pgp redo: press/reviews

Showing posts with label press/reviews. Show all posts

A Few Review Things

Mairéad Byrne at RISD.

Mike Young at decomP.

And Mike Young-ish at the library.

Adam Robinson: a 2010 Goodreads Choice Nominee. (VOTE!)

Stephanie Barber at It's All Good.

Rachel B. Glaser in The L Magazine.

Andy Devine at The Faster Times.

Stephanie Barber will be moving her studio into the Baltimore Museum of Art, where she will create a new video each day as part of the Sondheim Prize Exhibition. For full press release, click the image below the fold.

StephanieBarber.com

ArtBMA.com

Easter Rabbit Resurrected

December 22, 2010 -— When the first print run of Joseph Young’s collection of microfiction, Easter Rabbit, began to sell out last fall, the author thought, Well let’s do the typical, boring thing and get some more copies made, ho hum. Fortunately, Easter Rabbit cover artist Christine Sajecki was there with a better idea. “Let’s do a whole new cover,” she said, “and add in some new stories!”

This Christmas, Sajecki’s idea came to fruition: beautiful new cover art by the artist and the addition of a book chapter entitled Stories Around People. Young’s publisher, Publishing Genius, will be officially re-releasing the book on Christmas Eve.

(Click here to read the full press release.)

Indie Lit Roadshow Comes to Baltimore

Baltimore, MD;
Indie Lit Roadshow: Monumental Genius Holiday Bookshop
www.indielitshow.com
Baltimore hosts a one-day-only pop-up bookshop featuring several local and national independent presses, bookstores, and magazines. There will be plenty of book shopping (just in time for the holidays) and performances as well as free gift wrapping and wassail, all at Monumental – the city’s newest and most intimate reading event, hosted at Jamie Gaughran-Perez’s spacious penthouse apartment at 24 East Mount Vernon Place, a few doors down from the Washington Monument.

Presenters Publishing Genius, JMWW, Shattered Wig Review and The Monumental Reading Series are joined by Normals Books & Records, the WORMS reading series, and several authors/artists including Stephanie Barber, Laura van den Berg, Dina Kelberman, Michael Kimball, Justin Sirois, John Dermot Woods and more.

(Click here to read the full press release.}

Mike Topp's new book available in December

Publishing Genius Press is nervous and giddy about the fact that Sasquatch Stories, Mike Topp’s book of one-liners, poems, haiku and one-paragraph stories is opening for pre-sales tomorrow, and will be officially available on December 14, 2010.

The book, which features cover art by Tao Lin and a drawing inside called “Sea Nerd,” by David Berman, is only 68 pages long, and doesn’t have a lot of words, and many (if not all) of the pieces are already available for free through Mike Topp’s PDF newsletter, the Stuyvesant Bee, which he apparently sends to 99% of everybody.

Topp has also published other books, like Shorts Are Wrong, which is about twice the page count, and Happy Ending which is a bit shorter, both of which bear the same witty sensibility as Sasquatch Stories.

Publishing Genius has also put out work with a similar sensibility, for instance Mairéad Byrne’s The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven, and Joseph Young’s Easter Rabbit.

Topp lives in NYC unless he has died or moved.

A. Minetta Gould and Amber Nelson to co-release poetry books

November 8, 2010 -- Publishing Genius Press is thrilled to announce that it will publish a unique book of poetry by two young writers, A. Minetta Gould and Amber Nelson. The book is described as two books in one, identified as a front/back book, where both sides of the jacket are separate covers for distinct titles. It will be officially released on January 11, 2011, with presales opening in mid December.

(Click here to read the full press release.)

Fog Gorgeous Stag by Sean Lovelace

The Faster Times review.
Book Punch review.

Four questions for the author.
3AM review.

NANO Fiction excerpt.

Reviews at Hayden's Ferry, Monkeybicycle.

Fog Gorgeous Stag is an electrical fire of a book. From the first page you know it’s going to combust, and it does, and it will. Each sentence is wired evil, a sentient boll weevil, a morning devil, an angry lover hovering for some reason or other, a bleeding fever. Each image a starsong; a shelved elf; a microwaved marshmallow egg. This book is just not safe for human consumption. If you must read it, I recommend real thick gloves like the furries wear, a mouthwash month, some antiviral gum with Freshening Riblet Crystals, a hundred-year moratorium, or kevlar hot pants. This is not a blurb. This is a warning label.
-Ander Monson, author of Other Electricities

