Saturday, February 28, 2009

Regnat Populus...

...is Arkansas' official state motto: "The People Rule." Yeah they do. Especially these people who came to our reading at Nightbird books, which contains actual birds, such as this one, who is closing her eyes, perhaps because it was night:
After the reading, we had a party at the home of University of Arkansas Press Director Larry Malley and his wife Maggie including champagne, delicious Irish whiskey and cake!
Thanks so much to everyone at the press for hosting Kyle and me, and for making Fayetteville such a great tour stop. Kyle and I are in Memphis now, and Memphis is buried beneath a surprisingly significant amount of snow, but we are about to read at Burke's Bookstore tonight at 6, so we hope to see you there.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Hog Heaven

Live Nude Girl turns one month (and one day) old today--happy kind of birthday, book! In a tour stop that feels particularly celebratory, Kyle and I are reading in the book's birthplace--Fayetteville, Arkansas--this evening. First, though, since it was cheaper, we had to fly to Tulsa. Here is the eerie green wing of the plane, seen through my window, all smeared with de-icer:

After driving two hours from Oklahoma to "The Natural State" and then spending 20 minutes or so sort of lost on the University of Arkansas campus, Melissa came out and waved us down and we finally made it to McIlroy house... ...home of University of Arkansas Press which contains this sign, telling you where you are... ...as well as the many smart, nice people who work there. Further smart nice people are to be found at the University of Arkansas Press warehouse, where Kyle is pictured, marveling at the superbly organized and neatly towering boxes of well-made books: Larry Malley took us all over the land of the razorbacks... ...including to the Petra Cafe where we had delicious Middle Eastern food for lunch, maybe the best I've ever had anywhere. Who knew? They thanked us for eating locally... ...and they are very welcome. Tonight, we are reading at Nightbird Books at 7 with Miroslav Penkov. It was hailing a minute ago, but it's stopped now, so there's no reason not to come. See you there!

Thursday, February 26, 2009

The week of rave-ups continues! In the Devil's Territory in the Boston Phoenix, the Baltimore City Paper, and more


1. Nina MacLaughlin, books critic for the Boston Phoenix, wrote a generous and well-made review of In the Devil's Territory in yesterday's arts section. The first paragraph:

"In Kyle Minor's dark debut collection of stories, personal secrets always exact a terrible price — sometimes worse than the events that motivated them. In the novella "A Day Meant To Do Less" — violent, agonizing, and the centerpiece of this collection — nine-year-old Franny gets assaulted in the tobacco fields near her Kentucky home. She is chased, pushed, pissed on, forced to take her older cousin's penis in her mouth. She grows up, tells no one, buries it deep. But as Minor shows in fantastic, horrifying detail, buried truths can bubble up in strange, nightmarish ways."

Read the rest of the Boston Phoenix review of In the Devil's Territory here.

2. Jeffrey Anderson at the Baltimore City Paper highlights "A Day Meant to Do Less," a story from In the Devil's Territory, in its review of Best American Mystery Stories 2008, in which the story also appears.

Read the Baltimore City Paper review here.

3. I gush about Kathleen Rooney's book Live Nude Girl at the Writers Read blog maintained by the Campaign for the American Reader: here.

LNG (rave) reviewed on Huffington Post!

It's no secret: I have much love for the "liberal" media. And, it seems, they have some back for Live Nude Girl.

"LNG is a memoir of Rooney's career as an art model that wrestles with the headier issues of the naked form as inspiration, objectification for the sake of art, and the role of a muse throughout history. Since Rooney has 3 other books (including a cultural study of Oprah's Book Club) to her credit, we felt sure that her latest effort wasn't of the 'I'm hot and wrote about it' efforts we've been seeing too much of lately," says Kevin Smokler in "The Shelf Talker" this week. Be sure to check out the whole column (which talks about a lot of other people, not just me) here.

Thanks to Kevin, and to eagle-eyed lefty Evan Willner for pointing it out.

All right stop, collaborate, etc.

Eric Ziegenhagen's punny joke last night was that we were at the Goat Show, but he was a little hoarse. Sore-throatedness aside, Eric did a bang-up job organizing the casual party/potluck/salon/variety-show in the Collaboraction loft space, which has this pretty sign by the door... ...and which is full of art and comfy furniture...
...and which felt like hanging out cozily in some really fun living room: Sadie Rogers sang some beautiful songs... ...Matt Kerstein of Brighton MA played a solo show, and I read an excerpt from Live Nude Girl, plus--in the collaborative spirit--three poems I co-wrote with Elisa Gabbert. The chair I sat in while I read--story-time style--is pictured here, in the mirror to my left: Lots of thanks to Eric for coordinating and to Collaboraction for hosting!

