Over the fourteen months since I founded Small Press Picks, I’ve noticed a troubling trend: during that time, about 85 percent the review queries I’ve received have come from male authors. I’ve learned about some great books that way, books it’s been a pleasure to review. But given my personal goal of ensuring that at least 50 percent of the books I review are by women, I would like to encourage more women to send me their small-press novels or story collections. (See this link for details on the types of books I’m most inclined to review.) And, of course, I will continue seek out small-press books by women on my own.
Favorite New Fiction
from Small and Micro Publishers
After slamming a brick-weighted, $2,000 Gucci handbag into the skull of her boyfriend, a young woman, Emily, observes: “Technically, the law says you’re supposed to wait until they try to eat your brains before you take a whack at them, but what’s the point? Once the magic is gone, get them before they get you—that’s what I say.”
Emily’s world—in which a sexually transmitted virus is turning men into zombies—is just one of darkly comic dystopias that Dale Bridges brings to life in his new story collection, Justice, Inc. Some of the others: a post-apocalyptic megastore that both protects and imprisons its employees; a world in which death has been all but “cured,” making suicide a means of population control; and, in the title story, a corporation that aims to satisfy the desire for justice by staging public executions of cloned top criminals, like Osama bin Laden.
The complications of romantic partnerships are often explored in fiction, but rarely with the depth and insight that Wendy J. Fox brings to her début story collection, The Seven Stages of Anger, winner of the first Press 53 Award for Short Fiction.
Through several stories, and through the perspectives of multiple characters, Fox suggests that happenstance, circumstance, and inertia—as unromantic as they may be—can play a much larger role in how relationships form, sustain themselves, or die than we may like to think. As for destiny and fate, for the most part, they are the stuff of fairytales.
In American 419 and Other Stories, journalist and novelist Adetokunbo Abiola takes us on an honest, unsanitized tour of modern Nigeria, one that is by turns tragic and darkly comic and in every sense thought-provoking.
Several stories in the collection focus on deep-seated corruption in the country, manifesting in everything from financial scams to medical quackery. At the center of the title story, “American 419,” is advance fee fraud, commonly practiced through scam e-mails. (The 419 refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code that concerns this crime.) In this story, Boston businessman Fred Taylor has lost one hundred thousand dollars to such fraud, but Taylor thinks he might recoup his losses by helping a Nigerian politician transfer money to America in exchange for a cut of the funds.
A patient in a ward of anorexics envies “the protruding bones of someone who is that much closer to not being here at all.”
A psychology major finds that her job at a halfway house is replacing her idealism with frustration and disgust.
A nineteen-year-old becomes sexually and emotionally addicted to a rock drummer who, in response, scorns her “sheer lack of pride.”
These are just a few of the situations explored in Paula Bomer’s new story collection, Inside Madeleine, which shines a light into the most uncomfortable corners of the young female characters’ lives, under circumstances when these women are most vulnerable, uncertain, and prone to making mistakes. The stories are raw and sometimes cringe-inducing. But it’s likely that for any woman who has reached the point of looking back on her teens and twenties, aspects of these tales will feel unsettlingly familiar, or spark the occasional “but for the grace of god” reaction.
In the best of times, in the best of personal circumstances, looking for work is a pain in the ass. But in a sagging economy, and especially for job hunters who are running on financial and spiritual fumes, this task can bring on an existential crisis.
Jarrod Shanahan’s darkly hilarious illustrated novella, It’s a Tough Economy, portrays just such a crisis.
With this post, Small Press Picks continues its series of interviews with editors and other key figures at small and micro presses throughout the country. Here, we speak with Stephanie Bryant Anderson, publisher and editor of Red Paint Hill Publishing, a new press that is looking to publish full-length poetry collections, novels, plays, short story collections, translations, and anthologies. How (and when) did Red Paint Hill Publishing get started? What motivated you to launch it? Red Paint Hill Publishing began very recently. In fall of 2013, I organized a poetry reading to raise money for the Autism Foundation of Tennessee. Through that event I felt very connected to my community. When that event was over, I wanted to do more. So, after soul searching, I decided to venture away from Up the Staircase Quarterly, which I co-edited with my longtime friend April Bratten. I wanted to sell books to help raise money for the foundation. Putting my two passions (literature and advocating for autism) together just made sense to me. The name Red Paint Hill is a nod to my hometown. Red Paint Hill [located in Clarksville, Tennessee] was a navigational landmark–a rock bluff at the confluence of the Cumberland River and the Red River. Clarksville has an interesting history of writers, which is another reason why I chose the name. I see that you have published two poetry collections: The Blackbird Spirituals by Jonathan Treadway and Windsock Etiquette by Zach Fishel. What drew you to these writers and their poems? The Blackbird Spirituals is a brilliant collection of poems. The poet, Jonathan Treadway, is someone who is very connected to his Kentucky roots. The poems began from his time spent in Portland. There is a great dichotomy in his poems that I truly connect to. Some of us yearn for new people, new places, new experiences in life; place has such a strong impact on who we are – whether in staying or yearning to leave. His writing is a validation of my own emotions. He has what a lot of writers lack – intimacy. There is an incredible closeness between reader and writer. Spiritual tones carry the collection, and yet there is that sadness that weighs it down – the loneliness, the desire for acceptance and companionship. The poems are brutally honest. No one describes a woman’s moan like Jonathan Treadway! Zach Fishel’s book, Windsock Etiquette, is a collection of sonnets. Each poem leads into the next poem. They are eclectic and intelligent. They are blue collar and front porches. There is a sense of spirit that cannot be broken. This is very different from The Blackbird Spirituals; in that group of poems the soul hangs from...