Mission Creek Book Fair this Saturday!

This Saturday, April 6, is the Mission Creek Book Fair, and I'll be sitting at a table with some comics and broadsides (including this Mission Creek collaboration with Roxane Gay). I'll be sharing a table with fellow cartoonist and UICB student Cody Gieselman (who recently posted this essay on SIFT's blog). If you're in Iowa City this weekend, come by The Mill (120 E Burlington St) some time between 11-7.

Broadside with Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is reading this Tuesday as part of Iowa City's Mission Creek Festival, along with John D'Agata and Andre Perry at Prairie Lights. I collaborated with Roxane on this broadside featuring her short story, "What Long Legs Mean," which will be available for sale at the reading. Printed using handset type at the UI Center for the Book, the broadside is printed on repurposed manila folders and posterboard. To see other broadsides I've printed, click here. The reading starts at 7 and is free.

Top 5 at Matter Press's Blog

Check out Matter Press's blog (as well as The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts), where they posted my Top 5 Pieces of Tone. The list was inspired by a class I took last Fall with poet Arda Collins.

Lost in San Jose

Here's an excerpt from RUNX TALES #3, which is going to the printers this week! Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Indiegogo fund. Sorry for the delay—you'll be getting your copies of the comic book in the mail in March and April. Meanwhile, here's me and Nora Benson-Glaspey at the Winchester Mystery House: 

The Next Big Thing

I began studies at the University of Iowa Center for the book last August—around the same time, funny enough, that posts around here started tapering off. But now the talented Amanda Davidson has inspired me to resurrect this dormant blog to “self-interview” for The Next Big Thing series.

I’m choosing to talk about a project that’s just getting started—a wedding-themed novel in ten parts. But I want to take a minute to plug a couple other things. Brooklyn Arts Press will publish a collection of my short fiction this fall (the title is still in negotiation). And I’m now inking the last page of the third issue of my comic, RUNX TALES, so look for it in April.

Also stay tuned for my Next Big tag-ees for February 27: essayist and poet Lisa Wells and cartoonist (and my former collaborator!) Amanda Verwey. 

Here goes: 

What is the working title of the book? 
The Hitch: An Agamist Manifesto 

Where did the idea come from for the book? 
Fascination/torment. From being a guest and working as a caterer at weddings. 

What genre does your book fall under? 
Right now I’m envisioning it as ten separate chapbooks that could be read in any order. Some lean more toward fiction, some toward nonfiction, some are image+text. There is narrative overlap. Despite being created as ten separate books and called a manifesto, I’m thinking of it as a novel. 

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition? 
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi 

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 
Typical wedding stuff: heavy symbolism; tension between the mystical and the carnal; often comical attempts at idyll; Bacchanalic reveling that can tip that idyll over the brink into the realm of the sinister; the bizarre commingling of people from vastly different strata of the happy couple’s lives. 

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? 
Its characters include a control-freak wedding planner; his romance-novelist mother; a tyrant bride; a victim bride; a groom who is really a tattered newspaper clipping; a cynically poetic caterer; and me. All of these characters are fairly easy to inhabit. 

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
It will first be printed in limited letterpress editions over the next couple years. I'd like to later adapt it to a trade edition. So ideally, both, although it doesn't seem like something an agent would take on.

Down to the wire . . .

Only one week to go to help print RUNX TALES #3! Spread the word!

Check out this new video I made for the campaign, with the help of woodworker/dramatist/silver drummer girl, Jessie Smith. Click here to see the campaign!

RUNX TALES needs your help!

I just kicked off an Indiegogo campaign to help with printing costs for RUNX TALES #3! The third issue of this autobio/informational comic will feature a letterpress cover and full-color spread, and I need your help to make it happen! In addition to an interview with Jincy Willett, a metaphysical tour of San Jose, and a memorial to a mythic drugstore, there is a tell-all about two different sugar daddies I had. Here is a detail from the title page:

Click here to learn more about the campaign!

'Where you are right now is in a gift shop.'

My short story "Spiel" is up today at Wigleaf! It explores the aesthetics of the mom industry.

New story in > kill author's final issue!

After three years, it's time to say goodbye to the online journal, > kill author, and I'm excited to be included in its farewell. Click here to read my very short story, "Dawn In the Afternoon," and listen to a recorded reading. The rest of the work included here is really great, so be sure to stop a second and look around!