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Radio on!

This is turning out to be a very radio-y week. This morning, at 10 am Central time, 4pm in Dublin, I got to be interviewed on the air for the program (or programme, if you will) Moncrieff by Sean Moncrieff of Newstalk, Ireland's National Independent Talk Radio Broadcaster. Sean is an author, also, most recently of the novel The History of Things and was voted Sexiest Radio Voice by the public in this year's 3G Mobile Annual Awards. Hot.

Monday, February 23, 2009

You gotta listen to the radio...


...because I have not found it to be in the hands of such a lotta fools trying to anesthetize the way that we feel.

Tonight, it was in the hands of Jesse Seay--pictured here amid a forest of mics and headsets--at Vocalo.org... ...and Jacob Knabb, managing and fiction editor of Another Chicago Magazine. They hosted me, Brandi Homan, and Lina-Ramona Vitkauskas to record us reading our work from the latest issue of ACM, whose theme is American Values. I also did a tiny reading and some Q&A about Live Nude Girl.

As a huge fan of public radio, I found it to be an elementary school field trippy thrill to see where the audio-magic happens: And now I am more of a fan than ever of Vocalo. Be sure to check them and their mission out here. Thanks to Jacob and Jesse for having us, and to Lina and Brandi for being kickass co-readers.

Last but not least, here is the peanut butter sandwich I ate on the flight from BWI to Chicago earlier today... ...constructed with care by one Kyle Minor. He chose, as you can see, to cut it in half. Well played, Kyle; nicely done.

Publishers Weekly (starred!) review of Live Nude Girl!

"This esoteric, organic meditation on life as an art object is itself a model of personal writing, perfect for those on either side of the easel," they conclude.

You can read the whole (short, but really good!) review here.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

The District sleeps alone tonight...

...but Kyle and I will sleep one more night at Abby's place just north of DC in Takoma Park. Before our reading at the Cloyd Heck Marvin Center, Kyle, Abby, Tim, Caryn and I ate Burmese food at Mandalay in Silver Spring, MD, which has a photograph of Caryn and Tim on the bulletin board in the entry way, from a fundraiser the restaurant held for cyclone relief. I had to take a picture of the picture, 'cause I'm meta like that: All the food was fantastic, but the highlight was a cute, round cream-of-wheat/coconut-cream baked dessert known as shweji, which is pictured (with Caryn chopping it into shareable pieces) here, and which I will have to attempt to recreate when I am not on tour and have more time for cookery (that is if I can figure out how the heck to make it--anyone?):
Our reading at GW (of which I am an alumna) was up against the Academy Awards (maybe you've heard of them?), but the audience filled up nicely just the same...
...thanks to the valiant publicity efforts of Greg Nanni (pictured here with chairs, waters, microphone and chocolate cupcake)... ...GW student and Rome Review editor. Thanks so much, Greg, and to Dan Gutstein for reading with us! And extra thanks to Dan for quoting Frank O'Hara saying "It is even in/prose, I am a real poet" during the Q&A.

Tomorrow, Kyle and I fly home to our respective Midwestern cities for a couple days of much-needed not-being gone. We will sleep in our own beds, wear our robes around our whole apartments/houses, make coffee in our own coffeemakers and do other home-ish things before reuniting to soldier on our epic adventure in Fayetteville, Arkansas on Friday, February 27. The legend continues. See you there.

Charm City, USA

"Anybody going to Baltimore?" yelled the Apex bus driver as we stood stopped for an indeterminate number of minutes at some anonymous weigh station off the Jersey turnpike. "Yes!" said Kyle. Most people were going to DC, but the driver was asking because he needed to tell the two of us and one other guy that there'd been an abrupt change in bus stops, so instead of somewhere on Odonnell street, we would be getting dropped on Cherry Hill. Here is Kyle, surveying the industrial waste of where that actually turned out to be: Luckily, we were not there long. My Rose Metal Press partner and all around amazing friend Abby Beckel came to pick us up and take us to Canton to meet Lauren Silberman and Matt Moffatt for lunch at Helen's Garden where I had one of the best sandwiches of my life, which supplanted the previous Best Sandwich Ever contender that I got in Chinatown in NYC and ate on the Fung Wah back in January 2007. Has it ever occurred to you to almond-encrust a tomato? Because that is what the Helen's Garden people do: Next we headed over to Hampden...
...to hon it up... ...before our reading in the 510 reading series at Minas Gallery. Michael Kimball and Jen Michalski were gracious and attentive hosts, the audience was standing-room only...
...and our co-readers Rahne Alexander, Shane Jones, and Blake Butler were uniformly entertaining to listen to. Be sure to check out all their books/projects.

