Countdown to AWP 2012

AWP 2012 is just a few weeks away now, so we'll start bringing you info on our deals, swag, and Ninth Letter related events.

One thing you'll want to be sure to put on your schedule is the Monster Mags of the Midwest, Part II reading, which we are co-sponsoring with The Cincinnati Review and Mid-American Review. Here is the awesome list of readers: Mary Biddinger (vol. 5, no. 1), Brock Clarke (vol 4, no. 1), Matthew Gavin Frank (most recently vol. 8, no. 1), Michael Robins, Laura Van den Berg, and Keith Lee Morris (most recently vol. 5, no. 2). The reading, which is free and open to the public, will be on Wednesday, February 29, at Murphy's Bleachers (across from Wrigley Field!). The event will start at 7pm. It will be a great way to kick off AWP. I'll also be live blogging the event, so be sure to check back here for pictures and inside scoop.

In other news, here are a few recently published books from our contributors:

The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey (vol. 6, no.1). BookPage recently interviewed Margot about the book.

The Night Swimmer by Matt Bondurant (vol. 4, no. 2). Check out his blog for information on his research for the novel.

Stay Awake by Dan Chaon, which includes "Patrick Lane, Flabbergasted," which first appeared in vol. 4, no. 2 of Ninth Letter. Dates, times, and locations of where he'll be reading can be found on his website.

Contributors: if you have some news on a new book or have readings scheduled, be sure to contact us at info@ninthletter.com, so we can pass on the news to our readers.

2012: A Look Ahead

Happy 2012! Hope everyone had a great holiday season. There are a lot of great things to look forward to this year, including our new issue, which will be out this month. Take a look at the back cover, if you haven't already. Here are a few more reasons why we're excited it's 2012:

The musical adaptation of Cathy Day's (vol. 6, no. 2) The Circus in Winter will be part of the American College Theater Festival regional competition right here in Urbana-Champaign at the Krannert Performing Arts Center. The show will run from January 3-7.

New books from contributors, such as Stay Awake by Dan Chaon (vol. 4, no. 2), Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions by Michael Czyzniejewski (vol. 7, no. 2), and The Green Shore by Natalie Bakopoulos (vol. 5, no. 1). I'm sure there are more that I missed. If you're a contributor and have a new book either just out or coming out later this year, let me know at info@ninthletter.com.

We're teaming up again with The Cincinnati Review and Mid-American Review for Monster Mags of the Midwest, Part II at AWP Chicago. This is one sequel that won't disappoint. Check out this list of readers: Mary Biddinger (vol. 5, no. 1), Brock Clarke (vol. 4, no. 1), Matthew Gavin Frank (most recently vol. 8, no. 1), Michael Robins, Laura Van den Berg, and Keith Lee Morris (most recently vol. 5, no. 2). The (free!) reading will be on February 29 at Murphy's Bleachers. We'll have more details as we get closer to AWP.

AWP is also exciting because it gives us a chance to meet some of our readers. We're, as always, grateful for your readership and support!

Love and Shame and Love

Peter Orner's new novel, Love and Shame and Love is now available. If you've read any of Peter's work before, including his beautiful and heartbreaking essay, "Horace and Josephine" from vol. 7, no. 2, you know what a treat it is to have a new book from him. However, if you're not familiar with his work, this is the perfect to become acquainted. Beware: once you start reading, you might become addicted to his stories.




Here are some links you should check out:

• An excerpt from Love and Shame and Love.
• The excellent book trailer for the novel.
• A video of Peter reading at a recent Granta event, which also featured fellow 9L author, D.A. Powell (vol. 7, no. 2).

Peter will doing a series of readings over the next weeks in support of the book. Be sure to check out the dates and locations to catch him in person.

Contributor Round-Up

Next week is a busy week for The Carr Reading Series and by busy, I mean awesome! On Monday, October 17, John Warner (vol. 6, no. 2) will be reading from his novel, Funny Man. Then on Wednesday, October 19, two U of I MFA alums, Andrew Ervin and Andy Frazee, will be giving a joint reading. The events will be in the Author's Corner of Illini Union Bookstore at 4:30pm. Both are free and open to the public.

