Schomburg Tour Dates

Black Ocean author Zachary Schomburg will be touring the midwest during September (and beyond for a few dates in October) with some great readers--Jenny Zhang, Nate Slawson, Jesse Malmed, Joyelle McSweeney! The tour dates from his blog are listed below, and you can also visit his Tumblr for updates.

9/18. Iowa City, IA. Prairie Lights Bookstore. w/Jenny Zhang. 7pm.

9/19. Minneapolis, MN. Our Flow is Hard Reading Series w/Jenny Zhang. Harriet Brewing. 3036 Minnehaha Ave. 7pm.

9/20. Racine, WI. Bonk! Reading Series w/Jenny Zhang & Nate Slawson. Black Eyed Press. 312 Sixth Street. 7pm.

9/21. Madison, WI. The Project Lodge. 817 E. Johnson. w/Jenny Zhang, Anna Vitale, & Adam Fell. 7:30pm

9/22. Chicago, IL. Dollhouse Reading Series w/Jenny Zhang & Jesse Malmed.7pm

And a few October readings:

10/4. Portland, OR. Marylhurst University. 7:30pm.

10/11. Tucson, AZ. University of Arizona Poetry Center. Next Word Reading Series. w/Joyelle McSweeney.

10/18. Seattle, WA. Seattle Lit Crawl. Comet Tavern.

A Warm Welcome!

We are excited to welcome D.j. Dolack (forthcoming 2013) and Zach Savich (forthcoming 2014) to the Black Ocean family! Their manuscripts were selected from our recent open reading period. They join an already amazing crew, and we're so happy to have them.

In case you haven't seen it, here's our lineup for 2012. If that looks good to you, consider a subscription for only $50 (mad savings!). Click here to check it out.

Hunger Transit by Feng Sun Chen (Spring 2012)
Fjords by Zachary Schomburg (Spring 2012)
Handsome Vol. 4 (Spring 2012)
Dark Matter by Aase Berg, trans. Johannes Göransson (Fall 2012)
The Moon's Jaw by Rauan Klassnik (Fall 2012) 

Link Roundup

Hi everyone!

Our authors and their books have been popping up around the interwebs, and here are a few recent places: 

  • Brandon Shimoda's The Girl Without Arms was just reviewed on The Rumpus. Charles Kruger writes, "I wish I could explain to you, to myself, the effect this language has upon me, but I can only say it makes my skin crawl. In a good way." And for more good reading, you might want to check out the Albums of Our Lives feature, set into motion by Katy Henriksen (wife of Matthew Henriksen, and all around swell gal).
  • One of our favorite blogs to follow, Montevidayo, just posted two articles involving Black Ocean authors Aase Berg (With Deer) and Feng Sun Chen (forthcoming title from Black Ocean in 2012!). Johannes defies any tidy summing up, so you best just read this and this for a discussion that hovers around language, influence, ambiance, accesibility. You won't be sorry.

Beyond the internet realm, Carrie went to Iceland this summer, and rocked it out in her Black Ocean t-shirt. We're all jealous!

We'll be rolling out a few new features on the blog in the next month or so--if there is something you want to see here, please let us know in the comments!

 

Dismantled Catechism

New City Lit has reviewed Matthew Henriksen's ORDINARY SUN. If you haven't picked up this book yet, here's a taste of what you're missing (from Kelly Forsythe's review):

“Ordinary Sun,” separated into nine sections, functions under Henriksen’s idea of a “dismantled catechism,” the breaking down of the ordinary and commonplace into extreme, surprising close-ups of perception. He writes:

Sometimes she’d touch
a body in her empty bed.

A stranger’s face, a dark
spot on the wall, watched
her as if from a mirror

and behind the face a hand
held a brush for her hair.

The rawness of imperfection in this portrait helps the reader to push past the veils of the physical world to enter into a painful but graceful emotional landscape. In the title section, which is also the final portion of “Ordinary Sun,” Henriksen motions for the reader to more actively re-experience with him: “The body moved above the water / and the water was cold. / It made the sirens roar.” His associations become stronger and assertive, though still surreal and immediate.

*****

Matthew will be reading from Ordinary Sun at Nightbird Books on Thursday April 21 at 7pm.