Tarpaulin Sky Issue #17: Free, online

Tarpaulin Sky Literary Journal
Issue #17 / Summer 2011
192 pages, free, online

Click here to read the issue

Published by Christian Peet. Edited by Laynie Browne, Blake Butler, Colie Collen, Sandy Florian, Lily Hoang, Joanna Howard, and Karla Kelsey; with associate editors Duncan B. Barlow, Michael Tod Edgerton, Brian Mihok, Christine Wertheim; along with readers Jac Jemc, Eireene Nealand, Janna Plant, Michael Rerick, Amanda Skubal, Julie Strand, Amish Trivedi, and Laura Woltag.

Cover art by Noah Saterstrom. Featuring work by Scott Butterfield, David Buuck & Juliana Spahr, Roxanne Carter, Joshua Cohen, Stella Corso, Patrick Crerand, Jeremy M. Davies, Sandra Doller, Aaron Patrick Flanagan, Molly Gaudry, Roxane Gay, Anne Gorrick, Janalyn Guo, Daniel Y. Harris, Catherine Imbriglio, Lucy Ives, Christopher Janke, Patrick Jones, Catherina Kasper, Sean Kilpatrick, Thorin Klosowski, Sean Labrador y Manzano, Susan Maxwell, Susan McCarty, Christina Mengert, Anjali Mullany, Christian Nagler, Aimee Parkison, Lance Phillips, Deborah Richards, Kate Schapira, Ben Segal, Donna Stonecipher, Bronwen Tate, Laura Vena, and Max Winter.

Now taking pre-Rapture orders for Tarpaulin Sky Literary Journal Issue#17 / Print Issue #3

Tarpaulin Sky
Issue #17/Print Iss #3

7"x9", 204 pages, paperback
June 2011
Cover art: Noah Saterstrom

Special pre-publication price:
$12 includes shipping in the US
Pre-order by check or Add to Cart (ships June 2011)

Edited by

Laynie Browne, Blake Butler, Colie Collen, Sandy Florian, Lily Hoang, Joanna Howard, and Karla Kelsey, with associate editors Duncan B. Barlow, Michael Tod Edgerton, Brian Mihok, Christine Wertheim, along with readers Jac Jemc, Eireene Nealand, Janna Plant, Michael Rerick, Amanda Skubal, Julie Strand, Amish Trivedi, and Laura Woltag.

Featuring work by

Scott Butterfield, David Buuck and Juliana Spahr, Roxanne Carter, Joshua Cohen, Stella Corso, Patrick Crerand, Jeremy M. Davies, Sandra Doller, Aaron Patrick Flanagan, Molly Gaudry, Roxane Gay, Anne Gorrick, Janalyn Guo, Daniel Y. Harris, Catherine Imbriglio, Lucy Ives, Christopher Janke, Patrick Jones, Catherina Kasper, Sean Kilpatrick, Thorin Klosowski, Sean Labrador y Manzano, Susan Maxwell, Susan McCarty, Christina Mengert, Anjali Mullany, Christian Nagler, Aimee Parkison, Lance Phillips, Deborah Richards, Kate Schapira, Ben Segal, Donna Stonecipher, Bronwen Tate, Laura Vena, and Max Winter.

Sunday Roundup & A Valentine

Do or rue . . .

Who would have thought February could be so hot? Well, for publication opportunities, anyway. Har har. But it's also a short month, and right now you have precisely half of it left to submit a little bit of work to the next issue of Tarpaulin Sky, and to submit your magnum opus to the 2011 Fence Modern Poets Series. Both reading periods come but once a year. Like Elvis said, "It's now or never."

TSky Peeps in the News

Should reading periods and contests and Valentine's Day and concepts like "acceptance" and "rejection" give you the willies, fear not: TSky's own living patron saint, Rebecca Brown, writes about "failure" in a recent issue of Seattle's (only) newspaper The Stranger, invoking those writers forever synonymous with failure, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, as well as sketching their obvious parallels with The Flaming Lips and Korean ceramic artist Young Sook Park. Writes Rebecca:

I often need to remind myself that I need to hear failure out, because by failing at doing an easy thing, a groupthink thing, a thing one has been taught to do for one's career, one might be encouraged to make or do or be something more original and true. Because failing as an artist is a necessary thing, a thing I wish I could more easily accept.

If you haven't already checked out Rebecca's latest, American Romances, please do.

---

If you were sad to see Joyelle McSweeney go, you can take comfort that not only is The Constant Critic back in action, but that's it's being helmed by Karla Kelsey--who, it so happens, is also a new Poetry Editor at Tarpaulin Sky.

