“Graphic vignettes involving live alligators, diarrhea in department store bathrooms, domesticity, dissected animals, and the medicalization of sex…. Aaron Apps’s hybrid work extends beyond the lyrical and textual… An abandonment of sorts, a style of writing unafraid of failure and therefore willing to employ risk as a model for confronting violence, living with it, learning from it.”
Thanks to Levi Andrew Noe at Rocky Mountain Revival, you can hear new TS author Steven Dunn read from his novel, Potted Meat, and you can hear an interview with Steven as well.
Yup. It’s true. September 1st to November 30th, 2016, is the Tarpaulin Sky Press biennial reading period for manuscripts in any genre. Two manuscripts will be chosen for publication — one by Bhanu Kapil, the other by TS Press editors. Each author will receive $1000. If time & resources permit, TS Editors may choose additional manuscripts for publication (last time, we picked four in total). Finalist manuscript titles and authors will be listed on the website, extolling their awesomeness….
Allie Rowbottom at The Rumpus writes a brilliant review of Elizabeth Hall’s I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris (TS, 2016): “an orgy of information…. at once sexy and scientifically compelling … rendered with graceful care, delivering in small bites an investigation of the clit that is simultaneously a meditation on the myriad ways in which smallness hides power.”
We’re big in Britain. Granta features the first third of Steven Dunn’s debut novel, Potted Meat, co-winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. The book is out “officially” on August 1st. If you haven’t already “pre-ordered” Steven’s novel from us, do yourself a favor….
May – June 2016: Portland, Or; Eugene, OR; San Francisco, CA. Elizabeth Hall, with Evelyn Hampton, Jamondria Harris, Amy Lam, Teresa K. Miller, Jordan Okumura, A.M. O’Malley, Jason Snyder, Robert Torres …
In the wake of The Becoming (book 1 of the West of Kingdom Come quadrilogy), the feral twin brothers Rem + Rom “eggnawledge itchudder” and “reeleyes” their current state (fathered by a rogue member of the Lewis + Clark expedition and reared by a she-wolf) and build a log raft to “riverse ingenear” their father’s route-cum-rut that berthed them unceremoniously in spitting image at the mouth of the Columbia—all in the name of westward expansion.
Carl Ferrero’s work has been exhibited at Feature Inc., Vox Populi, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Artists Space, The Elizabeth Foundation, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Exile gallery in Berlin, and Artenova in Italy.
“Her voice is like a carnation sucking water, sucking blue. / She drinks. Hello she says. / Yes she says like the lion of St. Mark, with liquid nonchalance….” Excerpts from Emily Carr’s hybrid manuscript, Name Your Bird Without A Gun: A Tarot Novel, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
Medical practice as psycho-erotic soap opera. A mad philosophical speculation, a pseudo-scientific meditation. This is a horror show. Excerpts from Vanessa Roveto’s hybrid-genre manuscript, The Clinic, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
“You ask yourself what value (in terms of life, of action) ‘Up in Heaven’s’ bizarre punk/pop fusion holds, for precisely which audience. You wonder if Mick’s departure from punk sound, if not punk sentiment, betrays its own escapist anxieties before what Nietzsche describes as the two worst contagions: ‘great nausea at man,’ ‘great pity for man.'” Excerpts from Andy Fitch’s hybrid-genre manuscript, Garageland, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
“I’m no amateur when it comes to negotiations, but I’m willing to offer you my head. I’m willing to sacrifice myself to continue the species. This is an institution of unsportsmanlike policies and I’m doing my best to generate a little public interest.” Excerpts from Paul Cunningham’s hybrid-genre manuscript, GOAL/TENDER MEAT/TENDER, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
“Salvation is a drug, push the dopamine dosage in regular intervals – until screaming hero in chains. From her hands into her mouth, obedient. Promised salvation. The body of Christ taken with a glass of wine. Sacral flesh in the throat. She takes the body of the saviour into her, takes flesh and myth, and believes she is saved.”
