Easter Rabbit

Brand New Easter Rabbit Cover!

2010-12-17T09:07:00.001-08:00

Here it is, straight off the easel (actually, work bench) from painter extraordinaire Christine Sajecki. Encaustic and photocopy transfer on birch panel. Back cover design by Adam Robinson. Sent to the printers today!

Ready?

2010-11-19T07:09:00.000-08:00

In early 2011, Publishing Genius will do the REPRINT of my book of microfictions, Easter Rabbit. The REPRINT will have an all-new cover from original Easter Rabbit cover maker and brilliant encaustic artist Christine Sajecki. The REPRINT will also include new stories and such. Ready?

I didn't like it

2010-11-19T07:01:00.000-08:00

At Books I Read in 2010, Zachary German didn't like Easter Rabbit. Maybe it's because after I met him here in Baltimore and he gave me his book I didn't send him mine for like 2 months? Nah, just joking. Isn't everybody going to like it. Still, I don't mind the review, as such: "i didn't really like it. wasn't unpleasant to read, just didn't really leave me with much. reminded me sort of of diane williams mixed with david berman. ON ACID!"

Dark Sky Magazine

2010-10-07T14:12:00.001-07:00

Hey, me and microfiction just got interviewed at Dark Sky Magazine by the excellent Brad Green. Great mag, fine interviewer.

2010-09-23T21:44:00.000-07:00

Best New Book by a Local Author

Easter Rabbit by Joseph Young

Microfictionist Joseph Young has whittled the short story down to a few sentences—and often fewer than 50 words. What’s disarming is how effective these stories are in Easter Rabbit. You expect something so terse to feel incomplete, a mere piece of some greater whole, but the stories, moments, relationships, and feelings in these 100 pages end up saying all they need to in an artfully precise use of language.

LINK

Vestal Review Review

2010-08-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

Wow I've been so caught up in some other stuff [see below] that I haven't posted about this cool review at Vestal Review by the hard working Antonios Maltezos. Says Antonios,

"As an admirer of Joseph Young’s work, I’m aware he has collaborated with visual artists, placing his “texts next to their work on gallery walls in various ways.” Quite extra-ordinary considering how the artist, in general, will pair up with his medium for life—the painter with his canvas, the sculptor with his clay, the writer with the printed page; the single-minded devotion to the medium almost religious. But in this age of hybrids, it seems quite natural for Joseph Young to want to manipulate space and time much as the painter does, by capturing a moment that only seems devoid of arc if the reader is unwilling to participate. For the open mind, however, we aren’t simply dropped in the moment, but within the folds of a lifelong struggle for balance and meaning, some measure of reward.

"

Nice!

[Oh, what I've been caught up in: My vampire novel, NAME.]

2-Reviews

2010-03-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

Easter Rabbit just got this really cool and thoughtful review by Mike Young at his very own Noo Journal. He says such smart stuff like,

"These stories tick along with such sentences until the camera starts to melt: the world suddenly understood not through mimetic language but through the imposition of imagination. Conversations invent machines, a spider bite invents a vision of God" and "their job is to permute our circumstances and our language until they’ve uncovered new ways to make our world mysterious again."

Isn't that great? It's poetry itself, those words.

Rabbit also got a review from Stefani R. Maclin, who seems to be a librarian. She says,

"...hidden among these pages are treasures of tiny portraits, slices of life, of love, death, and breath. Cities and heartbreaks both rise from the ashes here, each story grasping at 'starlight... out of reach' with 'small and smaller tries.'"

That's nice too.

Linkner Likes Rabbit

2010-03-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

A fine shout to writer and reader Andy Linker and his blog Outside of a Dog, whereat he writes up the many books he reads. It's quite a nice source of indie and other books. Says Andy on Rabbit, "These are highly intriguing and often strikingly beautiful miniatures. Highly recommended." Thanks!

Hey, Reviews, I've Got to Catch Up

2010-02-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

Easter Rabbit has 3 new reviews since last we checked in. Well, maybe 2 and a half, one is more a succinctly stated opinion than a review. But those are good too!

