5.12.2012

MAY NEWS AND LINKS

Firstly, I'd like to announce the Writing Workshops Emily Pettit and I are teaching this summer.  For more information visit Flying Object.

I started two new blogs in the last two days, one is a site solely for my NBA Paintings.  The other is a selection of art I made at RISD and after RISD.

I am pleased to have two poems featured in the journal Sprung Formal (the Apocalypse Issue), along with Ashley Bellinger, Benjamin Boulier, Brandon Brown, Peter Davis, Marissa de la Pena, Kari Freitag, Madeline Gallucci,  Matt Hart, Jules Izkoff, Anna Kamerer, Mitchell Hugh Kirkwood, Rob MacDonald, Ryan MacDonald, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Christopher Martin, Will Meier, John Northington, Frances Odim-Loughlin, Annie Raab, Christie Ann Reynolds, Alex Rieser, Zach Savich, Reid Sprague, Sampson Starkweather, Lauren Stookey, Matthew Suss, Scott Sweeney, Paige Taggart, Maureen Thorston, Frederick Vorder-Bruegge, Teal Wilson, Patrick Wolf, and Elisabeth Workman.  The issue can be read or downloaded here.

Here is the cover of Sprung Formal:
 and Here is my flyer for my Summer Workshop, heavily inspired by the cover!:

Tonight, Emily Pettit, local gift-giver and talented author of Goat in the Snow, will be reading at Flying Object (42 West st., Hadley, MA) along with Dan Magers, Steven Karl, and with musical performances by Jono Tosch and Elaine Kahn (Horsebladder).

In June, I am proud to be published in Everyday Genius's first ever "Paper Issue" alongside great friend Lesley Yalen, and many other interesting writers!
Here is Jimmy Chen's great cover for the issue:


3.07.2012

New NBA Commission plus 4 new Poetry Books!

A few weeks ago I finished this Derek Fisher commission, only a week or so before he was unceremoniously traded to the Cavs. I'm glad I finished him before the trade, which would have definitely distracted my msPainting. Now Derek is memorialized as a Laker somewhere in Canada, possibly in the office of a young lawyer.

In other NBA news, the Bulls beat the Heat and the Sixers without Derrick Rose, which is a great omen for the playoffs, and I'm feeling more confident about the Bulls/Heat conference finals match-up, if all goes how it seems it will.

Z-Bo is back for the Grizzlies. Also I'm looking forward to watching Arenas play for the Grizz, and Ellis and the new big guy play for the Bucks. This isn't really an NBA blog, but reading Landman's ESPN fantasy columns this morning is inspiring me to pretend...

Here is a close-up of D. Fish, much hated by Celtic fans, much photographed and quoted in the lock-out last year.




















The world continues spinning and I am a few hours away from a finished Allen Iverson portrait.

In Poetry News, five of my friends from Umass-Amherst's MFA program have published books in the last couple weeks and months. My friend Chris Deweese's book "The Black Forest" has been released by Octopus Books. Here are two lines of note from two separate poems:

As I ride Eastward,
I can hear my biographer
furiously dictating
his own adventures

and earlier:

Or let's say you're dead
and you wish
for everyone else to be dead
It would be just like living!


"The Black Forest" is in good company of a slew of other new and great poem books, including local sensation Heather Christle's "What is Amazing", out from Weslyan Press.

Here is the beginning of Heather's poem "Basic":

This program is designed to move a white line
from one side of the screen to the other.

This program is not too hard, but it has
a sad ending and that makes people cry.

This program is designed to make people cry
and step away when they are finished.

In one variation the line moves diagonally
up and in another diagonally down.

This makes people cry differently,
diagonally. A whole room of people

New Yorker Lily Ladewig's book "The Silhouettes" is out from SpringGun Press. Here is a selection from "Another Poem for You":

what do you call a pale-faced silence
that makes a healing sound?
Me. Watch me
translate myself into English. Watch me
take my invisible top off. Things reconfigure,
they settle. I bought you this beautiful
silver espresso machine--it was imaginary
in the best possible sense.


Lastly and largely, Tyoyeu is actualized onto pages, written by two Seths. This book is like songs heard underwater, a relative's mid dream babbles. Here are some sections of it:

"I might see you in my nightmare
wandering
How'd you get there?
I'm running from the son I mated
I'm taking Alf on the road
Tell everybody that you know"

"Mathematics on whiskey. Triangles on heavy doves."

"Soup! Soup, are you accurate when I hold us between these spoons?"

1.13.2012

First Post of the New Year!

It is freezing in my turret, but I must continue onward, wearing my winter jacket.

<--Here is my latest commissioned NBA portrait, this time the enigmatic Ben Wallace. The whole time I painted him I'd thought he had retired last year, but now that I'm done, I see that he's back playing with the Pistons as if he never left!

Almost weekly, I recommend this book to people, The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond Of Matches, an absolute masterpiece by French-Canadian author Gaetan Soucy. I don't think I've ever read a book with a more interesting narrator. Emily Pettit has it stocked at Amherst Books, if you are in the area. If not, you will likely have to buy it online-- it has been very hard to find in person.

