The venerable Stephen Beachy names Pamela Lu’s Ambient Parking Lot as one of his 2011 favorites, here at LAMBDALITERARY.ORG.

Tan Lin’s Insomnia and the Aunt

…was published in the spring of 2011 as a limited edition artist’s book, with covers designed and letterpress printed by Rebecca Cooling-Mallard and interior composition by Patrick Durgin. As well as gaining notice from, among others, Brooklyn Rail’s artist’s books columnist, and featuring with Printed Matter, the world’s preeminent dealer of publications by artists, Insomnia and the Aunt was then known mainly to an equally “limited edition” of literati. Yet it was nominated for the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award in the summer and enthusiastically lauded in literary journals, such as Constant Critic. Now the book is being re-printed and re-launched as a deluxe paperback book suitable for the trade, libraries, and a general audience of readers. The book uniquely yokes avant-garde risk and biographical intrigue. It is poignant, arch, challenging, and accessible, all at once. Alongside its recent adjunct, the online “Patio and the Index,” Insomnia and the Aunt ushers in a new form of essay-narrative-poem: an “ambient novel.” In Lin’s increasingly influential oeuvre, it extends a project he dubs “ambient stylistics” into the evolving category of literary nonfiction, i.e. “life writing.”

…is an ambient novel composed of black and white photographs, postcards, Google reverse searches, letters, appendices, an index to an imaginary novel, re-runs and footnotes. The aunt in question can’t sleep. She runs a motel in the Pacific Northwest. She likes watching Conan O’Brien late at night. She may be the narrator’s aunt or she may be an emanation of a TV set. Structured like everybody’s scrapbook, and blending fiction with non-fictional events, Insomnia and the Aunt is about identities taken and given up, and about the passions of an immigrant life, rebroadcast as furniture. Ostensibly about a young man’s disintegrating memory of his most fascinating relative, or potentially a conceptualist take on immigrant literature, it is probably just a treatment for a prime-time event that, because no one sleeps in motels, lasts into the late night and daytime slots.

…is one among many works. Tan Lin is the author of Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe, BlipSoak01, Ambience is a Novel with a Logo, Heath (Plagiarism/Outsource), 7 Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking, and Heath Course Pak. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Conjunctions, Artforum, Cabinet, New York Times Book Review, Art in America, and Purple. His video, theatrical and LCD work have been shown at the Marianne Boesky Gallery, Yale Art Museum, Sophienholm Museum (Copenhagen), Ontological Hysterical Theatre, and as part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Soundcheck Series. Lin is the recipient of a Getty Distinguished Scholar Grant for 2004-2005 and a Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writing Grant to complete a book-length study of the writings of Andy Warhol. He has taught at the University of Virginia and Cal Arts, and currently teaches creative writing at New Jersey City University.

ISBN: 978-0-9767364-7-9 / $13.95 / BUY from SPD / BUY from KENNING EDITIONS / BUY from AMAZON

An open house at the one and only non-profit book distributor is a wonderful thing. You can drift through the stacks shopping and enjoying discounts up to %40, there are readings, and snacks; you will be in with the in crowd. It costs nothing but a trip to Berkeley, California’s warehouse district. This year, it also happens to feature Pamela Lu’s very first Bay Area reading in, I think, as much as five years! Read about it here.

Bill Luoma, of Some Math fame, reads with Juliana Spahr in the mighty Spare Room Series in Portland, OR, December 11th. Details are here. The next night in San Francisco, enjoy yet another reading from Waveform at Canessa Park. Details below:

CANESSA PARK READING SERIES

 708 Montgomery Street (at Columbus)

San Francisco, CA 94111

December 12, 2011

Amber DiPietra

Denise Leto

Jai Arun Ravine

Doors open at 7pm. Reading at 7:30pm.

Admission $6. Refreshments.

No one turned away for lack of funds.

*****************

About the readers:

Amber DiPietra is a poet who lives and works as an advocate and peer counselor in the Bay Area disability community. She is also an energy worker and teacher of expressive somatics. Read more about Write To Connect (life writes for radical and everyday embodiments) and her palmetry practice at www.writetoconnect.blogspot.com. Poems and prose pieces by Amber have appeared in Make, A Chicago Literary Magazine, Mirage Period[ica], Tarpaulin Sky, Mrs. Maybe, Monday Night and TRY!. Her work is featured in anthologies such as Somatic Engagement and Beauty Is a Verb. Amber’s chapbookWaveform is a long poem, collaboratively written with Denise Leto. As an occasional performance artist, Amber has done shows with the Olimpias Collective, Axis Dance and recently, a solo piece at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco.