Best American Essays 2011 is out now and we are thrilled that T.A. Noonan's "The Trouble with Correspondence" (vol. 7, no. 1), Peter Orner's "Horace and Josephine" (vol. 7, no. 2), and " Margot Singer's "A Natural History of Small-Town Ohio" (vol. 7, no. 2) were all listed as notable essays of 2010! Congratulations to all three of them. The notice is very well deserved.

Rachel Richardson (vol. 3, no. 2) has new book of poetry, Copperhead, which is out now.

Also out now is Blake Butler's (vol. 5, no. 1) new memoir, Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia.

Bookworm did an interview with Kevin Wilson (vol. 8, no. 1) about his new novel, The Family Fang. You can listen to it here.

Jensen Beach (vol. 8, no. 1) read at the most recent Stories & Beer and if you weren't able to make it, you can watch a video of his reading here.

Also don't forget that our October subscription special is still going on. You can get a two-year subscription for the price of one! To get in on the deal, pick the one-year subscription in the webstore and enter OCT241 in the special instructions box.

9L Exclusive - Seth Fried Q&A

Seth Fried. The Great Frustration. May 1.

And now, Ninth Letter brings you an exclusive Q&A with Seth Fried, author of the first blockbuster of the summer, The Great Frustration.



(Thanks Seth!)

Seth Fried has appeared twice in Ninth Letter in vol. 3, no. 2 and vol. 6, no. 1. Be sure to pick up a copy of The Great Frustration on May 1! Stay tuned to the blog for more Seth Fried exclusives in the coming weeks.

Contributor Round-up

Here are some contributor updates:

Dan Chaon's (vol. 4, no. 2) novel Await Your Reply has been chosen by the Mesa County Public Library for their One Book, One Mesa County project. If you click over, you can read more about the project and see the excellent trailer for the novel.

The Staff Recommends put together a reading list of Midwest literature, "Readings from the Flyover Country," which includes The Circus in Winter by Cathy Day (vol. 6, no. 2 and vol. 7, no. 1) The list was necessary because as they put it, these are "books and writers who would be better know if we Midwesterners believed in horn tooting, but we don't because no likes a horn tooter, and there's nothing so special about you that deserves tooting about anyway." Perhaps this is a call to start horn tooting about all the great Midwest writers!

Jedediah Berry (current issue, vol. 7, no.2) is profiled as part of the feature, "The Pleasures of Strangeness," about the wonderful Small Beer Press.

Dark Sky announced their updated list of forthcoming books and The Novelist and The Rapper by Mickey Hess (vol. 4, no. 1) will be released on March 1, 2012. Congratulations!

Cairn - New Issue Teaser #3

As promised on Monday, here is a teaser from Roy Kesey's "Cairn," which appears in the soon to be released fall/winter 10-11 issue of Ninth Letter and is also excerpted from his forthcoming novel, Pacazo.

Across the Fourth Bridge, the causeway thirty feet deep and fifty yards wide, almost empty because it is spring: the Piura River is now a thread of water through mud and scattered trash. Clustered in the riverbed tight against the far bank are half a dozen shanties. Gaunt chickens skitter around them. The only green of any kind is a line of points in the loam, gourds or maybe melons.

Farther down the bank something moves along the top edge. It is long and black or dark gray, too thick for a snake and now out of sight, the bus jolting off the bridge onto the roadway. Mariangel climbs into my lap, points out the window at a speck in the sky. It is either a hawk or litter lifted by wind.

In two or three months the summer rains will start. The shanty owners will harvest their crops, will move up onto the banks as the causeway fills. For a time it will be beautiful here along the river and elsewhere in Piura: greenery on all sides. People will come to the edge to watch the water move and to be calmed.

My head and hip ache and my stomach roils and south now, through Miraflores and Castilla and down into the Sechura, a strip of desert that holds the Pacific and the Andes apart for twelve hundred miles. Two tiny patches of its sand are in a sense my central texts. Marks on the dunes are the sentences and their meanings are unstable, altered daily by wind or rain, by footsteps including my own. I read looking for patterns, the better to see what does not fit them: traces of what was written one night ten months ago.

The fall/winter 10-11 (vol. 7, no. 2) issue will be available soon, then you'll be able to read the rest of "Cairn." To make sure you get as soon as it's available, sign up for a subscription today. If you buy a subscription now, you get an extra issue, so you get 3 issues instead of just 2. To get the special, head over to the webstore and type "Holiday Sale" in the special instructions box.

