Young Lions Fiction Award 2012 — Three Roars for Karen Russell!

1. The Celeste Bartos Forum, shortly before the ceremony. 2. Crosley, Lerner, Cole, Marx, Hale, & Crudup. You can tell I’m a fake journalist/photographer who was sneaking into this shot, because they’re all looking at the real journalist with the big flash, and not at me with my point-and-shoot. 

 

In 2001, the Young Lions Fiction Award was founded by Ethan Hawke, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Rick Moody, and Hannah McFarland as a way to encourage and celebrate the work of a young author (“young,” in this case, is defined as under 35). This year, the nominees included Teju Cole (Open City), Benjamin Hale (The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore), Ben Lerner (Leaving the Atocha Station), Karen Russell (Swamplandia!), and Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones). The awards ceremony was hosted by actor Billy Crudup (from Jesus’ Son, omgz!) at the main branch of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street on Monday night.

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Night of Indie — Small Press and Lit Mag Night at Franklin Park Reading Series

1. Joseph Riippi, author of A Cloth House, with Abigail Rose Welhouse, a poet and City College MFA candidate, a water sign, and a book publicist at Scott Manning & Associates. 2. Host and Curator Penina Roth opening up the night, with the elusive Penelope from Unnameable Books on Vanderbilt accidentally caught by my camera.
 
A gloomy and muggy NYC evening holds no reading junkie back. This month, Franklin Park Reading Series went big, besides the $4 pint specials and fantastic lineup. To celebrate small presses and literary magazines, subscriptions, books, and a radical t-shirt were raffled. Two lucky lit peeps went home with one-year subscriptions to The Paris Review and The Coffin Factory, each of the reading authors’ books found themselves new homes, and the focus of my jealousy: someone now owns a Paris Review t-shirt with the OG logo from the ’60s, printed on what looked like those love 50/50 cotton-poly blend tees. Luckily, all of us got to hear Daniel Long (The Fiddleback), Jac Jemc (My Only Wife), Miles Klee (Ivyland), Robert Lopez (Asunder), and Elissa Schappell (Co-Founder of Tin House and author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls) for free. Party.

Lit Prom Night 2012 – Small Press and Literary Magazine Night at Housing Works SoHo

1. Volunteers Tom MacDonaugh and Katherine “Cookbooks, Mainly” Willis–Student of Science and Marketing Assistant at John Wiley & Sons Publishing–happily posing with Peebers. 2. Guest editor and vocalist Katie Vogel, MerchPersonVolunteer Ann Duensing and Poet Hannah Webster examining the…guest list?

May is a good month, especially if you live in New York City. You get your tax return, the city warms up, it’s Morrissey’s birthday month (22nd, I hope all of you celebrate), and the best part: lit people are still celebrating Literary Magazine and Small Press Month. Ok, it’s really like a year, every year. Last night harlequin creature, Ugly Duckling Presse, and the Agriculture Reader partied with a bunch of us at Housing Works in SoHo with poetry and fiction readings, music from the Relatives and Isaac Gillespie, and free beer. This is all I ever want out of any party.

  

From P-Town… Wandering Creative Space with Chimamanda Adichie

1. On the last block to the Schnitz, I realize that it’s still light out at 7pm which means summer is closer than ever. 2. Adichie on stage at the Schnitz, looking fabulous. 3. Rob Spillman and Jon Raymond head over to the post-lecture reception at the Gus J. Solomon U.S. Courthouse. 

  

Chimamanda Adichie visited Portland for the first time as the season finale speaker for the Portland Arts & Lectures series. Andrew Proctor, Executive Director of Literary Arts, bullied her into coming and held a brief thank-you-a-thon prior to her introduction. I have to agree that the Literary Arts staff is 100% amazing. Adichie said she didn’t mind being bullied by someone like Proctor.

Her talk, A Cultural History of My Writing, began with the words, “As a child in Nigeria . . .” and circled back to #305 Margaret Cartwright Avenue several times as she described her writing life. Adichie has already proven herself in several genres and snagged a genius award. If she cut this lecture to about three and a half minutes and kept the #305 Margaret Cartwright Avenue refrain, it’d probably be an excellent pop song or perhaps a ballad, given that she is drawn to beautiful sadness and has a dark artistic vision which keeps her from writing for children.

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Veterans’ Reading at NYU

1. Workshop Fellow Lizzie Harris with KABOOM author and workshopper, Matthew Gallagher. 2. Reading newcomers, Sonya and Keerthi.

 

It is appropriate that my last post as a writer for The Outlet covers a reading close to me and what I think is simply one of New York’s best readings to hear immediate, affective, and electric literature.

This past Saturday’s annual Veterans’ Reading at the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, while having a connecting theme of veteran readers, features in its production the diversity and contradiction that is often missed at other readings around the boroughs. There are men and women; unpublished writers, like Jeremy Warneke; and heavy-hitters, like Rick Moody. It takes place in a picturesque townhouse in the West Village, yet is held under the tutelage of a University. There are young writers and MFA holders, poets and novelists, musicians and photographers, Army and Navy, activists and ambassadors, all housed under the same roof to hear stories from one very particular community: a community of veterans.

