AWP

Weather permitting, I'll be at the AWP conference in Washington DC tomorrow. I'll be working at the bookfair, representing the Sewanee Writers' Conference. I'm also going to be part of an off-site reading, sponsored by three of my favorite literary journals, Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, and Ninth Letter. I'm excited to read with the other writers, especially one of my best friends, Lucy Corin.

I love the bookfair at AWP and I always have at least one book that I'm dead set on buying. Two years ago, it was Light Boxes by Shane Jones and last year it was A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons and Call It What You Want by Keith Lee Morris. This year, I am long overdue to buy Amelia Gray's Museum of the Weird, so I hope FC2 has copies at the bookfair. I also like to get a few journal subscriptions. The aforementioned CR/MAR/9thLetter journals have a special deal, a year of all three journals for $33, which is a steal.

Readings in October

I realize now I dragged this out way too long, but here is the cover of the novel. Allison Saltzman, who also designed the cover for Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, did the cover design, and the art is by Julie Morstad. I have been a fan of Morstad's work, mostly because of the two children's books she's illustrated, When You Were Small & Where You Came From, which are so beautiful, so it was a thrill to see the illustration of the Fang family.

Here's a description of the book, which I did not write:

Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief.

Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as along as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world.

When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance—their magnum opus—whether the kids agree to participate or not. Soon, ambition breeds conflict, bringing the Fangs to face the difficult decision about what’s ultimately more important: their family or their art.

Filled with Kevin Wilson’s endless creativity, vibrant prose, sharp humor, and keen sense of the complex performances that unfold in the relationships of people who love one another, The Family Fang is a masterfully executed tale that is as bizarre as it is touching.

I'm also going to be reading in the midwest this month. I'll be reading on Thursday, October 14, with Nami Mun for the University of Cincinnati's Emerging Fiction Writers Festival. Holly Goddard Jones and Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. They are all writers I really love, so I'm excited to be hanging out with them.

The following week, I'll be reading at the University of Missouri-St. Louis on October 20th. I begged the people at UMSL to take me to C&K Barbecue, which is supposed to have incredible pig snoots and ribs.

Annie and Buster Fang

The Family Fang

Here is a teaser image for my novel, which Ecco is publishing in the summer of 2011. I'm really excited about this book and I'll give more details when it becomes official.

Been a Long Time

I haven't written in a long time. My 9 to 5 job is as the secretary of the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Things get crazy once the summer arrives. I stop sleeping. I get agitated at the slightest thing. I don't update my blog. But I'm clear of it for a little while and back to getting other work done.

I had some good news:

1) I was the co-winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for a short story collection. I tied with Robert Shearman; his work is amazing, so I'm really happy to be mentioned alongside him. Shirley Jackson is one of my all-time favorite writers, so this was an amazing thing. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is one of my top five books I've ever read. I got a really cool award with my name on it, as well as a black rock.

2) A story I wrote, "Housewarming", appeared in the 2010 edition of New Stories from the South. It's the fourth time I've been in NSFTS. Amy Hempel chose the stories this year and that made me very, very happy.

3) A story I wrote, "Skin", appeared in Best of the Web 2010. My wife was in the first BotW, so I was excited to be included. It's got a ton of amazing writers in it.

I have two copies of New Stories From the South 2010 and if you want a copy, leave your name in the comments of this post and I'll randomize the names at 12:00 pm on September 6th and send the two winners a copy.

I Stole A Line from Suzanne Vega

I have this story in Hobart called "My Hand, Dead Tissue, Severed at the Wrist". There's a line in there that reads, "I bloodied a nose and kicked one girl so hard in the gut that she made a sound like two babies had fallen out of her." I had been thinking about this line, having read it somewhere as a teenager, for many, many years, just waiting for the chance to use it.

Just recently, I was trying to remember where I'd stolen that line, where it had come from. And I found it. Suzanne Vega wrote it for an article in Details Magazine. It's an awesome essay, called "Fighting". It's basically a child's list of rules for fighting. Holy god, tell me this section isn't amazing:

Girls are crazy and mean. They don't fight fair. Fighting fair means hard, tight fists and regular punches. But girls will slap, bit, pinch, pull your hair, rip the buttons off your shirt and the earrings out of your ears. There are no rules in fights with girls. Just hurting.

The one exception was the fight with Carla W., when she challenged me. We never even touched each other. I just stood there staring at her as she wound herself down, and she eventually began speaking nonsense. "I'll kick you in the guts and two babies will fall out!" Eventually the crowd around us began to laugh, and I won.

In high schol, I read Details all the time because I was obsessed with how to comb my hair and I liked looking at men wearing suits, which seemed like the strangest attire in the world at the time. Now, I can clearly remember reading this essay, and I can clearly remember wanting to marry Suzanne Vega. So, sorry for taking that line, Suzanne, but I could not help myself.

Shirley Jackson Awards

I just found out that I am nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. The awards are given for "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic," and I'm nominated in the category for Single-Author Collection. I'm up against Brian Evenson, Paul Witcover, Robert Shearman, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, and Otsuichi. What I'm saying is, I'm not going to win.

But I'm really excited because I love Shirley Jackson's work. "The Lottery" was a story I read when I was in sixth grade and it, along with reading "A Good Man is Hard to Find" in fifth grade (a teacher at my Catholic grade school read that story to us. She introduced it by saying, "This is a Catholic writer."), really shaped my idea of short stories long before I ever thought of writing any. I love, love, love We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House. So this is a good day.