What I Kind of Liked About You . . . .

Small Desk Press book designer and founding member Jacob Evans is posting great stuff over at What I Kind of Liked About You, wherein all posts begin with the line "What I kind of liked about you . . . ." as in "What I kind of liked about you was the vomit of information, the barf of language, always coming out of you . . ." Imagine the possibilities . . . . .

Jacob lives in Hanoi, where he teaches English and rides a Russian motorcycle.

Poetry Reading this Thursday -- Marisa Crawford, Britta Austin, and Others

Date: Thursday, June 3, 2010
Time: 7:00pm - 9:30pm
Location: Dog-Eared Books
Street: 900 Valencia Street @ 20th
City/Town: San Francisco

An event celebrating the release of The Haunted House (Marisa Crawford) & Artifacts (Britta Austin)

Featuring readings by:

Britta Austin
Marisa Crawford
Claire Kiefer
Geraldine Kim

Starts at 7PM
There will be wine, snacks & paperbacks.
We hope to see you there!

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

Britta Austin grew up on a retired farm in the Pacific Northwest, where she studied the fine arts of tree fort building, river wading, and chicken herding. She now lives in San Francisco where she tends to her small family of old manual typewriters and bikes about town admiring street trees and dreaming of the forest. Her first book, Artifacts, was released from Watchword Press in January 2010.

Marisa Crawford is the author of The Haunted House from Switchback Books. Her poems have also appeared in Shampoo, Action, Yes, Invisible Ear, Glitterpony and Parthenon West. She received her MFA from San Francisco State University and lives in San Francisco where she works as a copywriter and sometimes teaches high school students about poetry and feminism.

Claire Kiefer was born and raised in Georgia, but has been living and teaching in San Francisco for six years. She earned her MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University in 2007, taught creative writing at San Quentin State Prison for several years, and now teaches children of incarcerated parents at Balboa High School.

Geraldine Kim is the author of Povel (Fence Books, 2005) which was featured in the Believer and Village Voice's top 25 books of the year. She also wrote the play Donning Cheadle, which was produced in San Francisco. She has been published in Kitchen Sink, Big Bell, 2nd Avenue, 14 Hills, and others.

The Lunatic is in the Mall

Marisa Crawford revisits her teen angst when she stumbles upon a Pink Floyd tank top at Forever 21.

"Lyrics like 'Mother, should I trust the government?' screamed at me from my t-shirt and my stereo simultaneously while I laid in my bed, thinking about how totally fucked up society was. This exploration of deep, dark emotions often was not pretty: it sometimes went hand-in-hand with depression, eating issues, drugs and a slew of other self-abusive behaviors. And in some ways, I feel insulted to be offered re-entry into an emotionally charged adolescent world where I first learned to question the status quo via a $15 Pink Floyd tank top."

Read all about it at The Ironing Board Collective

Quote of the Week -- Dickinson

Faith is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see --
But microscopes are prudent
in an emergency

Emily Dickinson #185

LIZZY ACKER MONSTER POETRY CONTEST!!

Lizzy Acker Monster Poetry Contest

Judge: Lizzy Acker

Are there monsters in your closet? Or under your bed? Do you see them when you close your eyes? Do you love them?

In celebration of the upcoming release of Lizzy Acker's Monster Party, Small Desk Press is thrilled (and terrified) to present the Monster Poetry Contest.

Send us a poem about monsters: think Frankenstein, Loch Ness, serial killers, childhood nightmares, the REM album, The Aileen Wuornos movie, etc., etc., etc.

The contest winner will receive a free catalog of all Small Desk Press titles – including Monster Party when it's released this fall – plus publication on http://wewhoareabouttodie.com/.

Please send submissions to contest@smalldeskpress.com by August 1st, 2010, and write "Lizzy Acker Monster Poetry Submission" in the subject line. Please include a cover page with ONLY the title of the poem. The winner will be notified by email.

Quote of the Week -- Dostoevsky

" . . . every reality, even though it has its unalterable laws, is almost always difficult to believe and improbable, and sometimes, indeed, the more real it is the more improbable it is."

"But could he eat sixty monks?" they asked, laughing round him.

"He didn't eat them all at once, that's evident. But if he consumed them in the course of fifteen or twenty years, it is perfectly comprehensible and natural . . . . . ."

from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Part 3, Lebedev's drunken rant, p. 346

Our authors are tougher than yours.