EIC
@CowboyJamboree
; author Dylan Quick is a Dairy Queen Don Quixote & more;
@notporncovers
(Country Covers Series); Banner = Joe Ely & Jerry Jeff neckerchiefs
My new book DYLAN QUICK IS A DAIRY QUEEN DON QUIXOTE is out now from
@LEFTOVERBOOKS
. Get it and support a great new indie press and good indie grit lit. There's small town drama mixed with some high minded Don Quixote references and a great soundtrack:
Happy (what would be) 99th birthday to Kurt Vonnegut. When I was an undergrad I got all charged up in the best way possible reading his fiction, and had so many questions to ask him about writing and philosophy that I sent him a letter. This is the postcard he sent back:
Would have been Kurt Vonnegut's 100th birthday today. Then again, he didn't mean to live as long as he did. Here's to an old fart w/ his Pall Malls. Once again sharing the postcard he sent me in college when I sent him a 7 page letter asking how to be writer.
@VonnegutLibrary
Thankful for all the kind things folks said about my new story up on
@RevolutionJohnM
, THE NIGHT GARTH BROOKS DIDN’T SHOW UP. If you haven’t read it give a go as a bday present to me (I’m 40 today):
I got her when I was 22. She was born on my 22nd birthday. I picked her from the litter because she was the cutest puppy I ever saw. It feels like a lifetime since then. We had to have her put down today. I will miss her so.
"It’s 1991 so the boy, Noah, sits in the front passenger seat. Back when that was still okay. He hears but the thing is he doesn’t know his father. Not really. A day and half every fourth or fifth weekend goes fast."
@gritvanwinkle
Very stoked to be featured in this alongside so many kickass writers. This story was a kind of turn in my writing of late, and I think it could lead to some good things. Anyway, support
@MISTERBULLBULL
and snag a sweet collection.
Honored to have a new story up at
@RevolutionJohnM
today. I think it’s a memory, but I might have dreamed it. I hope you enjoy THE NIGHT GARTH BROOKS DIDN’T SHOW UP:
We've read Raymond Carver, Rodney Jones, Allison Joseph, Gloria Vando, Gail White, Donika Kelly & Solmaz Sharif poetry in the first 2 weeks of my creative writing class. Peppered in Hank Williams, Robert Earl Keen & Steve Earle. Students are responding that they really dig it.
Happy birthday to the very first author I teach my creative writing and intro to lit analysis college students, Raymond Carver. Love to watch him blow their minds.
I shoulda got an MFA but I didn’t know nothing about nothing then. Didn’t want to do a PhD neither. So I wrote and started a publication that became a Press and edited and wrote and wrote. Very happy to have that hard work pay off.
My dad died in Oct 2020. He was almost 69. He was 5’6” and used to sit in his recliner with his right leg tucked under his butt, smokin a Swisher Sweet cigarillo watchin old westerns and that is the image I have of him that stays imprinted in my brain. That’s all.
Representin those
@DwightYoakam
Bakersfield Biscuits to pick up my boys from daycare. I look forward to the days when they are old enough to be embarrassed by such things.
Always a good day teaching Raymond Carver in class, and I'm doing an entire unit for 3 weeks. "Cathedral," "Neighbors," "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," & "Why Don't You Dance?"
And though it was the happy hour
It wasn't any fun
Cause the party again
Was just a party of one
Spin
#4
is Kinky doin some originals and interpretin Dylan, Willie, Tom Waits, Merle, Cash, Zevon, Willis Hoover, and others with his sage voice in 2015. RIP
@FriedmanKinky
:
Would I enjoy bein at AWP? Sure. Do I pay a couple thousand bucks a month for two kids in daycare? Yep.
In lieu of my presence I offer a great story from Terry Allen via Guy Clark:
“My father died many years ago now—of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
There are times to honor the old ways, and there are times to be different. The latter takes more courage.
Townes Van Zandt claimed to have dreamed the lyrics to "If I Needed You." Kind of happened to me recently. Dreamed the first stanza of a poem. Woke up & wrote it out, then wrote the rest. STOKED to say
@BendingGenres
picked it up for the Feb issue.
Standin on the gone side of leavin
She found a thumb and stuck it in the breeze
She'll take anything that's goin close to somewhere
She can lay it down and live it like she'd please
Spin
#1
today is an all-timer. Plus, Guy stands next to a paintin of the shirt he is wearin:
On his birthday, a postcard my first literary hero sent me when I wrote him a long letter in college and my first printing copy of Slaughterhouse-five. Happy 101st Kurt Vonnegut.
I won’t share the second page, but here’s the first of a poem I wrote comin out this Thursday from
@CowboyJamboree
Press as part of the BLUE BOB anthology, from a collection of poems I’ve written about the Dust Bowl.
Rockin Shotgun Willie hoodie on a cool Upper Peninsula mornin. Probably a good time to look at some more Willie anthology subs for
@CowboyJamboree
. Still time to get yours in:
We turned into our parents before we were out of our teens
Through a series of Chevys and Fords
The occasional spin round the floor at the Copper Canteen
S'pose it's just a McMurtry kinda day. Spin
#2
:
It's Johnny Cash's birthday today. The American Recording vols. he did with Rubin are just stellar. Listened to 'em for hours in the car driving to & from work on the backroads of Southern Illinois one year.
Spin
#3
is the posthumous American VI: Ain't No Grave:
And if I were like lightning
I wouldn't need no sneakers
I'd come and go wherever I would please
And I'd scare 'em by the shade tree
And I'd scare 'em by the light pole
But I would not scare my pony on my boat out on the sea
What an album by
@LyleLovett
. First spin today:
A week of Wenders, 3/5
Paris, Texas / Wim Wenders, dir. (1985)
“I used to make long speeches to you after you left. I used to talk to you all the time, even though I was alone. I walked around for months talking to you. Now I don't know what to say.”
#film
OPEN CALL 2024 NEWS 📚 All submissions have been reviewed by our Editorial Board. We plan to have info on results in late June or July. We've had hundreds of fantastic submissions this year so wish us luck!
For now, check out all the artists submitted this year. 🤩