Also, speaking of things to check out, be sure to get yourself a copy of Ellen Kennedy's forthcoming poetry collection, Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs, which Tao Lin is pictured artfully displaying here.. Tao let us do a tiny reading in his apartment as part of our day-long series of mini-readings all over NYC before our EARSHOT appearance on Friday. Thanks, Tao!

Today, I went to yoga with Abby and Caryn Lazzuri at the Willow Street Yoga Studio in Takoma Park, Maryland, which is located in a building so ugly it swings back around to pretty again:
During our first side-angle pose, the instructor instructed us to "weave [y]our bones in and out of the tapestry of the universal," which is not something I normally attempt, but I did my best. Now? We are doing our laundry. Super-glam. Tonight at 8 pm, we'll be reading in Washington, DC at the Marvin Center on the George Washington University Campus with Dan Gutstein. Eff the Oscars. Come hear us instead. We promise to be equally well-dressed, but way less bloated and excessively drawn out!

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Live Nude Girl reviewed by Ron Slate!

Massachusetts-based poet Ron Slate whose website you can visit here ran an insightful review a couple days back, on February 18. "Rooney has written a book largely about forms of intimacy – conventional and disruptive. But Live Nude Girl is also an act of intimacy between Rooney and reader during which she tries to bare and understand her motivation to pose in the nude. his is the beauty of her prose narrative – a telling that seems utterly without pretension, never trying too hard to analyze or provoke, but consistently coming up with apt and wise statements..." he writes. I meant to blog it sooner, but there's never quite enough time (or short-term memory, I'm finding; we are super-underslept) on the road, so I'm doing it now. Thanks, Ron.

Another thing I meant to do on February 18 was say happy birthday to my sister, Beth Rooney, a genius photographer whose work you can check out here. She was born on that day in 1983, the same year, John McPhee explains in a recent issue of the New Yorker, as the Chicken McNugget. What does that coincidence mean? Anything? Probably not? I don't know, but happy belated birthday, Beth!

If we can make it here...

...we can make it anywhere.

But as much as fun as we had in New York, and as much as we loved reading in 25 locations all over the city... (more to come on that when there's a little more time), including in the very special fourth anniversary EARSHOT reading series, this morning, we have to leave on yet another Chinatown bus from here to Baltimore. We're reading at Minas Gallery there tonight at 5:00 with three other brilliant readers. Be there!

Friday, February 20, 2009

The Daily Beast...

...also has a feature on Live Nude Girl by Lizzie Stark that you can check out here. Thanks to Lizzie for taking time out from the chaotic and whirlwindy AWP last week to do an interview.

Review in the LA Times!!!

Major thanks to Erika Schickel for her close reading and kind words--"She's a smart woman inhabiting a comely body, and she wastes no time taking it off at the top of her book..." among others--which you can check out here.

Later at the Bar

Last night, on our way from dinner and to Freebird Books, Kyle, Rebecca Barry and I stopped and got our picture taken in front of these Valentine's decorations because we heart NY and we heart Rebecca: The audience gathered up in the front of the store and listened to our stories over the howling wind: Peter at Freebird made everybody feel at home with wine and tea and stories about Oprah, and after we wrapped up there, we walked up the block to the B61, a bar named after the buses that go by. One of my old friends, a painter I used to pose for years ago in Boston (and who you can read about in the "Do You Want Me to Seduce You?" chapter of Live Nude Girl), the talented Jeremy Hoffeld came all the way from Washington Heights. Not only did he listen to us read; he also let me try on his very intense and stylish glasses: The bar happened to have a Magic Eight ball that patrons could use to answer their deepest and most existential questions. "Will Kathy's book sell a million copies?" Jeremy asked the Eight Ball. "Yes, definitely," said the Eight Ball. "Will it happen after she's dead?" he asked. "Reply hazy, try again," said the Eight Ball, but we left it there. Thanks Eight Ball, thanks Jeremy, and thanks to everyone for coming to the reading! I'm about to go to yoga with my host-with-the-most, Brendan, because I'm still feeling squished from the Fung Wah, but Kyle and I are going to read tonight at Rose Live Music in Brooklyn at 8 in the pm along with three other readers. A $5 cover gets you in and gets you a drink--that's value.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

No (no!) sleep (sleep!) till Brooklyn (Brooklyn!)

