A crew of dear old friends put together a pilot for Dragons, an original comedy series about two skate buddies transcending their human forms and attaining enlightenment, starring skate legend Mike Vallely. Treat yourself to a half hour of good vibes.

This is Sasha Fletcher. His writing is like walking towards a door but first putting on a blindfold and spinning in circles and then trying to walk towards a door and eventually ending up at the door but you’re not entirely sure how you got there. Sounds nauseating, but it’s a delightful experience.

Sasha emceed the Dzanc Best of the Web reading that took place last Tuesday at McNally Jackson. Other people read there. And I took videos of them too, but I was too far from the PA and they reading in semi-hushed tones. Sasha speaks loud when he reads in front of an audience. He knows how to perform. That’s what you’re doing when you’re reading at an event by the way. You know that, right? You’re supposed to be entertaining the folks in the audience. If you move some people on an emotional level, that’s fantastic, but priority number one is to be compelling. Sasha’s compelling. Take note, readers.

Leigh Stein read some very good poems. Elissa Bassist read some interesting anxieties on writing about Infinite Jest originally published on The Rumpus. For an extensive take on the evening, head over to Vol. 1.

Below is the tentative roster for Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance. Tentative because not all of these people have gotten back to me yet. If you haven’t, please do. I want to print your stuff.

Poetry:

Coming For To Carry Me Home

Poem: Sasha Fletcher

Image: Jake Blanchard

Fiction:

You Will Be The Living Equation

Story: Amber Sparks

Images: Margaret Durow

2001 or This is How the Century is Born

Story: Salvatore Pane

Images: Justin Chen

The End, Temporarily

Story: Matthew Simmons

Images: Patrick Savile

Water-Filled Jugs

Story: Brian Allen Carr

Images: Erin McCarty

Rainbow Dogs

Story: Justyn Harkin

Images: Sam Brewster

Five Pieces of a Broken Heart

Story: Roxane Gay

Image: Bryan Schutmaat

The Worst Thing My Father Did In His Life

Story: Patrick deWitt

Images: Cali deWitt

What is Your Favorite War?

Story: Joe Meno

Images: Kristian Hammerstad

Dieback

Story: Nick Ripatrazone

Images: Rose Wind Jerome

The Difference Between

Story: Andrea Kneeland

Photo: Kristie Muller

Relations

Story: Nicolette Kittinger

Birth in the Memory

Story: Carl Fuerst

Image: Jonas Norway

Nonfiction:

Lions

Essay: Paul Kwiatkowski

At the Window

Essay: Jen Knox

Whooo, buddy. Took us a little bit, and had a brief case of the ’slush-crazies’, but we finally finished the reading cycle for Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance. According to the Submishmash report (which is incredible, btw, big ups to Michael Fitzgerald and crew) we got almost 340 short stories and essays and accepted a little under 6% of them. God bless everyone for submitting. Even though the odds are not in your favor you did it anyway and for that I give you a very sincere hat tip.

Had a lot of folks helping with this: Thanks to Nathan Goldman who is very enthusiastic about reading and writing and that will take him far. Thanks to Dylan Suher who had responses to some of the pieces that made me laugh my ass off. Thanks to Andrea Kneeland who accepts no guff from fiction and I like that a lot. Thanks to Anika Sabin who only read a couple stories cause there was some confusion with the software and I was on too much of a tear to stop and help her. Sorry Anika. Very special thanks to Janelle Luce who helps me out on tons of other stuff besides reading subs because she has a heart that is devoid of any kind of evil and is purely kind and good and overwhelmingly positive.

Full roster coming Monday. This issue is gonna be a corker. A CORKER.

The following is the first part in an ongoing series highlighting those hidden caches of awesomeness, the independent bookstores that pepper this great land. Subterranean Books is one of the many rad bookstores inhabiting the St. Louis area, and not only are they surviving, but they’re thriving. This short interview with owner, Kelly von Plonski, was conducted via email.

What’s Subterranean’s origin story?
I was working at another bookstore and knew that I wanted to open my own store using my ideas and vision.  I had a business partner and together we borrowed money from relatives and opened Subterranean as a mixed-stock new and used bookstore, in October 2000.  Along the way I’ve transitioned the store from the mixed-stock to all new books, and shed my partner.  This year is our 10th anniversary and we’re still going strong.

What’s the curatorial process when choosing books to stock?
Short version: Gut.  Long version: Everyone on staff has input and the stock is reflective of our personalities. If anyone knows something or feels something about a book or a subject, we’ll stock it.  We also eavesdrop on our customers, pay attention to what’s being special ordered, read blogs, magazines, newspapers…everything to stay up on what would be interesting to carry.  We also carefully track what is already selling so that we are carrying what our customers want.  But especially, since we’re a small store we know our customers–we have conversations with them and we always take what they have to say to heart.  Many many books are on the shelves now because a customer told us about them.

