Here’s the scoop from their website:
Looking for something to read after you put the kids to bed? Then Issue Five of Monkeybicycle is for you. It’s bursting at the seams with humor that is not for innocent minds or faint hearts.
Our fifth issue is filled with the kind of humor that would make any good man blush, and it’s delivered from some of the best in the business. Just take a look at this killer line-up:
Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, Myfanwy Collins, Johnny Ryan, Davy Rothbart, Wendy Molyneux, Aaron Burch, Bret Scott, Elizabeth Ellen, Matt Craig, Timothy Bennet, Pete Grosz, Liliana V. Blum, Katie Schwartz, Tyler Smith, Michael Frissore, Antonius Wiriadjaja, Amy Guth, J. Marcus Weekley, Matt Summers-Sparks, C. J. Kershner, Ben Tanzer, Jennifer Dziura, Peter Bognanni, Charlie Anders, David Hart, Noria Jablonski, Bob Fingerman, Vince LiCata, Jack Pendarvis, Christopher Monks, and an introduction by David Cross.
I received great news on Friday night (and am only now having the chance to talk about it on here–due to the ice dams in our eaves which are threatening to submerge our office. FUCK!). Anyway, found out that my story The Daughters, which was published by Monkeybicycle (I have a huge crush on Monkeybicycle! Never thought I’d have a crush on a ezine and publisher, but I do!) is going to be in the DZANC Books Best of the Web Anthology. I’m over the moon!
To take my monkeylove one step further… I’m delighted to announce that I will have a story in their upcoming print issue as well. More about this as pre-orders become available.
Okay, I’m off to go stare at my window casings to see if any more water is seeping in. Oh, and Anthony Bourdain is on. So, you know. I’m going to go see what he eats.
There’s a ton of great reading out there for you this week:
Storyglossia’s Issue 25 is a special flash fiction issue, featuring the work of such treasures as Katrina Denza and Randall Brown.
AND
SmokeLong Quarterly Issue 19, guest edited by Jim Ruland, featuring the work of Grant Bailie, Kim Chinquee, Darlin’ Neal, and many more.
Looking for some good advice on writing and the writing life? Check out Janet Fitch’s blog at myspace.
Cliff Garstang wants YOU. Actually, he wants to know your choice for best New Yorker short story of the year.
A story by me is live today at my beloved Monkeybicycle: I Am Holding Your Hand
I just learned that the next issue of Storyglossia is to be guest edited by Katrina Denza. Katrina is one helluva writer and one helluva reader–so send your very best work!
Writers: run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore and get yourself a copy of this fabulous new book by the one and only, Jordan Rosenfeld—Make a Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time
You’ve felt the pulse-pounding drama of a good story, turning pages at a furious clip, caught up in a book so real, you feel as though it is happening to you. What makes that story, book or essay come to life? Strong, powerful scenes. Make A Scene is a guide for writers on how to write a strong narrative—story or novel—one scene at a time.
hmmmm, not quite sure this describes me…
You’re The Things They Carried!
by Tim O’Brien
Harsh and bitter, you tell it like it is. This usually comes in short,dramatic spurts of spilling your guts in various ways. You carry a heavy load, and this has weighed you down with all the horrors that humanity has to offer. Having seen and done a great deal that you aren’t proud of, you have no choice but to walk forward, trudging slowly through ongoing mud. In the next life, you will come back as a water buffalo.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
How many of the NYT 100 notable books have you read?
Me: I’m reading Bridge of Sighs
My own notable books of the year list includes: Famous Fathers and Other Stories
First snow of the season today–got me musing about my favorite snow beginning and my favorite snow ending (which are within two of my favorite stories of all time).
First, there’s Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, which begins:
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
And then there’s The Dead by James Joyce, which ends:
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
To celebrate its 2006 National Magazine Award in Fiction, VQR has published a special writers on writers supplement (available online because the issue sold out!):
The stories contained herein are of a slightly different strain. We asked each contributor to write a story in which a famous writer appears by name. Beyond that, we allowed for any angle. It could be a straightforward biographical narrative, such as Robert Walser’s “Kleist in Thon,” which recounts an actual journey of Heinreich von Kleist; an imagined (or even fantastic) tale, such as Allan Gurganus’s “Reassurance,” in which one of Walt Whitman’s soldier friends writes from heaven; or a humorous take, such as Ian Frazier’s “LGA/ORD,” in which Frazier riffs on Samuel Beckett’s claim that, had he not become a writer, he would have been an airline pilot.
Great interview with Pia over at litpark today:
All of life’s possibilities for messing up are still there, but the daughter’s on her way home, the tempted wife’s touching her husband’s hand, the mistress says a wordless goodbye to her lover from a payphone. Things have changed, but not necessarily ended, which, I hope, gives the stories a tension that continues beyond the last page.
myfanwy collins 