Vigorously Lazy

(image: Ted Hollins)

Hey Orlando: Next week the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities (or ZORA! for short) begins with the Opening Reception at Club KOHA in Eatonville on Wednesday, 1/26, 6:00 – 7:15 PM. If you’re the type to wait until a party gets into full swing, ZORA fest starts to get ramped up on Friday, January 28th at 12 noon on the World Beat Stage as spoken word artists Nas, Kyla Lacy, Shawn Welcome, Curtis Meyer, Devery and others.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll run into Ted Hollins, author of Issue Seven‘s photo essay highlighting 21 years of the ZORA festival. Go there! Take pictures!

I read contributor Bryan Furuness‘s story Man of Steel, originally published in Ninth Letter and republished in BANR 2010. The story concerns a kid who convinces himself that he sees things, visions of the future, most of them bad and he throws himself into harm’s way in an attempt to mitigate the disastrous future. It’s a great piece about perception, what’s real, what’s not, and the delusions that can drive people apart.

It made me happy to see Brian’s name in the BANR pages. I’d never read anything of Bryan’s work until he submitted something and we picked it up for online publication. Then I started seeing his name everywhere. And then I started reading everything attached to his name. Brian is a fantastic writer. Start here, then go here, then here.

Working on point-of-purchase stuff for AWP.

None of this stuff actually helps us sell anything. We usually sell out of books at AWP because of good old fashioned hand selling and friendly customer service.

Still, it’s fun to make this stuff and cool to give people something to walk away with. Are you going to be there? I hope so. I like meeting people who know/read the magazine. Feels good to make those connections. AWP is good for that reason alone: To hang with the people who are electronic ghosts the rest of the year. Start warming your palms up for the slew of hi fives.

If you’re in DC for AWP this year, be aware that Issue Six contributor Jim Ruland is unleashing his irreverent reading series, Vermin on the Mount, to the uninitiated East Coast. Including readings from Issue Seven contributors Amber Sparks and Nicolette Kittinger, as well as heavy-hitters Kim Chinquee, Roy Kesey, Lindsay Hunter, Tom Williams, Al Heathcock & Scott McClanahan. And it’s sponsored by yours truly.

Over at Big Other John Madera’s been compiling a bunch of year end lists, including one from yours truly.

Keep your calendar open Wednesday, February 16th for the release party of Burrow Press‘s Fragmentation and Other Stories, a book of 11 short stories and 11 photos by folks having some sort of connection with the Central Florida, including a story form yours truly.

This has not much to do with yours truly other than it was in yours truly’s brain this morning: Did you know Arrested Development is still around?

My lady got me the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010 for Christmas. I was all pumped about this edition since I found out Anne Elizabeth Moore‘s essay from Issue Five got a head-nod in the “Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2009” section. I hadn’t picked up one of these in a while. I’m not sure why. They’re always good. I’d rather have one of the pieces we publish reprinted there than in Best American Short Stories or BA Essays. It starts with an incredible short story by Sherman Alexie from his collection War Dances. In the midst of getting a growth in his brain checked out by the doctors, the narrator juggles his children, his dying father, and the very real possibility that he may be dying soon too. Alexie hasn’t lost his edge. It feels like he’s grown more crotchety as he’s gotten older, which is great. He’s at his most entertaining when he’s barbed and thorny.

There’s an etherial comic by Lilli Carré that’s a good example of when tone and feel are enough to carry a story.

Rana Dasgupta‘s essay, Capital Gains, on India’s unregulated capitalism run amok is discomforting, shocking, and an enthralling read from start to finish. Dasgupta attempts to hold a mirror up to a hopelessly corrupt government and a national psyche obsessed with the accumulation of wealth above all other things.

An excerpt from the photo journal/graphic novel hybrid “The Photographer” by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefévre and Frédéric Lemercier tracks a photojournalist covering a doctor’s travels in Northern Afganistan in 1986 treating mujahideen soldiers and residents of small villages effected by the war against the Soviet Union. The parts of the story unseen Lefévre’s photos have been dramatized by graphic artist, Emmanuel Guibert. I’m always thinking about roles that the arts play in politics and war, if they play any role at all other than Greek Chorus. “The Photographer” feels like a good example of commentary by-way-of objective storytelling.

I started reading War and Peace. I don’t really know why. I guess I felt like I was ready for it. For some reason it feels comforting in a way, to read about Russians in the 1800’s, to know that people haven’t changed all that much since then. We like to think we have but we haven’t. The settings and circumstances change, but we still behave the same. I’m having a hard time getting through the politics of it. If anyone’s read it before and or some advice for getting through the first few hundred pages (having difficulty keeping up with names and references) that’d be appreciated.

Hello? Hello!

Very much sickness was happening over the last two weeks. Sickness of the body, sickness of the computer, sickness of the season. All of this sickness prohibited the blog from getting updated with anything noteworthy. It was a natural time to be sick. But now that sickness is getting purged or deferred in one direction or another, allowing things to progress unimpeded. It’s a new year, time to shed away the husk of the past and prepare for new growth. In the next few weeks we’ll be announcing some events coming up very soon and the theme of our Spring print issue, something very different from what we’ve done before, something that you will more than likely fall in love with.

What do farmers do in the winter?

Today, and today only, holiday shipping is on us. Anything ordered from our store and shipped out today will get to you before Christmas, shipped on our dime. Get Issue Seven: Endurance to arrive at your doorstep in time to put under your tree. Get the bundle for that special someone whose big holiday plans are to sit in front of the fire and read. Get Issue Five for your little brother who’s into sci-fi and letterpress. And pick up a subscription for yourself while you’re at it! Oh yeah, and we’ll cover the shipping.

Head on over to the Anna Facebook page and explain what you would endure for your very own copy of Issue Seven: Endurance. Contest ends tonight at midnight EST.

If you haven’t clicked on over to the website of this week‘s illustrator, Walter Green, then do yourself a favor. Walt’s images have been showing up everywhere lately and his watercolor/handscript style seems appropriate almost every situation. He’s got knack for knowing what kind of image looks good for a literary object, as displayed in these fake book covers:

Well done, Walter. Looking forward to your further ubiquity.

Thanks to Tanya Angell Allen for writing up an extensive and glowing review of Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance over at Newpages.

“There is aesthetic beauty in this hip, young-feeling magazine, and beauty is one of the main things that helps people endure…(t)his particular magazine, founded in 2007, will hopefully endure for a very long while.”

Thanks Tanya! We hope you’re around for a good long while too!