Barrelhouse, Issue Three

One word. Barrelhouse. And, no, I don't mean that intriguing little liquor store in DC, you know, the one with the front that looks like three or four enormous barrels. Rather I mean the newish literary journal founded by Aaron, Dave, Joe, and Mike, self-proclaimed purveyors of pop flotsam and cultural jetsam, in addition to the usual mix of great fiction and poetry.

This year I finally became acquainted with the magazine, and after picking up Issue Three at AWP, I realize that I made my move just in time: this latest one is about Love. Yes, Love. I seem to have skipped all of those awkward, confusing steps; you know, the steps between that moment when you first lock eyes and the moment when all that mumbo jumbo, the death do us part stuff, that kind of silliness, or whatever, you know, whatever happens at the end, the moment that all of that suddenly becomes very not-silly at all. Not that I don't want to read about those steps, but that I'm fairly happy to have blindly stumbled into the exciting part. You know, kind of like returning from the bathroom during, well, during any part of the movie 300 (so maybe it wasn't that exciting after all). Anyhow, I clearly have some catching up to do w/r/t this journal.

But, so, and, well here's what the editors have to say about this issue: "It's kind of like our third date. The first date, we were chaste and sweet and overtly cool, dressed to impress. The second date, we tried to mix it up a bit, let you know we had a wild side. This time, baby, we want some commitment. In other words, you best be puttin' out."

So put out I did. And to be honest, I learned. I learned a darker side of Love, the "love set to not-as-cool-music-as-we'd-like" kind of love. I learned about Love from stories titled "Dot Dot Dot" and "Resin" and "Recommended If You Dig" and "Billets Doux" and "Carseat." From an interview, I learned about the kind of primitive, spiritual Love that George Saunders' characters miraculously seem to feel as they stumble around in a modern, loveless world. And, gasp, I learned about Love from a poem titled "House Over the World." Hopefully, Wade will explain it to me, even though I already know that I really liked reading it for some reason.

I wish I had more time to talk about all of the stories, but frankly, I'm getting tired, and won't be able to fit everything into this post. So I'll just talk about Greg, the husband in "Dot Dot Dot," who must simultaneously deal with an infestation of little black bugs in his house as well as his wife's sudden withdrawal from him and his affection. Greg says, "Marlin started using my real name months ago. No explanation, no apologies. But I kept on. I still use our nicknames, arrested in their evolutionary development at 'Binger,' in the hope that she'll eventually come back into the cutesy fold." And I'll just talk about Westly, the sleep-deprived father from "Carseat," who, because of his rude tailgating, incurs the wrath of another driver during a late-night lap around the neighborhood with his baby daughter. The man follows him to his house and confronts him, and after the driver and he scuffle in the yard, Westly sits on the porch of his house, which shelters his sleeping wife, and thinks; he sits on the porch with his daughter, who rests in the carseat, and says, "I kept thinking how it never seemed real, as if I had conjured him up. How standing on the slanted lawn, looking back at all of this, I felt caught. Because if I didn't have this, where would I be?"

"Carseat" has stuck with me since I read it a few weeks ago; it has surprised me with how many times it suddenly appears in my thoughts, and I can see why the editors chose to publish it. I feel I can't do it justice with a few sentences. Nor can I explain every wonderful piece in this issue. I'm sorry. I just can't. So here's where I say you'll have to see for yourself.

Rumor has it that the next issue is going to press very soon. And although I'm not sure what exactly the editors will have ready for us, be it Death or Birth or some other general kind of issue, which might put an end to this extended date metaphor, who knows, I know I want some of it, whatever it is, because it will be fantastic. So keep up the good work, Barrelhouse.

That is all.

Good night.

08 Fiction Judge for Winter Contest

I'm excited to say that Peter Orner has agreed to judge our Winter Fiction Contest next year. I've wanted to announce for a while, but we had the 07 contest running, and we clearly still have a long way to go until December 1st, 2007 (the PM deadline), but now you know. So start thinking about submitting and put that date on your calenders.

