Iowa City people: Things you should do (as if you aren’t doing enough already):  1. Lindsay Hunter (pictured, right), whose story collection Daddy’s is a long-time Monkfish Jowls favorite, is reading at The Motley Cow at 5 PM Thursday the 29th. 2. Amelia Gray (pictured, left), whose novel Threats got a B+ from Entertainment Weekly (but it’s betta than that!), is reading with a bunch of other people (including Nel Okparanta and Kevin Brockmeier) at 3 PM Saturday the 31st at The Mill (where Amelia once got “banned for life” but I guess the hatchet has been buried). All kinds of other lit things going on during the Mission Creek Fest, including a small press book fair on Saturday at The Mill with Hobart, featherproof, n+1, the Iowa Review, and others. Undergrads should come bearing manuscripts for the editors to read.  See y’all.

Iowa City people:

Things you should do (as if you aren’t doing enough already): 

1. Lindsay Hunter (pictured, right), whose story collection Daddy’s is a long-time Monkfish Jowls favorite, is reading at The Motley Cow at 5 PM Thursday the 29th.

2. Amelia Gray (pictured, left), whose novel Threats got a B+ from Entertainment Weekly (but it’s betta than that!), is reading with a bunch of other people (including Nel Okparanta and Kevin Brockmeier) at 3 PM Saturday the 31st at The Mill (where Amelia once got “banned for life” but I guess the hatchet has been buried).

All kinds of other lit things going on during the Mission Creek Fest, including a small press book fair on Saturday at The Mill with Hobart, featherproof, n+1, the Iowa Review, and others. Undergrads should come bearing manuscripts for the editors to read. 

See y’all.

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I saw Amelia Gray read from THREATS last night at Prairie Lights in Iowa City. Afterwards she said, “You should come to this poetry reading, Anthony.” And after that she said, “You should come get drinks with us.” And after that, “Would you drive me to my hotel in Cedar Rapids?” And I said Yes, yes, yes! Anything Amelia told me to, I would do, like she’s Mary Poppins or Maria the governess. (Brown paper packages!)

Excerpt:

“The tape on the package was striped with waxed string. David dug his fingernails underneath the perimeter of the tape and clawed at it. He didn’t want to go to the kitchen for a knife, and he spent an extra piece of time examining the entire package to find the loose end that could be pulled up. Inside the package was a Styrofoam carton, sealed with another kind of thick tape. A receipt was attached to the top of the lid, noting a cremation charge of $795, a box charge of $25, and a shipping charge of $20.95.

“The package measured a few feet square. It was pockmarked with red stickers printed with the image of a broken wineglass. The return address was of a funeral home in town. David placed the package on the coffee table between Franny’s cooking magazines and a stack of old newspapers. Some of the crosswords in the newspapers had been completed weeks earlier, perhaps months. Franny would read the news, and David would complete the crosswords. David took the newspapers into the basement and stacked them in a far corner.” (First chapter of THREATS: A Novel)

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Quick Fiction #18 came in the mail after a long wait! It’s the unofficial Iowa City issue with at least three Iowa Citians inside its pages: Me, Dylan Nice, and Rachel Yoder. The story I have in it is called Neighbors and I wrote it after reading Carl Sagan’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors which has a few paragraphs on caterpillar behavior which I decided to adapt to humans. Kind of a nice story. 

Visit the web site to order a copy, or to check out Dylan Nice’s story There’s Bugs or my story from the previous issue. 

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A few things that are going on in Iowa City, Iowa this weekend: 

1. Lindsay Hunter, Tao Lin, and Ted Thompson are reading at Prairie Lights books on April 1 at 6:00 (or maybe 7:00?). Details here. You know that I’m a longtime (re: at least six months) fan of Lindsay Hunter since meeting her one night last year. (Read about that here.) I make a brief “side-cameo” appearance in Tao Lin’s Shoplifting at American Apparel. YEAH. Yeah. 

2. I’m reading with a billion brilliant stars at The Dublin Underground in Iowa City at 5:00 PM on April 2. The details for this are here. Jac Jemc, Zach Dodson, Steve Tartaglione, Kyle Beachy, Aaron Burch, Adam Novy, Amy Butcher, Jill Summers, and Roxane Gay will also be reading. PHEW. Phew. 

3. A bunch of other stuff including Sam Lipsyte, free beer, John Waters, etcetera etcetera. Check them out here. 

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