Kyle and I woke up this morning in Providence in the driving rain, returned the rental car in Boston in the dispersing gloom, and took the bus to NYC in the hesitant sun, all in the span of approximately eight hours. That's three major East Coast cities in way under a day. Three! We are living the dream. Kyle's staying with his friend Doug in Brooklyn, and I'm crashing with my old friend Brendan, a philosophy professor at NYU, pictured here, to your right, my left, in this double-portrait-in-a-bedroom-mirror: He lives on the fifth floor, so while that was brutal in terms of getting my eight-days'-worth of luggage up the stairs (thanks, Brendan!), it offers spectacular views from every single window:
If you've never had the chance to take the Chinatown shuttle, aka the Fung Wah, I highly recommend it for its inexpensivity and adventure. Here it is, parked outside of a McDonald's somewhere in Connecticut, all hulking and multicultural:
And here, just because it grossed me out/cracked me up, is a sign advertising "100 % Beefy Satisfaction x2"--that's 200 %, mind you--at said McDonald's: And here is Kyle's lunch, which, you will note, involves both a quesadilla and nacho cheese Doritos, because this is a great country and, like I said, we are living the dream: Hope to see you tonight at Freebird Books! Rockstar!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Icy in Providence

When we drove west down 195 toward Providence, it hadn't yet begun to snow, but the clouds were looming: But it was warm (metaphorically at least) and cozy at Ben and Mary and Kitty's house: And at Ada Books they offered quite a spread--bread, cheese, grapes, cookies--thanks, guys! And here is the crowd, who bundled up in their hippest sweaters and ventured out through the pouring snow to hear Brian Evenson: Tomorrow, we'll get up early, drive to Boston, return the rental Prius (because we love the earth like that) to the Enterprise in Cambridge, take the redline to South Station, get on the Fung Wah bus to Manhattan, then take the subway to Brooklyn-- easy peazy one two threesie. See you tomorrow night at 7:30 at Freebird Books where we'll be reading with Rebecca Barry!

Another day, another review...

...this time from Aarti Nagaraju at her Booklust blog here.

Full disclosure: Aarti is one of my little sister Beth's best friends. She did a great job reviewing the book in a really honest way. "It's a thinking person's book- and it was fun to read it and be challenged by reading again, in ways I haven't been for so long," she writes. Thanks, Aarti!

Sweet Rest in Heaven...

...said the hand-stiched sampler on the wall of Room 12 at the White Horse Inn where I had the best sleep so far of the East Coast leg of the tour; it felt kind of like this... ...and I'm pretty sure this restfulness is a testament to the comfort and hospitality of the White Horse, and not just the several or so beers Kyle and I downed at the Governor Bradford after our reading. Before we read, we were interviewed for the "Art Talk" radio program on WOMR, hosted by the generous and enthusiastic Chris Busa, pictured here with me and a couple of other fans at the Provincetown Art Association Museum: Provincetown shrinks way down in population during the off-season, so our crowd was not terribly crowded. But the room we read in at PAAM was acoustically awesome and the walls were covered in black and white photographs, including this one of my all-time favorite poet and mysterious disapearee Weldon Kees, who I think loved Provincetown the way I love it: Did you know that before they rocked Plymouth, the Pilgrims landed at Provincetown? They did! And Provincetown has the monument to prove it: Did you also know that I used to live in Provincetown, courtesy of the Fine Arts Work Center, where Martin was a fiction fellow? I did! And it's been wonderful to be back, if only for 24 hours. Look at this... ...and this...
...and this:
Provincetown is so beautiful, just contantly casually all-the-time, like your friend who is gorgeous even first thing in the morning, unshowered and with her hair all messed up and no makeup or anything. Provincetown, how do you do it, and what is your secret? Here, Kyle contemplates these questions, or maybe something else, as he gazes out across the lonely bay: The quality of the loneliness in Provincetown is ever-present, but superior to the loneliness of the Pacific Northwest, though I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's because, geographically, though it is at the very end of the land... ...it is also at the forefront of the country in the Eastern time zone, and even though you are isolated, you are also by default kind of avant-garde?

We have to leave the Cape soon to make it to Providence in time for our reading there at Ada Books with Brian Evenson tonight at 7:00. You should try to make it too! See you there.