The story of the other fallen survivor is more grim. A driver’s semi truck broke through the ice of the Artic Ocean, and he couldn’t get out in time. His truck plummeted past the snowballs of salt that form just below the surface of frozen ocean water, and he was able to draw just enough breath from the air pocket in his truck’s cab before diving out into the viscous, freezing water. The ice was already forming over the hole he’d just broken through, and he would have died if a fuel tank hadn’t broken off from his truck. He rode the fuel tank all the way to the surface, where it broke through the thin ice, and he flung his hand up over the top.

The driver behind him in the convoy had stopped well short of the hole in the ice and had already given up his buddy for dead before he saw that gloved hand rise up with the fuel tank. Negotiating the thin ice around the hole, the other driver pulled the fallen man out. A helicopter — an unusual sight, but not unheard of — just happened to be passing over. The pilot saw the incident, and landed nearby, soon flying the fallen driver to the nearest hospital within two hours. The driver was treated for hypothermia and frostbite, and released that night.

The rescued driver immediately went to the bar, where he wasted no time telling his story. A number of his listeners didn’t believe him and even took umbrage with the tale, at which point, the rescued driver became aggrieved, and a fight broke out. Less than twelve hours after he was submerged beneath the ice of the Arctic Ocean — a situation that no one in recent history had ever survived — the rescued driver was nearly beaten to death in a dingy bar. He was taken back to the same hospital he had just left, and this time, he was there for two months.

--"Is Your Workplace as Rough as the Arctic?" by J. Ryan Stradal

Thanks to all the bloggers who spread the word about the Wolf Parts launch this week:

In a post titled "I Heart Keyhole," Chad Simpson says that "Bell's facility with language--his fondness for the utterance that makes up the construct--along with his ability to broach the human and feeling will yield an amazing fairy tale retelling." He also points out Peter's amazing work on the cover, which I agree turned out great--I can't wait to see it in person, especially since I've seen the full, wraparound cover already. Chad's chapbook Phantoms is coming out soon, which you can (and should) order here.

Scott Garson includes my book in a roundup of new and forthcoming chapbooks, alongside Nicolle Elizabeth's Threadbare Von Barren and the just-mentioned Phantoms. He says he "couldn't be more excited to read [my] forthcoming full-length collection, How They Were Found, which includes some of the best and most memorable stories I've read in a long time. It's a good bet that Wolf Parts--which is available only for a limited time thru pre-order--is going to deliver." His excellent American Gymnopédies is forthcoming soon from Willows Wept Press, and is (I believe) still available for ordering, although you should move fast--it's probably dangerously close to being sold out.

Dan Wickett ordered his copy in the "wee hours" after it was announced, then highlighted the audio version of the minibook, too kindly calling me "an excellent reader," which only "enhances this version."

Jason Jordan called Wolf Parts a "thing you should spend money on," along with new issues of Hobart, Nano Fiction, and Sententia. He's reading this Friday at the Brick Reading series, which you'll also be able to watch online.

The always friendly and enthusiastic Tyler Gobble posted a nice notice about the minibook, saying that ordering had "just made a good day even better." I'll have to find new things for Tyler to order, so he can continue to have good days.

Blake Butler posted about the book at HTMLGIANT, giving people a chance to compliment Peter's cover work again. Blake's Scorch Atlas was recently announced as a finalist for the Believer Book Award, and I think he's got a pretty great chance of winning. Fingers crossed.

Amber Sparks--whose story "Feral Children: A Collective History" has been a reader favorite from the February Collagist issue--noted that the book's announcement meant that "the vortex of all things cool had formed in her feed reader."

Speaking of feed readers, Troy Urquhart noted that "the most-shared item in [his] Google Reader so far this year" was "the article from Keyhole Press about Matt Bell's Wolf Parts."

Charles Lennox included my minibook in a post alongside Shane Jones' new book of poems, A Cake Appeared, describing Wolf Parts as "dark stuff." Fair enough.

Steve Himmer at Necessary Fiction kindly linked to the book itself, continuing his history of supporting his contributors before, during, and after publication. So did Tobias Carroll, who was kind enough to interview about my chapbooks last year, asking me some of my favorite questions ever.

Finally, Ben Tanzer suggests--as he often does--that ordering Wolf Parts "just might change your life."

Did I mention there are only ten days left to order this book?

I'm sure I missed a blog post or two, just because I didn't see them, so if you blogged about the book and didn't get thanked here, don't think I didn't appreciate it! I'd also like to thank everyone who spread the word on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader. I'm very lucky to be surrounded by such a kind and encouraging community. I hope you all had a great week!