Like wrangling elastic flamingoes and dyspeptic hedgehogs around wondrous croquet pitches, like rolling bocce with hair-triggered hand-grenades in a downpour of jazz-scatting jarts, Sean Lovelace’s wondrous Fog Gorgeous Stag staggers a mere mortal’s imagination with the sheer dervished dervish tattooed on the triumphant tympanic page, the centripetal paragraphs parachuting marginal corridors of ruin, and the Rorschaching sentences slicing through the winded wind-sheer of everything, everything going everywhere fast. This is prose that out-Jesuses poetry’s poetry. Reading it is to engage in the interval training of the syntaxes. The pant panting! The hypoxic breathlessness! The all of it that is the all of it!
-Michael Martone, author of 4 for a Quarter

Lovelace teaches creative writing at Ball State University. His first book of flash fiction, How Some People Like Their Eggs, won the Rose Metal Press chapbook prize. His works have appeared in numerous journals. He blogs at http://seanlovelace.com and is a contributor for htmlgiant.

For interviews, review copies or more information, contact adam@publishinggenius.com.

Add to Goodreads:

Publishing Genius releases Mike Young's first full-length collection

With advanced praise from Dennis Cooper, Mathias Svalina and Dara Weir, Publishing Genius is pleased to present We Are All Good if They Try Hard Enough, the first full-length poetry collection from Mike Young. The 80-page collection is characterized by Mike’s ecstatic language, with poems that change quickly, with wit and sensitivity. Topics range from Emmanuel Levinas’s theories on alterity, to the latest awesome gadgetry, to dancing, to epistemology and beyond.

(Click here to read the full press release.)

Upon the publication or Pee On Water by Rachel B. Glaser

Publishing Genius is beyond excited to announce the publication of Pee On Water, the first book from Rachel B. Glaser, a collection of thirteen short stories of vivid imagination and ecstatic language. The first story, called “The Magic Umbrella” reads like an umbrella popping open. It features a flaming stick that talks and a book that ruminates about its place on the shelf. The title story journeys through all of known time, and everything in between runs the gamut. From video games, to the NBA, to 9/11 and HIV, to space travel gone bad, Glaser’s fearlessness makes impossible stories possible.

(Click here to read the full press release.)

Rachel Glaser at The L Magazine

Rachel Glaser answers some writer-type questions at The L Magazine.

RBG: I have never been starving before. But I think I write best late at night during a span where I can’t decide if I should eat or sleep.

Offed at HTMLGIANT, Interviewed at Fictionaut

Jimmy Chen wrote Publishing Genius's obituary at HTMLGIANT, saying the company died of an aneurysm, probably due to all the genius in the brand. "From chapbook genius, to everyday genius, to the genius of sticking poems (aka “gay tagging”) in or around Baltimore, one wonders how Robinson’s head could not have exploded."

And at Fictionaut, Meg Pokrass fired a few questions at Adam Robinson for their interview series, "Fictionaut Five."

Stephanie Barber: Interview, Literary Death Match, Book reviewed

Here at Human Pyramids is an interview with Stephanie Barber in which she says lovely and challenging things about her work, in lower case, like:

. . . i am working within myself right now in a very particular way. i mean that i am pushing against my own ideas and my previous work in a way that was maybe not as possible to do when i didn't have such a large body of work. it is a very subtle feeling. like artistic proprioception. an interoceptive awareness of where i am in my art. this is a simultaneously abstract and specific feeling.

i'm unsure of how i feel about this morally. there is something about the hardcore individualist motivation in working like this--responding to previous work i have made--avoiding the tropes of previous stories--etc.--something about strident individualism which feels tawdry and propagandistic. the alternative seems either like being tossed around in the giantest ocean slammed by rocks and unnamed sea creatures or being in harmony and eternal dialog with all art ever made and about to be made.

One of the things I admire most about Stephanie's approach to art is her seriousness (her "interoceptive awareness" and her ability to frame her work morally). Another thing is her knack for simile (like being in the giantest ocean slammed by rocks and unnamed sea creatures).

Her book and a DVD of her films is called these here separated to see how they standing alone.

She will be performing at the Literary Death Match in Baltimore on Oct 30.

Here is a review of her book and DVD at PANK, written by JA Tyler.

PEE ON WATER reviewed.

At TriQuarterly, Danielle Burhop begins:

At the conclusion of Rachel Glaser’s first story collection, the reader finds herself blinking fast through a crowd of images: bears eat trash; fur ruffles in wind; candles “coy and shy their hot face.” The reader is left with the slimming of a soap bar into a sliver of itself, and with the impression that what constitutes narrative has just had its boundaries renegotiated.

At KGBBar Lit Journal, Eric Felibe-Barkin begins:

If you’re our age and into fiction you have to act like there’s a lot of new stuff out there to know about – secret, underground literary things that are making things new again. There isn’t. It’s no one’s fault.