I've copied his Bio off his website for those of you who aren't familiar with him and his work. If you're interested in learning more, click on this.

Peter Orner was born in Chicago and is the author of the novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006), and the story collection, Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller, won the Bard Fiction Prize and is being translated into French, Italian, and German. The novel is set in Namibia where Orner lived and worked in the early 1990's.

Esther Stories was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award.

Orner has published fiction in the Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Southern Review, and various other publications. Stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and the Pushcart Prize Annual.

In 2006, Orner was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Currently, Orner is on leave from San Francisco State University and living in up-state New York where he is writer-in-residence at Bard College.



That's all for now.

We'll have details up shortly at the official website.
As for the upcoming Greg Grummer poetry contest, I'll check with Wade and then we'll announce what's going on with that when I learn something.

Our 2007 Contest Winners

I'm sorry we've taken so long to post this information, but we've finally gotten our act together. We wanted to make sure we could announce both contests at the same time, and since we're in the middle of finishing this issue, it's been crazy around the office.

Greg Grummer Poetry Award Winner:
Angus Bennett – "On Whether the river Will Break"

Poetry Finalists:
Joshua Kryah for "My Easter"; "Come Hither"
Eliza Rotterman for "Two Girls"
Kimberly Lojek for '[Draft of Interior System of Structure]"; "[Harnessed Dove and Window Broken]"
Reba Elliott for "Child Not Made"; "Los Mineros para Los Minerales"
Arpine Knoyalian Grenier for "The Cables Set, The Light"
Melody S. Gee "Migration"
John Pursley III for "[You Can Look Through These Windows—Look, & Not See Anything…]"



and



Winter Fiction Contest Winner:
John Blair for “The Road to Little Happiness”

Fiction Finalists:
David Norman for "The Great Basin"
M. D. Baumgartner for "Like Gods of the Sun"
Matthew Goldberg for "With a Mighty Hand and Outstretched Arm"
Pierre Hauser for "Girlyman"
Amy Ralston Seife "What We Do"
Alison Hicks for "Texture"
Kristie Smeltzer for "Bridges"
Richard Jespers for "Engineer"


Congratulations to our winners and finalists and thank you to all who submitted your stories/poems. We'll also mail out notification to everyone who provided an SASE. And of course, when we publish, we'll send you along your copy of the contest issue.

Now I must go to class, but check back later for other things.

Almost There

We're in the final stages of the selection process for the upcoming issue of Phoebe, and we're nearly ready to post the winner and finalists of our fiction and poetry competitions. After that, I'll announce next year's fiction judge. Then Kati and Nat will layout the issue, and our work will be momentarily complete. Sorry this has taken so long, there always seem to be snags and setbacks along the way, which I'll discuss later.

So everyone who has asked about results and such, thank you for being patient; we'll get those to you soon.

Avery Anthology

So I received the first volume of the Avery Anthology in the mail a few weeks ago. And although I couldn't read it immediately because of other busy things, I took it with me on spring break to see just exactly how these people had realized their vision. And, to be honest, I had a personal interest in their publication, since they’d rejected one of my stories with a very nice note last fall. So after a nonstop read on the flight down to the beach, I must say that I am genuinely happy for Adam, Andrew, and Steph, the founding editors.

A quick history: I first caught wind of the project sometime last spring, and so throughout this past year I checked on them to see how they were doing as they traveled the long road to press. Their blog tells of their ups and downs (non-profit applications, printing issues, marketing/advertising, reading and selecting fiction, etc), and it's a fairly interesting look at the effort, more than a year long for this crew, needed to get a small, non-profit journal up and running.

As for the future, the editors of Avery seem to be on a rolling schedule as opposed to a semi-annual or quarterly schedule like most journals. But they also say that they plan to publish two “anthologies” a year. So I'm still unsure about the whole anthology versus journal thing; I guess I just don't see how it's any different, but perhaps time will tell.

