VenusZine
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Skin may be the body’s largest organ, but it takes on epic proportions in Lynne Tillman’s latest novel, American Genius: A Comedy, a dazzling and often dizzying meditation on memory and meaningful connection. Lingering in a facility never clearly defined (it emerges as something between a New Age spa and a mental health hospital), the main character, whose name we eventually learn is Helen, obsesses over every aspect of her problematic epidermis: psoriasis, moisturizers, alopecia, waxing, scars, vermiculations, facials, the way this or that cloth feels against her sensitive skin...
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Originally published January 2007, VenusZine
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When Elizabeth Crane burst onto the literary scene five years ago she was heralded as a bold, undeniably unique talent - a female writer to put on the shelf beside the literary likes of George Saunders and Dave Eggers. And rightly so: her two short stoy collections, All This Heavenly Glory and When the Messenger Is Hot, mixed an experimental writing style with a playful, often absurdist sense of humor, packed with plenty of emotional reverberation...
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Originally published February 25, 2008, VenusZine
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Cate Kennedy's debut collection is about two things: death and dying. In the first story, a young woman's girlfriend is in a coma following an auto accident and the woman must decide whether to take her lover off a respirator. In the second, an aging athlete puts the 15-year-old family dog down, almost as an afterthought. The third story takes place entirely in an airport, where a woman dying of some unnamed disease is trying to calmly smuggle three kilos of cocaine back into the country for one last drug-tinged hoorah. And in the fourth - well, you get the idea...
Originally published Winter 2007, VenusZine
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Jessa Crispin started Bookslut.com with two goals in mind: she wanted to score free books from publishers, and she wanted a new way, besides Minesweeper, to kill time at her day job. Now the monthly Web literary magazine has become her day job, read by an ever-growing fan base of booklovers eager to read reviews, columns, author interviews, plus a daily blog where Crispin dishes out her acerbic opinions about the woeful state of publishing...
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Originally published Spring 2007, VenusZine
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As any fledgling novelista knows, the worst work isn't in writing your manuscript - it's getting a publisher to give a damn. Lulu.com, a self-publishing, print-on-demand service, offers a refreshing alternative to the lottery-like prospect of landing a book deal. For no charge, writers can register, upload their manuscripts and artwork, and then, with a simple click, publish their books. Of course, "publish" and "print" don't mean the same thing here - and therein lies the beauty of Lulu...
Originally published Spring 2008, VenusZine
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Tedra Osell, a 39-year-old literature professor living in Venutra, California, blogs every day at http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/ about feminist issues big and small. And across the country Sarah Pierce, a 29-year-old Buffalo native, logs on every morning to savor each word...
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Originally published September 2007, VenusZine
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Most of us would cringe at the idea of returning to high school, let alone living there. But two years ago Nikol Lohr and Ron Miller decided to do just that. They bought four 1920s brick schoolhouses in rural Kansas, which they converted into an artist’s residency and their own home. “Since I was a little kid, my fantasy has always been to live in a school,” says Lohr, a 36-year-old writer who founded DisgruntledHousewife.com and recently published the knitting guide Naughty Needles...
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Originally published June 2007, VenusZine
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Even readers who relished Kelly Braffet's deliciously gothic debut, Josie and Jack, will have a hard time pushing through her second novel, Last Seen Leaving. It's an inoffensive but non-compelling read in which the main question of suspense is whether the story will transcend the usual formalities of a mystery-thriller and plumb the complexities of the characters.
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Originally published Winter 2006, VenusZine
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It's called the slush pile, and every book publisher has one. Unsolicited queries and manuscripts regularly get dumped into it, while little gets salvaged for a thorough read. When asked if his pioneering literary publishing company, Small Beer Press, has published anything from the slush pile, co-publisher Gavin Grant pauses. "Hmmm," he says, checking the catalog. The answer, after some shuffling, is brutally definite: "Um, no."
Originally published Winter 2006, VenusZine
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Starting an independent, feminist publishing house in the Midwest may not seem like the surest business model, but having that press concentrate solely on poetry sounds like the kiss of death. The editors of Switchback Books, Chicago’s only feminist press, didn’t let that stop them from setting up shop in the Windy City, or using the f-word...
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Originally published May 2007, VenusZine
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