I can’t keep up….

Posted on February 23, 2012 by

…with all the books I want to read. I feel I’m always falling behind. But lists. Lists are good. And I know I’ll buy new books and chapbooks at AWP. So here’s my list. I’ll read all of these and then I’ll make a new list and then it will feel less daunting.

1. Shut Up/Look Pretty –Lauren Becker, Erin Fitzgerald, Kirsty Logan, Michelle Reale and Amber Sparks

2. The Last Repatriate –Matthew Salesses

3. Wild –Cheryl Strayed

4. Birds of a Lesser Paradise –Megan Mayhew Bergman

5. Treasure Island!!! — Sara Levine

6. Betty Superman –Tiff Holland

7. Threats: A Novel –Amelia Gray

8. Bluets –Maggie Nelson

9. Girlchild — Tupelo Hassman

And all The Lit Pub titles. I mean, all of them.

Recently I read Richard Thomas’s Transubstantiate, my first ever neo-noir post-apocalyptic novel and it’s great and something I don’t have the skills for at all, so, admiration for that one. I also read Myfanwy Collins’ debut novel, Echolocation and it’s absolutely wonderful. I’ll say more about it, here, soon. I read Susan Tepper’s From the Uberplatzen: A Love Story, a tiny novel told in flashes and I’ll be interviewing her soon for Fictionaut, about one of the stories in the book.

What else? I’m currently reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I love it. It’s making me understand my quiet self so much more. There are apparently true benefits to the introverted style of being and this book feels important to me.

I’m also reading Snow Child, a debut novel by Eowyn Ivey and oh, I’m loving it. I seem particularly drawn to stories of people living in log cabins (i.e. Little House on the Prairie). The writing is beautiful and the story, sad and strange. Also, there’s lots of snow. (love the cover!)

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Praise for Together We Can Bury It

Posted on February 14, 2012 by

Ohh, I do not love self-promotion, and I really suck at it, but damn, I’m so happy and so proud of this book, so bear with me here. I’ve gotten some lovely blurbs for my collection, which launches at AWP. I only asked writers I knew and who knew my writing. People who have supported me so much over the years and whose writing I admired beyond words. So thank you Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Kim Chinquee, Jennifer Pieroni, Jeff Landon, and James Robison. I am so honored and grateful. And my deepest thanks to Molly Gaudry for her extreme faith, boundless energy and incredible vision. The Lit Pub is doing amazing things and I’m proud to be a part of it.

Praise for Together We Can Bury It

“We readers are blessed to have these perfectly made stories by Kathy Fish, each one a distillation of novel-sized themes and predicaments to a heady, imperative, short short encounter, each story exact, humane, each story providing a language of music. And each the product of a writer who knows all the storms and terrors, the pathetic and somehow holy conditions of our existence. Masterworks!”

—James Robison, author of The Illustrator

“A space man untethered in the universe thinking of home. A young couple biking in the rain to a parade that must be cancelled. A woman losing her speech and balance but still leaving, she thinks, for New York. With remarkable precision, Kathy Fish champions the dreamers, believers, and lovers. If you are not one of those, you can trust Kathy Fish to show you the way back to your heart.”

—Jennifer Pieroni, editor of Quick Fiction

“Kathy Fish's Together We Can Bury It is a wonder—stories filled with sadness, humor, and longing—a slanted banged-up beauty of a world that feels like this one, only more.”

—Jeff Landon, author of Truck Dance and Emily Avenue

“Full of grace and wit, Kathy Fish's Together We Can Bury It takes one to the familiar, yet bizarre: worlds of wonder, ache, and hope. Worlds not to forget. A refreshing voice, busting of compassion, guts, and wisdom. This collection shines with amazing delight.”


—Kim Chinquee, author of Oh Baby

“There’s a movie’s worth of character and plot and insight in every blooming one of these short
fictions. I finished this book feeling stuffed, dazed, and amazed by how much Kathy Fish gets done in such tight spaces. It’s a thrill to be privy to what she thinks about, the wonder she carries inside.”

—Pia Z. Ehrhardt, author of Famous Fathers

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Shut Up, Look Pretty

Posted on February 2, 2012 by

A book I’m very eager to read, from Tiny Hardcore Press featuring stories by Erin Fitzgerald, Lauren Becker, Kirsty Logan, Michelle Reale, and Amber Sparks:

Check out this interesting roundtable discussion at Necessary Fiction

Necessary Fiction.

A book I read and recommend is the e-book One Time All I Wanted, by Nicolle Elizabeth and published by Dark Sky Books. I reviewed the book at elimae.

