Our friends and heroes at Dzanc Books tell us that The Best of the Web 2009 is now available for pre-order (it will be in stores in late June) at the Dzanc website for $18.00.
The line-up for Best of the Web 2009 includes a kettle of fine stories, flashes, poems and essays, but from Brevity, we are proud to be represented by:
Terese Svoboda – How Catholic – Brevity 28
and
Kathrine Leone Wright – Why – Brevity 28
More info on the anthology and on ordering here.
For the next week or so, we’ll be featuring blog entries from authors found in our newest issue, Brevity 28. The first comes from Terese Svoboda, author of How Catholic:
For maybe twenty years I have been trying to write a short story about the effect of finding two moons of green eye shadow on a towel in my youth. I have also written three poems twisting the memory around, alluding to its larger context. But what was that larger context? Was it only a “family story,” an anecdote worth repeating only once to another relative just to make sure I didn’t imagine it?
I feared nonfiction telling: that would be me. I went into poetry originally to throw the velvet cloak around that persona, or to flaunt the “I” voice in peekaboo. Publishing my memoir last year–Black Glasses Like Clark Kent–where I could skulk around as a detective and refer to myself in relation to my relatives—wasn’t too bad. But only under the duress of my uncle’s suicide and the horrific revelations of his tapes would I have attempted its writing. Yet something about the form felt familiar. Cannibal, my first novel, was called a roman a clef by Vogue. According to Wikipedia, that’s the opportunity to portray personal, autobiographical experiences without having to expose the author as the subject. Think “thinly disguised.” The entry suggests that any material based on personal experience is a roman a clef, and used Heart of Darkness as an example. Huh?
What I do know is that all material needs the fuzziness of time until what’s important remains. Time completed How Catholic, enough to gain perspective on what those two green moons meant, and to find a voice to say what I understood about them in a larger context. To find a formal solution for this narrative in creative nonfiction worked. I’m happy.
Maybe I’ve always been happy.
Next week, BREVITY 28 will fall to earth like an acorn from a truth-telling oak tree. Where else can you find intergalactic dust, two peach-colored poodles, one upturned car, notes on the art of fencing, cake erotica, failed Caesarian sections, missing toddlers, cameos by Tiresias and Oedipus, and the brightest red dress you’ve ever seen? All of it nonfiction, and brought to you by the incomparable likes of Terese Svoboda, J.T. Bushnell, John Calderazzo, K.L. Cook, Brian Doyle, Kate Flaherty, John Griswold, Pat Madden, Leslie F. Miller, Brian Oliu, Rita Rubin, Phil Terman, and Kathrine Leone Wright. Plus new Book Reviews from Debbie Hagan, Joey Franklin, and Liz Stephens and stellar Craft Essays from Barrie Jean Borich and Sherry Simpson.
Stay tuned!
