Derek White reviews SHADOWPLAY

Shadowplay in Bangkok

Seeker and Scriber Derek White -- about on one of his many and various peregrinations -- reviews SHADOWPLAY:

"Lock is a master storyteller that transcends place & time. more than a storyteller, Lock seeks to reveal new meanings & truths in his explorations, to unveil the unseen [not to expose, but to reVEIL[& thus reveal]. he doesn't just seek to entertain, you get a sense he is deeply (& oddly) compelled towards his plots."

Read the rest here: http://5cense.com/09/BangTokDon/Re_Siam.htm

Eugene Marten's WASTE reviewed in THE QUARTERLY CONVERSATION

Eugene Marten’s Waste is blurbed up by the Lish School (including Lish himself) so I was expecting a quirkily written, intelligent effort more concerned with the structures of its sentences than narrative cohesion; what I got is a brutal, disturbing little novel that works beautifully both for those who read for story and those who read for the artistry—or at least those who read for those things but who can deal with a shocking amount of physical and psychological trauma distilled down into sharp, tight sentences.

Read the entire review at http://quarterlyconversation.com/waste-by-eugene-marten

THE KING OF SWEDEN reviewed at Bookslut.com.

Norman Lock's previous book THE KING OF SWEDEN (Ravenna Press) reviewed at Bookslut.com.

"Lock demonstrates a keenness for bringing the inanimate to life… The fresh language that Lock employs makes reading it more akin to lyric poetry than no...vel. … [A] brilliant miniaturist…"
--JESSE TANGEN-MILLS at Bookslut.com
http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2009_10_015190.php

Eugene Marten in The Brooklyn Rail

Excerpt from Eugene Marten's forthcoming novel Firework (New York Tyrant) in the current Brooklyn Rail

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2009/10/fiction/from-firework

Dennis Cooper gives a nice shout out to WASTE on his blog

Along with Blake Butler's SCORCH ATLAS, Tao Lin's SHOPLIFTING..., and Matt Bell's THE COLLECTORS, DC cites Eugene Marten's WASTE among books he's "read recently and loved."

Norman Lock, Joanna Ruocco, and Gary Lutz read for Ellipsis Press

Book party for Shadowplay & The Mothering Coven.

Norman Lock, Joanna Ruocco, and Gary Lutz
read for Ellipsis Press Saturday, October 24th, 2009 4-7PM
Readings start at 4PM.

at Barbès | DIRECTIONS: 376 9th St, Brooklyn, NY

Come celebrate the launch of new Ellipsis Press titles by Norman Lock and Joanna Ruocco. A hypnotic tale of artistic obsession, Norman Lock's SHADOWPLAY tells the story of a Javanese shadow-puppet master. "Wise up and get all you can of Lock," says Gordon Lish. Joanna Ruocco's THE MOTHERING COVEN is a "work of wonder" (Carole Maso), a singular act of prose daring. Also reading will be special guest and short story master: Gary Lutz.

Ellipsis Press will be at the Brooklyn Book Festival

We'll be selling lovely, soft papery wares--
including our new fall 2009 titles:

Norman Lock's Shadowplay and

Joanna Ruocco's The Mothering Coven.

Brooklyn Book Festival Directions

Corey Frost and Joanna Sondheim will be reading at the Boog City Festival.

Saturday, September 12th and 13th, 2009 | 12-6PM

at Unnameable Books | 600 Vanderbilt Ave. in Brooklyn

Books--including new titles by Joanna Ruocco and Norman Lock--will be on sale.


Corey Frost will be reading at around 1:40PM on Saturday. He is the author of The Worthwhile Flux (conundrum, 2004) and My Own Devices (2006). He has been a featured spoken word performer at festivals and events across Canada and the US, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and his performances have aired on the CBC, the ABC, and local stations around the world. He is currently writing a doctoral dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center, entitled The Omnidirectional Microphone: Performance Literature as Social Project. His work appears in the forthcoming Harp & Altar Reader (Ellipsis Press).




Joanna Sondheim will be reading at around 12:30PM on Sunday. Her work has appeared in Unsaid, can we have our ball back, sonaweb, Harp & Altar, The Portable Boog Reader 2, and Bird Dog, among others. Her chapbooks, The Fit and Thaumatrope, were published by Sona Books. Her poetry appears in the forthcoming Harp & Altar Reader (Ellipsis Press).



Other Harp & Altar and Ellipsis Press contributors also participating. See full schedule at: http://welcometoboogcity.com/bc59.pdf

Eugene Marten's WASTE reviewed in the Ottawa XPress

Geoffrey Brown's summer reading list in the Ottawa XPress includes Eugene Marten's Waste:

Eugene Marten's slim novella Waste (Ellipsis Press) details the day-to-day existence and experiences of Sloper, a janitor in a big-city office building. With unnerving clarity and precision, Marten starkly executes a chilling portrait of loneliness and anonymity, reminding us, in the process, that that which we might ever so casually discard and dismiss may not necessarily respond so casually in kind.

Check out the whole list at http://ottawaxpress.ca/books/books.aspx?iIDArticle=17883

Harp & Altar #6 is up!

Harp & Altar announces the release of its sixth issue

It was a nice two-syllable name. Hart Crane. Even one. He was the son of a candy-maker, the one who invented life-savers. Hart Crane drowned, so that was pretty strange. I read everything he wrote which was only White Buildings and The Bridge which I found a little impossible. And then the fat biography and his letters. I had never read anyone's letters before.. I was 27. It was good being a journalist or whatever I was now because I could do all the reading that was too much in college because now I was getting paid to know. I could see in my reading that Hart was trying to write the great long American poem and I think it was beyond him. Not because he wasn't great, but the long poem idea seems a little stretched thin and who needs it, really. But Hart kept finding patrons and getting grants. He was like a comic ingenue. He winds up completely isolated on an tropical island in a hurricane or else getting thrown out of Mexico on his Guggenheim he was such a drunk. Meanwhile, writing writing the bridge. Why has no one ever made this film. He was a very familiar man. I felt I knew him. A prematurely white-haired fag, shy-faced and handsome. Wearing one of those Russian sailor shirts he was always leaning against a tree or posing in a group, distractedly touching his own face. He seemed to be gazing into another world. My father looked that way in our family pictures. I figured it meant you were gay. There's one of me when I was thirteen sitting with all of my friends and I was doing it. Looking right through the camera, back at myself but pleased. Usually the other people in the picture seem to be actually in the world. They're stopping the balloon from floating off.

Eileen Myles, from "hart!"

Also: poetry by Kate Greenstreet, Jennifer Hayashida, Karla Kelsey, Justin Marks, Patrick Morrissey, Rob Schlegel, and Andrei Sen-Senkov, translated by Zachary Schomburg; prose by Roberta Allen, Stephen-Paul Martin, Joanna Ruocco, and David Wirthlin; Jared White on Brandon Shimoda and Michael Zeiss on Kafka; an excerpt from Lisa Jarnot's biography of Robert Duncan; and Michael Newton's gallery reviews.

www.harpandaltar.com