Anne Elizabeth Moore
Mickey Hess
& Todd Dills
. and introducing Pitchfork Battalion

THE2NDHAND #18 marks a turn in the road for THE2NDHAND, Chicago’s literary broadside and online magazine for new writing. This issue -- PIE -- is the creation of Anne Elizabeth Moore, Punk Planet associate publisher and editor of a forthcoming comix-focused series in Houghton Mifflin’s "Best American" line. PIE demonstrates that local pie-baking competitions are not so much different in their administration from dirty American presidential elections, that there is a fount of information about pie in greater Americana that you have surely never had the privilege of knowing. Along the way you might take a multiple choice, short answer, or fill-in-the-blank quiz to pass the time like a good schoolgirl.

Anne Elizabeth Moore hails from the west coast, but now calls Chicago her home. She is the associate publisher of Punk Planet, likewise editor of a forthcomign comix-focused series of Houghton Mifflin’s "Best American" line. Her fiction has been featured at THE2NDHAND.com and she authored the most recent 18th installment of THE2NDHAND’s broadside series, PIE.

Mickey Hess, Louisville resident and writer and THE2NDHAND’s FAQ editor, is a prof at Indiana University Southeast and is author of a memoir, Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory, and two story collections. His sampling techniques are on offer at here.

Todd Dills is the editor and publisher of THE2NDHAND. He is author of a story collection, For Weeks Above the Umbrella, and a novel due out in 2006. He edited the 2004 best-of anthology All Hands On: A THE2NDHAND Reader and writes the biweekly WING & FLY @ THE2NDHAND.com.

Pitchfork Battalion is all of us, the gargantuan scope of humanity writ small. Assembled from disparate parts (originally Joe Meno, Sean Carswell, Mickey Hess, and Todd Dills), this shape-shifting entity throws down cadence and rhyme and story with a punch hitherto unseen in the lit world. Check out some of the group’s initial offerings here.