Number one we have a review and interview at the colorfully lettered and nicely ambitious The Short Review. The interview was conducted by head chief Tania Hershman and the review handled by David Woodruff. Says David, "One gets a sense that the stories of Easter Rabbit are crafted from a sense of music as well as a mystery of daily life, the relationships, tired or conflicted, that help to define us." Also, "Those who liked their fiction well-defined or gobbled up and forgotten after a single reading, will find Easter Rabbit vexing. But in its open-ended form, in its prism-like prose, this is one book that the reader can return to again and again to see new meanings. In that sense, I believe the book is worth far more than its price."

Number two is a review at Ghoti Magazine (you know what that spells, right?) by CL Bledsoe:

"The bottom line is that Young takes situations that seem, mostly, fairly mundane, and breathes meaning into them. A man sees a black rat running through the leaves and this becomes a beautiful moment. Nature reflects experience as a girl feels “wind sliding up her skirt like a friend’s hand.” Young’s stories turn on a dime, taking simple scenes and suddenly exposing them for the powerfully important moments they really are."

Three we have the blog post by Ben White, runner of Nanoism, the Twitter fiction concern. Ben is perhaps less enamored of the book than some others. He says, "With around 80 stories that one could read in under an hour, the collection has the potential to be a numbing read. Many of stories understandably have a similar feel, the sparse dialog of a man and a woman, an image, a setting. ER demands to be read slowly, picked up and put down." Fair enough. He also wonders, fairly enough, if Easter Rabbit, despite it's fiction tab, is not in fact poetry. I've heard that.

NewPages Review

2010-02-02T07:36:00.000-08:00

Easter Rabbit was just reviewed by the ever-so-busy John Madera for the New Pages site. I like the first paragraph a lot:

"With their directness and precision, their attention to what Ezra Pound would call “luminous details,” Joseph Young’s microfictions might be mistaken for Imagist poems, but with their shift away from showing “things” as “things” toward “things” as something else, or, rather, toward portraying both the “thingness” of the thing and of some different “thing,” his miniatures suggest something altogether different. But where they fit is less important than what they do, how they make you feel. In Easter Rabbit’s miniatures, its sharp sentences focused on often mundane details, Young offers epics. Seemingly channeling William Blake, he offers further “auguries of innocence,” further testaments to worlds in granules, heavens in flowers, and – well, suffice to say, these are sentences to linger over."

John also wrote a nice blurb of his review on his blog, where you can find links to other reviews he's done and other projects. You should check out some of these other reviews, too. He's good at what he does.

Easter Fish

2010-01-28T07:33:00.000-08:00

Easter Rabbit got a new review. This time, by the talented and famous Kathy Fish. She had her review at the JMWW blog, right here. From this review, Kathy says, "This is a beautiful collection. These are not stories in the traditional sense and I can’t really compare this writing to any other, which is a very good thing. I feel both smarter and dumber reading Joseph Young’s work, but ultimately I feel…nourished. Because he brings to writing what I go to writing for and that is the beauty and depth of a true artist." I would say to her, you too, what you do too.

Flye and Baker

2010-01-21T09:05:00.000-08:00

I've signed up and nominated myself for the Baker Artist Awards, a Baltimore institution that awards cash prizes to local artists (visual, written, aural, etc). You can vote for me to win the popularity contest part of the award or you can just send good vibes that the judges shall pick me in the juried part of the contest or you can just look at some of the Easter Rabbity stuff I posted.

Second, Michelle Garren Flye has blogged on Easter Rabbit at her blog. She says this provocative thing: "Anybody who tells you you can read a good piece of microfiction in a few seconds is either joking or an idiot." She also talks on my story "Marie Celeste," which was getting talked on at Matchbook too.

Rumble Review Interview

2010-01-13T08:24:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: WOW, I just realized if you click on each of the four Easter Rabbit cover images on the Rumble homepage they take you to a different ER review. Cool!

The ubiquitous and energetic JA Tyler has written a review of Easter Rabbit over at Rumble Magazine. As he says, "Easter Rabbit takes words and makes them mean more, makes them hit us harder, makes us see better how language functions in short breaths, in gasps, in tight fists." JA also interviewed me for the magazine. Plus, check out the great fiction and poetry in the new issue. Nice. Thanks, JA.

