Happy Poetry Month! & TONS of news

To begin with, since it’s April 1st: Happy National Poetry Month! In honor of the occasion Carrie Murphy and Birds of Lace bring you:

 

A website where we’ll be posting a poem/poet a day, plus a recommendation from the poet of a book of poems they’ve loved. Check in with us everyday here; Nicole Steinberg kicked us off today!

Did you know that Jeanine Deibel’s In the Grave is out NOW?

 

Boys boys boys, in the grave and in each other’s faces, pummeling and beating and traversing the land like they once owned it and mean to take it back with bloody fists or at least pretend to, or at least leave it scarred up and sweaty for the meek to inherit.

excerpt:

“After beating those boys after punching their faces with bats until the idea of face became blurry after huffing clouds against the sky doubled over we debated whether to drag them out of sight or bury our boots between slats of rib taking turns until we were forced to stop from the coughing to catch our breath and leave. We would come back for them Ty told me we would clean up our mess but that rarely happened.”

Purchase In the Grave here. Coming later this month: Carrie Hunter’s Inversion Twilight.

***

& now for news:

-Birds of Lace participated in a women publishers roundtable at Delirious Hem, curated by Kristina Marie Darling. Also on the panel are dancing girl press, Patasola Press, Noctuary Press, Switchback Books, and Sundress Publications. Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

-all BoL poetry chapbooks are $3 for the entirety of April! Get ‘em at the shop

-Judy Berman and Niina Pollari’s awesome It’s Complicated project, which looks at problematic artists/art and the feminists who enjoy them, has just released it’s first zine in the series, Totally Crushed Out. This zine has these rad essays:

Nona Willis Aronowitz on Eminem
Brooklyn Copeland on Marlon Brando 
Elisabeth Donnelly on The Afghan Whigs
Nina Mashurova on Charles Bukowski
Tom Ribitzky on the men of Ayn Rand
Judy Berman on Glam Rock

Order it here! And read an interview with the editors here.

-Speaking of Niina Pollari, her excellent/sick/funny translations of Tyitti Heikkinen’s poetry, The Warmth of the Taxidermied Animal, is out now from Action Books. Get your copy here.

-If you didn’t make it to the Dancing Birds Brunch at AWP ’13, JD Scott recaps it for your convenience here.

-Carrie Murphy has a new poem in Big Lucks and another at The Bakery

-Rohin Guha wrote about the Bechdel test as applied to some of your favorite tv shows

-Carina Finn has a poem in the new issue of Coconut

-and finally, Bambi Muse reviewed Anna Joy Springer’s The Birdwisher

xox

 

 

 

Birds of Lace at AWP + news

Birds of Lace and Dancing Girl Press authors have teamed up to present you with a brunch-time affair (12:12pm) on Saturday March 9th. If you are in Boston and cold and in need of some entertaining & distinctly lacey literary stylings you may want to find yourself in a certain hotel suite to hear readings by:

Lisa Marie Basile
Stephanie Berger
Jeanine Deibel
Carina Finn 
Megan Milks 
Niina Polari
JD Scott
Nicole Steinberg
& Melinda Wilson

More information can be found here; there will be giveaways!  

Additionally, Jeanine Deibel will be giving an early debut for her BoL chapbook In the Grave at AWP (it will be out in our etsy store later this month). She’ll have copies on hand to sell and will be reading at the Queertopia off-site event on Thu. March 7th at Club Cafe in Boston; she will also be on the panel Teaching Mutt Lit: Genre-benders, Hybrids, and other Weirdness in the Creative Writing Classroom Saturday, March 9 in Room 202, Hynes Convention Center from 9:00am – 10:15am. 

*   *   *

Other news:

-Carrie Murphy wrote this post on Bitch Magazine’s blog about Benjamin Percy and his pregnancy suit

-Niina Pollari’s translations of Tytti Heikkinen’s poems, The Warmth of the Taxidermied Animal, will be out at AWP from Action Books; read Danielle Pafunda’s thoughts on it at Montevidayo as well as some words on it by Joyelle McSweeney

-Megan Milks’ TWINS is now available at Chicago bookshops Quimby’s and Uncharted Books. There are also only 3 more copies left at our etsy store before it’s sold out forever!

-Issue #8 of Requited feats. work from Kristina Marie Darling as well as BoL favorite Gillian Cummings

-A few BoL authors filled out the Next Big Thing interview: Carrie Murphy, Rohin Guha, JD Scott (who writes about his forthcoming BoL chapbooks Funerals & Thrones) and Andrea Quinlan, who writes about her forthcoming BoL chapbook The Mysteries of Laura

-The Dictionary Project interviewed Anna Joy Springer

xo

 

 

Ali Forney Center + news

Hello all,

As you well know, Hurricane Sandy destroyed many homes and businesses recently. One of the places devastated by the hurricane was the Ali Forney Center, a drop-in site for homeless LGBTQ youth in NYC. For the rest of the month, Birds of Lace will be donating 100% of our sales to the Ali Forney Center. Have you been wanting a subscription or a chapbook, or do you want to gift one to someone? Now is an excellent time to do so, as you’ll get excellent reading as well as the opportunity to support important community work. Visit our etsy shop here; you can also donate directly to the Center here. I will update at the end of the month to let you know how much money we raised.