“it is not subtle, our kind of sin / as when bioluminescent angels glitter the black expanse / it is called nyctiluca. / isn’t it ravishing? / isn’t it how it feels to hunt / and make of our meat God and child.”
Her “soul” abed with “regret”… / (Both demanding quotation marks)… / Was, over the last week and a half, / Like that two-headed dog / Locked inside a car with the windows rolled up.
“I grab my jizzy blankey and put on a bib / to catch the roofies. // Making piggy eyes for love. // I outsourced a boyfriend to autocomplete that pussy. // I crowdfunded a suicide.”
“Patsy Manson having a cup of urine thrown in her face at Heaven’s Gate … / Patsy Manson chased endlessly at night, round a racetrack by a mechanical rabbit….”
“We r strapped // 2 eachother / like some species // of occult glamour // I discharge my titters / over the bodies piling out // of the glass / The reanimation of my pie // in a funk of vex….” Excerpts from Lara Glenum’s poetry manuscript, JUNK SHOT, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
“we weren’t so stupid. we’d done our reading, even there in school. we knew of the deformities. we’d seen the portraits in our history book – the habsburgs with their horrible lips, their jaws. mental retardation, et cetera. we knew, we knew. but that wasn’t what we were doing.”
“Having climbed all five thousand stairs of the towering high-rise, OUR AUTHOR, in a red state of rage, erupts wildly into the room, and there, seeing that he was late to the conference, seeing that there were already so many authors at the table already, a million authors with a billion inflections, OUR AUTHOR thinks to himself that to pose even a single assertion, to converse with even a single poet, simply would not do….” Excerpts from Sandy Florian’s prose manuscript, The Chair, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
“Lil Kim was important to physics. She came up with the ‘Gigantic Shit Ton of Shit We Cannot Understand Theory’ which attempts to make sense of the ways in which the universe can be so fundamentally fucked the hell up.” Short fictions from MR Sheffield’s manuscript, We Are the Blood, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
“In our actions we are beyond the believable and we divine, through tea leaves or wind, chemical signals, market rates or text codes of our clan— where we are driven next— furthest from before. Join our little gathering despite these many faults and without which we wonder whose art is reverential. Meet our misshapen family.” Excerpts from Laynie Browne’s novel manuscript, Periodic Companions, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
“Sometimes I would rub my face in the corner where the blue carpet smelled like damp, burning goat candles and then my face would smell like damp, burning goat candles.” Excerpts from Mark Baumer’s fiction manuscript, Yachts, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
“Fire stormed on ice that winter night. Down turned to coal inside my pillow. A sky above my ceiling and the Devil bright red in it, I ate God’s Holy Bible. One prophet at a time. Deep within my bowels, his mercies turned to sour meal.” Excerpts from Brian Kubarycz’s fiction manuscript, The Instruments I Used, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
Lisa A. Flowers reviews Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi (Action Books): “A collection that intelligent children and adults alike will trip on and all-up-into. It’s the kind of book that’s as suited for DMT/LSD as it is for a vividly imagination-stimulating preschool storytime; and, of course, it’s a must for any occult-obsessee.”
“we weren’t so stupid. we’d done our reading, even there in school. we knew of the deformities. we’d seen the portraits in our history book – the habsburgs with their horrible lips, their jaws. mental retardation, et cetera. we knew, we knew. but that wasn’t what we were doing.”
Making its debut in Assiah is TS Press novelist Claire Donato’s stunning first collection of poems, The Second Body, brought to you by Poor Claudia. Watch this space for a review, and in the meantime, we encourage you to read an essay by Claire at the Poetry Society of America, meditating on the title poem from The Second Body.
“Salvation is a drug, push the dopamine dosage in regular intervals – until screaming hero in chains. From her hands into her mouth, obedient. Promised salvation. The body of Christ taken with a glass of wine. Sacral flesh in the throat. She takes the body of the saviour into her, takes flesh and myth, and believes she is saved.”
Her “soul” abed with “regret”… / (Both demanding quotation marks)… / Was, over the last week and a half, / Like that two-headed dog / Locked inside a car with the windows rolled up.
