Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story: Everyday Genius

Showing posts with label Everyday Genius. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Four Years of Genius

November marks the four year anniversary of Publishing Genius. To celebrate the head genius, Adam Robinson, has posted a selection from Andy Devine's "A Grammar for Fiction Writers" at Everyday Genius.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Meeting Words: A Live Editing Performance

This week at Meeting Words, Matt Bell is writing LIVE. The whole schedule is explained at Everyday Genius. I'll be doing a LIVE editing performance on Tuesday night, 9pm. Then Lily Hoang will edit LIVE on Wednesday. Then Matt will rewrite.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

4 Best Ofs for Everyday Genius

I guest-edited Everyday Genius back in August and part of September and I'm very happy to say that four of those pieces -- (1) How To by Aaron Burch; (2) What We Tell Girl to Do With Us Brothers If We Ever Stop Making Mud by Peter Markus; (3) Penumbra by David McLendon; and, (4) Modern Love by Stephen Graham Jones -- were selected for Dzanc's Best of the Web 2010. Way to go, Everybody. And, thank you, Adam Robinson, for letting me edit genius.

Plus, I did a guest-editing gig at Lamination Colony in early 2009 and Josh Maday's piece from that issue, Ashes to Undermine the Smell, also won a Dzanc Best Of.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

All Kinds of Nice Things About Everyday Genius

So I was guest-editing Everyday Genius for the month of August and I ended up with so much genius that the genius himself, Adam Robinson, has let me stay on through a good part of September. And then Matt Bell went and said all kinds of nice things about said editing, including this: "Together, these stories, poems, and Venn diagrams comprise what is certainly one of the best stretches of publication by any magazine, online or off."

Of course, the real genius is constituted by the writers: Stephen Graham Jones, David McLendon, Sean Lovelace, Peter Markus, Gregory Luce, Sherrie Flick, Giancarlo DiTrapano, Stacy Muszynski, Randall Brown, Ken Baumann, Robert Lopez, Gena Mohwish, Elizabeth Ellen, Blake Butler, Ingrid Burrington, Adam Robison, Barry Graham, Jane Hammons, Luca Dipierro, Sasha Fletcher, Matt Bell, Kim Chinquee, Catherine Moran, Andy Devine, J.A. Pak, Tria Andrews, Aaron Burch, Amelia Gray, and Sam Pink.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

More Everyday Genius; More Andy Devine

This is my second week guest-editing Everyday Genius and today there is a great piece by Andy Devine. Yesterday was J.A. Pak's formally-inventive adaptation. Tomorrow is a Venn diagram from Ingrid Burrington. Then there'll be some Catherine Moran, and, of course, some Kim Chinquee. And, speaking of, there's an incredible interview with Andy Devine at elimae; the brilliant Josh Maday asks the great questions.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Everyday Genius & Andy Devine

I'm guest-editing Everyday Genius for the month of August. Everyday Genius is the curious magazine arm of Adam Robinson's Publishing Genius Press. Today is Amelia Gray Day. Yesterday was a Sam Pinkism. Tomorrow and the next day and the next will be bits of genius from Ingrid Burrington, Aaron Burch, and Tria Andrews. The coming weeks will be filled with Kim Chinquee, Blake Butler, and the mysterious Andy Devine (speaking of, there's an incredible interview with Andy Devine at elimae; the brilliant Josh Maday asks the great questions).

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

A Kind of World

I have a short poem up at Everyday Genius. It's at least 15 years old and a little bit about my early days in NYC.

Nice Things About Us

Observer: “Powerful and moving ... breathless”
El Placer de la Lectura: “A monument to love”
The Glasgow Herald: “Be warned: this book has the power to make even the most hard-hearted of readers shed a tear. ... Kimball has broken into new territory: Us is one of the most graphic depictions of illness and loss I have ever read.”
Letras Libres: Michael Kimball "already delivers the future of the novel ... [He is] one of the authentic innovators in contemporary fiction."
Blake Butler: “There are two books I can remember that ever made me physically cry. There were the rape scenes in Saramago’s Blindness, and there was nearly every chapter of Michael Kimball’s [Us]. While the first hurt because it was so brutal, Kimball’s was a softer kind of invocation—as I read it in a bathtub, I could not shake the feeling of being held, as if somehow the words had interlaced my skin. This is the essence of the magic Michael Kimball holds—his sentences come on so taut, so right there, and yet somehow so calming, it’s as if you are being visited by some lighted presence.”
El Razón: “Bathed in tenderness ... touching and breathtaking ... one of the most moving, heartbreaking, and sad novels of contemporary American fiction. It is essential.”
Telegraph and Argus: “This is the saddest book I have ever read and one of the most beautiful ... One can’t help being aware of his grief and the great love he feels for his dying wife. It will make you cry and break your heart but this is one book you must read.”

Nice Things on Dear Everybody

The Believer: "a curatorial masterpiece"
The LA Times: "funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking"
Time Out New York: "stunning"
The Star-Democrat: "elegantly and eloquently written ... an unforgettable book"
Gary Lutz: “Dear Everybody confirms Kimball's reputation as one of our most supremely gifted and virtuosic renderers of the human predicament.”
Largehearted Boy: "Dear Everybody is a cleverly constructed book that balances pathos and humor exquisitely, and proves Michael Kimball to be a master storyteller."
The Citizen: "superb"
WYPR: “quite a literary feat"
The Faster Times: "Michael Kimball is a badass."
HTMLGIANT: "Dear Everybody is one of the finest, most heartbreaking books I’ve ever read."
David McLendon: "I know of no one ... who knows and understands every cog and flywheel and screw of the language machine to the degree of Kimball's reach."
Word Riot: Dear Everybody is "forever embedded in my brain."
Maud Casey: “Dear Everybody has the page-turning urgency of a mystery and the thrilling formal inventiveness of the great epistolary novels.”
HTMLGIANT: "one of the hottest, most innovative books of the year"

Nice Things About BIG RAY

Sam Lipsyte: “Michael Kimball has been writing innovative, compelling, and beautifully felt books for years, but BIG RAY seems a break-through and culmination all at once. It's funny and terrifying and it's his masterpiece, at least so far.”
Dana Spiotta: “Big Ray, the man, made an indelible human impression on me. BIG RAY, Michael Kimball's terrific new novel, is genuinely moving because it is so rigorously unsentimental. Kimball is a powerful and courageous writer.”
Jon McGregor: "BIG RAY, a slim and finely-toned book about an overweight ruin of a father, is an uncompromising work of power and grace. I finished reading it a week ago, but I still can't put it down."
Deb Olin Unferth: "Elegy, meditation, story, final reckoning—whatever you want to call it, BIG RAY is mesmerizing. Sorrowful and honest, the kind of book that compels, not compromises, BIG RAY is an incredible accomplishment."
Madison Smartt Bell: “BIG RAY is disturbing in the most extraordinary ways, and in the end extraordinarily touching also. There’s nothing quite like it I’ve ever read till now (though there were times I thought the ghost of Barry Hannah was whispering in my ear.) It’s amazing what a deep resonance a writer of Michael Kimball’s quality can strike with a very few words.”
Jessica Anya Blau: BIG RAY is stunning, haunting, and beautiful. This groundbreaking and unforgettable novel should not be missed.