different benefit to the readers of the world: they can publish the surplus of excellent manuscripts, that for whatever non-reason, are not getting published by Random House.”

The piece is an excerpt of the novel manuscript I’m working on now. I’m tentatively calling the novel Fine Creature. We’ll have to see what it becomes.

Thinking about all the awesome books I should read next term. I’ll be studying under Amy Hempel. Rock.