What’s the arts/literature scene in St. Louis like and what role does Subterranean play within it?
The arts/literature scene is thriving.  There are so many small galleries operating right now.  So many drama troupes and poetry groups.  We’ve had an art gallery in the store pretty much since we opened and we’ve had exhibits by almost 100 different artists up.  We help out with Noir at the Bar, a semi-regular literary event that focuses on crime fiction and takes place…in a bar. We’ve hosted traveling authors from Melville House, Soft Skull, Akashic Books, Found vs PostSecret and other really cool edgy publishers.

What helps a book sell? What’s been the most successful book at Subterranean?
A passionate bookseller.  People come to us because they trust us so when someone wants a recommendation they almost always take us up on the suggestion.  When one of us just loves loves a book, that excitement comes through and customers respond.  We have recommendation labels (shelf talkers) on a number of books and sales of those titles directly correlate.  Sales will all of a sudden spike for a title and I’ll check, and sure enough, someone has written a shelf talker for it.  By a landslide our bestselling title is ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’, second up is ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’.

How does a brick-and-mortar store not only survive, but maintain relevance in the age of Amazon?

Because you can touch them, smell them, flip through the pages and hear that lovely page-flipping sound. Turn the cover over to see the back.  You can have a real live conversation, standing at the counter. You can run into someone you haven’t seen in a while or that lives next door. People really appreciate that we curate, that they don’t have to dig through the dreck to get to something good.  They like it that they can ride their bicylcle over, take a coffee break next door, and ride home with a book from the Staff Picks shelf.

Please describe the cat that lives in your store. If you don’t have a bookstore cat, please explain why.

My mom and grandmother were horribly allergic to cats so even though I don’t have allergies, I am very sensitive to those that do and we’ve never had a store cat for that reason.

(image via)

It’s hot out. There’s nothing to do but find some AC and kick back with some fine reading material. But a hard drive spinning in a laptop can get cooking and the greedy heart of a publisher can  make books pricey. What’s a reader to do? We got you covered.

Order your copy of Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrfice today and get $5.00 off any back issue of your choosing. That means you could get $5.oo off Issue Five or you could get Issues #3 or #4 for FREE.

To take advantage of this discount that’s wildly unscrupulous on our part, simply add Issue Six to your cart, add one back issue of your choosing, then enter the coupon code “Summer” (case sensitive) in the coupon code field at the checkout page.

Think the savings don’t get any better? Think again! From now until August 15th, the Annalemma Bundle is a whopping 20% off! That’s all the available issues of Annalemma for a mere $20.00 plus S&H.

The summer sale ends this Sunday, August 15th. Head over to our store now!

Dear friend and Issue #4 contributor Sam Weller had a new book, Listen to the Echoes, released this week on Stop Smiling Books. My body is buzzing with nervous energy to read it. The Paris Review was gracious to host the release party.

The man of the hour was gracious enough to throw an invite in my direction.

There was a looping slideshow of pics from Bradbury’s house. Ray Bradbury’s got a globe of Mars in his home. Fucking Mars!

It was wild to walk around  TPR’s office. I felt like I was gonna brush up against some priceless artifact and accidentally break it, going down in history as that guy.

Even the bathroom’s got cool stuff in it.

Mr. Peak and one of the more sexual lit mag advertisements I’ve ever seen.

We were part of an ex-Chicago contingent showed up in support of Sam.

Sam is an amazing human. He believes in people. He believes in the strange and exciting work that they do. Even when they don’t believe in themselves. That is a rare thing to find these days. Consider yourself lucky if you’re in the position of being his friend.

The Paris Review! Come on! I’m sorry, this office was incredible. I won’t deny it, I was nerding out big time.

Thank you, Sam. And congrats!

The city of Chicago was up to a whole heap of bullshit, as mentioned a couple weeks ago. Not sure how it happened, but the Chicago Public Library stepped up and got the Gabriel Levinson’s bike full of books out of the garage and back onto the streets where it belongs. Raise a glass once again for Gabe and the CPL for keeping an undeniably good project going.

Read a good interview with Gabe here.

A few months back this blog saluted Gabriel Levinson, operator of the Book Bike. Chicago thinks the Book Bike is a threat to the public process and decided to shut him down. I think that is fucking bullshit. Absolute, utter bullshit. In spite of all the dubious and downright nefarious things the city of Chicago daily turns a blind eye to, their swift arm of justice has effectively obstructed one of the primary threats to Chicagoans: free literature. Way to go, Chi (slow clap). Way. To. Go. {via. Hat-tip to Vol. 1}

Check out the modern mythology of Caitlin Hackett. I’ve got half a mind to start an internet petition to get her and Matt Bell to work on a fucked up storybook together somewhere down the line. How sick would that be? {via}