Tag Archives: bryan coffelt

A Weekend of I Remember

Posted on January 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

This weekend, over at the Future Tense Books Facebook page and also on the new I Remember fan page, you can post your own I Remember. I love the whole I Remember form and often have student do it when I teach workshops and visit classrooms. It’s a pretty great writing prompt that is easy to get into but has the power and potential to result in multi-faceted work.

During a recent workshop that I taught in Seattle, I told students that memory is more important than story when it comes to writing about your life. The pressure of building a “traditional” story (beginning, middle, and end) is often too much pressure when the fact is this: in real life things don’t often unfold that simply.

So go check it out over on the Facebook, or if you want do some tweeting about it, write your own 140 character or less I Remember with a hashtag of #Irememberbook so I can go find them all. This is all to help us get the word out about the remarkable new Future Tense release, I Remember by Shane Allison (which is inspired by the Joe Brainard 1970 book of the same name).

Book, me, giant cat

Thanks for participating!

In other news, the upcoming Chloe Caldwell book is now available for pre-order as well. We’re doing the final edits on that book as I type (seriously–the Google doc is open in another tab!).

And oh, hey–look! I have a new poem on Housefire. And I’m reading at If Not For Kidnap next Friday with Bryan Coffelt, Edward Mullany, and a special secret guest who may have been mentioned previously in this post!

See y’all soon!

 

 

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2011 is Dead. Long Live 1997.

Posted on December 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

Hey–First off, I have new little stories at Unshod Quills and Hart House Review!

And since 2011 is just about over, I thought I should post a little year-end thingamajig. A few of my favorite things:

Novels: Donald Ray Pollack’s The Devil All the Time and Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers were both pretty kick-ass rough and tumble kind of novels and both steeped in a dark Americana style.

Mr. deWitt

Short story collection: How many times do I have to tell you. Lutz is a master. Divorcer simply destroys.

Memoir: Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy. So, yeah, it was all popular like ten years ago but I just finally read it and it’s pretty awesome. Some people say the Ann Patchett book, Truth & Beauty (about her friendship with Grealy) is even better. Can’t wait to read that one. I’m sad that Grealy is not around anymore.

Poetry: Gregory Sherl is the new leading man of the drug-addled emo poetry scene. Does that make it sound bad? I hope not. Because it’s beautiful. He’s also kind of like the Rob Pollard of the lit world now too–so many books coming out (including Monogamy Songs from Future Tense, summer 2012), so many words coming out of him.

Surprise Manuscript: Chloe Caldwell sent me a query in 2010 that piqued my interest enough to have her send me more stuff in 2011. In that short amount of time, her essays became even more powerful and I signed her on for a Future Tense release in spring of 2012. Legs Get Led Astray is gonna kick your butt and give you a heartache. Helping her edit her essays the past couple of months has been a constant thrill. She’s my favorite writer of personal essays. Watch out for her!

Movies: Oh, man. Has it been a shitty stretch of years for film? It feels like the quality of movies is down lately. I did really like Drive (like everyone else, I know) and Buck was great as well. My favorite DVD release was definitely Dogtooth, the strange and brilliant Greek film about a fucked-up family in a world all their own.

TV: There are many shows that I once really liked and have lost interest in (Dexter, Weeds, maybe even American Horror Story already) but the ones that have stayed awesome are Breaking Bad and Mad Men (in other words, the usual suspects). The saddest goodbye this year was for Friday Night Lights, one of the greatest and most realistic shows about small town living and family life to ever be on TV. Luckily though, FNL writer Jason Katims also does the AWESOME show Parenthood, which has a lot of the same great qualities of FNL. I never miss it–and yeah, I have a crush on Lauren Graham. So what?

Lauren

Music: I feel like I got more and more behind on the music scene this year. I’m just not as on top of it as I used to be. I remember people would ask me, ten or fifteen years ago: How do you find out about all these cool bands that you listen to? I would usually answer that I hung out at listening stations a lot, had friends with record store jobs, and that I read a lot of music magazines (NME and Melody Maker, Copper Press, Spin, or whatever). Now my answer is: the library. I get stuff at the library all the time. Just recently, I snagged a CD by Sarah Jaffe, thinking it was my friend Sara Jaffe. It wasn’t, but now I have a new favorite singer. Also discovered this year: Ayvett Brothers, Blind Pilot, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and I got to interview The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy and Jenny Conlee for Relix Magazine, which was cool. My 17-year-old son has reached the point where he’s listening to all these weird bands I’ve never even heard of.

