Christopher Barzak's Blog, page 14

Just a heads up.  Very soon this fall the second volume of Interfictions, which I co-edited with Delia Sherman, will be appearing.  And even sooner than the book is released, we'll be releasing a new story in the Interfictions Online Annex every week until the book appears.

I very much hope that readers like what Delia and I have gathered for their reading pleasures in this second volume.  More to come, but until then, the launch dates for Annex stories are as follows:

On Sept. 15th we're launchin

For local readers:

The Oakland Center for the Arts announces its third annual Free Open House and Season Announcement Party on Saturday, August 29, from 6:00-9:00 pm. Hosted by the Oakland Board, the Open House is a chance for the community to get to know their community theater better. Free food, wine, punch, and beverages will be offered in the Star Gallery, where a retrospective of posters from 23 years of past productions will be highlighted. Attendees will also be treated to a preview of sho

I love Meryl Streep.  And so whenever she has a movie out, I go, even if the movie sounds totally ridiculous.  Okay, so I missed Mamma Mia.  I just couldn't bring myself to see it.  It was too far out of my range.  But I did go tonight to see Julie and Julia, which sounded promising.  Unfortunately, the movie was trying way too hard to be cute and charming, and I'm not sure there was a complex character in the movie at all; it was very clear that there were good people who always said the most w

I'm thinking about this tonight, before a reading I'm doing here at Chatham University in another hour:

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Opposition

In my youth

I was opposed to school.

And now, again,

I'm opposed to work.

Above all it is health

And righteousness that I hate the most.

There's nothing so cruel to man

As health and honesty.

Of course I'm opposed to the Japanese spirit

And duty and human feeling make me vomit.

I'm against any government anywhere

And show my bum to authors and artists circles.

When I'm asked for what I w

An interactive segmented video about my home region's loss of industry over the past thirty years, and how it may now lose its very last major manufacturer in GM.  It's very well made, though a sad reality, and one that is now in the new century becoming the reality of more and more communities in America.  If you want to know what loss of economic foundations look like, watch this small portrait.  There are other documentaries I've watched that give bigger pictures, but this is a small taste of

It is now August, and I'm at the tail end of what has been a very busy summer.  I managed to move forward a bit with the novel, wrote two short stories, and an essay, and also took two classes toward my MFA degree and will be taking a third one beginning at the end of next week.   I sold one of the stories, and am still tinkering with the other, but have high hopes for it.  It's a much weirder story than I've written in a long time, and so I'm still sort of interested and intrigued by it, becaus

Last week was a big week for me.  Three nice things happened.

1. It was my birthday.  Fun times, growing old.

2. I got to reconnect with an old friend from college.  Fun times, rehashing when I was a youngster.

3. I read at Thurber House, In Columbus, Ohio, where the writer Jamese Thurber is from.  They run a summer series of literary picnics, and the most recent one was aimed at featuring three emerging voices in Ohio, in three forms: creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction.  Memoirist David Giff

Taken from Jeff Ford's blog, some information on a young adult anthology in which a story of mine will appear early in spring 2010.  It looks like a great anthology for young readers.  I'm happy to be included in it.

"This came in the mail today from Sharyn November, an Advanced Uncorrected Proof of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's upcoming YA anthology, The Beastly Bride: Tales of the Animal People It's the fourth in a series of anthologies of mythic tales — The Green Man, The Faery Reel, Coyo

Okay, okay, I babble on about my home city–small, cranky and rusty as it is, I love it, as a person should love and care for anything they feel is theirs in some way, as a home is–but sometimes I fall silent about it on my blog for long periods because even I get sick of my own obsession and passion for it.  Today, though, I'm slapping a picture on the blog that made me very happy when I saw it:

I'm not a business person, but I'm more than happy to see that this old town that hasn't know what to

Michael Dirda of the Washington Post delivers a great lecture at The Center for the Book in D.C., in which he discusses his new book which looks at 100 classic books of literature that aren't your grandpa's "classics", which means books that a while back would have been ignored by elitists and classicists who categorically dismiss books of popular literature and genre literature of various sorts rather than actually reading them to discover that good writing is good writing, regardless of genre.