Elvis Presley and a host of life coaches, motivational speakers, analysts, and maybe even mom and dad have all told us to "follow that dream." For the fiction writer, especially for the writer of literary fiction (a species nearly on the verge of extinction), following that dream, holding onto to it, is a challenge: the…
The following is a synopsis of my novel in progress, Housebreaking the Muse. Watch for excerpts over the coming months. Housebreaking the Muse Housebreaking the Muse traces the unlikely intersection of Ray Burke, recent MA in comparative literature from a large university in Middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania; Jacques Rigaut, the French dadaist, poet, gigolo, drug…
Several years ago, some fictioneer colleagues and I considered the idea of founding a small press. When asked what, precisely, we intended to publish, I answered, “Maximalist-Expressionist fiction,” a term both satisfactorily accurate and sensibly vague. Almost simultaneously a colleague responded, “Shut up fiction.” Much more to the point, wouldn’t you say? Especially when written…
A few years back, while attending the &Now conference on innovative writing at Lake Forest College in Chicago, I was introduced to the concept of spam poetry. For some, this exercise simply takes the form of a kind of poetic version of Duchamp's "found object": take the spam email and, without reshaping it in any…
Miff guided the Conculator down the flat, gently curving ribbon of I-95 through North Carolina toward South, stopping only to pee, fuel up, and grab a handful of fresh cigars from the barn-sized humidor at J.R.’s in Selma. When he’d left Pittsburgh, it was thirty-five degrees and sleeting. Here, in the Heart of Darkness, the sun shone on the windshield and offered him the warmth that always made him forgive Dixie its sins.
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 