FCOL2

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD II and DEMONS Launch Party and Readings

The Supermarket
268 Augusta Ave, Kensington Market

Thursday March 24th, 2011 @ 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD II will be on sale for $12. DEMONS will be on sale for $7. Other back-list titles will be available as well.

There is no cover. This is a fully licensed event. Contributors to each publication will be reading to celebrate this unique release. It will be hosted by Ferno House staff.

Eh. I'll probably be reading.

First lines are sexy.

Find the first line of a story I wrote at the sexy first line (and short-short story) website, 50 to 1. The story's actually about a girl who falls for a boy who falls for her best friend, who's a guy, and how they make it work. I don't think it'll ever be published. But you can read the opener!

Here are some other first lines that are cool and so on . . .

Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. —David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)

and from my mentor, the estimable Larry Garber, from his first novel Tales from the Quarter:

There are some women who are terribly narcissistic; they keep kissing their own shadows and getting their lips dirty.

You should really track this book down and read it. Probably at the biblio, since it's out of print.

Shhh. Quiet.

I don't really enter contests, or haven't in the past. Mostly because I'm miserly and don't like paying for anything. But I'm starting to enter more contests, including the Dzanc Book International Literary Award. You should know right out that I didn't win. But I was named a finalist, which I think is worth celebrating. Deets below . . .

Dzanc Books and Guernica are pleased to announce the winner of the International Literature Award—affiliated with the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal (June 19-July 2, 2011)—who receives airfare, accommodations, and tuition to this summer’s program and publication in Guernica.

Out of just under 200 entries, Final Judge Chris Abani selected a group of poems by Jacob Shores-Arguello as the winner:

Jacob Shores-Arguello grew up in Costa Rica and the United States. He studied poetry and translation at the MFA program at the University of Arkansas where he was the Walton Fellow. He is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Ukraine and the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship in Provincetown.

Finalists include:

Kevin Kaiser’s “Little Parrots” (fiction)
Angie Lee’s “Shuffle Master of the Universe” (nonfiction)
Andrew MacDonald’s “Krupkee” (fiction) - this is me!
Shivani Manghnani’s “Tsunami” (nonfiction)
Ottessa Moshfegh’s “The Chaperone” (fiction)
Brian Sousa’s “Away from the Mountains and Towards the Sea” (fiction)
Eleanor Stanford’s “A Story of Brazil in Three Fruits” (nonfiction)

With 200 submissions, making the final eight is pretty happy-making. Methinks it's time to start shopping the piece!

xo -a

Silk Road / Katrina Best's Bird Eat Bird

The latest ish of Oregon-based literary journal Silk Road is out, and included between its pages is a short story I wrote about a kid who's dad went mental in a supermarket and said kid's relationship with the Ukrainian exchange student he bullies. Doubt this one will ooze over the Canadian border, so if you really, reeeeally need to read, you'll have to either go to the states or order via their website.

Also, I want everyone to go out and buy Katrina Best's debut collection, Bird Eat Bird, which recently won the Commonwealth First Book Award for the Canada / Caribbean Region. Before Katrina hit it big time, I reviewed her book here. But as much as I'd like to take credit for 100% of the book's success, I'm willing to concede that Katrina might have played a role in it, too.

(winky emoticon face)