[Image by Kneil Melicano, borrowed from Threadless.]

This is the debut of the first track from The National's forthcoming High Violet, due out May 11. Can't wait.

With someone as prolific as Chinquee, it would be easy to make the assumption that her work is tossed off in some way, somehow written quickly or without as much care as someone else's, but having been lucky enough to see into Chinquee's process, I can vouch for the fact that she has a true passion for her work to be as artistically perfect as it can be. That alone makes me trust every word she commits to the page, and it is a striving often mirrored in the conflicts and temperments of her narrators, who push themselves hard, who expect much from the people who inhabit their lives.

The other thing I love about Chinquee's work is that no one can seem to decide whether or not she's a poet or a fiction writer. Her first book, the beautiful Oh Baby, was explicitly subtitled "Flash Fiction and Prose Poems," but her Pretty carries no such tag. Instead, it's been published as part of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series, implying a designation contradicted by Robert Olen Butler's blurb:

In her new book of very short stories, Kim Chinquee works the flash fiction form in much the same way that Raymond Carver worked somewhat longer story forms: with a stunningly complex simplicity.  There is always a roiling subtext beneath the seemingly placid surfaces and tones of Chinquee’s stories, a dichotomy which speaks to deep truths about the human condition.  Kim Chinquee is a true artist with a true vision, and Pretty is a brilliant book.

I couldn't agree more: I have long claimed that the full-length collection of flash fiction is a nearly impossible feat to pull off, as so few collections of thirty or forty shorts add up to any truly satisfying whole. Most flash collections eventually reveal their writers' over-reliance on certain techniques or characters, certain beginnings and endings, so that the whole book grows fatiguing in some way. For several years, I've claimed that the only collection I'd read that proved me wrong was Chinquee's Oh Baby. Now, with the long-awaited release of Pretty, Chinquee has thankfully added another collection to that very short list.

Pretty is available on Amazon and elsewhere, but the best option might be to order a signed copy directly from Kim. I can't recommend this book enough, and I hope you'll choose to read it soon.

This month, his picks are two writers I really enjoy--Darlin' Neal, whose Rattlesnakes & The Moon just arrived in the mail the other day, and Chad Simpson, whose Phantoms I happily blurbed, because it's one of the best flash chapbooks I've ever read, by one of my favorite writers--as well as Brad Watson, a writer I'm not familiar with but whose Aliens in the Prime of their Lives I'm now looking forward to checking out based on Andrew's coverage.

Long story short: If you're not already reading Andrew's Book Club, you should be. Bookmark it, add it to your Google Reader, friend them on Facebook. Andrew's doing great work here, and you'll be happy you followed along.

Starting today, Keyhole Press is taking pre-orders for my limited edition minibook Wolf Parts.

A dark, fragmentary retelling of Little Red Riding Hood in forty short fictions, this version of Wolf Parts will only be available to people who pre-order the book before its print date of March 21, 2010. The book costs $8 (with free shipping), for which you'll receive the perfect-bound minibook, plus an audiobook version that you'll be able to download immediately upon completion of your order. As an added bonus, you'll also receive an e-coupon for $3 off my full-length collection How They Were Found when it becomes available for pre-order later this year, sometime before its October release.

To give you a taste of what's inside, here's the beginning of the book:

After Red cut her way out of the wolf’s belly—after she wiped the gore off her hood and cape, her dress, her tights—she again found herself standing on the path that wound through the forest toward her grandmother’s house. Along the way, she met with the wolf, with whom she had palavered the first time and every time since. Afterward, she went to her grandmother’s, where she again discovered the wolf devouring the old woman, and where he waited to devour her too, as he had before. Once again she was lost, and once again, she cut herself out of his belly and back onto the stony path. Over and over, she did these things until, desperate to break the cycle, she laid across the stones and, with the knife her mother had given her, gutted herself, quickly, left to right. She cried out in wonder at the bright worlds she found hidden within herself, and with shaky hands she scooped their hot wet flesh into the open air, where with a flick of her wrists she set them each free.

Basically, if you order Wolf Parts during the next three weeks--the only time it will be available for purchase online--you'll receive the audiobook immediately, the print minibook in early April, and, should you later choose to order How They Were Found directly from Keyhole, you'll get that book for just $11 (instead of the usual $14), plus some pre-order bonuses for that book that we're not ready to talk about yet.