The issue itself weighs in at just over a pound (acc. to their blog), costs 10$ plus shipping, and runs to 245 pages or so of fiction. The design is nice; it looks as though their art director, Seth Sanders, has taken the time to paint or create an illustration and title page for each of the 19 stories, as well as the startling cover, which seems like a lot of work, but it adds a nice, personal touch to the journal. As for the contributors, they all seem to be fairly experienced writers, who range from the popular to the obscure (but no less able). The editors have picked up a piece from Ander Monson, and an excerpt from Stephen Dixon's forthcoming novel, which is great I think for the inaugural issue. Their other contributors seem to have solid publishing backgrounds as well, and more noteworthy, those backgrounds vary: the contributors notes mentions Tin House next to elimae and Juked; Best American Short Stories credits next to small press releases. And of course, there's an "emerging author" in there somewhere, though I would have liked to see "this story is the author's first publication" appear once or twice in the contributor's notes as well.

But obviously though, it comes down to the stories, not who an author is or where they’ve published.

So, to the fiction.

I can't touch on all of it, since this post has become a bit longer than I wanted, but I'd like to mention a few that grabbed me, that “knocked my socks off.” I’ll start with Dominic Preziosi's “Aftermath.” Preziosi's story takes place in the apocalyptic landscape of New York City shortly after the attacks, though the narrator finds a way around the obvious pitfalls such a story might encounter by focusing more upon the characters (a husband, a woman, and a lecherous, one-eyed priest) rather than the event itself. The piece reminds me of those news stories and legends that we all heard concerning men and women long presumed dead, who returned home after having wandered around in the smoky haze of the city for several days. In the story, the main character spends a few days with a stranger, a women he's met after the collapse, and, with the help of a one-eyed priest, they try to make sense of what has happened before he finally thinks of returning to his wife.

“The Importance of War” by Dean Bakopoulos is a three-page story about a squad of soldiers, who stay in a trench and wait for a fellow soldier to die in a nearby field. They sit around, play cards, and try to light bong resin, since they’re too scared to go outside and fight or help their dying comrade. Apparently, the enemy has poison gas and nail bombs. The soldiers say things like, “I’m getting damn sick of pork and beans,” and “I’d give my left nut for a cold six-pack today.” They debate whether or not they should put the dying soldier out of his misery, and eventually one of them rolls a grenade over the side with the pin still in it, so as to leave the final decision up to him. Instead, the dying man treats them to a delirious operatic concert in Italian. When one of the soldiers says, “We should ask him to sing us something American,” the narrator responds:

“Nothing beautiful comes from America anymore,” I said, but nobody paid attention to me anymore when I said things like that. The war was too important. I didn’t blame them.


Anyhow, I thought it was a sad story.

My favorite story in the anthology is “Incidental Music” by Daniel Levin Becker, which is about a billing clerk, named William, who works at Amity Credit where he opens the incoming envelopes and files payment checks. He begins to receive from a certain man random bits of intricately drawn sheet music, which the man has folded around his checks. William takes the sheet music to a neighbor, Lenore, a librarian, and together they play the music on her piano. As the months go by, they fail to make any sense of the various kinds of music, but they do become attached to each other. They fall in love. One day the checks stop coming, and William finally seeks out the mystery composer. I won’t give away the ending, but I will say it’s a great story about how one life’s coming to an end leads to the beginning of another man’s life.

I realize that these quick write-ups don't do the stories justice. I'm sorry. The best thing would be for you to read them yourselves and see what you think. So that’s about it for this post. Sorry about the sudden cut and stop and such. I’m tired and it’s time to do other things. Check out Avery though if you can. It's a new journal that I'd like to keep track of.

New York Times Book Review

Read James Poniewozik's review of Then We Came To The End, recent first novel of Phoebe contributor Joshua Ferris.

"Then We Came to the End, it turns out, is neither small nor angry, but expansive, great-hearted and acidly funny."