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Comedies of the Cataclysm: Vol. 1 Brooklyn Presents Matt Bell at RAC

1. Rahawa Haile, fiction writer and literary reading regular. Seriously. She goes to more of these than me, and has a fantastic head of hair. 2. Jeff Brewer, fiction writer, Dorian Gray aficionado and diaper conversationalist; with Nicole Treska, Jeff’s minion (for fun) and writer. Both work at City College. We talked about diapers and Oscar Wilde for ten minutes. No joke.

 

While everyone else either enjoyed the warm evening in a park or participated in Occupy’s May Day “festivities,” a handful of us found ourselves at CULTUREfix in the LES for another stellar Vol. 1 Brooklyn reading. This time they celebrated and launched Matt Bell’s —  editor at The Collagist and Dzanc Books –  novella-in-shorts, Cataclysm Baby. The Vol. 1 boys know how to throw a good reading, and brought Melissa Broder (MEAT HEART), Jacob Silverman, Lincoln Michel (Founding Editor at Gigantic) and EL’s own Julia Jackson to make it a literary evening full of lasagna, spontaneous assisted suicide attempts, a new authoritative history of the United Statesian religion, and a daughter’s voice that, if recorded, probably sounds like doom metal octave fuzz.

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One Year of Fiction Addiction… and Lots and Lots of Whiskey!

1. Dudes, I really like chalk signs! 2. Ryan Britt, really serious about trying to get people to publish his story. 3. Chloe McConnell, who works at the New Yorker in the production department, and is Vines’ roommate!

  

Ave. A, between 1st and 6th streets, is a dangerous place for me. Its amenities seem ominously situated solely for me to go broke. At 2nd, I hit my bank, head to Mast Books, then to A-1 Records and, depending on the time, the only place you can listen to Rancid and Sublime and Radiohead, the venerable Cherry Tavern. On Tuesday night, however, I skipped the Tavern and made my way down to 2A, which is home to Fiction Addiction, the excellent and always good-looking reading series hosted by Christine Vines. Last night Vines celebrated one year of whiskey and a really bad fiction habit with tiny cupcakes from Baked by Melissa, $4 whiskey specials, and readings from Ryan Britt, Shelly Oria, Mike Albo, and Ben Greenman. Oh, and the new and fucking awesome journal The Coffin Factory was there giving away copies of Issue One, and selling Issue Two for five bucks. You’re bummed you missed it.

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Living in a Material World: A Conversation with George Saunders and David Lipsky

1. David Lipsky and his Macbook, trying to find something bad to say about Saunders. Conclusion: impossible. 2. George Saunders: he do the police in different voices.

 

On Thursday, I went to the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House around six-thirty and met my friend Useless MacNastus. Most evening readings start at seven, so we figured half an hour was early enough to guarantee ass and back support while listening to George Saunders. We figured wrong. The nineteenth-century townhouse was clogged with people, including a girl hunched beside a garbage can like a dispossessed Oscar the Grouch. The more fortunate fought for seats that faced a mirror. Pressed against a wall in the muggy main room, Useless said, “The moustache quotient is off the charts here.” “Everyone looks like George Saunders,” I said, then George Saunders inched by us. He made eye contact and said “Ehhhhhhhh,” which is the sound you make when two sweaty doofuses are watching you squeeze through a crowd.

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BETRAYED! at Franklin Park

1. Diego Ongaro, Filmmaker, Roasted Pig Delivery Dude, and Hubby to Courtney Maum, fiction writer, humourist and Outlet contributor, with Michelle Legro, Online Editor to Lapham’s Quarterly. Kielbasa Dogs not named. 2. Penina Roth, Founder and Curator of the Franklin Park Reading Series and professional podium raver. We have the same Smiths cassette. Yay!

 

It felt like summer last night in Brooklyn, and Franklin Park‘s big front yard seemed like the perfect place to round out the particularly gorgeous day. Inside, a crowd of literary lovers was ready to get back stabbed, cheated on, and psychically attacked. Or, in other words: It was Betrayal night at this month’s installment of Franklin Park Reading Series. Joseph Riippi, Leah Umansky, Fiona Maazel, Toure, & Heidi Julavits were the writers who would share their sordid tales.

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Fence Magazine’s Spring Issue Launch at Housing Works

1. Novelist, short story writer, and editor Lynne Tillman. On Fiona Maazel: “I love your imagination. It also terrifies me.” 2. Fiona Maazel, reading from “Screen.” “I know what happens to boys in a public bathroom, I know the face of evil.”

 

Fence Magazine is primarily a poetry journal, but for fifteen issues the SUNY Albany publication has had the inimitable Lynne Tillman as its fiction editor, and the Spring 2012 issue launch reading at Housing Works in SoHo doubled as a farewell salute to Tillman, as the forthcoming issue is her last as Fence’s fiction editor. The readings from Fiona Maazel (Last, Last Chance; Woke Up Lonely, a novel, is forthcoming), James Yeh (co-founding editor of Gigantic; he also has a kickass story in the latest issue of NOON), Elizabeth Koch (co-founder of Opium Den and Black Balloon), and Paul Lisicky (Famous Builder, and the forthcoming title Unbuilt Projects) showcased Tillman’s fictive impetus for wryly imaginative stories that skate in darker corners of the psyche.

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