The Decemberists

There were a lot of other personal highlights in 2011 as well. Getting married to B. Frayn Masters in January was a beautiful moment that keeps turning into more beautiful moments.

Married Bliss Attack!

Now come on, 2012!

I’m reading at If Not For Kidnap on a special Friday night edition, January 20th. I’m joined by Bryan Coffelt, poet, designer, Future Tense co-hort, and 49ers fan. There will also be Edward Mullany, a musical guest, and a secret special surprise reader at this event. Not to mention booze. House readings: They’re the best.

Alright, folks. Have a great Christmas and New Year.

love,

Kevin

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Marriage, Staples, Freaks…

Posted on January 27, 2011 | 2 Comments

Alright, 2011! It only took you two weeks to change my life!

On January 15th, I got married to the beautiful B. Frayn Masters.

B. Frayn Masters Sampsell

I will put up some more wedding photos soon, I hope. Just waiting for friends to send their pics from the ceremony.

You may know B. Frayn from her smash hit storytelling series, Back Fence PDX, or her own writing. If not, get with the program, because everything she does is golden. Her next big show is Entertainment For People 4, which is on February 23rd at The Woods.

In other event news, I’ve been organizing the next Smallpressapalooza, the annual celebration of small press writers at Powell’s Books. This year includes folks like James Gendron, Nicole Georges, Jennifer Denrow, Alissa Nutting, and Suzanne Burns. More details on that as it gets closer.

Speaking of small press, I wrote this article for The Center For Fiction’s new website about how to start your own little press. It’s pretty much a behind the scenes look at what I’ve been doing for the past couple of decades (stapling, stapling, stapling).

The newest book on Future Tense though, is a fancy paperback tome called The Book of Freaks by Jamie Iredell. It will be out really soon, but in the meantime, the book’s trailer (created by cover artists Bryan Coffelt and Brian David Smith) has been creating a buzz with various mentions on blogs and international newspapers. Check it out.

Jamie will be touring soon for the book, doing a bunch of west coast readings with Mike Young, one of my favorite young writers out there. Watch out for that. Their Portland stop will be March 5th.

Alrighty, folks. I’ll be back with an update in early February.

In the meantime, I have been tweeting a little more these days–most recently about fashion! One of my favorite trivial things to be cranky about. Come follow me!

Stay warm!

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Video Action!

Posted on November 23, 2010 | Leave a comment

Earlier this year I set up a reading for three great poets–Emily Kendal Frey, Evelyn Hampton, and Bryan Coffelt. I made a special effort to write funny intros for each person (they were recently published at Lamination Colony!).

It was a beautiful time at Ampersand in Northeast Portland. And look: there’s video to prove it.

Thanks to Bryan and B. Frayn for the camera help and the uploading.

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Return of Haiku! Plus…Laminate Me!

Posted on October 29, 2010 | 2 Comments

Hey–just a quick note to say that Haiku Inferno (me, along with B. Frayn Masters, Elizabeth Miller, and Frank D’Andrea) are performing at the Portland Rally to Restore Sanity event tomorrow. I think we go on around 2:30. Our set is pretty short (it is haiku after all), so don’t be late. We’re gonna do haiku about the Tea Party, Juan Williams, and Chris Dudley to name a few.

It’s been over a year since our last show and I’m a little rusty on my haiku writing. It’s taking me forever to write these little buggers. So please come out and cheer us on so that my hard work is rewarded!

In other news, I am excited to have some weird little stories up at Lamination Colony. I always wanted to be on this site (run by Blake Butler, who is probably my favorite tweeter on the planet) and now my dream has come true. And it’s a good thing too–this LC is the last one.

If these stories sound familiar, it’s because they were written as introductions at a reading earlier this year at Ampersand.

ACP stuff! I did a quickee interview recently for this blog.

And thanks to all the students of Rebecca Brown’s writing class at University of Washington (and especially RB herself!) for reading ACP and enjoying it. I love to hear about students reading my work. Thank you!