Go to the NYT for more.

AWP 07 Recap

We just got back into the office after a good time at AWP: we sold our journals, then gave away the remaining copies; we traded issues with other journals, especially those with whom we haven't organized a formal exchange yet; we went to panels; we met lots of people; we probably forgot other people, and we're sorry about forgetting those people; we attended readings; we had drinks; we saw famous people, etc.

We did many things, and those things were mostly fun.

I can't speak for everyone on our crew, but here are a few of the highlights from my trip.

• Hobart. This is a great journal, which I recommend everyone read. I chatted with Aaron Burch, the editor, for a bit about his starting it up, his reading submissions, and other things. The design itself is very nice. And he's been receiving plenty of submissions to keep him busy reading. The guest edited issue (edited by Ryan Boudinot) is particularly good, by the way.
• Also, many people came to our table and said they really enjoyed reading Phoebe. This was a nice surprise, as we rarely hear anything back at all. Putting together an issue always seems to end after it's printed and distributed, so it's nice to see how the process continues. Thanks to those who continue to read us. And many thanks to those who continue to submit as well: you're where it all begins.
• Robert Olen Butler read a story that he wrote about Nixon. The story, "18 1/2," appeared in the most recent issue of Zoetrope: All-Story. And his Nixon impression is pretty good. He also read from his newest collection, Severance: Stories.
• Went to the Fence/Actionbooks poetry reading at some bar (django?) on Thursday evening and had my first PBR tallboy in a long while. Wade, our assistant poetry editor, helped me to understand the meaning of certain poems. Other poems I did not understand as well.
• On Friday, I was happy to hear Susan Shreve read from her new memoir, due out in June 07. I didn't realize that she'd be coming to AWP, so that was great to see her and to say hi.
• Met Liam Callanan, an '02 graduate from Mason's writing program and author of two books. He teaches in the writing program at UW-Milwaukee. He'll be in D.C. on March 18th, I think, to give a reading at Politics and Prose to support his most recent release, All Saints.
• Talked to the Bat City Review folk and picked up their first two issues. Hopefully I'll read them in the next few days. Other journals I checked out that are worth noting: American Short Fiction (the people at Badgerdog are doing lots of good things right now), DIAGRAM, and Backwards City Review. I could list plenty others too, I suppose, but I don't know. That would take a long time.
• I met and spoke with Andrew Brown of Red Morning Press. He and two other Mason poets started the press in '04 after they graduated from the writing program and, according to their catalogue, it looks like they're putting out a title a year, though I also remember Andrew said that they plan to expand that number to two titles a year fairly soon, and eventually they'll accept nonfiction and fiction submissions as well.
• Finally met Richard Peabody, editor of Gargoyle and a very active figure in the lit scene here in D.C. I think he plans to reopen his submissions period this summer. Apparently, he's been a bit backlogged over there, which is no surprise considering the many other projects he's working on.
• Checked out the new issue of Redivider, in which one of our readers, David Conner, has a painting. It's a fine issue, I think, both because of Conner's work and the fiction.
• Heard Martone and Barth both give readings from new work. They are funny people. I think Barth's story, "Us/Them," will be printed in the newly resurrected Johns Hopkins Review? However, I can't find any links to this news online, so I don't know if it's true or not. I don't know what's true when Barth speaks. Or Martone for that matter. But either way, it was good to see and hear both of them.
• Met up with the Black Warrior Review staff at the local pub late Thursday and Friday nights to celebrate nothing in particular. They are great folks, who put out a great magazine and seem at home in any bar with anyone. Thanks BWR for the company.

That's about it for now. I think at some point Wade will give a brief rundown of AWP from the poetry side. Otherwise, I think you can check out Perpetual Folly and the Emerging Writers Network for some other comments about the conference. And I think Erika over at the Practicing Writing blog will post something soon as well.

That's about it; I'm off to log some fiction packets.