A Matchbook Review

2010-01-02T07:24:00.000-08:00

As in all things Matchbook, a thoughtful, closely read review of Easter Rabbit appears on the Matchbook Magazine blog by Edward Mullany. Edward and Matchbook also run, in case you don't know, a popular and lively discussion group on Fictionaut. From the review:

"At his best, Young pressures language until the plot he is describing - even a plot that is ordinary - is suffused with something sacred. His use of white space, between title and story, and between lines of the story itself, is bold enough to relieve us of the sort of sedentary composure which some habits of reading effect in us. Yet it is also careful enough that the traces of the story are retained.

"Easter Rabbit is composed of three sections - the title section (which is the longest), Deep Falls, and God Not Otherwise. It is possible to conceive of the book as a sort of literary triptych - a treatment of religious ideas in a secular world."

That last is really neat.

Blog-A-Sphere

2010-01-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

So...there's ER activity on the blogs, starting with this cryptographic message out of Derek White's 5cense blog for xmas day: "some books clustter useless knowledge & words in your headpool—others like this one accumulate such disparate junk DNA & bundle it into tidy packages—objets d'art—so you can move on."

There's also the Big Other with other. John Madera so goodly gives Easter Rabbit a nod in his post My Favorite Books in 2009 (in alphabetical order). Then, just a couple days later, John Dermot Woods, 5 Books Published in 2009 that Wrecked My Brain a Little. John says, "This is an IMPORTANT book. Some reviewer predicted early in Richard Brautigan’s career that he was creating a new genre, that one day we’d read novels, poems, short stories, and 'brautigans.' He was right, even if common parlance has yet to catch up. Enter the new mode of writing: 'joe-youngs.'"

And, Brad Green at Elevate the Ordinary gives Easter Rabbit a year end entry in A Year in Reading. My title is in bold in Brad's systemology but I'll let you visit to see what that means.

Dispatch Litereview Gives Away the Rabbit

2010-01-01T08:16:00.000-08:00

The FEB10 Drawing Event

Very simple, actually. All you must do is subscribe to the mailing list, which you can do either by clicking the link in the upper left corner of this page which says "subscribe" or by sending a blank e-mail to subscribe@litareview.com. If you are already on the mailing list then you are already in the running. If you are not on the mailing list on the night of 12 February 2010, then you will not be entered into the drawing. Very simple, we believe.

Such Faster Awkward

2009-12-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Over at The Faster Times, the excellent Michael Kimball has interviewed me, A Kind of Planned Awkwardness. In the interview, MK asks me about all 30 words of my story, "Eleven," which appears in Easter Rabbit. This was one of the most fun interviews I've had the pleasure of doing.

Wow, Megan Lavelle Writes Easter

2009-12-09T07:29:00.000-08:00

Megan Lavelle, artist, designer, curator, writer, photographer of first class wrote an essay on Easter Rabbit for the Baltimore art blog, BmoreArt, here. It's such a wonderful piece of thought and image and idea. You should also check out the excellent How We Dwell, a huge project curated by Megan spanning over a year in which she invited artists of all kinds to live in her apartment for a weekend. Oh, and this great piece with pop sickle sticks. Surf around her site!

From her essay, "The relationship between text and reader becomes transactional, how much are we willing to give and how much do we want to take. The small texts draw us in and the white space requires us to go beyond the page, beyond the comfort of the words and to our own black box."

Thanks, Megan.

Catch These

2009-12-08T12:20:00.000-08:00

Since last post, there has been some new rabbit news.

Christopher Higgs wrote up his Notes On Joseph Young's Easter Rabbit over at HGiant. Chris keeps the wildly eclectic blog Bright Stupid Confetti, which is a lot about art. He's also a Publishing Genius label mate, with his chapbook Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously. In his Notes On Easter Rabbit Chris says, "I really had a good time reading Young’s sentences…this is why I come to literature: not for story, but for sentences…and this book delivers." He also says, "The way I picture this book in my head is as if the entire story had been painted as a mosaic onto a stained glass window and then the window shattered and Young came and glued the pieces back together," which is pretty cool.

Over in his post at Big Other, Little Easter War Machine Rabbit, J.A. Tyler reminds us on a pretty cool book called Little War Machine, put out by Ravenna Press. That book, says, J.A., reminds him of Easter Rabbit, "well-written, tightly-wound, intensely-structured."

And then there's been a variety of activities at Goodreads, with tiny reviews of Easter Rabbit by Brad Green and John Dermot Woods, plus a reiteration of her Easter Rabbit cover blurb by Amelia Gray. Says Brad, "Well worth multiple reads." Says John, "An incredibly new take on literature. Joe's idea of what language can comprise a narrative and his experiments with brevity gave me a feeling similar to the first time I read Gary Lutz's Stories in the Worst Way."

