#awp14

I am very pleased to announce the release of publisher Spuyten Duyvil’s newest collection of experimental prose by women, and proud to say I am included with my story “The Room is Glass.” I recommend you pick up a copy, not because it supports me but because you’ll find some damn good writing in there–Karen Lillis “Guide to New York City (circa 1992)” and Melanie Page “Metal Eye Drifter” among my favorites.

“This anthology provides a much needed venue to spotlight women writers engaged in serious creative writing projects chronicling and responding to our current culture.”

The editor, Nava Renek, and four contributors (Aimee Parkinson, Alexandra Chasin, Cynthia Reeves, Brooke Wonders) produced a panel at Seattle’s AWP conference, in which they discussed what makes prose experimental, which I really enjoyed because I don’t think my work is clearly experimental. By that, I mean I feel my work is still very accessible. Perhaps I like the term innovative writing better. Innovative writing has a smaller audience in mind, no pre-determined formula, and exists outside of easily defined narrative conventions.

Aimee Parkinson said, “innovative female authors constantly push boundaries of written expression, finding new ways to express diverse experiences and the diversity of their visions in an ever-transforming world.”

Alexandra Chasin notes that as women, we’re shackled by the knowledge that we are in danger, and our mobility is inhibited by this knowledge. Chasin advises a young woman to unshackle her mind and just “write like a fucking human being.” This, in and of itself is post-structuralism, she says, “the end of the Master narrative.”

Oh there’s more, so much more good stuff. Just click on any of these links and rock your world. I’m honored to be in the company of these brilliant women.

by Jessica Rogen on 02/26/14

It’s 6:41, and my pre-AWP to-do list somehow grew overnight. So, with out further ado then, here is our final featured author: Phong Nguyen. Please join us on Saturday from 1-2 PM at table P21 and pick up a signed copy of his short-story collection Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History.

As Matt Bell puts it: “The stories in Phong Nguyen’s Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History bravely reinvigorate and reimagine the biographies of our culture’s heroes and villains, offering new vantages from which to see the decisions that shaped our world: Smart and witty, these stories deliver one after another, each reopening the eternal questions of how we got to be who we are, of where we came from and where we might go next.”

Phong Nguyen is the author of Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History (Queen's Ferry Press, 2014) and Memory Sickness and Other Stories (Elixir Press, 2011), which won the Elixir Press Fiction Award. He co-edits the journal Pleiades and co-directs the Unsung Masters Series, for which he edited the volume, Nancy Hale: On the Life and Work of a Lost American Master. Nguyen teaches fiction and American literature at the University of Central Missouri, where he lives with his wife, the artist Sarah Nguyen, and their three children.

 And the times for all our book signings, yet again:

Joseph D. Haske – Thursday, 2-3 PM

         Michael Nye – Friday, 11-12 AM

         Peter Grandbois – Friday, 2-3 PM

         Phong Nguyen – Saturday, 1-2 PM

by Jessica Rogen on 02/17/14

Boulevard is headed to AWP in less than two weeks and, as such, we’re delighted to present the second teaser for our author signing, featuring fiction-writer Michael Nye, who will be autographing his collection Strategies Against Extinction Friday from 11-12 at theBoulevard table (P21!).

The only Michael Nye story I had read was “A Fully Imagined World,” which we published in our Fall 2012 issue, until I picked up his collection sometime last year and devoured it whole. Michael’s stories effectively function on the discomforting juxtaposition between cool description and inner headspace. They’re often very funny in a tragically day-to-day way, a bit like a Laurie Colwin tale. His characters, with varying degrees of obliviousness, move through the real world as I know it, and Michael has a deft way of writing their struggles that prompted me to such a continual feeling of consanguinity that I read most of the collection in the cold sweat of Déjà vu. Will they each find epiphany/revolution—however cold a comfort that might be—come pick up a copy for yourself and find out.

Or as Queen's Ferry Press puts it: 

"Michael Nye’s debut short-story collection is nine stories about people who find themselves at difficult turning points in their lives—times when they are faced with hard choices, broken promises, and the fear of self-destruction. These diverse characters include a war veteran turned radio broadcaster, a film projectionist, a second-generation comic book store owner, a vascular surgeon at one of Boston’s premier hospitals, an ex-baseball player turned financial advisor. The stories in this collection are startling and realistic evocations of the lives of memorable characters, told with rich observation, energy, compassion, and grace."

Michael Nye is the author of Strategies Against Extinction, (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2012), and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Crab Orchard Review,Kenyon Review, New South, Sou’wester, and South Dakota Review, among many others. His work has been a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in fiction. He lives in the Midwest and works as the managing editor of The Missouri Review.

A friendly reminder about all our author signings:

 Joseph D. Haske – Thursday, 2-3 PM

         Michael Nye – Friday, 11-12 AM

         Peter Grandbois – Friday, 2-3 PM