Author: christopherbarzak

  • Get ready to get up there

  • The near future

    This weekend I’ll be reading with Cat Valente at Suspect Thoughts Books at 4903 Clarke Avenue in Cleveland.  Looking forward to a trip up there.  If you’re around the area, stop in and say hi. On Saturday, April 26th at 3 PM, I’ll be hanging out at Barnes and Noble in Boardman, Ohio with poets,…

  • Good Things

    It’s so sunny out today, I walked to the post office to mail my taxes out, then stopped in at a cafe where a bar tender convinced me to drink a very fruity drink with her to celebrate the sunniness.  It had seven different kinds of alcohol in it.  Good thing I was walking. Last…

  • Politics at Tin House

    Tin House is putting together another interesting issue for this coming fall.  If you’ve got stories involving political trends, you might try them out there: Fall, 2008, the Tin House Political Issue We are now reading for forward-looking political writing. Emphasis on forward-thinking, projections of trends and counter trends (no utopias or dystopias). With nonfiction,…

  • Close Encounters

    When I woke up this morning and opened the door of my bedroom, my kittens weren’t waiting right there at my feet, which they usually are doing. Yeah, they’re that cute. I stood there, worrying for a moment that something had happened to them, but in the next moment a very frightened bird soared down…

  • Knockemstiff

    I just read Donald Ray Pollock’s debut story collection, Knockemstiff, which takes place in rural southern Ohio, in a town of the same name as the book. The stories are dark, deadly, and mythic depictions of something more than what you’d even call small town Ohio, a sort of gothic revision of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg,…

  • Back

    I’m back from Florida, which was wonderful. It was both weird and wonderful to be applauded and go up on a stage and give a little acceptance speech for an award for my writing, and I’m still tingly from the whole feeling. This week, however, has been very busy for me, and I had to…

  • Off

    I’m off to Florida tomorrow, to attend the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, where I’ll be presented with the Crawford Award.  Very excited, naturally, but it’s been hectic around here lately.  Renovating my office, which has included scraping paint off all the woodwork and sanding and restaining and finishing it, as well…

  • I’m listening

    Ever wonder what some of our political representatives really think? Here’s Oklahoma representative Sally Kern, revealing her true beliefs about something she obviously knows nothing about. And, Sally, indoctrination has always been a part of public education. You’re just upset that some schools aren’t teaching your beliefs about the world any longer. And as for…

  • Who we think we are

    An interesting analysis of the racial divide in America at the NYT, and how what we’ve been taught to think about homogeneous rural people and people from diverse urban centers doesn’t turn out to be true, at least when it comes down to who they’re voting for: The assumption has always been that a black…