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The Iowa-Missouri border, 1967

Posted on January 16, 2012 by

The summer I was seven or eight years old, my dad took two of my brothers and me to a family reunion in southern Iowa. My five other brothers and my mom stayed behind. Only subsets of our family took trips because there was only so much room in the car, so Bob and Tim and I felt chosen and lucky. He drove us past Mt. Ayr, our destination, to the Iowa-Missouri border and took this picture of us. It felt very exotic to me at the time. I’d never been anywhere but Iowa before. There’s another, cooler, photo of the three of us standing sideways under this sign with one foot in each state. It’s a close-up and all three of us are sort of glaring at the camera, like don’t mess with us. We are badass. But I love this one too. The body language of it. Something kind of badass in our poses here too.

There are other photos from that trip. There’s one of me standing behind a very large dog. That seemed to be a recurring theme in my young life. Me having my photo taken with somebody else’s dog.

Anyway, this is what I’m writing about now. This strange trip to visit our odd rural southern Iowa relatives. I don’t know what will come of it. I hope something good.

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Such riches in so small a space…Quick Fiction 18

Posted on January 11, 2012 by

QUICK FICTION 18

Cover art by Andrea Zuill

Edited by Jennifer and Adam Pieroni, Quick Fiction has been a long-time favorite literary journal of mine. I saw that Pia Ehrhardt was in Issue 4 and being a fan of Pia Ehrhardt, I subscribed and have been a subscriber and sometime contributor since then. I’ve held on to every issue and go back and reread them often. I brought all my issues to my flash fiction class at American University (the Discover the World of Communication summer program for high school students). The kids ate them up and learned so much by reading what I think has always been the best of what flash fiction has to offer.

The design and look of Quick Fiction has remained simple, with stunning artwork on the covers. Quick Fiction has only ever been about flash fiction and prose poetry, most of the work covering only one, small page. The work inside consistently great.

But Issue 18 may very well be the final one for this great little journal and that breaks my heart. There is amazing work to be found here and you can buy a copy here: Quick Fiction. Issue 18 includes 27 stories and prose poems, all truly excellent.

Some of my favorites from the issue were “The Train” by Curtis Smith, “Temporary” by Myfanwy Collins, “Seagulls” by Eric Bosse, “Parenting, From Chicago to Abu Dhabi” by Mark Yakich, “The Polar Bear” by J.A. Tyler, “Infinite Things All at Once” by Rachel Yoder, “Voodoo Child” by Roxane Gay, “More Love”by Greg Gerke, “Forgive Us, We Feel Less Confident Than We Appear” by Andrew Michael Roberts, and “Vs.the Mailman” by Charles Lennox.

These works and really everything in the issue work so well on the level of language and emotional evocativeness. I love this perfect line by Nathan Clay Barbarick in “Who Are You Kidding?”: “Nothing ultimately develops between us but the calm horizontal line of our reciprocal knowing”. The diction in “Temporary” by Myfanwy Collins, words like “unblinkered” and “cabbagey” and how the whole, small thing is layered over with images of dismantling. The simple truth of “I didn’t know her but I knew her” in Roxane Gay’s “Voodoo Child.” How there are no missteps, tonally, to the short, sharp story “Seagulls” by Eric Bosse. The “smart surprise” (to use a term of Jennifer Pieroni’s) at the end of the James Grinwis story “Village 51 Glimpse.” Two stories with two different takes on a lifetime in a paragraph are “Washington ‘The First Shall Be First’ Franey and “Mindy ‘Baybee’ Byrne by Stephen Cicirelli and they are both impressive in their scope and number of emotional punches.

I love Rachel Yoder’s writing and here, this paragraph, in “Infinite Things All at Once”:

“I copied six types of cool loneliness from a book onto unlined paper and then considered how I was so cool and lonely I might shard apart into ice flakes so delicate and infinitesimally complex they ruin your heart the precise moment you are able to comprehend them.”

Well, yes.

The last page of this issue of Quick Fiction contains one simple sentence, so in keeping with a journal that has always been classy, elegant and great: “Thank you for reading.”

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Together We Can Bury It — Coming Soon! The Lit Pub Bookstore…

Posted on January 7, 2012 by

Very excited to see my new short story collection at the Lit Pub Bookstore page with such a stellar list, including books by Aimee Bender, J.A. Tyler, Matt Bell, Andrea Kneeland, Scott Garson, Caitlin Horrocks, Miles Harvey and Ben Segal and Erinrose Mager. I seriously want to buy all of these.

Here is the link. These books will launch at AWP in Chicago: The Lit Pub Bookstore

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Some good things to start 2012….