More good news: reviewers Jordan Davis and Ray McDaniel remain on staff, and are now joined by Christina Mengert and Vanessa Place. Does it get any better than that?

Yes, actually. The CC has also vowed to bring us "a new review every single week of 2010," which is just nuts, and they've begun with a review of Aase Berg's With Deer, translated by Johannes Göransson (who, among things, will soon have a book out with Tarpaulin Sky Press), along with reviews of Graham Foust's A Mouth in California, Claudia Keelan's Missing Her, Andrea Lambert's and 750910-2155's [sic] Lorazepam and the Valley of Skin: Extrapolations on Los Angeles, Lisa Olstein's Lost Alphabet, Mathew Timmons's Credit, and Elizabeth Marie Young's Aim Straight at the Fountain and Press Vaporize.

---

Andrew Zornoza's Where I Stay is micro-reviewed by John Findura, at elimae

As Antoine de St. Exupery wrote in Le Petit Prince, "Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them".... Andrew Zornoza does it with style and grace.

as well as by Jason Pettus, here, and Derek White, here.

---

TSky Editor Sandy Florian and TSky Press author Joshua Marie Wilkinson both have new books coming out--which may not shock you, given that, like the Beastie Boys' Paul Revere, they are in demand--but what you may not know is this: their books mark the first single-author titles from the publishers of the online & print magnificence that is Sidebrow, and is now also Sidebrow Books.

Also: the books are full-color. Also: Florian's On Wonderland & Waste features collages by Alexis Anne Mackenzie, and Wilkinson's Selenography features polaroids by Califone's Tim Rutili.

Yeah. That's we're talking about. But that's also why we'll shut up now and just embed some previews, for your perusing pleasure:





Both books are available now for preorder at a special discounted rate of $30 for the pair (25% off the cover price), and are also available separately for $18 (10% off).

---

Factory School announces the publication of Heretical Texts, Volume 5: TOWN, by Kate Schapira; Green-Wood, by Allison Cobb; Underground National, by Sueyeun Juliette Lee; House Envy of All the World, by Simone White; and The City Real & Imagined, by CAConrad & Frank Sherlock.

---

And speaking of big announcements (& Valentines)

Kevin Sampsell is not just fab author and publisher. Not just a champion of small presses all around. Not just the guy who--bless him--buys our books for Powell's. Though he may bill himself as a "common pornographer," he is, in fact, a big ol' Romantic, an absolute sap:

The longtime Powell's employee proposed to his girlfriend, Frayn Masters, in front of more than 100 people, many of them friends and colleagues, who had gathered at the West Burnside bookstore to hear Sampsell talk about his new memoir A Common Pornography. Sampsell dropped to one knee and held out a plastic ring ("a placeholder") to a surprised and delighted Masters, who hugged and kissed Sampsell before saying "yes" into the microphone. The audience clapped and cheered and Sampsell and Masters cried and hugged some more, then Sampsell sat down at a table and started signing books.

Congrats, Frayn & Kevin!

Sandy Florian: The Tree of No

Sandy Florian's latest, The Tree of No, is now available from Action Books.

Action Books published her first book as well--Telescope. If you've never read Sandy, you may want Telescope as a primer. Or maybe her chapbook from TSky Press: 32 Pedals & 47 Stops. (Oh, whoops, sorry--if you don't have that already, you missed it. It sold out.)

From co-publisher Johannes' blog, an excerpt:

I become pregnant with a hole. Scoop it out and the void comes down on its head. Then give it thanks and sing into the pit. For he is mindful of me. For he is manful on me. I make a beast of him like I make a beast of the bird, like I make a beast of fish, like I make a beast of the sea scrolling under my feet.

Climb this tree, folks. You'll never want to come down.

Octopus Magazine #10

Edited by the dynamic duo of Zachary Schomburg & Mathias Svalina, the tenth issue of Octopus Magazine is online. And it's bloody huge. TSky Press authors Sandy Florian, GC Waldrep, and Joshua Marie Wilkinson (interviewing Dorothea Lasky) represent, as do TSky Journal contributors Claire Becker, Hillary Gravendyk, Steve Langan, Ada Limon, Laura Sims, and Bethany Wright. This list hardly scratches the surface, however; you'll find about 70 other folks in there as well. No kidding.

We're pleased to say the issue also includes the most thorough reading to date, of Max Winter's The Pictures, courtesy of Lucy Ives. Click here to read it & everything else.