That's it for the sales pitch. On a more personal level, I can honestly say that this is one of my own favorite works, and one that I'm incredibly happy to finally put out into the world after keeping it close for the past year or so. I hope you'll consider picking up a copy, and that if you do you'll enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed working on it in all its various incarnations. As always, thanks again in advance for your support and your readership, and for doing whatever you can to spread the word about Wolf Parts.

ORDER NOW AT WWW.HOWTHEYWEREFOUND.COM

Dzanc's new effort to expand our mission and bring the creative world to a national audience, DZANC DAY takes its cue from the popularity of our Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions. On March 20, 2010, Dzanc will run over 30 creative writing workshops in 25 cities across the country. These workshops will be held in cities from Portland, OR to Orlando, FL, from New Haven, CT to Los Angeles, CA and points between.

All monies raised from DZANC DAY will go toward supporting Dzanc's charitable programs which, in part, bring creative writing programs to students who could not otherwise afford the opportunity. Fantastic authors from across the country have volunteered their time, experience, and expertise to run these individual workshops. Each workshop will allow students to work face-to-face with the instructor in specific venues with each location focusing on a specific aspect of the writing world.

The DZANC DAY workshops serve not only to expand Dzanc's effort to bring inexpensive, face-to-face workshops to a wider audience, but, as noted, also to help us generate income that will allow Dzanc to continue that effort in our other charitable arenas - awarding the annual Dzanc Prize, running Dzanc Writer in Residence Programs in schools across the country, and more.

To browse available workshops and to sign up, click here. Workshops are being conducted by writers like Kyle Minor, Michael Czyzniejewski, Dave Housley, BJ Hollars, J.A. Tyler, John Domini, Jen Michalski, Anna Clark, Jeff Kass, Peter Markus, Rachael Perry, Erik Smetana, Sherrie Flick, Amelia Gray, Dan Brady, Mike Ingram, Laura Ellen Scott, Pasha Malla, and Jeff Parker, plus many others. Everyone at Dzanc is very appreciative of these people's efforts on our behalf, and we're sure these are going to be great. As far as I know, space is still available for all workshops, so please consider signing up, and please let any students or other writers know about these very low-cost events. Judging by the people involved, I'm sure they're all going to be great.

I sat down last night and watched 60 Writers / 60 Places, and got up this morning and watched part of it again. Directed by Luca Dipierro and Michael Kimball, it's a fantastic short film (about fifty minutes), both purely for the readings themselves and also for the glimpses of writerly personality and temperment that emerge even in these short glimpses.

 Lots of great writers appear in 60 Writers / 60 Places--Brian Evenson, Blake Butler, Joanna Howard, Kim Chinquee, Robert Lopez, Deb Olin Unferth, Sam Lipsyte, Rick Moody, and Adam Robinson, among many others--and of course it's great to see their work delivered here. In addition, there are lots of faces new to me, including several very young writers and several writers of a more academic bent. It's a diverse cast, and nearly everyone's work was interesting as language and also well-delivered as performance. Some of the standouts include Unferth's reading from Vacation in a laundromat, Fiona Maazel's at the gym, Willie Perdemo's reading at a playground, and Will Eno's reading that closes the movie, as well as those of many of the other writers mentioned above. Throughout the movie, I found myself riveted to the chair not just because I was curious about who was coming next, but also because I wanted to see where they would be.

Each reading begins with the writer staring into the camera, usually with a fairly blank look on their face--the film's website says the movie "begins with the idea of the tableaux vivant, a living picture where the camera never moves." After a few seconds, the reading begins, with the camera static and the scene around the writer often moving as if unaffected by the reading. Afterward, there's another second or two where the writer has obviously been asked to return their gaze to the camera, to stare the viewer down, returning the scene to its static beginning before the film cuts away. This post-reading pause is one of the movie's most interesting features, because while the blankness of the stare before the reading has a performative, "game face" kind of feel, the one after rarely does: Here, nearly every writer's face has changed slightly, even if they've only read a single sentence. The most common occurrence is a brief, almost imperceptible smile or grin, tugging at the corners of mouths pulled tight, one I've seen at countless readings, that I've felt on my own face at the end of my own performances. It's the look of an athlete after a game, a gymnast who feels sure she's stuck the landing, and in the context of this film's conceit it further becomes a sort of recognition of some bigger transformation that has just taken place, where a person is transformed via the mere act of reading their own words, their bodies stepping out of their everyday location--a subway car, a garden, a supermarket--into some space more electric. This is a movie full of such moments, and Kimball and Dipierro should be proud of how many great ones they've managed to capture on film.

