Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Fairy Tale Review e-books

Kate Bernheimer's Fairy Tale Review titles are now available on Weightless Books as e-books. Weightless is run by Gavin Grant, editor of the fabulous Small Beer Press (which is also run by author Kelly Link). You can buy all back issues of FTR for just $9.99! That's less than ten cents a tale.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Mark Lamoureux's Spectre

Mark Lamoureux's new book Spectre is out from Black Radish Books. You can catch a glimpse of it at on "SPD Recommends" or buy a copy here.

A marriage of the fantastic to the absurd--the monstrous and the transcendent, the ridiculous and the delightful, the ordinary and the other-worldly: Lamoureux pursues a deliciously strange seam of Nazis, superheroes, aliens, mythologies, monstrous fungi, altered consciousness, magic, and spirits, a carnival-esque world scored by a voice alternately sardonic, wistful, and ironic. A potent and beguiling collection.

If you would like to review Spectre, contact Black Radish Books for a free copy at blackradishbooks at gmail dot com


Saturday, September 4, 2010

David Wolach on Philly Sound

PhillySound has a nice interview with David Wolach on his new book, Occultations from Black Radish Books: the book's genesis, the concerns with body, the body politic, the nature (and loss) of our connections to one another. http://phillysound.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

Friday, September 3, 2010

Kate Bernheimer's Horse, Fower, Bird

Kate Bernheimer, Writer-in Residence at UL Lafayette, has a new story collection Horse, Flower, Bird (Coffee House Press) and an anthology, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (Penguin). Horse, Flower, Bird has been getting fabulous reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, as well as among some high profile book blogs such as Wordmunch: http://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/there-is-no-disputing-these-are-adult-tales-horse-flower-bird-by-kate-bernheimer/.

Booklist writes:

In eight hauntingly poetic fairy tales, Bernheimer roots deep into the hyperimagination and fears of lonely girls and the estranged women they become. When a little girl’s pet parakeet dies, she runs away from home and later becomes an exotic dancer who builds her own cage. Two sisters perform imaginary scenarios from Star Wars in which love never triumphs. A girl abandons her sister’s friendship for that of a doll, and later for an imaginary friend whose disappearance leaves her psychotic. A young Jewish girl suffers from guilt and a fear of incineration after her friends and family fail to comprehend her intense desire for atonement. And in the collection’s most heartrending story, a woman hides a petting zoo in her basement, convinced that her secret is preserving her overworked husband’s stability. By turns lovely and tragic, Bernheimer’s spare but captivating fables of femininity resonate like a string of sad but all-too-real and meaningful dreams. This is a collection readers won’t soon forget, one that redefines the fairy tale into something wholly original.

And Library Journal:

Bernheimer, Kate. Horse, Flower, Bird. Coffee House, dist. by Consortium. Sept. 2010. c.208p. illus. ISBN 978-1-56689-247-6. pap. $14.95.

This is a collection of eight imaginative if not downright unusual tales that will delight readers but also evoke sadness and loneliness. Bernheimer’s lean and lyrical writing conceals forceful and spirited stories that will definitely prove disturbing, as in the collection’s last, dreamlike tale, “Whitework.” Other stories, like the penultimate “A Star Wars Tale,” will bring back strong memories of childhood as they communicate an innocent understanding of the world that is simultaneously beautiful and perhaps brutal. Bernheimer’s passion for fairy tales is evident in every story she spins, which should come as no surprise—she is founder and editor of Fairy Tale Review, and her previous works (e.g., The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold) draw heavily on classic fairy tales from many countries to create wonderfully original ones. VERDICT Bernheimer’s work provides a refreshing contrast to most available fiction. It is no stretch to compare her to Aimee Bender or Kelly Link, and fans ought to be on the lookout for My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, a forthcoming collection that she edited featuring those two authors.—Faye A. Chadwell, Oregon State Univ. Libs., Corvallis

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Another re-inter-view: David Wolach and Emily Carr

David Wolach, whose new Black Radish Books collection Occultations is just out, reviews Emily Carr''s Directions for Flying, while Emily turns her attention to David's Occultations: check it out at Dialogue's End.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

David Wolach's Occulations

Also out from Black Radish Books, David Wolach's Occulations. Mark Wallace published a mini-review of Occultations here: http://wallacethinksagain.blogspot.com/2010/08/brief-reviews.html

And CA Conrad has published part of a feature (to be added: poet commentary by Rob Halpern, Rachel Levitsky, others) that will end up as completed on PhilllySound. For now, it is at his web journal.
Interview plus poetry, etc. http://tenbyfour.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, August 17, 2010