Essay in Proximity, Marching Backwards, and Passes to Fictionaut

Essay in Proximity
Proximity was started in June last year six months after the current rececession had started and six months before it was officially called. The first paragraph in the first magazine notes the paradox of recession (and even depression) ... "Only a bunch of artists would start a new art magazine in the throes of recession. [...] Because sure -- the economy is receding ... cultural production in Chicago is surging yet again." Ed and Rachael Marszewski. Proximity as a magazine is concerned with mechanisms of cultural production. The first issue, primarily focused on Chicago, featured an article about the collective art production during their factory braks in Pennsylvania of of a group built a communal art project called Swampwall. "Early on this relative of mine and several of his co-workers spent their work breaks attaching newspaper clippings, snapshots, spent soda cans, industrial debris, trashed food containers and similar pieces to one wall of the plant." Proximity contains charts, diagrams, analysis, articles, and speculation about the persistence of this kind of production.

I have an article in this issue three, which just came out. I spent eight months working as a social media analyst and discovered I enjoyed, perhaps too much, analysis. I used some of the new tools and techniques I learned at this job to compare the blog-based networks associated with three Seattle literary magazines and their corresponding print-based networks. I studied The Raven Chronicles, The Crab Creek Review, and Pontoon from 2003-2008, and discovered some surprising things.

Essay at Plortlandfiction.net
Another semi-commie or at least collective effort is Portlandfiction.net is a Web site in Portland. "Each week, the authors in The Portland Fiction Project write on a suggestion word." They've written about wedding anniversiy materials, Paper, Silver, Leather and Lace, answers to unstated questions, and so on.

In addition they have published a few guest essays including an article by Tom Spanbauer on Dangerous Writing. " I'm right now writing a book on Dangerous Writing and one of the things I've come up with is the fact that we are, all of us, in some way or another haunted. These days, we use psychological terms to express our hauntings. But when we come right down to it, isn't an Oedipal complex, a very specific haunting by a mother and a father?"

They just published my essay, "Marching Backwards into the Future."

The movement to restore the primacy of the printed word is a conservative one with the same degree of sense as might be found among medievalists, adopters of the Paleolithic lifestyle, and steam engine train enthusiasts.

Passes to Fictionnaught
Finally, I have five guest passes to the beta release of Fictionnaught an online writing community with a super clean interface and membership including some huge powerhouse writers such as Pia Ehrhardt, Claudia Smith, Marcy Dermansky, and Gary Percesepe. It was created by Carson Baker and Juergen Fauth. Although as a community it doesn't contain the mixers that make FaceBook work so well, it is an excellent way to find great fiction and share your work. Commentary tends to be on the gentle affirmative side. If you are interested in one of my passes, let me know, and I'll send it you. I'm at: matt(dot)briggs(at)geemail.

Puschcart Prize Nominations from SmokeLong Quarterly

SmokeLong Quarterly is thrilled to announce its six nominations for the Pushcart Prize:

"How 9) Strange" by Laird Hunt SLQ #19, December 2007
"Taco Foot" by Jack Pendarvis SLQ #19, December 2007
"Trestle" by Matt Briggs SLQ #20, March 2008
"The Folk Singer Dreams of Time Machines" by Matt Bell SLQ #21, June 2008
"Fatback" by Jeff Landon SLQ #22, October 2008
"Tenderoni" by Kathy Fish SLQ #22, October 2008

Thanks. This is great company to be in... Matt

Review: Emily Ate the Wind by Peter Conners

Peter Conners, the author of a previous collection of poems and a forthcoming memoir about following the Grateful Dead, Growing Up Dead, recently published Emily Ate The Wind, a novella of extravagantly tiny miniatures. At five-by-eight inches, the book is the size of a boulder. It is as light as pumice stone. The surface feels like a hardened sponge with just as many gaps and holes as the matrix of what is there. There are repeated sentences with repeated characters engaged in oblique activities of daily life made all the more bleak and oblique because there isn't any context for their actions. Many times the sentences themselves find themselves unraveling the mystery of the world documented here. "Emily tries to exit the bed on her left and hits a wall. There is no wall. Why is there a wall?" There is in the novel a Dan, an Amber, an Emily, a Lucinda. The events in the book have little to do with each other, and only the tenuous magic of same names, a book jacket, and Conner's sharp syntax keeps them bundled together. One event happens at dawn one day, or another at dusk. Something happens in a rock quarry. Another event occurs in a trailer.

Narrative can suggest itself in even random occurrences. In a story, two things happening one after the other suggest a correlation and a cause. I learn that the black cats crossing my path are bad luck because of the time a black cat crossed my path and then a man driving an El Dorado shot a stop sign and parked the grill in my back seat. Emily Ate The Wind, however, manages to undo this false logic and reduce the characters to a succession of sentences, garage doors, dirty clothes, applesauce, and Kyle's Bronco.

PowerPoint Off: Matt Briggs and Doug Nufer

An audio visual duel to the death between a hippie and a business man.

On November 18th, 2008 at 7:30 PM at the Jewel Box Theater in Belltown (free of charge), Matt Briggs and Doug Nufer will present their “roadmap” for the future of the community writing organization Richard Hugo House. Neither is affiliated with the organization. And neither are you. Present your own vision of the future at powerpointoff.blogspot.com or come to the party to heckle, cheer, and consider: is a community writing center a halfway house or school? (PDF Poster | FaceBook Event)

The Jewel Box Theater on 2322 2nd Ave. Seattle, WA 98121; 206.441-5823.X2; Jewelbox@seanet.com

"Half" by Claudia Smith

I think people should read this story. If you haven't it is here.