Shome Dasgupta's Blog, page 4

In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods | Matt Bell

"Drown yourself away, my wife sang, and despite my want to stay I found myself again outside the house, for against the fury of her song my horror held neither strength nor will nor strategy."
-- In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell  

Belle Journal Volume I

With a mantra that rises from the soul of a sometimes forgotten land and a tenacity instilled by those that came before, Belle Journal emerges as a home for the voices of “alternative” southern belles. Based in Baton Rouge, La., this new literary journal features prose, poetry and visual art from women all over the South.

Runaway Dish

Runaway Dish is a private, not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the creative culinary talents and resources that thrive in Southern Louisiana while raising funds for various local charities.

Runaway Dish Culinary Journal Vol. 2:




Runaway Dish Culinary Journal Vol. 1:






















Each themed dinner will spotlight a different chef and a different charity.

Puerto del Sol | Volume 48 | Number 1

Alongside the works of:

Matt Bell,
Steven Ramirez,
Robin Lee Jordan,
James O'Brien,
Brenda Rankin,
Lisa Estus,
Sonya Huber,
Julia Cohen,
Joelle Biele,
T Kira Madden,
Jennifer Buxton,
Max Somers,
Britt Melewski,
Matthew Wimberley,
Sheryl Luna,
Dani Sandal,
Eric Morris,
George David Clark,
Noah Eli Gordon,
Myronn Hardy,
Catherine Kasper,
David Romanda,
Nora Hickey,
Sally Wen Mao,
Megan M. Wong,
Kelsie Hahn,
Sessily Watt, and
Jeanine Deibel,

"Went The Bite" can be found in  Puerto del Sol  (Volume 48, Number 1).




Puerto del Sol  (Volume 48, Number 1) is now available for preorder .

Fight Song By Joshua Mohr

"Not many authors can shift from satire to sentiment so easily, but Mohr is a clever enough writer that he manages to pull this off...As the plot in Fight Song becomes increasingly surreal, it gets funnier, and the emotional veins it taps into grow more real and textured. The novel becomes a kind of parable, a story of man searching for redemption." —LA Times

Joshua Mohr is the author of the novels Termite Parade (a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection), Some Things that Meant the World to Me (one of O Magazine's Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller), and Damascus, published in the fall of 2011 to much critical acclaim. Mohr teaches in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco.

Fight Song is now available at Powell's Books .

Time And Language: An Interview With Gabriel Blackwell

It was such a pleasure to interview  Gabriel Blackwell . He is the author of Shadow Man: A Biography of Lewis Miles Archer (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2012), Critique of Pure Reason (Noemi, 2013), and Neverland, a chapbook with video/audio/illustrations. He is also the reviews editor of The Collagist and a contributor to Big Other .

Time And Language: An Interview With Gabriel Blackwell can be found at Carbon-Based Lifeform Blues .





For more about Gabriel Blackwell , please visit his website here .

Uncanny Valley Magazine 0002

Alongside the works of:

John Colburn,
Rachel B. Glaser,
Tyler Gobble,
J. A. Tyler, Rachel Yoder,
Kathleen Rooney and Elisa Gabbert,
A. D. Jameson,
René Georg Vasicek,
Michele Harris,
Justin Anderson,
and
Lindsay Hunter,

"Mud" and "Gone Went The Rabbit" can be found in   Uncanny Valley Magazine 0002 .



Uncanny Valley 0002 is now available for preorder  (includes a free copy of issue 0001).

Other Voices Querétaro

Workshops led by:

Gina Frangello
Stacy Bierlein
Rob Roberge
Pam Houston
Josip Novakovich .



For more information: Other Voices Querétaro .

Mark Maynard, On Reading

"Reading is the antidote to loneliness. Through the characters of prose, and via the persona of poetry, we come to understand ourselves. We know that our experiences -- whether sunk in dark thought and despair, or raised by moments of joy and promise -- are things that have been felt before, and will be felt again. Our unspoken thoughts and outward actions are mirrored, and often shown to us in a new light. Reading confirms our humanity."

{ Mark Maynard is the author of Grind and the Fiction Editor of the Meadow . Visit his website  here for more information.}

Hilary Plum, On Reading

"I read The Tunnel mornings at my kitchen table, all day had to sweat off the stench. Reading about Sacco and Vanzetti I rode a train across Germany; against the green countryside, red roofs, slim roads diving into fields and threading mountains, they must die. In bed as a girl I read Yeats and Dickinson and remember no more than a rhythm. I hope I am not alone in this, I read that passage from 'Orbit' aloud again and again. My vision descends the archaic torso of Apollo. For a series of nights I read the first page of Der Prozess, Jemand musste Josef K. verleumdet haben, I get no further. Sick I lay on the couch and heard 'Hymn to Life' in Jimmy’s thick tones, a half hour in tears. I sat reading 'The Morning of the Poem' in a library in Concord, Massachusetts, until a man interrupted me. He was from Ghana, was it, and trying to get into a business class, could I read his application? My publisher was the ocean: I read a poem and was almost angry, how much of myself I needed to offer in response, and what fool wouldn’t know this as love? There are days that won’t pass without a detective novel. The mornings in Tucson, some chair at some historic inn, agog at The Making of Americans. Child on each side of my father reading Treasure Island, our eyes on N.C. Wyeth’s men, their round muscled limbs. I lie in a park in Oregon and Bolaño would forgive me each interruption. It is winter, Blood Meridian. I still have some lover’s mother’s William Maxwell, never read. I read every Anne of Green Gables then read each one again and she did the same. Years later I went to the red clay and warm sea of that island; years later I bought books I didn’t want when she sold them. It is surprising, who might give you The Dubliners. I did skip one section of Les Misérables, never finished Portrait of a Lady nor Anna Karenina. Sat in a friend’s hammock before the exam reading Andrei Bely. To my lovers gave Nabokov and Beckett, why; from another borrowed Beckett back. She and I read all of Beckett then went to the ice cream shop where they microwave the cookies, listened to the town fool dictate a personals ad, to whom we couldn’t see. Manuscripts on my desktop that despite guilt I don’t reply to. The Qur’an, the rest of Sebald. I sat on the roof of the dorm reading Blake aloud and like a sophomore hoped someone could hear me. Sick I lay in bed and he read me the poems of Lawrence, which I do not care to read under other circumstances. Lost a manuscript he had given me; panicked; moved out. Skimmed everything on the internet. Stood in Penn Station, book propped open. Wrote a book."

{ Hilary Plum is the author of They Dragged Them Through the Streets (FC2, 2013). She’s co-director, with Pam Thompson, of Clockroot Books and is a consulting editor with the Kenyon Review. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series for Rescue+Press .}