New Books

Here are some new books from our contributors:

Jo Scott-Coe's new memoir in essays, Teacher at Point Blank has just been released from Aunt Lute Books. The essay, "In/Out," which appears in the book was featured in vol. 3, no. 2. Here are some of Jo Scott-Coe's tour dates in support of the memoir:

San Francisco, Books, Inc. The Castro: October 21, 7:30pm
Riverside, California: Central Library for Arts Walk: November 4, 6:30pm
Seattle, Washington: Elliot Bay Book Company, November 19, 4:00pm
Seattle, Washington: Parkplace Books, November 20, 2:00pm

Vol. 4, no. 1 contributor, Brock Clarke's new novel, Exley, is now out in the world. He'll be reading as part of the Happy Ending Reading Series in NYC tomorrow, 10/6. For more tour dates, check his website. Brock Clarke also contributes to the special feature "The National Book Award 1960, Revisited" in the current issue.

How Should a Person Be?, the new book from Shelia Heti (vol. 4, no. 2), is now available and can be ordered through the book's website.

Adam Levin's (vol. 1, no. 1) book, The Instructions, is on sale and featured as the deal of the day at The McSweeney's Store.

The Wilding by Benjamin Percy (vol. 6, no. 2) is now available. Head on over to his website for tour dates.

Gary L. McDowell (vol. 4, no. 1) has a new poetry collection out, American Amen.

Matt Bell (forthcoming in vol. 7, no. 2) has a new fiction collection, How They Were Found, from Keyhole Press.

Also available from Keyhole Press is 9L staffer Aaron Burch's new book, How to Predict the Weather.

And finally, former 9L staffer Andrew Ervin's book, Extraordinary Renditions, was recently published by Coffee House Press.

Congratulations everyone!

Summer Reading

First, congratulations are in order for 9L contributors Stephan Clark, Sarah Einstein, and Margot Livesey! Stephan Clark and Sarah Einstein will be listed in the "notable essays" section of the upcoming Best American Essays for essays featured in Ninth Letter. Stephan Clark's "My Year of European Underwear" and Sarah Einstein's "Mot" both appeared in vol. 6, no. 2. Margot Livesey's "Mr. Clark's Daughter" from vol. 6, no. 1 is a notable short story in the upcoming Best American Short Stories.

Summer is a great time for picking up some new books. Here are a couple nominees for your reading list:

The Best of the Web 2010 from Dzanc books features a number of 9L contributors, including Mary Biddinger (vol. 5, no. 1), Robert Olen Butler (vol. 1, no. 1 & vol. 2, no. 1), Dan Chaon (vol. 4, no. 2), Brian Evenson (vol. 2, no. 2), Christine Hartzler (vol. 4, no. 2), Ander Monson (vol. 1, no. 2 & vol.6, no. 2), F. Daniel Rzicznek (vol. 6, no. 1), and Angela Woodward (vol. 7, no. 1). This is just a small sample of the plethora of awesome writers featured in the collection.

Walks with Men, the new book from Ann Beattie (vol. 1, no. 2) is out now. There is an excerpt available here.

Benjamin Percy (vol. 6, no. 2) discusses his affinity for Stephen King's The Gunslinger with Carolyn Kellogg over at Jacket Copy.

And don't forget, the summer/spring 10 (vol. 7, no. 1) issue of Ninth Letter is available in our webstore.

Published for a Day

Word Riot is publishing novels and story collections from past contributors in PDF form for one day only. The books will be available until 11:59pm tonight. You can download and read as many as you want between now and then. Be sure to check out I/O, a lyric essay memoir novel type thing, from 9L contributor Brian Oliu (vol. 6, no. 1).

Eggers & Butler

We love passing on good news and two fiction contributors from our first issue (spring/summer 04), Dave Eggers and Robert Olen Butler, have new books. Check them out.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers is available now.

"...what Dave Eggers has found in the Katrina mud is the full-fleshed story of a single family, and in telling that story he hits larger targets with more punch than those who have already attacked the thematic and historic giants of this disaster. It’s the stuff of great narrative nonfiction." - Timothy Egan, The New York Times

Hell by Robert Olen Butler will be released on Sept. 1.

