Thanks to the folks over at Vol 1 Brooklyn for publishing “Because I Want So Badly To Be Loved,” an excerpt of a newly finished novel manuscript.
A new story called “Prologue” and The Coffin Factory
3 AprOver at The Coffin Factory, I read a new story.
Because I want to walk out the door of a dark Finnish farmhouse and deep into November morning fields, where leaves would have fallen if there’d been any trees not yet chopped for burning, and maybe it is not quite cold enough yet for snow but you can smell it, can’t you, the snow coming on, and the smoke of the burning trees from the chimney behind you, you can smell that too, and in the distance while walking I want to see my grandfather digging something in the hard dirt, potatoes maybe, rutabaga,…
Something About Aleksandar Hemon’s The Book Of My Lives
4 MarI like this paragraph in this reflection I wrote on Aleksandar Hemon’s The Book Of My Lives.
“We all have our own wars. And our childhood homes, no matter how much we love them, will be destroyed in some fashion by the mortar shells of time. Then they exist on only in memory. And Hemon’s stories and memories are all the more powerful for the degree to which they eclipse our own.”
From Heavy Feather Review.
“A love song to memory and mothers…” A Cloth House reviewed at HTMLGiant
19 FebJoe Trinkle on A Cloth House over at HTMLGiant:
Joseph Riippi’s novella, A Cloth House, reads like a transcript of a long-ago dream — fragmented, steeped in mist, sticky with synesthesiac description that cannot avoid its own hieroglyphic symbolism. A woman remembers her life to us with language that moves the same way our memories do, slipping between the concrete and abstract, alternating between inspection of the tiny objects we keep near to us and the larger fears and loves which we infuse into them.
Riippi’s written a love song to memory and mothers, and the way all unsettling love songs are written: superimposed upon a melancholic minor key. It’s an emotional work wrought with sweet dialogue as usually heard in poetry.
Gabriel Blackwell’s SHADOW MAN
4 Dec
Over at Heavy Feather Review, I wrote up a transcription of a stranger’s thoughts on Gabriel Blackwell’s wonderful debut novel, Shadow Man: A Biography of Lewis Miles Archer.
Thursday, December 13, The Fiddleback rocks Brooklyn
29 Nov
Delighted to be reading in a couple weeks for The Fiddleback’s first event spectacular at Public Assembly (formerly Galapagos) in Brooklyn. The wonderful Courtney Maum and Jason Koo will be reading as well (they rock), with music to follow by Latchkeys (who also rock).
DOORS OPEN AT 7:30, SHOW STARTS AT 8:00
Free 21+
