News | Tarpaulin Sky Press

TS AUTHORS AND THE TROUBLE THEY CAUSE

News | Tarpaulin Sky Press

TS AUTHORS AND THE TROUBLE THEY CAUSE

HTML Giant review of Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown…

At HTML Giant, Kristin Sanders provides a brilliant and fun review of Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them (Tarpaulin Sky, 2011): "[not merely] offers more questions than answers. Who are the Lost Boys, really, and why are they clothed in bearsuits? What’s the history between Peter and Mrs. Darling? How many other little girls did Peter whisk off to Neverland? How does one properly dispose of Never poo? About Tinkerbell, Boully wonders: “where ever will we get such small medical supplies for you? The Tinker dental dam; the Tinker tampon.”

Johannes Göransson interviewed at HTML Giant

At HTML Giant, Blake Butler interviews Johannes Göransson, author of *entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2011): "I don’t think of art as separate from the world, nature etc. Nor am I interested in art which claims to be part of the world; art that claims to not be art. I am interested in art that is invested in its own Art-ness – with all of its crass devices and costumes, all of its kitschy metaphors and pageantry, all of its infected toys. On the other hand I’m not interested in creating a kind of refined space of contemplative art either, I don’t want art as an escape. I suppose in all of these what I object to is a kind of stability, a kind of space that art depicts or documents or provides. I’m more interested in art as violence, art as a haunting, as a spirit photograph, as what Aase Berg calls a 'deformation zone' or what Joyelle has called 'necropastoral'." (JG)

"This is a Poem, Not an Act of Terrorism": Student arrested after imitating work by Tarpaulin Sky Press author Johannes Göransson

A feel-good story about Louisiana State University student James Bellard, who was arrested after writing a "quite disturbing" poem inspired by Tarpaulin Sky Press author Johannes Göransson. "I was in Tureaud hall walking towards my last class of the day," writes Bellard, "when a man walked up behind me and said in a voice like my high-school teacher that had always stood by the school entrance and inspected everyone’s uniforms, 'Excuse me sir!' I turned around to see what he wanted (faintly annoyed by the association), then I saw the badge clipped to his belt. 'Put your hands on the wall!' he commanded."

The Nation features Joanna Ruocco and Man's Companions

The Nation features Joanna Ruocco and *Man's Companions*, from Tarpaulin Sky Press: "Ruocco delivers something stranger than banal moralizing. In the final paragraph, she steers the narrative into foreign territory, and the weirdness of her conclusion is doubled by her ability to meet and then flout expectations with a single gesture, offering up the anticipated feminist insights in the least predictable fashion.... Ruocco restores the power of a familiar critique by rendering it uncanny..... When you read her stories, you find yourself warped from one world to another, transported by the flight of her words between languages."

HTML Giant reviews Johannes Göransson’s entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate

At HTML Giant, Ryan Downey reviews Johannes Goransson's *entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2011): "A hybrid form somewhere between or among the categories of poetry, prose, essay, theatre production, and instruction manual.... A relationship to an Artaudian Theatre of Cruelty.... Masks and intricate costumes aplenty.... Dresses made from looted items, prison-style clothes, black and polished bodies, cowboy costumes, skins charred from suicide bombings, heaps of dead horses, birds bursting from bodies, wounds, basketball jerseys on androgynous children, kissing faces and murder victims, exoskeletons, audience members in whiteface.... A pile up of sequined things and fleshy things. . . . The audience is often implicated. After all, torture and interrogation is not borne out of individual will and action alone. . . . All aboard."

TriQuarterly reviews Shelly Taylor’s Black-Eyed Heifer

At TriQuarterly, Dane Hamann reviews Shelly Taylor's *Black-Eyed Heifer* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010): "Shelly Taylor’s debut effort, Black-Eyed Heifer, is a mosaic of form and language, childhood and adulthood, the American South, horses, gravel roads, and light. It is a riptide pulling its readers out into the deep, powerful currents of nostalgia. It is unrelenting...."

Bookslut interviews Kim Gek Lin Short

At BookSlut, Elizabeth Hildreth interviews TSky Press author Kim Gek Lin Short (China Cowboy (2012) and The Bugging Watch and Other Exhibits (2010)) discussing "among other things" the "David Bowie Method, poems who wear cheap prose wigs, establishing a sort of cahoots with the villain, hallucinating Clint Eastwood (musical accompaniment and all), chafing against the words 'strange' and 'experimental,' and being considered the 2010 poetry It Girl."

TriQuarterly reviews Joanna Ruocco's Man's Companions

At TriQuarterly, Hanna Park reviews Joanna Ruocco's *Man's Companions* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010): "A keen manipulation of ordinary experiences into strange, funny, lovely, uncomfortable truths.... Ruocco is consistently inventive. She tilts the world as we know it, challenging our senses."