At We Who Are About to Die, Ani Smith begins:

Dear Rachel,

Hi. I hope you are well. How is the weather in—actually, I don’t remember where you live. Because I like fiction and have difficulty concentrating on facts. I mean, sometimes I even think there is no proper difference. Fiction comes from brains and brains are tangible as facts, right?

WE ARE ALL GOOD reviewed.

At her blog, Erin McNellis wrote a wonderful review, expository review of WE ARE ALL GOOD IF THEY TRY HARD ENOUGH. She begins:

I am a scholar of, teacher of, student of, and writer of poetry. This constellation of identities means that when I pick up a new book of poetry, I turn into Robert fucking Langdon from the fucking Da Vinci Code: I look for correspondences, connections, patterns, “Symbology,” so that I can solve the book’s mystery and come up with a thesis clever enough to bring down the Catholic church. Mike Young’s We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough stumped me for a long time.

And, wow, a beautiful, heartwarming overview of PG by Green Lantern, a collective/collection of artists and amigos in Chicago.

Publishing Genius is a publishing genius. A poetry and fiction press based in Baltimore they have consistently wowed with their eclectic, super fresh choices. They publish paperbacks, chapbooks and have an outdoor poetry posting project called isReads. All of the stuff is quality.

Thanks a lot you people!

Three Reviews

Lots of PG news today:

1. Joseph Young wins Best of Baltimore for Easter Rabbit.
2. Rachel B. Glaser reviewed and interviewed at We Who Are About to Die for Pee On Water.
3. Mairéad Byrne reviewed at The Rumpus for The Best of (What's Left of) Heaven.

Easter Rabbit ranked Best of Baltimore

Best New Book by a Local Author

Easter Rabbit by Joseph Young

Microfictionist Joseph Young has whittled the short story down to a few sentences—and often fewer than 50 words. What’s disarming is how effective these stories are in Easter Rabbit. You expect something so terse to feel incomplete, a mere piece of some greater whole, but the stories, moments, relationships, and feelings in these 100 pages end up saying all they need to in an artfully precise use of language.

Thanks to the City Paper! Get your copy of Easter Rabbit here.

Andy Devine, WORDS and TOUR

Thomas Baughman has written an intelligent synopsis of WORDS by Andy Devine. His essay leads to this question, "A fine example of avante-garde writing or a brilliant parody of postmodern pastiche?" and then has the good sense to let the reader decide. It's a wonderful take on a challenging book.

In other Devine news, we at the Publishing Genius office are busy setting up a reading tour for Andy. So far we've got dates set up for the end of the year in cities like Nashville, New York City, Portland, Indianapolis. If you are interested in hosting Andy Devine, contact Adam Robinson right away.

Say, Poem

Say, Poem, Adam Robinson's book from PG's AMP imprint, reviewed by Cami Park.

Mairéad Byrne review at Big Other

Wow. Michael Leong's Big Other review of The Best of (What's Left of) Heaven doesn't miss a trick. It's an exhaustive take on Byrne's use of form and subtlety. Among other things, he writes:

The “small things” that are her poems connect to each other in such enriching and dialogic ways that The Best of (What’s Left Of) Heaven becomes, in the process of reading, greater than the sum of its constitutive parts. Taken as a whole it amounts to an oftentimes comedic, sometimes steely-eyed, but ultimately compassionate manifesto on how to live life poetically.

You can read Leong's whole review here.

Todd Zuniga on eBooks

If you're wondering about Publishing Genius's perspective on ebooks, you'll find this article at Media of interest. Written by Todd Zuniga, the mastermind behind Opium and the Literary Death Match (coming back to Baltimore on October 30), the article talks about Andrew Wylie, the agent who announced earlier this summer that he will directly sell ebooks to Amazon (cutting out publishers), and how groups like Random House, Melville House and Publishing Genius are managing their own ebook deals.

MLKNG SCKLS Review and Jello Words

Decomp Magazine featured Justin Sirois's book, MLKNG SCKLS. Thanks to Spencer Dew for the review. He wrote that "Sirois, through the presentation of hallucinatory consciousness, offers an undeniably human portrait." That sounds about right.

And at We Who Are About to Die, Melissa Broder scores Matthew Simmons's book, A Jello Horse.

And at Big Lucks's blog, Mark Cugini offers praise about WORDS by Andy Devine, saying, "It’s an awe-expiring cognitive experience, and the most engaged I’ve been while looking at words. It’s interactive and stimulating, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the infinite possibilities of language."

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