"No writer in America today can be said to surpass Butler in the eating-his-cake-and-having-it-too category: He's literary and entertaining, serious and funny. Within his clear and fluent narratives, there usually nestles complexity, if you care to look for it." - Chauncey Mabe

New Book Round-Up

Check out these new books from 9L contributors:

The Signal by Ron Carlson (vol. 1, no. 2 & vol. 5, no. 1).

"The Signal takes us into terrain that’s stunning and terrible. In doing so, it becomes both an elegy to a broken marriage and a heart-stopping, suspenseful thriller. It’s a difficult journey, but relax: with Ron Carlson, you really are in expert hands." - Jennifer Gilmore, The New York Times.

Tryst by Angie Estes (vol. 6, no. 1).

"Gleeful and gorgeous, delighted by puns and other wordplay (including words from French, Latin and Italian), Estes’s fast-paced free verse, rich with internal rhyme, takes rightful pride in the beauties it flaunts and explains." - Stephen Burt, The New York Times

Fugue State by Brian Evenson. The collections contains "A Pursuit," which was originally published in Ninth Letter's vol. 2, no. 2 issue.

"In his new collection, Fugue State, Evenson's stories most often serve as detective-style investigations into the horror of everyday speech. His characters cling to sentences, phrases and words with the intensity that usually accompanies unrequited love." - Ross Simonini, The Los Angeles Times

Archicembalo by G.C. Waldrep (vol. 4, no. 2).

"Waldrep’s title denotes an antique keyboard instrument with 24, or many more, keys per octave. Notoriously hard to play, such instruments made subtle and challenging music, with notes a conventional score could not include. Waldrep’s sometimes bewildering, often exciting prose poems make their own unconventional music, replete with slippages, repetitions, suggestions." - Stephen Burt, The New York Times

More New Books!

Three contributors from 9L's new Spring/Summer 09 issue have new books:

Lawrence Sutin's novel, When We Go into the Water, is out from Sarabande Books. An excerpt from the book appears in the Spring/Summer 09 issue.

"...Sutin has written a novel of such sheer audacity and delight it leaves the reader dizzy. No small part of its pleasure is that it manages to be so many things at once––a tour de force of compaction, outrageously sprawling, epic and intimate, with the velocity of a bullet train that stops to inspect a wildflower." - Mary Ruefle

Robin Hemley, most recently a 9L poetry contributor, has a new nonfiction book, Do-Over!, from Little, Brown & Co.

Do-Over! is one of the funniest, wisest, most perfectly observed books I've ever read. Robin Hemley possesses a keen insight into the all-too-human wish to rectify our past mistakes. He also knows that we are better for having made them."-Bernard Cooper

Red Hen Press published Brendan Constantine's poetry collection, Letters to Guns, which is available now.

"Brendan Constantine will offer you something you don't know, in his astonishing debut book, Letters To Guns. Not since James Tate have we seen a poet so inventive or voracious in topic, in spirit and in imagination." - Elena Karina Byrne

New Books!

Here are some new books from 9L contributors:

Spring/Summer 09 fiction contributor, Margot Livsey’s latest book, The House on Fortune Street, is now available in paperback. More about Margot Livsey and the book can be found at HarperCollins.

"The most durable structure here, in fact, is not a house but the novel itself, whose design unites so seamlessly with its intentions that one wants to admire it from every angle.” - The Washington Post

Ben George (CNF, Spring/Summer 07) edited an anthology about fatherhood called The Book of Dads. The collection also features essays from other 9L contributors, Steve Almond (Spring/Summer 04, Spring/Summer 05, Fall/Winter 07) and Brock Clarke (Fall/Winter 06).

"These essays speak to us, as parents and children, in a language rich with humanity and wisdom." - Ken Kalfus

Poetry Contributor, Lytton Smith’s (Fall/Winter 2006) collection of poetry, The All-Purpose Magical Tent was the winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and is published by Nightboat Books.

"Smith's sequences have themes and forms rather than gimmicks, relying on imagination rather than on any biographical facts. His powers ought to help this book, and its author, last." – Publishers Weekly.