Christoper Newgent Live Blogs The Bunny

2009-12-03T14:09:00.000-08:00

Christopher Newgent has all along been a great supporter, of Easter Rabbit, of Publishing Genius, and of the wide world of literature in general. Now, he's live blogged his reading of the book, here, with cool observations and smart words. Thanks 10 thousand pounds, Chris.

Easter Rabbit Wordle

2009-12-01T12:59:00.000-08:00

Christine Gets Heavy

2009-12-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

"There’s really only one [story in Easter Rabbit, 'Parallax,'] I don’t like at ALL, it bugs me every time I see it or hear him read it. The ambiguity in it feels so cheap and easy. With the last sentence in the story, the main man looks around at these people he 'has.' The end. It makes me want to scream at Joe. Has?? What a dumb word to end a good story on. He just purposely selfishly withholds everything from us there, with no image, no feeling, and I don’t even want to bother to imagine what 'has' possibly refers to. He gives nothing, I give nothing. Has. Fucking bullshit.

"When I love one of his stories, which is most of the time, it's because it's a small puddle reflecting a tall stand of trees, with complete and startling accuracy."

--Christine Sajecki

Easter Rabbit Release Party

2009-11-25T08:43:00.000-08:00

Baltimore author Joseph Young is celebrating the release of his book of microfictions, Easter Rabbit, by bringing together a diverse team of musicians, performers, and visual artists to add their vision to the book’s stories. The party is scheduled for December 12 at The Hexagon, 1825 N Charles Street, starting at 7 pm.

Easter Rabbit, published by local small press Publishing Genius, comprises 86 extremely short stories, with some stories as short as 17 words. At the release party, a team of actors will dramatize a dozen of the stories, while a group of painters and other artists will show work inspired by the book. Local band Sweatpants will be on hand to play music composed especially for the event.

Artists included in the show are Lauren Boilini, Graham Coreil-Allen, Kathy Fahey (designer of poster seen in this post), Luca DiPierro, Paul Jeanes, Magnolia Laurie, and Easter Rabbit cover artist Christine Sajecki. Actors are Linda Franklin and Caleb Stine, directed by Nancy Murray. Sweatpants is Adam Robinson, Jamie Gaughran-Perez, and David NeSmith.

David Peak and Adam Robinson Talk It Out

2009-11-23T19:34:00.001-08:00

As I said earlier, David Peak posted a review of Easter Rabbit over at his blog, Ghost Factory. In response to that review, Adam Robinson posted something of his own. David then made a response to that. It's an interesting conversation between two smart guys that has implications beyond just my book. People interested in really short fiction or writing in general might want to get in on it.

Peak Reviews Rabbit

2009-11-23T06:05:00.000-08:00

David Peak, writing books of Surface Tension (Blazevox), writes a review of Easter Rabbit over at Ghost Factory. Says David, "Pieces like "Disclose/Agape," "The Willful Child," "The Idealist"--these stories are worth the price-tag alone. You will read them again and again. You will. And something will sneak up on you, something long forgotten, the back of your head will fall out and you will remember the time you took that big breath and really felt the heaviness of all your surroundings." That's a nice sentence. Thanks, David.

Quickly Reviewed, Said

2009-11-18T04:51:00.000-08:00

Greg Gerke, author of There's Something Wrong with Sven, posted his review of Easter Rabbit at Big Other. Says Greg, "[These micros] live in the actions of the characters, in the details of the river or forest, and in the Beckettian/Pinteresque bits of dialogue. They are story and poetry and they describe a universe in mourning for its own mysteries, a human race run down but capable of enchantment." Thanks, Greg.

Cami Park, writer of many good things, blogged her reading of Easter Rabbit at Mungo. A hugely kind thing she says is "these writings do what art does, encompass the familiar, the emotion of everyday life fully and without artifice. A pan in the snow, a quarter on the back of a hand– I had no idea such things could make me feel so much." Thanks, Cami.

Christopher Newgent--author and interviewer--is getting ready to live blog his attempt to read Easter Rabbit in a single sitting. Meanwhile, he is holding a contest to give away an Easter Rabbit postcard. Simple enough, tell him the meaning of life. Good luck!