Denise Leto is a poet and Senior Editor at the University of California, Berkeley. A collaborative chapbook, Waveform, written with Amber DiPietra is out from Kenning Editions. Her work has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Beauty is a Verb, Cinco Puntos Press; Somatic Engagement, Chain Links Book Series; The Wolf Magazine, Arts Council of England; Aufgabe; Xantippe; and MELUS: Journal for the Society of Multi-Ethnic Literature in the US. She was an Artist in Residence at Djerassi Resident Artist Program and a Fellow for the University of Michigan’s Research and Practice Symposium on Movement, Somatics and Writing.

Jai Arun Ravine is the author of แล้ว and then entwine (Tinfish Press, 2011), Is This January (Corollary Press, 2010) and The Spiderboi Files. They received an MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University. A recipient of fellowships from ComPeung, Djerassi and Kundiman, their short experimental film on Thai trans-masculinities, Tom/Trans/Thai, recently exhibited at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Thailand. Find Jai online at http://jaiarunravine.wordpress.com/.

If a poet isn’t ranked in the top twenty-five, the feeling goes, why read him or her. Maybe I’m imagining it, this consensus-seeking chasing after the current number one with a bullet; maybe it’s real but also only a reflection of the larger culture. Most of the time I remember to forget it. When I do get that itch to compare compare compare, Bill Luoma’s second full-length collection Some Math reminds me not to care…

At Constant Critic.

Bill Luoma reads with Juliana Spahr at the Spare Room in Portland, OR, December 11th. Details are here.

Moles Not Molar presents

Friday, November 18

8pm

@ Vox Populi Gallery – 319 N 11th St., 3rd Floor

KATE ZAMBRENO‘s first published novel, O Fallen Angel, won Chiasmus Press’ “Undoing the Novel–First Book Contest” and was named as one of the best books of 2010 by Bookslut. Another novel, Green Girl, will be published this October by Emergency Press. Heroines, a critical memoir revolving around the women of modernism, some of which was incubated on her blog Frances Farmer is My Sister, will be published by Semiotext(e)’s Active Agents series in Fall 2012. She is a prose editor at Nightboat Books, and recently curated a series called Prose Event that interrogated the intersection of fiction and the essay for the Belladonna* Collaborative.

JESSE SELDESS recently relocated to Brooklyn from Karlsruhe, Germany. He is the author of two books, Who Opens (Kenning Editions, 2006) and Left Having (Kenning Editions, 2011), as well as chapbooks on Hand Held Editions, Instance Press, Answer Tag Press, and the Chicago Poetry Project Press. His work has recently appeared in the journals The Recluse, EOAGH, Jacket, Little Red Leaves (http://littleredleaves.com/LRL4/Jesse_Seldess.html) <http://littleredleaves.com/LRL4/Jesse_Seldess.html%29> , and out of nothing. Since 2001, he has edited and published Antennae (www.antennae-journal.com <http://www.antennae-journal.com>  <http://www.antennae-journal.com/> ), a journal of experimental writing and language-based performance and music scores.

IRIT REINHEIMER is an artist and media maker based in Philadelphia. In her creative endeavors, she works across disciplines to find the most appropriate media to express and communicate her ideas. This has lead Irit on a journey that began in fine arts with sculptural installations exploring the relationship between women and work, then continued to documentary and experimental film focusing on ideas of identity and loss. Most recently, she has delved into the world of production design for film, where her experience with both installation and video has been put to a new use. Irit is dedicated to her craft and continues to create her own work; her love for community and collective projects often steers her to collaborations. Irit’s films have been screened in the U.S. and abroad.  http://apartment2f.wordpress.com/

voxpopuligallery.org

Red Rover Series

{readings that play with reading}

Experiment #52:

Full Court – Small Press Forum

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6th

7pm / doors lock 7:30pm

**please note change from usual day**

Featuring:

Patrick Durgin

Johannes Göransson

Caroline Picard

Susan M. Schultz

at Outer Space Studio

1474 N. Milwaukee Ave

Chicago, Illinois

suggested donation $4

logistics –

near CTA Damen blue line

third floor walk up

not wheelchair accessible

PATRICK DURGIN is the author of Imitation Poems (Atticus / Finch, 2006), and The Route (with Jen Hofer, Atelos, 2007-8). His poets theater script PQRS will be his next book, due out in 2012. He is the editor of Hannah Weiner’s Open House and The Early and Clairvoyant Journals of Hannah Weiner. He is editor and publisher of Kenning Editions, and teaches critical theory, literature, and writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Kenning Editions @ http://www.kenningeditions.com.