It's been amazing to be watching basketball again. I'm pleased the Bulls and the Thunder are at the top of their conferences so early. Last night, JT and I watched Tony Allen and Rudy Gay play great games as the Grizz killed the Knicks who played with little grace or heart. The night before I caught the end of the awesome/weird overtime Heat/Clippers game, in which LeBron missed the most freethrows I've ever seen him miss.

Lastly, I want to remind Western Massachusetts that sign-ups are filling up for Emily Pettit's and my Spring Writing Workshops at Flying Object.

Creative Writing with Rachel B. Glaser
Thursday evenings from 5:30-7:30pm
February 23rd (8 Weeks)

$175

Although writing of all styles will be welcomed, the class will be encouraged to explore nontraditional approaches. The class will complete both in-class and out-of-class writing and reading assignments. The workshop will run in typical workshop style, with writers sharing their work each class. In addition to their workshop pieces, writers will write short pieces in response to weekly exercises. Besides poetry and fiction, pieces in this class can be also written as playwriting, nonfiction, or even songs and found objects. Exciting writing is not necessarily experimental, but it benefits every writer to read and experiment with writing that breaks with convention. A good writing workshop is the ideal environment, a forum for ideas in general, and the best kind of collaboration. The last class will take the form of a reading (along with the poets in Emily Pettit’s workshop) at Flying Object among friends, family, and the public.

If you are interested, please send an email explaining why you would like to take the class, along with a little information about yourself and a writing sample of 3-8 pages (the writing sample can be an excerpt from a larger work, or a combination of any genre) to rachelbglaser@gmail.com.

If you want to participate in the class but are inexperienced in Creative Writing, you are strongly encouraged to use the writing sample requirement as your first prompt. If you are stuck and would like a more specific assignment, please email Rachel and she will give you an assignment (which will give you a feel for the format of the class).

Rachel B. Glaser is a graduate of The University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s MFA Program in Fiction. Rachel has taught at Elms College and Flying Object. She was a Juniper Festival 2011 Writer-in-Residence. Her work has been published in McSweeney’s, New York Tyrant, and others. Minutes Books published her poetry chapbook, Heroes Are So Long. Her first collection of stories, Pee On Water, was released by Publishing Genius Press. The title story is a history of the world told through the evolution of human behavior.

$175.00
Sign-up for the workshop by credit card or paypal:


Poets & Poems with Emily Pettit
Monday evenings from 5:30-7:30pm
March 12th (8 weeks)
$175

In this workshop we will get curious. Writing, reading and discussing poems will be our means of propulsion. I hope for this workshop to be generative and reflective and offer many new perspectives to each in relation to your own work and the work of others. Engagement with your own work and outstanding contemporary work will help us to explore how an interest in poetry can be pursued in the larger context of one’s life. Poetry will get us curious.

I hope for this workshop to use the unique space that is Flying Object to help inform our ideas, our writing, our reading. It will be our laboratory.

If you are interested in reserving a place, please send an email explaining why you would like to take the class, along with a little information about yourself and a writing sample of 4-10 pages of poems to ecpettit@gmail.com.

Emily Pettit’s first full-length book, GOAT IN THE SNOW was published by Birds LLC. She is the author of two chapbooks, HOW (Octopus Books) and WHAT HAPPENED TO LIMBO (Pilot Books). She is an editor for notnostrums and Factory Hollow Press as well as the new publisher of jubilat. Emily received her MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa.

Classes will be held at 10 writers.

Flying Object will be awarding one scholarships to offset half the tuition cost to one writer. If you are interested in receiving this scholarship, please mention it in your email to the instructor. The scholarship is awarded based on a combination of need and merit. Additionally any previous student of Rachel’s may take her class for the discounted price of $125.

_______________________________________

Refund policy: Please note, tuition includes a $15.00 non-refundable deposit. This means that if you drop a class after signing up, we will refund your tuition minus $15.00. If there’s less than a week (7 days) before the start of the first class, we will refund 50% of your tuition. Once the class has begun tuition is non-refundable. So make sure that your month-long vacation to the Arctic won’t conflict before you sign up!

12.06.2011

December News and Links

Poet Jack Christian has a great chat with Poet Mark Leidner about Leidner's Factory Hollow Press book "Beauty Was The Case That They Gave Me"

Pre-orders for Emily Pettit's debut "Goat In The Snow" forthcoming from BIRDS LLC Press

With the news of the upcoming NBA season, writer Bethlehem Shoals writes his first NBA post for new sport blog The Classical

I'm excited to read in Providence, RI where I lived and had fun for so many years at RISD. The reading and panel is at Brown University, part of a program set up by the great Evelyn Hampton and Sarah Tourjee. It will be fun to see old roommate and singer of songs Mike Young, my old fiction teacher Joanna Howard, and the other great readers: Lily Hoang, Matt Bell, and Matt Salesses

11.25.2011

Magic


Here is half of my latest commissioned MSpaint, Magic Johnson, painted for the talented and charismatic Michael Kimball! (Click here to see a different view)

Jubilat 20 is out, and filled with great poems by Ben Fama, Peter Gizzi, Shannon Burns, Michelle Taransky, CAConrad, Lesley Yalen, and many more. Come to Flying Object on December 3rd to celebrate the issue and the raffle!

