literary locals
Spring signals the coming of one wild and dark issue of American Short Fiction;reading and launch on Saturday
Spring is almost (possibly already!?) here in Austin, and for American Short Fiction (ASF), the season means Pacific Island colonies, heists, robots and a one-armed woman at an alligator farm.
The Spring issue of the Austin-based literary magazine is out, and as usual, ASF gives us stories that are wild, heartfelt and new. Featuring writing by Scott Blackwood, Robert Boswell, Tate Higgins, Maggie Shipstead and Laura Van Den Berg, this issue focuses on the voice of the collective.
Highlights include a gang of female bank robbers in gorilla masks, adultery, tornadoes and bright orange crabs that eat each other. Sound a bit dark? It is. It’s also totally awesome. As Jill Meyers tells us in her Editor’s Note, “All this first-person plural and womanliness and crime and violence may not sound like a blast to read. And yet it is.”
Saturday's launch party and reading at The Highball should be a blast, too. Come out at 7 p.m. and celebrate the new issue with drink specials and some dark, jangly folk music from local band Hello Caller. Poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi, actor and writer Elena Pasarello and novelist, yoga-dude and man-about-town Neal Pollack will all be reading excerpts from the Spring issue, as well as from their own work.
The launch party will also be the perfect place to pick a copy or two of ASF (both the Spring and Winter issues will be on sale), but if you can’t make it to the celebration, copies (and subscriptions!) are also available to order online.
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ASF was acquired by Badgerdog Literary Publishing in 2003 and re-launched in 2006. Work from the magazine has been anthologized in Best American Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, New Stories of the Southwest and Dzanc’s Best of the Web. For more details on the reading, check out the Facebook event page here.