JOHANNES GÖRANSSON is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate, and several books in translation, including works by Aase Berg, Henry Parland and Johan Jönson. He teaches at the University of Notre Dame, co-edits Action Books, and writes for the blog Montevidayo.com.  Action Books @ http://www.actionbooks.org.

CAROLINE PICARD is a writer, artist and performer. Based in Chicago, she is the Senior Editor for the Green Lantern Press. Recent writing and comics have been published in/by art.ltd, Bad at Sports, Proximity Magazine, Seven Stories Press, Artifice Magazine, MAKE Magazine and Pinch. Her first collection of short stories, Psycho Dream Factory (Holon Press, 2011) was released concurrently with a limited edition energy drink, “Happiness Machines”. She makes music/videos with Lady Rollins and manages The Paper Cave, an on-line bookstore curated with select work from independent presses around the world.  The Green Lantern Press @ http://press.thegreenlantern.org.

SUSAN M. SCHULTZ has lived and taught in Hawai`i since 1990.  Her books of poetry include Memory Cards & Adoption Papers (Potes & Poets, 2001), Dementia Blog (Singing Horse, 2008), and (at press now) Memory Cards: 2010-2011 Series.  She’s edited Tinfish Press since 1995 and blogs at http://tinfisheditor.blogspot.com on publishing, Alzheimer’s, and much else.  She’s a lifelong fan of the St. Louis Cardinals. Tinfish Press @ http://tinfishpress.com.

RED ROVER SERIES is curated by Laura Goldstein and Jennifer Karmin.  Each event is designed as a reading experiment with participation by local, national, and international writers, artists, and performers.  The series was founded in 2005 by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin.

Kenning Editions and New Corpse are pleased to announce a reading and talk by poet Jesse Seldess. Plus, The Paper Cave and Kenning Editions pop up shop, on site!

Seldess’ poetry has been critically acclaimed since it first saw wide exposure in the form of his first collection, Who Opens. He will read from his latest book, Left Having, and give a talk on his compositional process, under the working title of “Inconstants and Variables.”

Jesse Seldess recently relocated to Brooklyn from Karlsruhe, Germany. He is the author of two books, Who Opens (2006) and Left Having (2011), both from Kenning Editions. He has also published chapbooks with Hand Held Editions, Instance Press, Answer Tag Press, and the Chicago Poetry Project Press. His work has recently appeared in the journals The Recluse, EOAGH, Jacket, Little Red Leaves, and out of nothing. Since 2001, he has edited and published Antennae, a journal of experimental writing and language-based performance and music scores.

Saturday October 29th, 2011, 7:00 PM at Green Lantern Gallery, 1511 N. Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. Admission is free, along with beer, wine, and refreshments. The gallery is a third floor walk up and is not ADA accessible. This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. Bring extra cash and avail yourself of the best book shop in the whole midwest.

Seldess also reads at the Poetry Project in New York City, November 16th, with Hoa Nguyen, and in the Moles Not Molars series, Philadelphia, November18th, as well as the DC Arts Center November 20th.

Moe’s Books on storied Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, CA, hosts Amber DiPietra and Denise Leto, reading from Waveform. The event is free and begins at 7:30 PM, Tuesday, October 18th. The chapbook will be available for purchase at the store, of course, but if a preview is of interest, you may order one here.

Humboldt State University then features DiPietra and Leto at the culminating event of their “DAMN Week on Disability,” 7:00 PM, Friday, October 21st. The Critical Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies blog at HSU offers full details on every event in the series, here.

Small Press Distribution is offering no less than three Kenning Editions titles among their staff picks for a 40% discount, now through October 15th! Including: Ambient Parking Lot, by Pamela Lu, Some Math, by Bill Luoma, and The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater 1945-1985, edited by Kevin Killian and David Brazil. Click on over to http://www.spdbooks.org/pages/events/staffpickssale.aspx

And don’t forget about these other new titles: Left Having, by Jesse Seldess, Waveform, by Amber DiPietra and Denise Leto, and Insomnia and the Aunt, by Tan Lin. All of these titles can be acquired, with an attractive discount, by subscription.