Alex Kudera's Blog, page 113
April 9, 2015
Auggie's Revenge at Beating Windward Press
Beating Windward Press to Publish Alex Kudera’s Tragicomic Novel Illustrating
Precarious Times for College Adjuncts and Contract-Wage America.
APRIL 6, 2015, ORLANDO, FL: As the issue of destitute adjunct professors breaks into the mainstream with articles appearing in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, Salon, and The New Republic, Beating Windward is excited to publish Alex Kudera’s second adjunct novel, AUGGIE’S REVENGE this fall.
AUGGIE’S REVENGE is a satiric crime novel packed with small cons, betrayals, vigilante justice, stolen vegetables, and clandestine romance. Michael Vittinger is an adjunct philosophy instructor on his last contract and searching for a life worth living. Disenchanted with academia, he finds himself drifting into late-night supermarket friendship with Auggie, a man on the make, and Jonny November, a one-legged grifter who is Auggie's protector-mentor, of sorts. As the economic recession drags on and the marks dry up, the three plot to murder Auggie's abusive stepfather and divide Auggie’s rightful inheritance between them.
At 75,000 words, AUGGIE’S REVENGE offers a fast-paced thriller while illustrating some of the critical labor issues of the day.
Alex Kudera is a Philadelphia native who teaches contemporary literature at Clemson University in South Carolina. His debut novel, FIGHT FOR YOUR LONG DAY (Atticus Press) won the 2011 Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Best Fiction from the Mid-Atlantic Region. Reviews and interviews can be found in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academe, and other locations.
Beating Windward Press is an independent publisher of novels, short story collections, and non-fiction. They are based in Orlando, Florida and produce 4 to 6 titles a year. Their books reflect the individual tastes of the small staff - mostly mainstream fiction with a literary edge. Print books are distributed internationally through Ingram; E-books are distributed in all e-reader formats through VitalSource and Smashwords. Matt Peters established Beating Windward Press in 2011. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans.
Visit http://kudera.blogspot.com and/or http://www.BeatingWindward.com for updates or find Alex Kudera at #AWP15 Atticus Books Table 1840 from 12 to 2 p.m. on Saturday where he'll be visiting with Atticus's Dan Cafaro and other talented publishers leading the Indy literary scene.
March 17, 2015
#AWP15
for #AWP15, look to find me at a social-justice Mexican and @AtticusBooks http://t.co/wMw6El23DF #amreading #amwriting #amsigningifuwantmeto
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) March 16, 2015
March 14, 2015
#AWP15
For the AWP conference, I'll be at a gathering of social-justice poets and writers at Salsa Ala Salsa on Friday, April 10 at 6 p.m., and then I'll be helping at the Atticus Books table from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 11.
March 4, 2015
February 14, 2015
February 2, 2015
the son's room
I've heard last night's Super Bowl featured an insurance advertisement that featured the death of a child, and I can see why folks would find such crass commercialization of tragedy disturbing. Alas, it also reminded me of this Italian film I saw in the theaters many years ago, and always look to recommend.
The Son's Room
has excellent cinematography, parallels the Raymond Carver story, "A Small Good Thing," and also includes a Carver poem in the middle. There are some comic moments, but I would not have guessed the director was considered "Italy's Woody Allen" as the IMDb link notes.
January 29, 2015
January 25, 2015
Turquoise Truck for Mendicant Bookworks
I'm excited to announce that in addition to published paperbacks of
Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served
and
Auggie's Revenge
, I'll also have "Turquoise Truck," a car-lot story, published as a stand-alone e-book at Mendicant Bookworks by summer of 2015. Mendicant is known for gritty realism and has published Gerald Locklin, Mark SaFranko, Ben Tanzer, and other small-press stars in the past. This will be my second foray into the world of stand-alone e-books; my first was a short novella (or long story),
The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity
.
January 23, 2015
after that, read some SaFranko
I just discovered this great new interview with Mark SaFranko over at Decibel Magazine.
Here's an excerpt:
DM: What keeps you plugging away when you are alone in your room in silence all the time?
MS: As a product of the 60s one thing that sticks with me is that anything is possible. It's something that burns within. Sometimes people ask me what makes an artist and I say torment and torture. (Georges) Simenon said writing is a vocation of unhappiness. Maybe there's something that is unfulfilled in people who write.
I was lucky enough to interview Mark a few years ago, even before I'd read his novels, Hating Olivia and Lounge Lizard.
AK: In an online interview, you described the “monthly nut” as a huge obstacle to writing. Maybe to life itself. I’m pretty sure that implied a mortgage and most likely a wife and kids. And worse yet, I’m pretty sure this scene is being played out in New Jersey. So basically, what we need to know is how in hell did you ever write anything at all?MS: Yes, these days that scene is indeed being played out in Jersey. But I have an understanding wife, and she tends to leave me alone as long as I hold up my end of things. Same goes for my son. But to answer your question about how I did any writing, it’s really a matter of minutes, and I’m not being facetious. I recognized a long time ago that most of our time is wasted. If you want to write and you only have a matter of minutes every day, you have to use what you’ve got. The minutes add up and so does the work. You end up doing the best you can. It’s all you can do most of the time.Anyway, get off your ass and write this weekend. You won't regret it. After that, read some SaFranko.