Variety Spice, Reviews, News

2009-11-16T20:11:00.000-08:00

In other news, Easter Rabbit has been reviewed over at Randall Brown's blog, Flash Fiction dot net, by Jess Bouchard. One of the great things about this review is that Jess's 8-year-old daughter has a say too. Says the 8 year old, about one of my stories, “I know this piece is deep. I don’t know why. I just do.” Thanks, Jess and her daughter.

Easter Rabbit also seems to hit a chord with domesticated animals. The cats at Lauren Ellen Scott's house are not only cute but don't mind posing with the book. I can't think of any stories in Easter Rabbit with cats in them, but maybe they'll like the plentiful birds.

At the last, Easter Rabbit gets a mention from Roxane Gay in her interview at The Collagist, saying, kindly, she's looking forward to its imminent arrival.

The Easter Rabbit Interviewed on The Signal

2009-11-06T16:24:00.000-08:00

Aaron Henkin of WYPR, our local NPR station, interviewed me about Easter Rabbit and the workings of microfiction on the radio show The Signal. I also read some selections from the book. The podcast is here. All the segments from the show are well worth listening to, but for your info, I'm at approximately minute 25 in the show.

Lucky We Got 'Em

2009-11-06T15:15:00.000-08:00

And now, your Goodreads update...

Michael Kimball, who is going to read Easter Rabbit, has a wide net. For start, he wrote Dear Everybody, a novel so good, it really is. For next is his world famous project Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard), which was talked about on NPR. After that, he works with Luca Dipierro on making films, Little Burn Films. After again, he interviews writers at Faster Times, such as Gary Lutz and Rachel Sherman. That's a lot though there's more.

Melanie LaBarge, from Albany, wants to read Easter Rabbit. Her favorite writer is Shane Jones, and I think that's not a coincidence; Light Boxes is dedicated to a Melanie. I'm guessing she's the Melanie too that's a massage therapist, which is very right livelihood.

Chuy Boca seems to moonlight as Derek White. Derek is fond of seafood--he runs the excellent Calamari Press and the fine magazine Sleepingfish. His book, Poste Restante, was reviewed at The Believer, where Ross Simonini says, "White demonstrates the elasticity of [flash fiction] and how the compressed format can allow for some of the wildest creative leaps in new fiction."

Stephanie Johnson is the author of One of These Things Is Not Like the Others, which is stories from Keyhole Books. One of those stories is "A Case Study in Accidents," originally over at Contrary Magazine. Stephanie has live e-readings for the stories, too. Adam Robinson (right, that one) interviewed her at HTML Giant.

Micah Cash is a painter. I know his painting, and he was good enough to let me hang a work of his in a show I co-curated. He was interviewed by Tom Brown, where Micah says, "My choices of materials are always very specific; usually chosen for their metaphorical and physical properties in relation to the emotive elements I want to convey." This sounds very smart and in line with what I know of his evocative work.

Goodreads Has Been A While

2009-10-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

New people reading or to-reading Easter Rabbit from Goodreads:

Heather Christle is the author of The Difficult Farm, a collection of poems published by Octopus Books. I'm waiting for it in the mail. Heather is either In The Library With The Wrench or you are. She's got poems in GlitterPony and 1 of them has 10 parts. A broadside of "Barnstormer" is at Nor By Press.

Blake Butler. Books like Scorch Atlas, from Featherproof, and Ever, from Calamari. "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." —Gary Lutz. And HTML Giant.

William Walsh, Attleboro, is going to-read Easter Rabbit. He wrote Questionstruck: A Collection of Question-based Texts Derived from the Books of Calvin Trillin and Without Wax: A Documentary Novel, both with colons. Rain Taxi and Blake Butler (see above) wrote about Without Waxxx: "Without Wax is full of the electric, the taboo, the sad bizarre. There's no doubt Walsh knows what he's doing."

Jamie Gaughran-Perez is Baltimore, my friend, definitely Very Most Good. He just wrote something at the really interesting Wunderkammer with pictures of kids, and Jamie knows kids. He's one of the people at Narrow House and Sweatpants.

Last, no least, is Ken Baumann. Blench: A Music
will be at New York Tyrant and Internal Dialog is already at Lamination Colony. He's editing No Posit and co-editing No Colony, yes. He's even got an IMDb page, hugging this girl.