In other BoL-related news:

-Megan Milks’ TWINS will be released early next month; expect a pre-order page towards the end of this month

-Leon Baham, author of Ponyboy, Sigh, is featured now at Lambda Literary’s The Banal and the Profane

-Birds of Lace has partnered with Niina Pollari and Judy Berman’s project It’s Complicated to release a series of zines focusing on the misogynist art that feminists love. The first issue is coming soon, with essays by Nona Willis Aronowitz, Elisabeth Donnelly, Brooklyn Copeland, Tom Ribitzky, Nina Mashurova, and Judy Berman. Updates forthcoming!

- The new issue of Action Yes features work from BoL authors Carina Finn and Jiyoon Lee, as well as work from favorites Tim Jones-Yelvington, Ben Fama, Feng Sun Chen, Christie Ann Reynolds, Paige Taggart and more

-Kari Larsen, whose chapbook Come as Your Madness will be out from BoL next year, writes on Kate Zambreno’s brilliant new book Heroines over at her blog; she also writes on Carrie Murphy’s brilliant full-length book Pretty Tilt for Anobium Lit

- The new queer issue of PANK, edited by Tim Jones-Yelvington, features work from BoL authors Anna Joy Springer, Anne Marie Rooney, Seth Oelbaum and many excellent others

- Samantha Cohen, whose chapbook Gossip will be out from BoL next year, has new work up at Gulf Coast

- Carina Finn is interviewed at the Sweet Briar College website

- BoL authors Kari Larsen and Andrea Quinlan both have new chapbooks out from Dancing Girl Press: Say You’re a Fiction and We Speak Girl, respectively

xox

Forthcoming releases + lots of news

 

No, we won’t be publishing Francine Pascal, but we will be publishing Megan Milks’ wild and uncanny take on Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield via her chapbook TWINS, coming in November. We’ve been announcing forthcoming titles over on the BoL twitter, as well as posting excerpts from the chapbooks at our new tumblr. Here’s a round-up of what’s been announced so far, as well as links to the excerpts:

-TWINS by Megan Milks
-macey [triolets] by Seth Oelbaum
-FunSize&BiteSize by Jiyoon Lee
-The Mysteries of Laura by Andrea Quinlan
-Shell of an Egg in an Effort by Anne Marie Rooney

Keep an eye on our twitter + tumblr over the next few days for the rest of the titles. It’s going to be a full year of worrisome brilliance around here.

More (a LOT more) news on what our authors have been up to lately:
-The new issue of NAP features work from several BoL babes, including Anna Joy Springer, Niina Pollari, Carina Finn and Ji Yoon Lee
-Helen McClory reviewed Anna Joy Springer’s The Birdwisher for Pank’s blog
-Perhaps a Girl Elsewhere author Adam Strauss has new work up at Word for Word
-Relief Work author Rohin Guha has an essay up at The Rumpus on the shooting of Mollie Olgin and Mary Kristene Chapa
-Andrea Quinlan has new work up at NNATAN
-An interview with Meet the Lavenders author Carrie Murphy about her (excellent) new books of poems, Pretty Tilt
-An interview with They Really Want You contributor Ben Fama on his new project Mall Witch
-Carina Finn for Becca Klaver’s “What’s So Hot” salon
-Niina Pollari for “What’s So Hot”

xo

Action Books, Birds of Lace, and Kate Durbin Present: An Evening of Intimate Readings in the Bathroom of a Goth Club

AWP will never be the same again! Facebook event page here.

xox

Giant BoL-related News Update

It has been far too long since I’ve posted, so there is quite a bit of news to share.

First, I’m excited to announce that our first publication of 2012 will be Jason Helm’s chapbook Fetish. I was lucky enough to hear Jason read this story at the release party for Rohin Guha’s Relief Work earlier this year; I loved the story then and can’t wait to unleash it upon the world, soon.

Birds of Lace authors have been up to quite a bit in the past few months. Here are some links to a few of those endeavors:

- Meet the Lavenders author Carrie Murphy had some poems published in NAP Magazine, which can be read here. She also has a poem up over at Story Bought Dress which can be read here. Additionally, Carrie is an excellent cook, and her food blog Plums in the Icebox is full of wonderful recipes, and even more of those recipes are available via Carrie’s posts over at Hello Giggles. In the most exciting C.M.-related news of all, her first full-length book of poems, Pretty Tilt, will be published by Keyhole Press in 2012!

