Black Clock

Brian Evenson is owed some karmic rewards.  The publication of his first novel, Altmann’s Tongue, generated enough controversy to oust him from his teaching position at Brigham Young University, rattle his faith, and sever close personal relationships.  Asked to stop publishing or risk censure from the Mormon community, Evenson opted to keep writing, leaving his position and his family behind.

Since that decision, however, Evenson has garnered a wealth of awards and critical …

The task of providing some introductory overview of author Lewis Shiner’s life and career is, while not quite Herculean, certainly daunting.  Shiner might be characterized as primarily a pop artist-cum-magical realist, or a sympathetic but sharp-eyed chronicler of American subcultures, or even a futurist (if a futurist of a somewhat grim outlook.)  His fiction, both in its form and content, is entangled in complicated relationships to music as well as comic books and graphic storytelling.  And Shiner has been cast in various roles throughout his writing career: early on, as one of the “founders” …

Media assassin and cultural glass blower Betty Nguyen makes death-of-print doomsayers eat their words. As a part of the Levi’s Workshop 2010 summer series, Nguyen—whose traditional titles include curator, art director, and founder and editor of First Person Magazine—has created a contemporary library that offers the public “a diverse sampling of anything artists are noting, coming across, doodling, making right now and flipping upside down into your own message… In a backlash to the world of internet, $60,000 Italian art catalogs, or life commitments, it is just to give people the …

Poems-For-All is a fantastic literary project founded by Richard Hansen. Hansen prints poems in miniature-sized books and urges readers to spread them around. A full description of the project’s manifesto fills the backs of the little books. It reads:

“They’re scattered around town—on buses, trains, cabs, in restrooms, bars, left along with the tip; stuffed into a stranger’s back pocket. Whatever. Wherever. Small poems in small booklets half the size of a business card. A project of the 24^th street irregular …

In “Zizou Président,” author Anne-Marie Kinney flexes literary skills as deft as Zizou’s footwork to capture the palpable energy of the World Cup without the maddening buzz of the vuvuzela.  Kinney’s story, published in Black Clock 12 and free to read online, brings us back to the summer of 1998 when Zinedine Zidane led France to its ultimate World Cup victory and became a soccer legend.  Though set in a specific moment and place in time, Kinney’s depiction of the raw frenzy of collective emotion that hinges on the superhuman achievements of select individuals is universal; marked by a kind …

Christian Svanes Kolding’s film, The Things We Keep is only one-minute fifty-seven seconds long.  It lacks a plot and characters.  It’s essentially a pan of a lot of stuff.  And yet you end up watching it over and over again until what was supposed to be a short YouTube break has turned into an hour.  This is in part because the film, made entirely of still images that Kolding’s digitally animated together and set to the tune of Broadcast’s “Corporeal,” is visually and sonically cool.  But more than that, what makes The Things We Keep so compelling and addictive, is that it explodes with stories. …

John Haskell is the author of the novels American Purgatorio and Out of My Skin, as well as a collection of short stories entitled I Am Not Jackson Pollock.  His writing has appeared in magazines such as Bomb and The Believer, and he is a currently teaching writing and literature at Columbia University.

BLACK CLOCK: So you’re quite the rambling man – living in San Diego, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.  Has travel or living in such …

Birkensnake is precisely what you want in your lifeboat: good to read, fun to touch. This strange little fiction collection, edited by Brian Conn and Joanna Ruocco, operates somewhere between a literary adventure and art object. Although each issue is offered as a free download on-line, nothing compares to the physical object. Custom designed by artist Sarah McDermott aka Chemlawn, Birkensnake is one of the swankest journals out there. …

Claire Phillips and I sip our morning cappuccinos at the ever-busy, ever-trendy Intelligentsia Café. I squint swollen-eyed over cappuccino steam and tell Claire how early 11 am feels to me. She laughs with the confidence of a woman who’s been wide-awake for hours. Her red lipstick is perfectly placed and her sleek, waved black hair does not frizz beneath the light February breeze. I suspect that she is the type who can stay up late, wake up early, and still look lively; possibly she is not human. Maybe she is a cyborg. …

Chris Ziegler is the former music editor at the Orange County Weekly and staff writer at now defunct legendary, Punk Planet. His freelance work has appeared in Paper Magazine, Arthur and Spin, among others. He is one of two co-founders of Los Angeles music paper the LA Record, a free alternative weekly that is distributed on street corners. Along with the brand’s website and other cross-promotional events, the Record tries to promote local Los Angeles music. We recently spoke with Ziegler (via phone) about the internet’s continued impact on the future of literary publishing, and …

“Old age is always wakeful;” Herman Melville once said, “as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.” And indeed, for a man of his age, Melville keeps to a surprisingly energetic routine. When I managed to catch up with him in Venice last week, he was enjoying a hearty lunch off the boardwalk between his daily muscle-beach workout and his weekly Thai massage (“it is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation,” he explained, passing me a card). Nevertheless, he was gracious in accommodating a young writer all too thrilled to …

Rick Moody is the author of eight books including The Ice Storm, The Black Veil and most recently, Right Livelihoods, and his fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, and elsewhere.  His band, the Wingdale Community Singers, released their first album on Plain Recordings in 2005.  Moody’s “Primary Notes 2008: The Republican Diaries,” appearing in issue 9, marks his fourth contribution to Black Clock. …

Date: March 12, 2008

Location: Seminar Room, Butler Building, CalArts Visiting Writers Series

Los Angeles-born and -based writer Lisa Teasley is fearless. A risk-taker, at least. Or so it would seem. She skateboards, she paints (“a physical working out of the imagination through color”), and she writes about subject matter that many might think of as …