May 1st
Fiction International editor Harold Jaffe reading at SDSU’s Love Library

http://library.sdsu.edu/events/harold-jaffe-reading

May 9th
Fiction International presents a multi-media reading by four of San Diego State University’s MFA graduate students: Carla Wilson, Shane Roeschlein, Andy O’Clancy, and Ryan Forsythe.

https://www.facebook.com/events/148138485362803/

May 15th
Our big 40th celebration at The Whistle Stop Bar! Join us in celebrating 40 years of innovative, social-activist writing. Friends and staff of Fiction International will come together to toast the accomplishments of this vanguard journal.

https://www.facebook.com/events/372881449484633/?ref=22

Hope you can make it out to one, if not all, of these exciting events! See you soon.

For more information on this event, go to http://www.sandiego-art.org/finished_2columnR_content.php?conID=192

Fiction International is an SDSU-affiliated journal dedicated to progressive political ideals and innovative forms of fiction and nonfiction. Edited by Harold Jaffe, Fiction International turns 40 this year.

Harold Jaffe is the author of 20 books, including 13 fiction (or docufiction) collections, five novels and two volumes of essays. He is a professor of creative writing, English and comparative literature at SDSU. His work has been translated into 15 languages, and has appeared in City Lights Review, Paris Review and Best American Stories to name a few.

Katie Farris is a fiction writer, translator, and professor. Farris has taught at UC Berkeley and Brown University and has served as a Visiting Professor at New England College’s MFA Program. She currently teaches fiction, poetry, and comparative literature at San Diego State University. Her fiction, translations, and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Verse, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Green Mountains Review, Washington Square, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Brooklyn Rail and other publications.

Jimmy Jazz has read poetry at a bowling alley in Chicago, a punk squat in Phoenix, a clothing store in Los Angeles, The Fringe Festival in New York, and at myriad universities, theaters, coffee shops, galleries, bars and bookstores. He has written five novels and edited the web mag Pirate Enclave since 1999. Since finding unemployment, he has written an exhaustive 500-page memoir/history called The Book of Books.  He is celebrating the release of two novels – House of the Unwed Mother and The Cadillac Tramps.

Ryan Forsythe is a writer, editor, artist, and dad from Cleveland, now living here in San Diego, though he calls the mythical state of Jefferson home, after running a hostel in Redwood National Park for 4 years with his wife and children. His recent publications include If You Don’t Read This The Terrorists Will Win (Black Scat Books, 2012) and Dick Cheney Saves Paris: a personal and political madcap sci-fi meta- anti- novel (Love Earth, 2011). Ryan will be graduating in May with his MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University.

Dani Heinemeyer is an MFA Fiction student at San Diego State University and a grant writer in Balboa Park. A native of South Dakota, she studied creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Goldsmiths College in London. She spent the last six years in New York City writing grants and hanging out with dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History, followed by more grant writing and avant-garde performances she didn’t understand at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Julie Harris is a writer and artist originally from New Mexico. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and a minor in History from New Mexico State University in 2012, graduating with distinction in University Honors. As an undergraduate, she received several English awards, including the Sutherland-McManus Award for prose. She is currently in the Master of Fine Arts program at San Diego State University studying fiction.

Charlie Griggs is a San Diego State University MFA Fiction student. He is originally from Maryland and earned his Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from Florida State University. His writings remain largely unpublished, but with a novel in the works as well as an ever-growing surplus of short stories, he intends to change that posthaste.

For more information on this even, go to http://www.sandiego-art.org/finished_2columnR_content.php?conID=192

“Jaffe said this book is particularly important because it addresses the idea that modern society has allowed itself to become so focused on retold truths, that reality is getting further away from being in ‘real time.’

He hopes that readers can learn to question information exchange and revive the spirit of compassion.”

Read the full article here. Revolutionary Brain can be ordered from Amazon here.

The front cover owl is courtesy of the fine photography of Ryan Seslow and the back cover features a mandala based on his image. If you’d like to peruse the full line-up of texts and art, visit our page here: Fiction International #45: About Seeing.

If you click the link, you can find the full text of several of the works. & if you haven’t gotten your copy, it’s not too late. In fact, if you order from Amazon here, you can even have one in 48 hours (if you order 1-day or 2-day shipping).

By the way, if you keep reading down the page, please ignore the note in the next post about your last chance. Submissions have closed for Fiction International #46: Real Time/Virtual. We’ll be making decisions soon, so sit tight, true believers….

Fiction, non-fiction, indeterminate prose, and visuals which address Real Time/Virtual are welcome. Please submit hard copy from 9/1 to 12/15 2012 to the address listed on this page. We will consider submissions of narrative, anti-narrative and indeterminate texts but only accept submissions reflecting the theme.

All submissions (text and images), including those from agents, must be printed out, accompanied by an SASE, and mailed to:

Harold Jaffe, Editor
Fiction International
San Diego State University
Dept. of English and Comp. Lit.
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182-6020 USA

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~fictintl/submit.html

     Do you remember paper printed books, the dissolute scent of aged pages?“

-From “Art-Making in the Technopsphere”
A collaboration between a few of the best, brightest and belligerent: Andy O’Clancy, Natalie Quave, Chad Stroup, Randall Lahrman, Ryan Forsythe, Jo Ellen Aragon, Carla Wilson, Francois Bereaud

Do you remember?–Check the “Technospere.” It will jog your memory:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~fictintl/story_46_compilation.html

In this timely collection of essays and “quasi-essays,” acclaimed novelist and critic Harold Jaffe explores the maddening chord changes of millennial culture. Gesturing, in a philosophical shorthand, toward a kind of pop Armageddon, Revolutionary Brain is at once thesis, allegory, and surreal comedy, demonstrating just how far we, and the natural world we have debauched, have fallen. Obsessed with technology, we are incapable of reconstructing ourselves. By way of Jaffe’s elegant prose and perfect pitch, our collective disability is laid bare at the 11th hour. Revolutionary Brain is a powerful cry for a brave new aesthetics that turns towards, not away, from our tormented globe.

According to Jonathan Baumbach, author of You: Or the Invention of Memory, “This witty and explosive book is an indictment of injustice and spurious morality and a call to art and enlightened activism as healing alternatives.”

Order from Raw Dog Screaming Press or view the full press release.

Diving back into the collaboration…
How do words fit in? Are we in space? And if so, who paid for our ride?

“…when giant corporations own the means of production and make barriers so low—not in order to democratize art, but in pursuit of the long tail, firm in the knowledge that a buck off a million books that sell one copy each is the same as a buck each from a million identical Fifty Shades of Greys—well, perhaps there is a slight devaluation of said art. Definitely there is a commodification.”

How can we taste the real?

Congratulations to FI Assistant Editor Ryan Forsythe for publication of “Untitled” in City Beat’s “Fiction 101″ contest.  Find out how Roger learned the difference between the real and the imitation here:
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-11171-fiction-101.html

And read the rest of “Art-Making in the Technosphere,” here:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~fictintl/story_46_compilation.html

What have you commodified today?

Consider riffing on Real Time/Virtual, or just spew out your own post-political process. Sometimes it’s just time to write.

Still stuck? Read this. One of the best articles written for writers who are busy procrastinating.
Also, tell us: What are your favorite articles or best words of writerly advice?

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/02/21/25-things-i-want-to-say-to-so-called-aspiring-writers/