Welcome to featherproof
|
Written by featherproof
|
Fall 2011:
|
The Karaoke Singer’s Guide
to Self-Defense
By Tim Kinsella
For all this novel's depth of story, and that story's grip and wealthy undercurrents, Tim Kinsella's rushing, trippily meticulous prose is so exciting to follow that the story seems as much the novel's soundtrack and topography as it is the point. A thorough and wildly distinctive read. -Dennis Cooper, Author of The Marbled Swarm Reunited for a funeral and leery of one another, a family compares splintered memories. Will bathes his grandmother. Mel gives her wig a haircut. Norman is not prepared to take over his father’s club. Jesse has never known how old he is. They each cope with limited options and murky desires.
An irreducible collage, as intuitive as it is formal, The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense drifts between story lines and perspectives. Long bus rides through a post-industrial Gothic Midwest, Classic Rock, and compulsive brawls hum a requiem for the late night life of Stone Claw Grove. |
Out Now:
|
The Universe in Miniature
in Miniature
By Patrick Somerville
Patrick Somerville is the most devastatingly sensitive badass nerd in contemporary lit. I love this book, with its weird art and crazy machines and secret agents and out-of-control love. -J. Robert Lennon, Author of Castle Out Now! In this genre-busting book from award-winning novelist Patrick Somerville characters, stories, and stray thoughts revolve around the “The Machine of Understanding Other People,” the story of a Chicago man who is bequeathed a supernatural helmet that allows him to experience the inner worlds of those around him. Through his lonely lens we peer into the mind of an art student grappling with ennui, ethics and empathy as she comes to terms with her own beliefs in a godless world. We telescope out to the story of idiot extraterrestrials struggling to pilot a complicated spaceship. We follow a retired mercenary as he tries to save his marriage and questions his life abroad. Mind-bending and cracklingly new, Somerville’s broadly appealing and uniquely imaginative constructions probe the outer reaches of sympathy, death, and love in a world seen from the inside out. LIMITED FIRST EDITION: the specially designed cover turns into a mobile of Patrick Somerville's miniature universe! |
  FREE Mini-book!
Daddy's
By Lindsay Hunter
“Each tiny, diamond story—precise, comic, poised at the edge of surreal—contains one brutal life force tearing itself off the page. You can hold Daddy’s in your hands and feel it breathing.” —Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation Out now! You ever fed yourself something bad? Like a candied rattlesnake, or a couple fingers of antifreeze? Nope? You seen what it done to other people? Like while they’re flopping around on the floor you’re thinking about how they’re fighting to live. Like while they’re dying they never looked so alive? That’s what Daddy’s is like. In this collection of toxic southern gothics, packaged as a bait box of temptation, Lindsay Hunter offers an exploration not of the human heart but of the spine; mixing sex, violence and love into a harrowing, head-spinning read that’ll push you a little further toward flopping.
| The Awful Possibilities
By Christian TeBordo
 "Nine caustic stories by TeBordo find screeching ironies in rhetorical absurdities and writerly subversiveness. Bizarre and biting, these tales leave a mark." —Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW
A girl masters the art of forgetting among kidney thieves. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic childrearing. You’ve heard these people whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door. In brilliantly strange set pieces that explode the boundaries of short fiction, Christian TeBordo locates the awe in the awful possibilities we could never have imagined. |
| Scorch Atlas
By Blake Butler
Butler is an original force who is fearless with form... The design is appropriately disarming, an apt part of the overall barrage by this inventive and deeply promising young author.—Time Out New York A novel of 14 interlocking stories set in ruined American locales where birds speak gibberish, the sky rains gravel, and millions starve, disappear or grow coats of mold. In 'The Disappeared,' a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. In 'The Ruined Child,' a boy swells to fill his parents' ransacked attic. Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler's full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William Gass, yet turned with Butler's own eye for the apocalyptic and bizarre. | | AM/PM
By Amelia Gray
At moments screwy, prickly and pleasantly surprising, Gray’s short shorts deliver youthful snapshots about being nuts in love... A delectable debut.—Publishers Weekly If anything's going to save the characters in Amelia Gray's debut from their troubled romances, their social improprieties, or their hands turning into claws, it's a John Mayer concert tee. In AM/PM, Gray's flash-fiction collection, impish humor is on full display. Tour through the lives of 23 characters across 120 stories full of lizard tails, Schrödinger boxes and volcano love. Follow June, who wakes up one morning covered in seeds; Leonard, who falls in love with a chaise lounge; and Andrew, who talks to his house in times of crisis. An intermittent love story as seen through a darkly comic lens, Gray mixes poetry and prose, humor and hubris to create a truly original piece of fiction. |
More Books: 
Free Mini-Books:
Click to download, print, and fold your very own Mini-Book!
Blog
|
|
|
|
Written by featherproof
|
Well, it's been awhile. And wow, things have changed. The economy is flipping out, people are protesting Wall Street, and America's super powers are leaking away. All we can say is: the collapse of the empire is gonna make for some great art and literature!
Appropriately, our next book has all the key ingredients. In The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense, post-industrial consumer capitalism practically prescribes a dream-like state as a default setting. This dream-like experience of the world is strange and erotic, as information itself becomes the currency and grounding of experience the strangeness of physicality becomes fetishized.
We couldn't be more excited to release this book at this moment. Tim Kinsella has been a creative force in music for years. Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc, Owls, Make Believe and Friend/Enemy are all products of his tireless creativity. His most recent record is the blistering Life Like (Polyvinyl), a stripped-down, road-tested album recorded by Steve Albini. Now he’s turned his hand and relentless energy to another creative endeavor: the novel.