Fictionaut Interview

2009-10-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

Meg Pokrass interviewed me over at Fictionaut yesterday, which see it here. Meg lives in San Francisco with rats, and can be read about at Michael Kimball Writes Your Life on a Postcard. She's got one thing at Annalemma and some at Canopic Jar and Thieves Jargon. Jürgen Fauth is behind Fictionaut.

Not Strictly Easter Rabbit (but probably close enough)

2009-10-12T11:35:00.001-07:00

First, the editors over at Grey Sparrow Journal have nominated my 5 Micros for a Pushcart. Thanks, editors! Take a look at a couple flash fictions by Stefanie Freele from the Grey Sparrow archives, here.

Second, Ravi Mangla was good enough to ask me to participate in his Recommended Reading series. Beside keeping RR, Ravi writes at such places as Storyglossia and SmokeLong.

Interview by David Erlewine (with weird Luke Wilson interjections)

2009-10-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

At his blog of all things fiction, Whizby Fiction, David asks me such well-researched and interesting questions about Easter Rabbit. Check it. There you can also see his Goodreads review.

David, he's a lawyer and a tireless writer and instigator of interesting writing things. e.g., he's now flash fiction editor of JMWW, from which I have no doubt interesting things will come. Another, he's at the front edge of Twiction, as shown by this piece on MSNBC. There are too many of his stories out there in the world to even imagine. Here's just a few: @ Pindeldyboz, @ Monkeybicycle, @ Hobart, @ elimae.

Oh, Blogs! & et Cetera

2009-10-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

For today's roundup, we first present John Dermot Woods, working over there at, you guessed it, John Dermot Woods dot com. He says fine things about the Easter Rabbit book trailer, "This is the simplest piece of beauty I’ve looked upon in a while." John has a great novel out called The Complete Collection of people, places & things, by BLAZEVOX. I heard him read from it, and it's funny and sincere, and it's got lovely drawings also by John. See La Petite Zine and also Lamination Colony.

Next, The Idiom by Christopher Newgent. Over there he says he's going to take Publishing Genius and me up on our challenge: read Easter Rabbit in one sitting, get your money back. Christopher might even liveblog his attempt. He's got nice stuff in nice places, such as, "At the Fire Scene" and They Are My City. He was in Top 50 for wigleaf.

Ok, on to Goodreads...

Sasha Fletcher has said he'll read it. I know he was an Everyday Genius, a la fovea, and will be a Mudlucious. We walked to get beer once.

Amy lives in Alexandria, VA. She likes Ray Bradbury and Aimie Bender, among others.

Matthew Simons is the Man Who Couldn't Blog, and another good to-reader of Easter Rabbit. He is also a t-shirt, and he is his very moving book, A Jello Horse, by Publishing Genius. Check out the review at The Believer. He is influenced by "peaches." Read something good on 5_Trope.

Jason DeBoer is in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work has appeared in nice printy places like The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, and Rosebud, and electron places like Mississippi Review and Failbetter. His novel Stupor, if like his other nice work, is good and should be found a home.

Ah, Rusty Barnes. You and I don't have to even look to know he edits for the fantastic Night Train. Still, we can know that he is the author of Breaking It Down, a collection of flash fiction from Sunnyoutside. Also, good things to look forward to, 3 poems at Dead Mule and a story at A Trunk of Delirium.

Rauan Klassnik, all the way from South Africa, "collects and loves." He has prose poems in a book called Holy Land, from Black Ocean. Gary Young, who I think is probably the same one who used to live in Baltimore, says about Holy Land, "His poems—dreamlike fables that conflate the domestic and quotidian with the dangerous and the perverse—are bathed in tears and blood." Something else is Ringing, which is a free chapbook and illustrated in a really nice way.

Well, Shane Jones. He's got a book, Light Boxes, blowing up. Hipster Book Club says "Gorgeously surreal and touching," and they're not the only ones. Originally from Publishing Genius, it's due out in a second from Penguin Books. Also, in case you don't know, Spike Jonze has said he'll make a movie of the book, bringing in the pretty awesome Ray Tintori to direct. Year of the Liquidator is the new press from Shane and Blake Butler--great. Wow, I also didn't know til now that he blogged Easter Rabbit. Thanks!

