An interview, a nomination, and a book giveaway

I’ve spent the past two Januarys careening toward apt deadlines–proofing, sending PDFs to contributors, fixing, refixing, etc. This is happening earlier than usual–i.e., now–only more slowly, more sanely. We’re working on the last of the last and we’ll send the final proofs to the printer this week.

Since I’m ahead of the game, I’m spending the last week of 2012 reading. I hope you have time to do the same. If not, don’t worry–my news is brief.

To continue along the Things You Don’t Have Time to Read vein, there’s an interview that Randolph and I did over at Brian Bahouth’s website. We featured Brian’s story, “Evinrude,” in apt‘s inaugural print annual (I can’t believe that was two years ago already) and he’s been kind enough to follow our progress ever since. So follow the link and listen as we talk about writing and apt and design and Literary Firsts and the many other ways we fill our time.

The kind editors at Newfound have nominated my short story, “Sacramento, 2006,” for a Pushcart Prize. They’re doing great things with the redesign/relaunch of their site and I’m humbled to have work in their pages, as it were. If you can, make time to check out their new issue, which includes fiction by Diana Abu-Jaber, Amelia Gray, and Chris Schacht.

And, as we veer back toward things that you’ll hopefully make time to read–emphasis on hope–I’m giving away three copies of The Mere Weight of Words at Goodreads. It doesn’t get better than free books.

On that note, I leave you with a photo of my T-shirt.

Check me out: