Friday, January 25, 2008

A PECULIAR FEELING OF RESTLESSNESS: FOUR CHAPBOOKS OF SHORT SHORT FICTION BY FOUR WOMEN

“The four brilliant chapbooks that make up A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness are disarmingly, unabashedly intimate collections by women who know how to tell a story and aren’t afraid to drag the unspoken out into the light of day.” —Pia Z. Ehrhardt

The four chapbooks collected in A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness, three of them finalists and one of them the winner of the Rose Metal Press first annual short short chapbook contest, all revel in the succinctness of their form, the underlying tension anchored beneath each story of 1,000 words or less. These stories are peculiar; they resonate with restlessness. They are deft, they are gritty, and they are lyrical. Laughter, Applause, Laughter, Music, Applause by Kathy Fish, Wanting by Amy L. Clark, Sixteen Miles Outside of Phoenix by Elizabeth Ellen, and The Sky Is a Well by Claudia Smith (the reprint of her sold out chapboook) combine four multi-layered portrayals of beautiful uneasiness into a collection rich with wit, grace, and originality.












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HOW TO BUILD THE GHOST IN YOUR ATTIC

With wit, dynamism, and cutting senses of urgency and humor, Iowa Prize winner Shippy tells the tale of Isaac Makepeace Watt, a melancholy man living in a Thebes that is much like contemporary America.
The House of Cadmus still rules(and will fall), but they only appear in the poem as media white noise. Isaac’s concerns are personal, his father’s illness and his own moral decrepitude. There are talking monkeys, plagues, oracles, and nano-robots—you know, the usual agoramania.

















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BREVITY & ECHO: AN ANTHOLOGY OF SHORT SHORT STORIES

This collection of short shorts by Emerson Alumni was published in December 2006.
The anthology features: Derrick Ableman, Joann Avallon, Rusty Barnes, Jane Berentson, Stace Budzko, Leslie Busler, Jennifer Carr, Keith Carter, Chip Cheek, Amy L. Clark, Kirsten Culbertson, Mark DeCarteret, Erin Dionne, Denise Duhamel, Elizabeth Kemper French, Lee Harrington, Jen Heller, Chris Helmuth, Steve Himmer, Brian Hinshaw, Jacqueline Holland, Amanda Holzer, Shannon Huffman, John F. Kersey, Laurel Dile King, Mariette Landry, Molly Lanzarotta, Don Lee, Matt Marinovich, Tara L. Masih, Melissa McCracken, Sheehan McGuirk, LaTanya McQueen, Maryanne O’Hara, Janice O’Leary, Josh Pahigian, Jennifer Pieroni, Robert Repino, Ashley Rice, Matt Rittenhouse, Joe Robb, Beth Anne Royer, Brian Ruuska, Mary Saliba, Nina R. Scheider, Kimberly Ann Southwick, R. S. Steinberg, Cam Terwilliger, Terry Thuemling, and Laura van den Berg, as well as an introduction by Ron Carlson and an afterword by Pamela Painter.













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THE SKY IS A WELL (Sold Out)


“Each of Claudia Smith’s short shorts is a tilted memory of love and loss […] There is a natural accuracy in these brief narratives; the stories are short; her voice is true.”
–Ron Carlson

Lyric and gritty, glowing and graceful, The Sky Is a Well & Other Shorts is a complex and compact collection from Claudia Smith, funny-sad master of the short short form. Evocative of places and times long gone or going, the ephemera of memory and emotion, youth and age, each story unfolds like a song on a concept album—the pieces can stand alone, but together they blend into a seamless whole you’ll want to hear again and again. The two-color letterpress covers of this beautiful chapbook were printed at the Museum of Printing in North Andover, Massachusetts, and each copy was saddle-sewn together by hand.

Although this edition is sold out, Claudia's book has been reprinted as part of A PECULIAR FEELING OF RESTLESSNESS, an anthology of four chapbooks of short short fiction by four women. Order it today!

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