Fresh new work! I’m reading at the Tangent Reading Series on November 6th. I’ll be with Mark Wallace and K. Lorraine Graham. I will be reading from my new fiction project (a novel told in tiny stories!) called This Is Between Us. I’m very excited to share this work-in-progress.

Contest! I am the judge for the Burnside Review Fiction Contest. Details here.

I’ll write more next month. Have a great Halloween!

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Post-Party Regrets

Posted on October 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

Last Friday’s 20th birthday party was a great night full of drinking, cake, and friends (not to mention Mike Daily’s cool bike stunt/toast).

B. Frayn Masters parades one of the cakes around.

We packed over 150 people into Disjecta and had a lot of fun showing off our history of books and artifacts on two big tables.

One of two tables of stuff on display.

But of course, as is sometimes the case, I realized later I made a few goofs and should have given some more shout-outs from the stage. I guess that’s what happens when you’re trying to figure out a working order for a dozen readers.

There were two people who didn’t make it to the stage. Suzanne Burns made the drive all the way up from Bend, Oregon but dropped out of the line-up later in the night when she started to not feel well. I regret that she didn’t get on stage. A couple of days ago, she posted a note on her Facebook page with a copy of the story/Future Tense tribute she was going to read. Go check it out if you’re friends with her there. Thanks for being there, Suzanne.

Michael Walsh was the other person at the event who didn’t make it on stage. I published two of Michael’s poetry chapbooks in the mid 90s and was always a big fan of his work. It was great to see him at the party and he was even wearing one of the very first Future Tense T-shirts ever produced. It was one that I made, also in the mid 90s, that said: “Corporate Poetry Still Sucks.” But even though Michael didn’t make it on stage, at least we got to see our old pal, Richard Meltzer (Richard wrote an intro to Michael’s chapbook, Paper or Plastic) .

Richard Meltzer's reading from his chapbook, Holes, was a highlight.

Of course, there are a lot of other people that I want to thank for my twenty years of publishing though I neglected to at the party. People like former Powell’s small press mavens Vanessa Renwick and Marty Kruse–two people whose supportive value can not be measured. As well as Chloe Eudaly from Reading Frenzy (I gave the shop a plug but not her by name like I should have).

Future Tense authors Brandon Freels and Kurt Eisenlohr were also there, and while they’re both too shy to get on a stage with a microphone, I want to say thank you to them now. They’ve both been a big help with many Future Tense projects. Also, my interns, past and present, especially Jenn Lawrence and current wonderboy, Bryan Coffelt. And of course, my lovely fiance, B. Frayn Masters, has been a huge contributor to the press for eight years now.

Popping some champagne with Disjecta's main man, Bryan Suereth.

Again–many thanks to everyone. You can see some a lot more pics of the party on Mykle Hansen’s Flickr page. The photos on this post were by the great Leann O’Rourke.

And if you missed out on the fun, we’ll probably do it again in five more years, and I’ll remember to thank everyone that night.

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Some Shenanigans

Posted on June 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

Hey folks–a couple of fun things coming up. First off, I’ll be hosting a reading on July 2nd at Ampersand.

This all came about (or was INSPIRED by) Evelyn Hampton’s brain-meltingly good book of poems, “We Were Eternal and Gigantic.” I was so transfixed by the oddness of her unique world (I read a bunch of it while doing an info shift at work) that I quickly tracked her down and saw that she lives in Seattle. I emailed her to see if she’s come down to read here and she said yes. In fact, we’re getting her here before she goes off and moves to Rhode Island (read: Brown).

Phew! That was a close call.

I’m so glad I’ll get to meet her and see her read. And she’ll be joined by Emily Kendal Frey, whose new book, The New Planet, might be her best work yet. Not only that, but Bryan Coffelt, Future Tense intern/editor/designer will be reading from his new chapbook, The Whatever Poems.

I’m so excited to be hosting these fine folks that I have written some strange (maybe misguided?) long-form story intros for each person. They involve Bryan’s dad’s tattoo, Emily’s connection to NASCAR, and Evelyn’s mechanical arm (body part subject to change). It will be interesting to see how it all goes down. And oh yeah–there will be free beer. And hopefully if it’s nice, we can open up the big garage door/window thing.

In other news, I wrote this little list of awesome things I’ve recently read, for Impose!

And to convince you even more of my love for reading, see this Laughing Yeti post!

Pay attention!

And we’ll see you on July 2nd.

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