Finally, John Dermot Woods, like up above, also put Easter Rabbit on his to-read list. Here's one more for Woods: His comic chapbook, The Remains, is forthcoming from Doublecross Press.

Miscellany Here and There

2009-10-07T11:52:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: I discovered after making this post that David Peak, over at Ghost Factory, posted the book trailer for Easter Rabbit, which I think is nice of him. Ghost Factory is also a magazine that David edits and looks really neat. The Rocket's Red Glare is a sci-fi book that David has out by Leucrota Press. Why not read this poem at Kill Author?

So first of all, Cami Park, over at the elegant Mungo, has kind cross-holiday remarks about Easter Rabbit in her post, Easter At Christmas. For one thing, Cami is a bigtime contributor to a cool idea called For Every Year, like this, so please look at that. Then, how about something from Pank?

Next, Josh Kleinberg, working from Missoula, Montana, said a really heart-warming thing about indie publishing on his blog of a very interesting name, ...///.///../.././/./////...///. I mean, if I can just thank someone for being nice enough to buy Easter Rabbit and it makes people that glad about indie publishing, then I'll thank them! Check out Josh's work at Dogzplot and Tulip.

Close Calls with Nonsense is a poetry blog by Harvard prof Stephen Burt. He makes some odd, interesting, and kind comments on the book trailer for Easter Rabbit, as well as on 800 numbers. He has a book the same name as his blog, Close Calls With Nonsense: Reading New Poetry from Graywolf Press.

Thirdly, new people at Goodreads putting Easter Rabbit on their read lists:

Justin Sirois is doing his blog Secondary Sound, which is also one of his books, by BlazeVOX. Another of his books is the no-vowel MLKNG SCKLS, which Brian Evenson says, "A tight, spare and quietly tense gem of a book.” Look at the review at Bookslut.

Mike Young, we talked about him. He edits NOO Journal. He has a chapbook that's only a dollar, MC Oroville's Answering Machine, which is a crazy bargain. Mike Young is really good.

Goodblogsread

2009-10-01T06:38:00.000-07:00

A few new Goodfolks have said they will Goodread my Goodrabbit, as follows:

Kathy Fish lives in Colorado. Her work is published or is forthcoming in Quick Fiction, FRiGG, Night Train, Spork, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, New South, Storyglossia, Smokelong Quarterly, RE:AL, [sic] literary journal, Cranky, elimae, Per Contra, Sleepingfish and elsewhere. You can also read a review of her book, A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness, which she co-chapped with three other writers, at Quick Fiction.

Greg Gerke lives in Buffalo. His work has or will appear in Gargoyle, Rosebud, Fourteen Hills, Night Train, Flash Forward Press 2009 Anthology and others. There’s Something Wrong With Sven, a book of short fiction, is out from Blaze Vox Books.

Tracey, who lives in the UK, is interested in "cooking, dogs, computer, reading." She has a cute dog and two teenagers, who are likely cute too.

Sarah Harste has a love affair with letters. So also, she's a college student "who is quickly becoming addicted to the online world of journals and blogs." This, by her excellent blog, is very true.

Finally, we've seen him before, Jason Jordon and His Blog have a good thing to say about Easter Rabbit and also the preorder of Put Your Head in My Lap (Future Tense Books), stories by the major time talent Claudia Smith.

Thomas Spande

2009-09-26T09:17:00.000-07:00

Painter Thomas Spande is going to trade me this painting for a copy of Easter Rabbit. This is so lucky!

Pank/Bell/Goodreads

2009-09-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

The blog from Pank Magazine included Easter Rabbit in their "Five Things, It's Friday" post. They also linked Shellie Zacharia's new book, Now Playing, which is on preorder from Keyhole.

Over at Matt Bell's blog, Matt in all kindness reprints my story, "Valentine," which is included in Easter Rabbit. Matt is behind the super new, super great magazine The Collagist.

At Goodreads, some new folks have put Easter Rabbit on their to-read lists:

P.H. Madore runs the magazine, Dispatch Litareview. Ellen Frances says, "[P. H. Madore] is nice."

We just heard about Matt Bell above. Here's some more though: Matt Bell is the author of two chapbooks, The Collectors and How the Broken Lead the Blind, and has had fiction published recently in Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, Meridian, Monkeybicycle, and Keyhole. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI.

