Author. Editor. Michigander.
I was interviewed by Megan Graham at noah magazine about my experiences as a writer, the inspiration behind and conceptualization of Sea of Trees, and the best piece of advice I’ve ever received:
“I think a lot of people get very afraid that they’re never going to get published. And you just kind of have to have the attitude that a lot of great people don’t get published or it takes them a long time to get published. That is absolutely part of the game. You just have to keep going.”
I absolutely adore synthpop (when done right), and think, in the hands of a truly talented artist, it can be some of the catchiest, most ear-satisfying-est music around.
Case in point: Jonathan Bates (who goes by the name Big Black Delta). His new album is dropping at some point this year, and he recently released the first single, “Side of the Road,” which is already a contender for my favorite song of 2013.
And the music video is pretty stellar too. Enjoy it below.
They had me at an aging, Robert Smith-like rock star hunting Nazis across America.
But beyond the gimmicky premise, This Must Be the Place is a truly magnificent film, gorgeously shot and acted, with a lot of heart. And a killer soundtrack by David Byrne too.
Sure, the premise could be whittled down to “Sean Penn plays Cheyenne, a retired rock star who goes on a mission to hunt down the Nazi who persecuted his father at a concentration camp during World War II,” but there’s a lot more to it than that. The film deals with legacies—and what we make of them—and also, and perhaps more importantly, the often skewered perceptions of our own lives and of those around us, and how we let single moments define us, good or bad.
I also found it to be quite the experiment on regionalist settings and how these places define the people present there. There is a fantastic segment of the film that takes place in Bad Axe, Michigan, for example, that does a wonderful job of cementing this place as a very real, living and breathing place, making it feel wholly unique without turning it into a parody. Director Paolo Sorrentino handles each location with great care, and you can tell that each of these places—New York, Dublin, Utah, among others—are characters of themselves, and that each has its own story to tell—each has its own way of affecting Cheyenne in profound and often life-changing ways.
Bottom-line: Sean Penn is fantastic, and his characterization of Cheyenne is worth checking out on its own, but there is so much more to the film than that. This Must Be the Place is a wildly entertaining fantastic character that is absolutely beautiful to look at, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Issue 9 has easily one of my favorite covers yet. I’m absolutely thrilled for this bad boy to have launched.
Pick up a copy: $12 (Print), $2.99 (eBook)
Also, this is one of my favorite times of the production cycle: When we unveil the new header images (below).
I can honestly say I get more and more excited for each issue release we do—and this one’s no different (it’s got such an amazing roster of folks inside I can hardly believe it). Oh, and the cover’s pretty nice to look at too.
Issue 9 is due out on/around April 1, 2013.
I’m excited to be reading at Wednesday Night Sessions on March 27 in Farmington, Michigan. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend you swing by—I’m in some fantastic company, the event is sponsored by some absolutely fantastic publications, and, perhaps best of all, there are door prizes. Hoorah!
Also, you can find upcoming dates/lineups below.
“The writing alone is beautifully haunting in its description.”
Thanks for the review, Sarai!
“The Midwest is dirty (in parts), dingy, full of hardworking folks — blue-collared, if you will — and I think the history here, the historical devotion to farms and factories, the nitty gritty, our mostly-congenial attitude (with a slight bit of snark), has produced very distinct literature . . . literature that, I believe more than any other region, holds a mirror up to us.”
“What about our rights?”
“What about your wrongs!?”
My god this is brilliant.
Two things: One, I’m a huge fan of British actor Matthew Holness (his Garth Marenghi character/Dark Place series was comedy genius). Two, I love me some crime thrillers. So discovering that Mr. Holness has written/directed a short film about “a pulp fiction writer who decides to avenge his brother’s death at the hands of gangsters,” well…my day is made.
The film, A Gun for George, can be viewed in its seventeen minute entirety at Film4’s website. And while it’s not as humorous as his other outings, it’s a fantastically entertaining piece of work, well worth a viewing (or two).
In late 2010 I co-founded the literary journal Midwestern Gothic with my good friend Jeff Pfaller as a way to highlight the people and writing of this region we call home—one we thought was dangerously overlooked. Sure, there have been famous authors and poets from the Midwest, but our goal was to go one step further: not just highlight the people that, due to their popularity, would eventually belong to the world, but show what the region in general had to offer. It’s uniqueness. It’s rich tapestry of characters and mythology. How it produces writers and writing unlike anywhere else.
In 2012 we decided to take our goals one step further by creating MG Press, a micro-press devoted to publishing novel-length fiction in the hopes that, much like with the journal, it would help shine a spotlight on the region.
And today, through a lot of hard work, I am happy to say our debut publication, the collection This Jealous Earth by Scott Dominic Carpenter, is available to purchase. We are so thrilled that Scott chose us to help guide the publication of his baby, are immensely proud to put our name on it, and are extraordinarily eager to share it with the world.