Here's an excerpt:
DM: What keeps you plugging away when you are alone in your room in silence all the time?
MS: As a product of the 60s one thing that sticks with me is that anything is possible. It's something that burns within. Sometimes people ask me what makes an artist and I say torment and torture. (Georges) Simenon said writing is a vocation of unhappiness. Maybe there's something that is unfulfilled in people who write.
I was lucky enough to interview Mark a few years ago, even before I'd read his novels, Hating Olivia and Lounge Lizard.
AK: In an online interview, you described the “monthly nut” as a huge obstacle to writing. Maybe to life itself. I’m pretty sure that implied a mortgage and most likely a wife and kids. And worse yet, I’m pretty sure this scene is being played out in New Jersey. So basically, what we need to know is how in hell did you ever write anything at all?MS: Yes, these days that scene is indeed being played out in Jersey. But I have an understanding wife, and she tends to leave me alone as long as I hold up my end of things. Same goes for my son. But to answer your question about how I did any writing, it’s really a matter of minutes, and I’m not being facetious. I recognized a long time ago that most of our time is wasted. If you want to write and you only have a matter of minutes every day, you have to use what you’ve got. The minutes add up and so does the work. You end up doing the best you can. It’s all you can do most of the time.Anyway, get off your ass and write this weekend. You won't regret it. After that, read some SaFranko.
January 15, 2015
books: 20 + 1
Lying on my couch at an uncommon angle, I looked up at a shelf with a small selection of paperback fiction and saw these ten titles in order: Lorrie Moore's Anagrams, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Sula, Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World, Arthur Nersesian's The Fuck Up and Chinese Takeout, Chris Offutt's Out of the Woods, Yuri Olesha's Envy, Pynchon's V, and Roth's The Human Stain.
I have so many books in storage and in piles on the floor or shelves in other rooms, yet, possibly, these ten represent in exacting proportion all the fiction I read. Having said that, I soon realize that 30% women might be high, sadly enough, and 20% in translation is low, I think, and it would be weighted more toward fiction from Europe and Russia, not 50/50 between Europe/Russia and Asia. Also, because I anticipated teaching contemporary literature, after 1945, when I drove down to South Carolina, I left most of my titles written before World War II in storage space in Philadelphia.
I do have the white whale and friends, Pierre, etc. on hand, at least a couple of the same Penguin paperback editions I read as an undergrad. Of the ten I just named, only Olesha is one I was assigned to read as an undergrad, but the copy on the shelf is one I procured years later. The copy of V is one of two I've owned, and I bought it in England when I was working as busboy in France and then traveling in Europe the summer and autumn before the Berlin Wall fell. The Crying of Lot 49 stays on a different shelf where I keep the books I've been teaching most recently.
What's on the shelf above the first ten, you ask?
Ha Jin's Waiting, Denis Johnson's Angels and Jesus' Son, Edward P. Jones's Lost in the City, two different editions of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and then four Kafka Schocken Classics w/Dad's Kunderas leaning against them. Kerouac's On the Road rests horizontally on top the paperbacks just named.
When Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served , my bilingual stack of stories, arrives from Romania, I'll let the copy I keep rest in its alphabetical place, between Kafka and Kundera, on the higher plane of shelf.
I have so many books in storage and in piles on the floor or shelves in other rooms, yet, possibly, these ten represent in exacting proportion all the fiction I read. Having said that, I soon realize that 30% women might be high, sadly enough, and 20% in translation is low, I think, and it would be weighted more toward fiction from Europe and Russia, not 50/50 between Europe/Russia and Asia. Also, because I anticipated teaching contemporary literature, after 1945, when I drove down to South Carolina, I left most of my titles written before World War II in storage space in Philadelphia.
I do have the white whale and friends, Pierre, etc. on hand, at least a couple of the same Penguin paperback editions I read as an undergrad. Of the ten I just named, only Olesha is one I was assigned to read as an undergrad, but the copy on the shelf is one I procured years later. The copy of V is one of two I've owned, and I bought it in England when I was working as busboy in France and then traveling in Europe the summer and autumn before the Berlin Wall fell. The Crying of Lot 49 stays on a different shelf where I keep the books I've been teaching most recently.
What's on the shelf above the first ten, you ask?
Ha Jin's Waiting, Denis Johnson's Angels and Jesus' Son, Edward P. Jones's Lost in the City, two different editions of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and then four Kafka Schocken Classics w/Dad's Kunderas leaning against them. Kerouac's On the Road rests horizontally on top the paperbacks just named.
When Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served , my bilingual stack of stories, arrives from Romania, I'll let the copy I keep rest in its alphabetical place, between Kafka and Kundera, on the higher plane of shelf.