-Relief Work author Rohin Guha has been making videos of his lovely self reading Courtney Stodden’s tweets. (If you are unaware of who Courtney Stodden is, a quick google search will illuminate.) Those videos are compiled here for your viewing pleasure.

-Fabulous Essential author Niina Pollari’s newest & beautiful chapbook, Book Four, is now available from Hyacinth Girl Press here.

-Perhaps a Girl Elsewhere author Adam Strauss has a poem up in the new issue of Smoking Glue Gun here.

-The Birdwisher author Anna Joy Springer has work up at Joyland here.

-BoL is having a holiday sale: seven chapbooks PLUS The Birdwisher for only $20! Available at the etsy shop here.

-Lastly but not leastly, Birds of Lace created a limited-edition (of 30) catalog for Matt Momchilov’s recent show They Really Want You at Unspeakable Projects Gallery in San Francisco, CA. The catalog features writing in response to the pieces in Momchilov’s show by Niina Pollari, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Rohin Guha, Kate Durbin, Mike Kitchell, Leon Baham, and Ben Fama. The catalog also includes a mix cd of music chosen to accompany the art, as well as a one-of-a-kind polaroid of a sculpture from the show; a few copies will be available later in the month for purchase through the Birds of Lace etsy store.

xox

BoL News Round-up

*Tomorrow night in NYC our very own Rohin Guha (Relief Work) is reading with BoL favorite Jason Helm at the Gaslight Reading Series. The event starts at 7pm and is being held at 116 bar @ 116 MacDougal.

*Mr. Guha is also busy infiltrating the UK’s pop-media, as evidenced by his cameo over at The Guardian regarding the firing of Cheryl Cole.

*Niina Pollari has an article up over at Jezebel. Additionally, you may or may not know that she is in an excellent punk-rock accordian-and-megaphone-touting band called Mindtroll, whose music can be enjoyed here.

* Starting tomorrow, Anna Joy Springer (The Birdwisher) is going on tour for her new book The Vicious Red Relic, Love, out from Jaded Ibis Press. You can view tour dates here; The Birdwisher will be available for sale at the San Francisco and Berkeley dates.

*Next month will see the release of two new BoL titles: Ponyboy, Sigh by Leon Baham and Meet the Lavenders by Carrie Murphy. There will also be special pre-order extras going out with both of these chapbooks which I can’t wait to share with you, soon!

Tidbits

Finery (#5) contributor Brooklyn Copeland wrote a lovely review of Adam Strauss’ Perhaps a Girl Elsewhere over at her blog. Thanks Brooklyn! You can purchase Perhaps a Girl Elsewhere here.

Soon I will be posting a call for submissions for Finery #8- finally!

You only have a week left to order Anna Joy Springer’s The Birdwisher at 30% off. Visit our etsy page to order & use the code “vicious” at checkout.

Next month will see the release of Kristina Marie Darling’s Footnotes to a History of the Victorian Novel, a limited-edition chapbook/broadside that makes use not only of elegant wordplay but also vintage wallpaper, tiny ornaments, an IBM Selctric II typewriter, soft pink paper and brightly colored thread. Shortly thereafter we will have two other brilliant releases to kick off summer, with Leon Baham’s spooky poetic essay based on The Outsiders, Ponyboy, Sigh and Carrie Murphy’s ode to ’60s girl groups, Meet the Lavenders, which will feature a cover and illustrations by Rhani Lee Remedes.

The Vicious Red Relic, Love & The Birdwisher April Sale

Anna Joy Springer, author of The Birdwisher, has a new book coming out this month from Jaded Ibis Press. The Vicious Red Relic, Love is now available for pre-order; your pre-order gets you 20% off as well as a limited edition poster print from the book! Go here to order your copy.

In honor of Springer’s new book release Birds of Lace is offering 30% off of her 2009 illustrated novella The Birdwisher during the month of April. Go here to order and use the coupon code “vicious” at checkout.

Anna Joy Springer, Daniela Sea & Julianna Snapper read from ‘The Birdwisher’

Finally, in its entirety, the video of Anna Joy Springer performing a section of The Birdwisher (Birds of Lace 2009) at the release party for the book on 3/6/10 (hosted by Mommy Mommy! Reading Series at compactspace in Los Angeles, CA). Anna Joy enlisted friends Julianna Snapper & Daniela Sea to act out the parts of Detective Geon and Mrs. Little; she also sang the song that appears in the book as text on pages 73-74 at the 12 minute mark. Enjoy the video below:

Anna Joy Springer, Daniela Sea and Julianna Snapper read from ‘The Birdwisher’ from birds of lace on Vimeo.