ZYZZYVA Events
- March 8, 2012
ZYZZYVA at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore
Location: 7 p.m., Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore, 2904 College Ave., Berkeley
Description: Gary Soto, Faith Gardner, and Blossom Plum read from their work in ZYZZYVA's Winter and Fall 2011 issues. Free. For more info, visit http://bit.ly/wCoO2Y
- March 21, 2012
Ellen Ullman and Jaron Lanier in Conversation
Location: 7:30 p.m., Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore, 2904 College Ave., Berkeley
Description: Ullman, author of "The Bug" and "Close to the Machine," discusses her work and her new novel, "By Blood," with Lanier, author of "Your Are Not a Gadget." Free. For more info, go to http://bit.ly/w5fiF4
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Tag Archives: Winter 2011
Self Portrait as Wikipedia Entry
Dean Rader is a professor in the English department at the University of San Francisco and author of Works & Days (Truman State University Press), which won the 2010 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize. His forthcoming book is Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to NMAI (University of Texas Press).
“Self Portrait as Wikipedia Entry” is one of his two poems in ZYZZYVA‘s Winter issue. The piece, in print, appears with sections of underlined words, denoting what would be a hyperlink if read on a screen. We reproduce the poem here with the actual links.
Rader will be reading tomorrow night at 7 p.m. with Herbert Gold, another Winter issue contributor, at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, as part of a ZYZZYVA/Granta event.
Variation Under Nature
Kascha Semonovitch is a poet and writer in Seattle. Her poems have appeared in The Colorado Review, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, and other journals.
“Variation Under Nature” is one of her poems in ZYZZYVA‘s Winter issue. The titles of her poems in ZYZZYVA are also selection titles from Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species. She is currently working on a series of poems based on the life of Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary of Darwin’s.
Melinda, Doing Her Best
Herbert Gold is the author of such novels as Birth of a Hero (1951), The Man Who Was Not With It (1956), and Fathers (1967), as well as of the nonfiction works Haiti: Best Nightmare on Earth (2001) and the memoir Still Alive! A Temporary Condition (2008).
“Melinda, Doing Her Best,” which appears in ZYZZYVA’s Winter 2011 issue, is a story set sometime in ’90s San Francisco, back when Moose’s was open in North Beach and when dot-com money was pouring into the city. That the title character is a computer programmer on the outs, then, is particularly striking. It’s tempting to read Melinda as a harbinger of the high tech good times gone sour. But the story is primarily a troubling depiction of a woman everybody wants something from, a person truly alone.
Enter Harlow
Karen Joy Fowler is the prize-winning author of many books, including the novels Sister Noon, Wit’s End, and the best-seller The Jane Austen Book Club. Her most recent book is the story collection What I Didn’t See (Small Beer Press).
“Enter Harlow,” her new fiction in ZYZZYVA‘s Winter issue, is further testament to what Michael Chabon has said about her work: “No contemporary writer creates characters more appealing, or examines them with greater acuity and forgiveness, than she does.” Set at UC Davis during the ’90s, the story, which comes from the opening pages of a novel-in-progress, follows a young woman “meandering” through her fourth year of school. “Enter Harlow” tells how that meandering is suddenly, spectacularly interrupted — in the school cafeteria. The following is an excerpt from the story.
Get Lost
Faith Gardner is a writer and musician living in Oakland. She plays guitar and sings in the bands Hooray for Everything and Dark Beach, and performs solo as Scarlett O’Hara. Her writing has appeared in PANK, Word Riot, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and many other places.
“Get Lost” appears in the Winter 2011 issue of ZYZZYVA. About a young woman who is suddenly without her best friend, who moved with her to San Francisco, Gardner’s story is appealingly downbeat, somewhat sinister, and surprisingly humorous as it follows a person gone adrift in an unfamiliar city and looking everywhere for her bearings. The following is an excerpt from the story.
