Heavens to Zeus! This week has been a delightful blur, hasn't it! Well, it has for me, because--and I feel that after so many weeks of heavy-lifting (what with all the rebuilding of civlization one brick at a time!), I've earned a couple shameless plugs!--I had a lovely little short story about volcanoes and love and death and bodily waste chucked online somewhere! And so in honor of this little feat--and the slightly larger feat of having a collection of my stories out next month--I'd like to dedicate today's report to the incredible men and women who are keeping culture from coming apart at the seams, by writing stories and sharing their art with the world. Because without words, we'd be nothing more than cave dwellers. We'd be nothing more than a pack of wildebeests closely resembling Ke$ha. And wouldn't that be a fright!
• Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist is getting the graphic novel treatment thanks to Derek Ruiz and Daniel Sempere. [GalleyCat]
• HOLY MACKEREL! Neil Gaiman doesn't know who sent him the Home Sushi Kit. [Neil Gaiman]
• In case it wasn't apparent enough by the sprawling, poorly-edited text of the last book, J.K. Rowling will not be writing another Harry Potter book. [The Guardian]
• READY FOR THE WEEKEND!There are a lot of literary events throughout New York City. Very few of them are worth going to. EARSHOT, a Brooklyn-based series curated by Nicole Steinberg, features Eric Nelson, Chris Tarry, and several others tonight. It is absolutely worth going to. [Facebook]
• DEAD LANGUAGES Please claim a nearly-obsolete word for yourself? [Save The Words]
• Patti Smith won the National Book Award in the nonfiction category. [WNYC]
• The Metropolis Case author Matthew Gallaway has brought forth another installment of "The Publishing School" featuring several other writers--like Bennett Madison and Miles Klee, among others--all who go on the record about how nerve-wracking it is to have an agent attempt to pick apart your labor of love. [TheAwl]
• Further proving that high literature and television need not be mutually exclusive, Jhumpa Lahiri has been hired as a consultant on HBO's In Treatment. The subject matter--immigrant ennui--is of course her forte. [NYT]
• The new issue of n+1 has a make-believely glamorous take on the thrills of being an MFA candidate! [n+1]
• Oh and have you seen this incredible little trailer for my upcoming chapbook, the title for which is listed in my blurb below? It was entirely engineered by a dapper young man named Paul K. Tunis (I simply whispered the lines of dialogue into his ear.) It's exactly one-part Legend of Zelda and one part unfortunate blind date with nondescript, scruffy Brooklyn manchild.
Mister Rohin Guha has written for scores of places and you can follow him here. His collection of short stories, Relief Work, is forthcoming from Birds of Lace. Once a week he'll be checking in on civilization and giving us a progress report.