John Haskell's (Fiction, Fall/Winter 04) new book, Out of My Skin, is now available from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

"In his excellent third book, Haskell gets into the head of a lonely writer whose shot at a second chance hinges, strangely and brilliantly, on an impersonation of an impersonation of Steve Martin...It's an odd world, and certainly one worth entering." - Publishers Weekly

New Books!

We're always happy to share good news, so we wanted to let you know about some new books from 9L contributors.

Perfect Hurt by Bradford Gray Telford (Vol. 5, No. 1).

“...Perfect Hurt, an elegant debut that somehow manages to be both restrained and luscious at once. How can such carefully patterned, structured poems engender this roiling intensity, convey such a sense of careening interiority?...Here is a new voice that arrives as something already achieved: a presence, a consciousness: a made, unmistakable self.” - Mark Doty

Flying by Eric Kraft (Vol. 1, No. 1).

Laura Miller reviewed the book for The New York Times. Time's review says, ...Flying is a reminder of how entertaining a novel can be when it slips the surly bonds of realism."

The Book of Props by Wayne Miller (Vol. 4, No. 1).

Publishers Weekly's review states: "Transformations—from the everyday to the wondrous and/ or haunting—are everywhere in Miller’s elegant second book. The poems are at once dreamlike and fervent in their will to cleave to the material world."

Live Nude Girl by Kathleen Rooney (Vol. 4, No. 2).

"While revealing what a nude model does, how she does it and why, what she feels and thinks while doing it, Rooney explores what her profession means to her personally and what it means and has meant to others. The writing is enticing, engaging, inviting, and the anecdotes it tells are irresistible." - Peter Stitt, editor of The Gettysburg Review

New Books: GHOSTS by César Aira

Ghosts, by César Aira, newly translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews, is now available from New Directions Publishing. The New York Times calls Aira "one of the most provocative and idio­syncratic novelists working in Spanish today."

An excerpt from Ghosts appears in the latest issue of Ninth Letter, vol. 5 #2.

Recent and Upcoming Book Releases from 9L Contributors

As we celebrate the release of our new issue, we can also share the good news of recent and upcoming book releases from past 9L contributors.


Vol. 1, Issue 1 contributor Katherine Vaz's Our Lady of the Artichokes and other Portuguese-American Stories was released by the University of Nebraska Press in October 2008.

Here is what Julia Glass said about the collection: "Katherine Vaz captures brilliantly the tragicomedy of people caught between ancient superstitions and modern values, people longing to cross over from one culture to another, from loneliness to love, from folly to grace. Her stories glow with a fairy-tale magic, yet they also feel uniquely and delightfully new."

Also, in October 2008 Scribner released The Wettest County in the World: A Novel Based on a True Story by Matt Bondurant (Vol. 4, Issue 2).

Publishers Weekly's review of the novel said: "Bondurant endows this gritty story with all the puzzle-solving satisfactions of a mystery. It's a gripping, relentless tale, delivered in no-nonsense prose."

Calamari Press recently released Ever, a novella, from Vol. 5, Issue 1 contributor Blake Butler.

Gary Lutz praised the novella saying, "Blake Butler is a daring invigorator of the literary sentence, and the room-ridden narrator of his debut novella, EVER, nerves her way into a hallucinative ruckus of rousing originality."


Erinn Batykefer (Vol. 5, Issue 1) won the 2008 Benjamin Saltman First Book Prize for her poetry collection, Allegheny, Monogahela. Red Hen Press will publish the collection in Feb. 2009.

Congratulations!

Keith Lee Morris

9L contributor, Keith Lee Morris will be a featured reader on Wednesday, October 22, at The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series in NYC. The show starts at 8pm and is free and open to the public.

In other Keith Lee Morris news, his new novel,The Dart League King, is now available from Tin House Books.

New Novel from John Domini

A Tomb on the Periphery, a new novel by 9L contributor John Domini, is now available from Gival Press. A Tomb on the Periphery was a finalist in the 2005 Gival Press Novel Award, and has been called "an edgy, richly peopled and thoroughly absorbing novel" (Margot Livesey) and named by the Emerging Writers Network as "one of the books we're looking forward to in '08."

UIUC Alumna Publishes Poetry Collection

Congratulations to Erin Elizabeth Smith, UIUC MFA poetry alumna and former Ninth Letter staffer, on the publication of her poetry collection, The Fear of Being Found, available now from Three Candles Press.