Peter Cole is the editor of Keyhole Magazine. He also does Nashville Is Reads. He also does a lot of stuff.

J. Michael Wahlgren has Gold Wake Press. If you click his name, you'll see things about old cameras and poetry. His book Credo is forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press.

Ryan W. Bradley is currently working on his MFA in creative writing from Pacific University. His poetry and fiction has been published or is forthcoming in The Oregonian, A Thousand Faces, Third Wednesday, Yippee Magazine, and Gander Press Review. He has also "pumped gas."

Blogs

2009-09-23T22:27:00.000-07:00

Some people have been good enough to post about Easter Rabbit on their blogs.

Paula Bomer tells us about the Easter Rabbit preorder on her fittingly eponymous blog, Paula Bomer. Fittingly, she tells us, "I'm a writer." After having seen her read at the 510 Series here in Baltimore, I can say "and a good one!"

Meanwhile, at more blogs more fittingly named, J.A. Tyler, at J.A. Tyler blog, writes, "EASTER RABBIT by joseph young - a collection of micro-fictions that promises to pummel & overwhelm." Read the excerpt, "the ostrich," from his novella The Zoo, A Going.

Finally, Adam Robinson writes about this blog on his blog. Adam says, "Joe Young is keeping a funny blog about press for Easter Rabbit. I don't know why I think it's funny, maybe because it's so blatantly promotional. It seems like if you come within 100 e-feet of the book, like comment on it somewhere or decline writing about it for your ping pong blog or ADD IT TO YOUR GOODREADS PAGE, Joe will write, like, a microbio about you."

Adam has a book coming out some time from Narrow House that's going to be amazing.

HTML Giant

2009-09-23T09:04:00.000-07:00

There's a bit of noise about Easter Rabbit over at HTML Giant. Thanks, Blake, thanks, everybody.

Mike Young says, "joe young has been one of my favorite “online writers” for 5+ years

i published one of his stories in the first issue of noo: “domestic”

joe young walked me kindly to a strange and lovely comic book store but didn’t go inside with me because he had to go swimming

this is also an accurate summary of his prose

joe young rocks"

Josh Maday says, "Joe Young’s collection is, of course, excellent. If you read it once, you’ll read it twice, at least (I have my sources). Young’s microfictions function like emergency life rafts in that he gets this ostensibly small bit of material into your head and then pulls the cord and something huge unfolds.

Well, I gave that metaphor a good beating.

Anyway, I’m excited to see this book."

Goodreads

2009-09-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

A few folks have added Easter Rabbit to their to-read lists, for which I'm really greatful.

Jason Jordan holds an MFA from Chatham University. His forthcoming books are Cloud and Other Stories (Six Gallery Press, 2009) and Powering the Devil's Circus: Redux (Six Gallery Press, 2009). His prose has appeared online and in print in over forty literary magazines. Additionally, he’s Editor-in-Chief of decomP. You can visit him at his blog at poweringthedevilscircus.blogspot.com.

Lesley C. Weston: "I write to live and live to have things to write about."

Josh Maday lives in Michigan. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in New York Tyrant, Apostrophe Cast, IsReads, Phoebe, Lamination Colony, Action Yes, Barrelhouse, Dark Sky Magazine, Everyday Yeah, Opium Magazine, No Colony, Thieves Jargon, NANO Fiction, and elsewhere.

Carl Annarummo runs The Greying Ghost. He is runs a cassette label dedicated to odd noises and found sounds. Extensive info on these two projects, as well as his blog, etc... can be found at Airforce Joyride.

Goodreads

2009-09-21T03:50:00.000-07:00

My publisher, Adam Robinson, added Easter Rabbit to Goodreads, the social networking site for readers. Writer J.A. Tyler was kind enough to put Easter Rabbit on his to-read list. He is founding editor of mud luscious / ml press and the author of SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (ghost road press, 2009), INCONCEIVABLE WILSON (scrambler books, 2009), and IN LOVE WITH A GHOST (willows wept press, 2010).

Table Tennis Blog

2009-09-21T03:41:00.001-07:00

I decided to broaden my outreach with Easter Rabbit to blogs and bloggers of all kinds. The folks at Table Tennis Blog weren't interested in the book, but were kind enough to reply to my inquiry. Visit them for all sorts of information about table tennis, "The most under-rated sport in existence."