The MLP Stamp Stories Anthology is now available for order. In honor of this publication, Wigleaf published a special edition of 50 word stories. I participated, as did other MLP contributors: Joanna Howard, Joanna Ruocco, Claire Donato, Michael Bible, and more.

Emily Pettit and I's first double workshop reading at Flying Object was a great success. Thanks to all who listened and read.

The new powerhouse of creative, genre-defying, thought-provoking sports blogging, The Classical, is near launching. Currently they have a preview tumblr up, and have started posting.

Hopefully the NBA will return, because right now things are looking bleak.
The NBA looks like this:

11.20.2011

Reading and Winter/Spring Class Announcement!

Tomorrow night (Monday the 21st) from 5:30-7:30 join us at Flying Object (42 West st., Hadley, MA) to listen to a reading by the writers who participated in Emily Pettit's class and my own class this past term. From what I know of the readers, I am sure it is going to be very varied and impressive!

10.12.2011

Recent Developments

Edward Mullany's first collection of poems "IF I FALTER AT THE GALLOWS" is available from Publishing Genius Press. The collection is beautiful, and funny and strange. PGP runs an online journal called Everyday Genius, which posts poems and stories daily from really talented and varied authors.

The image to the left is one of Mullany's. It has been exciting watching his paintings transform on his blog The Other Notebook. For a long time the paintings were painted with bold wiggling lines, but in the last few weeks, a new De Kooningian quality is erupting within them!




Mike Young, young author of Look! Look! Feathers and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough, is accepting students for his online poetry workshop with Barrelhouse. I have never taken a class online before, but if I was, I'd want someone like Mike Young to teach me, a man who has built a number of cultures on the internet, who has a couch in his chat room.



Additionally, I should congratulate amazing lunatic Nat Otting, whose first book of poems THE WRONG BOOK has won the 1913 Fanny Howe judged prize. Nat has been called The Human Hyperlink. His writing defies logic and delights me. I am very excited for his book to take shape.


It has been super exciting to witness the planning and designing of Emily Pettit's upcoming book GOAT IN THE SNOW, due out February from BIRDS LLC Press. The image to left is not the cover for Pettit's debut, but it was hard for me to not create many alternate covers, which one day might be considered for the Japanese translation. Emily's poems are a wise, comforting voice, giving me instructions while I dream, supporting all levels of wonder, encouraging life with no discrimination for what types of life will come. I am very excited to be reading with her in Denver this February!



This post feels like I am making a newspaper for my homeroom class. The most recent news, which arrived today, while my Adobe Acrobat Icon bounced insistently at the bottom of my screen wanting to update, is that I will be reading in NYC on November 14th at Webster Hall with Ben Fama, Ben Mirov and Marina Blitshteyn for the first reading of a new reading series called Death Hums created by Amy Silbergeld. I hope the reading is in The Marlin Room (pictured right!).

Lastly, here is an interview that I did with The Short Review. Thanks so much to Tania Hershman!

8.24.2011

August News







I am very pleased to have a story in McSweeney's issue 38! The cover is stylish and simple, like discovering a great piece of jewelry in your friend's old log cabin, or reading a delightful historical fact.

Thanks to Hilary Plum, the talented writer of fiction and co-director of Clockroot Books, for interviewing me at Kenyon Review blog.

Lastly, here is a portrait I painted of my nephew. Email me at rachelbglaser at gmail dot com if you are interested in commissioning a painting of your baby or loved one!

7.10.2011

Michael Kimball interviews me for Charlotte Viewpoint


The interview can be read here. Michael Kimball is the author of many books, including the new book 'US' which is out with Tyrant Books. Michael helped me edit 'Pee On Water', and is a big help to Publishing Genius Press.

In other news, the NBA lock-out.

Also, Blake Butler/Lily Hoang's dream-child 30 Under 30 is now out (Starcherone Books), with writing from Joanna Ruocco » Brian Oliu » Michael J. Lee » Angi Becker Stevens » Shane Jones » Devin Gribbons » Christina Kloess » James Yeh » William Seabrook » Danielle Adair » Megan Milks » Rachel Glaser » Michael Stewart » Sean Kilpatrick » Andrea Kneeland » Zach Dodson » Beth Couture » Mike Young » Kathleen Rooney & Elisa Gabbert » Joshua Cohen » Matt Bell » Adam Good » Andrew Farkas » Jaclyn Dwyer » Ryan Downey » Ryan Call » Kristina Born » Conor Madigan » Rebecca Jean Kraft » Evenlyn Hampton

I'm very excited to read it!