God is optional in The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense. A young man battling an addiction to brawling, bathes his grandmother. A woman locks her home and abandons her family, unsure if they might have already abandoned her. A teenage runaway looks for a new life in a strip club recently passed down to an unprepared heir. With shock or resolve, the citizens of Stone Claw Grove, Michigan cope with an optionless everyday, each struggling to recognize some note of desire in the overwhelming static of cliche.
You can BUY IT NOW, from a mondo corporation, while we're all still allowed to be consumers.
Flavorpill said it's most exciting, and there is some agreement on that front:
"For all this novel's depth of story, and that story's grip and wealthy undercurrents, Tim Kinsella's rushing, trippily meticulous prose is so exciting to follow that the story seems as much the novel's soundtrack and topography as it is the point. A thorough and wildly distinctive read." -Dennis Cooper, Author of The Marbled Swarm
"By the time I finished the book, my copy was more dog-eared than just about any other book I own, and when it ended, I felt bittersweetly bereft. I thought The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense was a brilliant read, highly recommended for readers who like a little nostalgia in a smart, dark, funny, and engrossing novel." -LitStack
On theme, various Chicago authors and musicians will be 'karaoking' pieces of the book at our release party, Oct 11th, at The Hideout. Not to be missed:
The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense Book Release Party
October 11th, 6:30 pm. $1.
The Hideout, 1354 West Wabansia
Featuring Tim Kinsella, lecturing on his debut novel,
and karaoke readings from the same by Bobby Burg, Mairead Case, Zach Dodson, Natalie Edwards, Lindsay Hunter, Devin King, Paul Koob, Todd Mattei, Caroline Picard, Dmitry Samarov, and more!
 We've got a FREE Mini-book sample on the site, as per usual.
Our other books KEEP GETTING REVIEWED, and positively. Zach talked to Laura van deer Berg about the whole business and yachts over at Ploughshares.
The apocalypse looms. Other revolutionary parties are forming. The time is now.
So: fight the man, read a book, watch it all burn. We'll be with you till the end.
|
|
|
Written by zach dodson
|
|
If you're still somehow trapped in the academic cycle, as some of us here at the the nest are, then there's only one thing on your mind right now: School's out for summer. (Possibly, forever.)
This means it's time for shorts, lawn chairs and Pimm's and lemonade out in the yard. Absolute laziness is what we prescribe, and no reading until Fall 2011, when you'll be able to get featherproof's next book:
The Karaoke Singer’s Guide
to Self-Defense
By Tim Kinsella
We can finally confirm the Gossip (Wolf). We couldn't be more into the debut novel from Chicago's most untiring creative force. And we're not the only ones:
For all this novel's depth of story, and that story's grip and wealthy undercurrents, Tim Kinsella's rushing, trippily meticulous prose is so exciting to follow that the story seems as much the novel's soundtrack and topography as it is the point. A thorough and wildly distinctive read. -Dennis Cooper, Author of The Marbled Swarm
What's it all about then? Glad you asked: Reunited for a funeral and leery of one another, a family compares splintered memories. Will bathes his grandmother. Mel gives her wig a haircut. Norman is not prepared to take over his father’s club. Jesse has never known how old he is. They each cope with limited options and murky desires. An irreducible collage, as intuitive as it is formal, The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense drifts between story lines and perspectives. Long bus rides through a post-industrial gothic Midwest, classic rock, and compulsive brawls hum a requiem for the late-night life of Stone Claw Grove.
Want a taste? We thought so. Here's a mini-excerpt from The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense, and a new mini-story from the unsinkable Molly Gaudry. Print 'em out, fold 'em up, and head out to the yard:
We'll have copies of these minis, Storigami, and tons of books at the Printers Row Lit Fest, the weekend of June 4th, in downtown Chicago. We're so pumped to be in a super-tent with super-friends McSweeney's, Drag City Books,
Hobart, Stop Smiling Books, Green Lantern/Paper Cave, Knee-Jerk Magazine, Make Magazine, and 826 Chi! Come say hi and pick up a few books to read, flashlight-style.
Recommended listening while you read: Joan of Arc's newest album, Life Like released yesterday!
Tim Kinsella will be reading, along with a whole bunch of featherproof friends at QUICKIES!, June 14th. It's a goodbye party for our dear sweet Mary Hamilton, and we're pissed at LA for taking her, for having an eternal summer, and perpetuating an unstable California economy. Come hear the whistle blow as her train heads out.
The show goes on with June's Show 'n Tell Show, back at Lincoln Hall, with a new house band, and a great line up: Jim Coudal, Dawn Hancock, Veronica Corzo-Duchardt, Ryan Duggan, Johnny Sampson , and your favorite Mom, SpokesMom. That's June 23rd at 8pm.
That's all the news for now. Happy sunshine, beach balls and day-drunks.
|
|
| | << Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
| | Results 1 - 8 of 152 | |
|
|
|
Upcoming Events |
Summer Forum Fundraiser w/ Patrick Somerville
Tue, Feb 21st, 2012, @7:00pm - Lula Cafe, Chicago
|
AWP 2012 Chicago Kick-Off Party
Wed, Feb 29th, 2012, @8:00pm - The Empty Bottle
|
AWP 2012 Karaoke Idol
Thu, Mar 1st, 2012, @9:00pm - Beauty Bar Chicago
|
AWP Literature Party 2012
Fri, Mar 2nd, 2012, @8:00pm - Lincoln Hall, Chicago
|
|
|
|
FREE Mini-book!
