Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 268

the understory Pamela Erens and Oh Baby by Kim Chinquee. Good stuff. Really good stuff.

While we have been especially geeked to read two new books previously mentioned here, Stories by Scott McClanahan and Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon, a collection of letters between the poets Hosho McCreesh and Christopher Cunningham, we alas have not yet gotten our hands on them. That said, we have any number of books here at TBWCYL, Inc. headquarters that we have been wanting to read and so we took to the bookshelves this week in search of what might come next. As we did, it occurred t

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Twenty - "The Understory."

Ah, Week Twenty of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, our ongoing experiment at hard core self-absorption. We intend to post one self-portrait per week for one year, and this week the portrait is titled "The Understory" in honor of the quite good novel The Understory by Pamela Erens which we have been reading this week and plan to talk about in more detail soon, maybe even tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you would like to track this project in its entirety please do at the Flickr, and if you woul

Chicago Subtext and la Guth. Cool stuff.

The always and endlessly lovely Amy Guth, she of Bigmouth Indeed Strikes Again blog fame, the wonderfully not humorous novel Three Fallen Women, Pilcrow Lit Fest awesomeness and a recent edition of This Podcast Will Change Your Life, in which she almost announced something big, has a quite cool new gig, and literary blog, which we can now officially let you know about. The blog is called Chicago Subtext, it is focused on all things literary here in our very own Chicago and we think you will wan

Some much appreciated praise for Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine.

We want to offer many thanks to Joshua Mohr author of TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Some Things That Meant The World To Me for the kind review of Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine he recently posted to Goodreads. It is much appreciated and it can be read in its entirety below. For real. Just look. There you go.

"Ben Tanzer has a playwright's ear for dialogue, which I mean as a huge compliment. And he showcases it often in this quick novel. The main characters wax about their zeitgeist, making

Further proof that it is Jill Summers' world and we just live in it.

Writer and audio goddess Jill Summers is a long-time favorite of the staff here at TBWCYL, Inc. We have podcasted with her and ran a great piece of hers back in the early days of This Zine Will Change Your Life. Sometimes we even just follow her around. Frankly, we think she rocks, and so we were very excited to see that she not only won the Pilcrow edition of Opium's Literary Death Match series this past Saturday night, represesting Orange Alert no less, but that she also got a really nice writ

Just in case you were wondering what TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer looked like while serving as a panelist at the 2009 Pilcrow Lit Fest.

He apparently looked bemused. This photo is one of many from the most excellent James Stegall's 2009 Pilcrow Lit Fest Flickr photostream.[image error]

All the World's a Grave by John Reed.

The wholly unique writer John Reed has gone all Girl Talk in his latest book, All the World's a Grave and the result is a terrific mash-up of six Shakespeare plays - Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear and Henry V - that hang together in ways surprising and true.[image error]

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Nineteen - "Pilcrow."

It's Week Nineteen of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, our endlessly self-absorbed effort to post one self-portrait of ourselves per week for one year, and this week we are Pilcrow. Are you Pilcrow? Sure you are. And do you want to maybe follow this project on the Flickr? Because you can. Maybe you would even like to see a self-portrait of your own right here at This Blog Will Change Your Life. Well, you can do that too, just send us one at thiszinewillchangeyourlife@yahoo.com. Easy, ye

End of the week round-up, Tim Hall, Pete Anderson, Jason Fisk, and more. Much, much, more.

Friday is upon us, nice, and in a wonderful end of the week sort of way, we have stumbled into a random confluence of friends and stuff we wanted to share with you.

First, the wonderful poet, and one of our many current best friends ever, Jason Fisk who we just happened to have published in This Zine Will Change Your Life earlier this month, has a new chapbook out from Brown Bottle Press with the musician Jeremy Michael Cashman titled Trapped Within Myself.../The Village Library Interviews/, that

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live and sprouting. Or something like that.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live and sprouting. Or something like that. We have a new poem, Linen Garden by Eric Suhem, which we are way excited about, and, as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, a music selection from Jason Behrends, and stress tested prose love from Pete Anderson. We hope you enjoy this edition and we appreciate all shout-outs and links. Finally, please note, that we have re-opened for submissions. Nice.[image error]