You can buy 60 Writers / 60 Places on DVD from Little Burn Films, either individually or with Kimball and Dipierro's previous film, I Will Smash You.

As a teaser, here's the first paragraph of my story:

From between my wife's legs quickened only this puff of womb-air, this gasp of baby-breath trapped for months inside of her, followed by no body, no afterbirth, no cord to cut or miscarriage to scrape away. Afterward, my wife insisted she heard the sound of her baby girl crying, but what was I to say in the absence of that child? How was I to call her anything other than mad, when she insisted our baby was near, that she could hear her every move?

Thanks so much to Mike Meginnis, Evan Lavender-Smith, and the other staff members at Puerto del Sol for taking this story, and for their enthusiasm and professionalism throughout the publishing process and beyond. I can't wait to see the issue and read more of it, as the web samples available at their site are fantastic. If you haven't checked any of them out yet, I suggest starting with the Frédéric Boyer excerpt translated by Nick Bredie and Joanna Howard.

You can subscribe to Puerto del Sol for just $20 for one year, with longer subscriptions costing even less.

The morning has more night in it than sun, the air more sea than sky. You heave all of your laundry onto the lever. You drape folding chairs, your uncle’s accordion, all of your suitcases strung through the handles of a Doberman’s leash. You reheat last night’s coffee in the pot. It's not nearly enough. You push the lever and in the morning they find thirteen bodies in the fuselage of an abandoned airplane behind the old hotel.

--From "The Lever" by Jim Ruland, at FANZINE

"Here's the thing," he said. "Your mama's dead. And you're forty years old. And I have a warrant out for my arrest. And I am addicted to getting tattoos. And our air conditioner's broke. And you are drunk every day. And all I ever want to do is fight and go swimming. And I am addicted to keno. And you are just covered in hair. And I've never done a load of laundry in my life. And you are still technically married to my drug dealer. And I refuse to eat beets. And you can't sleep unless you're sleeping on the floor. And I am addicted to heroin. And honest to God, you got big tits but you make a real shitty muse. And we are in Beaumont, Texas."

--from "These Are The Fables" by Amelia Gray, published today in Cell Stories (and read to great acclaim while wearing fake hair in the basement of an Ann Arbor comic book shop on the Dollar Store Tour last summer).

Jim Ruland is bringing his Vermin on the Mount reading series to AWP this year, partnering with Keyhole to put on a reading the evening of April 8th at The Mercury Cafe. Set aside the date, because it's going to be a great event: I'll be reading with Amelia Gray, Elena Passarello, Kevin Sampsell, Matthew Simmons and Rachel Yoder.

More details to come as the date approaches, but mark this on your AWP calendar as something to be at.

--from "Grim Tales" by Norman Lock (online at elimae, collected in Trio, enjoyed by my students)

That's where she is: on her back, on the grass near Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. Angels darken in the dusk on the fountain's dry tiers, and Rainey watches through the slats of a bench. She had started to walk the lip of the muted fountain, but Richard wanted to inspect the thin silty edge of the lake.

Not far, he said. A constitutional.

--The opening of "Jazz" by Dylan Landis, from her collection Normal People Don't Live Like This

The finger seems freshly severed, only slightly blue. It’s fleshy and pliant, the fingernail a varnished plate with a hangnail dangling from it. It is fitting that I found his finger here, among the evergreens. I wrap it in a tissue and head through the maze of trees for the big red barn. Inside the barn, they sell non-tree things: blinking lights, ornaments, wreathes, bloated blow-up Santas, life-size nativity scenes. The checkout line winds long, to the back of the barn. I take my place at the end. I could probably skip to the front, waving the finger like a VIP pass, but I want to spend some time with it in case they need or want to take it from me.

--from "Point of Detachment" by Jessica Vozel, published in the newest issue Word Riot, which also contains work by Philip Brunetti, David Gianatasio, Michael K. Meyers, Jeff Vande Zande, Matt Baker, Brad Conlin, Scott McClanahan, J. Bradley, Jordan Castro, Matthew D’Abate, Elizabeth Hall, Judson Hamilton, Jordan Hanhilammi, Gail D. Kelley, Ed Makowski, Casey Quinn Dana Roders, Tristan Silverman, James Sutherland, Christopher Woods, and Rae Bryant. Congratulations to Jackie Corley and everyone else at Word Riot on another excellent issue, and to my friend Jessica, for "Point of Detachment," the first of many fiction publications to come.