You stand there, wondering could you fit inside a Chinese carton with the sides greased enough, watching the weeds celebrate at the front of a dust-smothered shed. The waitress grabs your hand and squints up at you as if it means something. The brothers start up; spit on each other during words, clash teeth, rip their own lips off, furious about pro city teams you're almost sure you've heard of.

They've chosen sides, and in among the vague you worry you'll root wrong. You look at her. She still squints, you might even call it a smile, her eyes on a train track or a dust storm coming, or wind, or distance—all of it, and her warmth along your arm with the confidence of weather, and she smiles like the right direction.

—Gigantic by Marc Nesbitt

By the time he was twenty, the lush greens and bright blues of his childhood were gone, skies stained a permanent black, the rolling, sunken meadows of the Scottish lowlands turned brown but hidden beneath a near immutable, perennial layer of snow. She'd wanted a wedding in the sun, in the quality of light that dances on open water, spins gold from the long leafy vines of the willow, which speaks of new beginnings. She'd settled for the cold, dirty-white of permanent winter. She held no bouquet, no blooms adorned her hair on a day whenall the diamonds in the world would not have bought a single, wiliting corsage.

—Carry Each His Burden by James Goertel

"What I learned is that even a book can be a door if you hold it right," says one of Bell’s narrators, and if you hold How They Were Found right, you will have a door, a door of immaculate perception, a door into elsewhere and whatever is next door to it. It’s a fine debut collection demonstrating the author’s versatility, especially with regard to form and content, realized by a measured, strapping prose style.

Thanks, John!

Earlier in the week, Tobias Carroll and I talked about Cataclysm Baby at Vol. 1 Brooklyn, in part to promote my Tuesday night reading that they hosted in New York City. Among other things, Tobias and I discussed the use of permutations as a writing process, the influence of fairy tales, and my "thoughts on the roles of hope and despair in the face of irrevocable change" (as Tobias says it).

The event on Tuesday went great, and it was a pleasure to read with Lincoln Michel, Melissa Broder, Jacob Silverman and Julia Jackson. I'm so appreciative of Tobias and Jason from Vol. 1 for hosting me, and to Ryan Chang for covering the event for Electric Literature's The Outlet. Thanks again to everyone who came out to hear us.

When I arrived, the music changed, and then it went silent—nothing of note except for the ringing in my ears, the residue of the clinking of a glass, the dropped phone call, the silence of a house in the morning. There is nothing romantic about the idea of final when final arrives like this: not with an arrow in the eye, not with a body losing grip on the floor and disappearing in the dark with a sparkle and a wink, not with a final blink after turning magenta, a red not found in nature, a red not found in your face, not even while choking, not even while gasping for breath. What you have imagined the final stage to be is not what it is—here is a list it is not. It is not surrounded by family and handwritten cards from friends, fresh flowers replacing dead flowers, no, never dead flowers, get them out of here, cast them into the street, put them in another room, the water will not save you.

—Level End by Brian Oliu

Bell's apocalypse is discontinuous; each tale evokes its own paradigm, its own idiom of grief. He's less interested in the invention and world-building that marks so much of sci-fi and fantasy than he is in tapping into the mythological undercurrents of end-of-the-world narratives. The short pieces in Cataclysm Baby unfold (or burst, or twist) like strange, dark fairy tales, each proposing another vision of collapse... These motifs—the end of social order, the species-transformation of new children, the utter collapse of ecological norms—run throughout Cataclysm Baby, telegraphed in Bell’s precise, concrete style.

You can read the rest of the review here.

And is she there with them? Calling, not hearing, cartwheeling the streets like a tumbling leaf, taking her time before your finding?

To explain would take too many fingers.

—Treesisters by Joseph Riippi

I'm very excited to appear in the newest episode of Brad Listi's podcast Other People, where—according to the show notes—our topics of conversations included:

Dissertating, Michigan, kids, parenthood, the Great White North, Canada, family, boredom, storytelling, Lord of the Rings, Bill Murray, repetition, Meatballs, Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son, Louis Ferdinand Celine, groupthink, individualism, time, isolation, travel, Jim Morrison, An American Prayer, bad poetry, midlife crises, exercise, real experience vs. mediated experience, empathy, pregnancy fears, Dzanc, The Collagist, violence, The Man with Two Brains, nudity, Stephen King, The Shining, adolescence, writing rituals, stamina, self-doubt, long periods of uncertainty, validation, learning from the slush pile, and genre vs. literary. 

That's a lot to cover in an hour! Thanks so much to Brad for having me on the show. Other People is one of my favorite podcasts, and if you're not already a listener, you should be: You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes by clicking here.