Posted on January 3, 2012 by

There’s a terrific interview with Molly Gaudry at Used Furniture Review. She says, among other smart, insightful things, “I think there’s only one single thing that can help get a person ahead — genuine sincerity. All one has to do is truly love what this little pocket of the publishing world has to offer, and express that love by taking advantage of all available possibilities. And the best thing about it is anyone, absolutely anyone, can do so at any time. That is the strength of the “indie lit” scene.”

Sara Lippmann has a great story you should read at Connotation Press called Body Scan.

This essay by Pico Iyer at the New York Times Sunday Review: The Joy of Quiet. One of my resolutions for 2012 is to pursue more quiet in my life. To shut down and go inward, more. So, amen, to everything in this article.

Just learned that the Stripped anthology (edited by Nicole Monaghan) is out and it includes a story of mine. The anthology has an interesting premise: “Stripped is a collection with a twist. Yes, the fiction contained herein includes works from some of the best-known names in flash fiction as well as the work of emerging writers, but the bylines have been removed so you can’t tell who wrote what. What’s more, the stories hinge largely on gender roles – but with the authors’ identities stripped from their stories, editor Nicole Monaghan has created a bit of a guessing game. Did a woman, for example, write that piece about ambivalence toward motherhood? Or was it a man? More to the point, does it really matter? Or is there something bigger going on when men and women stretch their minds and imagine what it might be like to be the other?” There are numerous wonderful writers included. The book can be ordered from Amazon

Today I received my first acceptance for the year, a reprint for an anthology: Midwest Gothic Stories, edited by Jodee Stanley and Brian Kornell. There will be stories in there from Don Chaon, Mike Czyzniejewski and Cathy Day (who will also be doing a panel, along with the anthology editors, on Midwest Gothic Fiction at the upcoming AWP). The best description I’ve seen of what “Midwest Gothic” is can found on their blog here: What is Midwest Gothic?

Another resolution for this year is to pursue health. Well, I feel as though I’m always pursuing health in some form or another, but 2011 sucked health-wise and I felt as if I needed to do something a little drastic. So I’ve embarked on a 21 day “vegan cleanse” which involves: no coffee, no alcohol, no sugar, no wheat products, no (of course) animal products, no meat, no dairy. Ha, what’s left? Actually there’s a lot left. So I’m starting every day with green tea instead of coffee, which may turn out to be the hardest change of all. We’ll see how this goes. Right now, I have a headache.

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Into and Out of the Wild–My final post at Necessary Fiction

Posted on December 31, 2011 by

Necessary Fiction.

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Matter Press: Open Reading for Prose Chapbook (January)

Posted on December 29, 2011 by

No reading fee and Matter Press pays handsomely and makes handsome books (see the book on the right). Here is the info:

During the month of January, Matter Press will be open for submissions of a prose collection (prose poetry, fiction, and/or creative nonfiction). Please use Submishmash to submit your 25–40 page manuscript (each piece within the collection must be under 600 words) to us. Individual pieces in your manuscript may have appeared in journals, both in print and online, as long as the entire collection itself is unpublished. Here are some additional details:

There is no reading fee. Your submission will be read by the managing editor (Randall Brown) and/or “blind” by Rosemont College MFA in Creative Writing degree-candidates. The readers will look to choose one manuscript to publish. Please submit only ONE chapbook during this reading period.

Please double-space the manuscript using Times New Roman 12 pt font (or something similar).

Please do not include any author-identifying information on the manuscript. Please do include a cover letter and bio. Please include with the cover letter the manuscript’s category (prose poem, short short fiction, creative nonfiction) and a short statement regarding the role compression plays in your work. The manuscript can be a hybrid of these genres.

Please ONLY include a title page for the collection and the stories themselves; please do NOT include acknowledgments, blank pages, a table of contents.

Please include a page break between the individual pieces that make up the collection.

Manuscripts will be accepted January 1, 2012 until midnight February 1, 2012.

Matter Press will have a one-time only print run of 300 copies of the chapbook. The author will receive $500 and 25 copies; the chapbook itself will receive an ISBN number.

Any manuscript that does not meet the guidelines will not be considered for publication. If you have any questions, you can email Matter Press.

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Appalachian Silence among the Dark Selves – Sam Rasnake

Posted on December 25, 2011 by

I posted these poems on Christmas Eve at Necessary Fiction because they felt right, not in a religious sense, but in the feel and tone of solemnity that I get from Sam Rasnake’s poetry, particularly this Appalachian suite. Be sure to check out the youtube links at the bottom of the page. The musical choices compliment the poems so perfectly:

Necessary Fiction.

There’s more to come in my last days as writer-in-residence at NF. I have loved this opportunity to share such brilliant writing. I’m working on something to post, of my own, on New Year’s eve along with some great, wild photographs. Stay tuned!

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