Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story: Aaron Burch

Showing posts with label Aaron Burch. Show all posts

Friday, November 12, 2010

Smile Politely, Andy Devine

There's a nice conversation with and around Andy Devine and his national tour, Being Andy Devine, at Smile Politely. It includes his publisher, Adam Robinson, his editor (me), as well as writer Aaron Burch, the host of Stories & Beer, where Andy Devine will be reading on November 14th. At the same time on the same day, November 14th, Andy Devine will also be reading at the Soda Series in NYC, with Mairéad Byrne, Daniel Groves, Stephanie Barber, and Adam Robinson.

Plus, there's a really nice post by Tom DeBeauchamp about reading Andy Devine's novel, Apartment City, over at Htmlgiant.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Mud Luscious Eleven

There's a great issue of Mud Luscious (#11) up with incredible work by Amelia Gray, Rachel Glaser, Peter Markus, Robert Lopez, Scott Garson, Joanna Ruocco, Alissa Nutting, Ken Sparling, Roy Kesey, Lily Hoang, Aaron Burch, Jac Jemc, James Kaelan, Adam Robinson, James Chapman, Ted Pelton, and Dawn Raffel. My piece is from How Much of Us There Was, which comes out later this fall with Tyrant Books.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Word-Things

I interview Ingrid Burrington at Hobart about protest signs, Venn diagrams, and other word-things.

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.

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, July 8, 2009

The Dollar Store Tour and I Will Smash You

I have two events coming up that I've been looking forward to for a while:
(1) The Dollar Store Reading on July 11th @ 730pm @ The Lof/t.
(2) Smashing for Success on July 18th @ 2pm @ the Contemporary Museum.
I hope to see you there or there.

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.