Jacket reviews Ana Bozicevic’s Stars of the Night Commute

At Jacket, Nicole Mauro reviews Ana Bozicevic's *Stars of the Night Commute* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009): "Though Božičević’s work does terrify, and so, by extension, is rightly ‘about’ terror . . . Stars is more accurately (and happily) about what an émigré does, heart and eyes intact and hungry for the redemptive and the beautiful, after having experienced all that is contrary to the love and kindness (that can be) human beings."

Publishers Weekly reviews Joanna Ruocco's Man's Companions

Publishers Weekly reviews Joanna Ruocco's *Man's Companions* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010): "Thirty-one brief, clever tales from the author of The Mothering Coven employ traits from the animal kingdom to underscore absurdities in the human species. 'Lemmings,' for example, features a desultory dialogue between two lovers who debate the better 'iconic' location to jump from—the Space Needle or the Empire State Building. . . . Satisfyingly developed.... The nuttily obtuse 'Flying Monkeys,' [features] a rarely intersecting conversation between two women onboard an airplane that reveals how the women—former best friends who happen to sit next to each other—can't stand each other. . . . Ruocco's understated humor and irony have a playful, experimental appeal."

Publishers Weekly reviews Traci O Connor’s Recipes for Endangered Species

Publishers Weekly reviews Traci O Connor's *Recipes for Endangered Species* (Tarpaulin Sky Press): “These stories constitute some tender, aching love stories. Connor’s characters are curious specimens who don’t quite fit in, but have rich inner lives…. Creepy, Hitchcockian….. Juxtaposes vivid descriptions of flowers with excerpts from the painter’s late asylum notebooks to evoke the chilling stream-of-consciousness of a troubled narrator….. A kind of nut job’s notebook, full of Lolita-like obsession (including photographs). Cocktail recipes conclude each of the stories in this varied and occasionally unnerving debut collection.”

After Ellen reviews Bozicevic’s Stars of the Night Commute

At After Ellen, Heather Aimee O'Neil reviews Ana Bozicevic's *Stars of the Night Commute* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009): "Queer poet Ana Božičević’s first book, Stars of the Night Commute, is an intense and highly lyrical collection of poetry.... Božičević’s work is thought-provoking, inspired and unexpected. Highly recommended."

At Harriet, Stephen Burt reviews Joyelle McSweeney's Nylund, the Sarcographer

At the Poetry Foundation's Harriet, Stephen Burt reviews Joyelle McSweeney's *Nylund, the Sarcographer* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007): "Flights of campy-cum-lyrical post-Ashberyan prose.... The Daisy parts are actually sexy, the murder-mystery parts and the furniture-store bits are genuinely funny, the language dissolves into stream-of-consanguinity post-surrealism and then resolves into a plot again.... It’s recommended"

Bookslut reviews Joyelle McSweeney’s Nylund, the Sarcographer

At Bookslut, Christopher Higgs reviews Joyelle McSweeney's *Nylund, the Sarcographer*: "Nylund, the Sarcographer is like interesting on steroids. Caution: if you are looking for a typical, straight forward, good old fashioned yarn, you’d do best to look elsewhere; but if you want to experience something fresh, daring, creepy, and significant, this is the one for you. It is the opposite of boring, an ominous conflagration devouring the bland terrain of conventional realism, the kind of work that tickles your inner ear, gives you the shivers, and tricks your left brain into thinking that your right brain has staged a coup d'état....Other than the incomparable Ben Marcus, I’m not sure anyone in contemporary letters can compete with the voracity of ingenuity, complexity, and beauty of McSweeney’s usage."

Rain Taxi reviews Danielle Dutton’s Attempts at a Life

At Rain Taxi, Peter Connors reviews Danielle Dutton's *Attempts at a Life* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007): "In section after section in Attempts at a Life, Danielle Dutton executes expert, miniscule language slips that make us slide down the surface of her narratives like raindrops streaking the windows of the last un-gentrified house in an old Victorian neighborhood.... It most certainly introduces an important new literary voice."

TS author Elizabeth Hall interviewed at Brooklyn Magazine

Interviews, even with the most amazing people, are still only as good as the interviewer. At Brooklyn Magazine, we all get lucky with the fab Marian Ryan, who is right at home with Elizabeth Hall and her debut, I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris (TS Press, 2016).

Aaron Apps’s Intersex (TS 2015) in American Book Review

"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."

Steven Dunn, excerpts from Potted Meat, in Columbia Journal

Columbia Journal features fiction by Steven Dunn: excerpts from his debut novel, Potted Meat, forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky Press in 2016. "Chrissy Ann don’t stink. She smells like work. Like how I smell like coal smoke. She lives at the end of the holla on top of a mountain and has lots of hogs and chickens. She feeds them every morning. When I was at her house her little brother stuck a stick up the hog’s butt. Chrissy Ann slapped the shit out of him. Then she hugged the hog. Then she said we should take a walk in the woods to get out the heat and away from her stupid brother...."

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