Ghost Proposal’s issue on “Hybrid Forms & the Post-Genre Approach” features Tarpaulin Sky Press author Joyelle McSweeney and TS publisher Christian Peet, along with Tyler Crumrine, T Clutch Fleischmann, Oliver de la Paz, Hannah Brooks-Motl, and Douglas A. Martin.
By Nathan Meltz and Shira Dentz. You know that you’re not watching a traditional kid’s movie when animated Jack Kirby-like Viking storm troopers murder an animated village of medieval Irish peasants.
Part two of our interview with Jan Clausen, author of Veiled Spill: A Sequence (GenPop Books), one of the more important books of poetry published in the last year.
Tarpaulin Sky is delighted to have the opportunity to interview “hostile” writer Jan Clausen, author of Veiled Spill: A Sequence, and author recently praised and admonished in American Poetry Review and The Rumpus respectively.
Erica Baum on The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman (Penguin Press 2016); Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton (Catapult Press 2016); Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives by Susan Howe (Christine Burgin / New Directions 2014); Three Strong Women by Marie Ndiaye (Alfred A. Knopf 2012); and Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey (Little Brown and Company 2016)
“I’m currently reading at least twenty books at the moment (I’m just eyeballing the stacks on my nightstand), from Wake Up and Roar by Papaji to The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy — but there are books that have lingered on the nightstand for a few months because I continue to return to them.”
Katie Hibner reviews Of Beings Alone (Tinfish Press, 2016): “With the ability to technologically manicure and customize every element of our existence, from our profile pictures to our potential lovers, to maybe even our children in the near future, I fear that Wolsak’s dystopia will expand outside of her text and into reality. Of Beings Alone is a jolting reminder to surrender to imperfection: appreciate the bruises on your ‘windfall pears.'”
Lisa A. Flowers reviews Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi (Action Books): “A collection that intelligent children and adults alike will trip on and all-up-into. It’s the kind of book that’s as suited for DMT/LSD as it is for a vividly imagination-stimulating preschool storytime; and, of course, it’s a must for any occult-obsessee.”
Katie Ebbitt reviews The Devastation by Melissa Buzzeo (Nightboat Books, 2015). Buzzeo “writes disaster into being, building form and language from memory and absence—pulling concealed, dormant, and suppressed language from her own body, which she seeks to transfer into the body of her book.”
In his 1917 essay “Art as Device,” Viktor Shklovsky wrote: “the purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived, and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself, and must be prolonged.”
Books that other publishers have been kind enough to send us in the hope that you will review them. Please do. Reviewing is good for everyone involved. Bonus: reviewers whose reviews are accepted for publication on tarpaulinsky.com receive any Tarpaulin Sky Press paperback of their choice. If you’re interested in reviewing one of the titles below, please send a brief cover letter to reviews[at] tarpaulinsky[dot]com and include “Attn: Review Editors” in the subject line. Publishers (or authors), please send review copies to Tarpaulin Sky Press, PO Box 189, Grafton, VT 05146.
Books by 32 authors and translators on 27 presses, including Ahsahta, Black Radish, Brooklyn Arts Press, Burning Deck, Civil Coping Mechanisms, Dancing Girl, Denver Quarterly, Dusie, Kore Press, Letter Machine Editions, Little Paper Press, Plays Inverse, Ricochet Editions, Tarcher Perigee, and more.
Books by 30 authors on over two dozen presses, including Ahsahta Press, Black Radish Books, Burning Deck, Calamari Archive, Commune Editions, Dusie Press, Hummingbird Press, Llewellyn, Milkweed Editions, New Michigan Press, Plays Inverse, Ricochet Editions, Solid Objects, Subito Press, Ugly Duckling Presse, and more.
Books by 17 authors and translators on 14 presses, including Bear Star, BlazeVox, Burning Deck, Caketrain, Coffee House, Dusie, FSG, Transcendent Zero, Trembling Pillow, and University of Iowa.
