There have been some pre-orders! So one issue of NOON is gone, honey is gone, and some other things, not yet specified, are gone. I’m thinking about giving away my copy of Birkensnake 1. It’s too good to be hoarded.

“The Horse Mind” by Camilla Engman. Here’s her flickr site.

The first ten people to pre-order issue 1 will get something nice in addition to a nice copy of Dewclaw. (I have some issues of NOON (5 & 6), Play by Mathias Svalina, t-shirt, honey, other things…)

To preorder, click the “buy now” button in the sidebar, or email me (evelynh at gmail.com) if you’d like to pay another way.

DEWCLAW Issue 1 should be available June 1 or soon after, maybe before. Contributors are:

Claire Donato
Matthew Simmons & Amy Minton
Mike Young
Blake Butler
Rachel B. Glaser
Claire Becker
Shya Scanlon
Cherri Wood
Amina Cain
Kathryn Regina
Matthew Salesses
Scott Garson
Jessica Treat
Leslie Patron
Isadora Bey
Stephanie Brachman
Adam Graffunder

I hope you will consider pre-ordering.

(DEWCLAW’s cover art is by the fantastic Cherri Wood.)

Spork Press is back!

I found out about Spork as they were announcing their death about two years ago. I had just read Crush by Richard Siken and found out that he co-edited this press called Spork that right that minute, almost, had died. But now it’s back!

I submitted a couple of things this morning and, within minutes, heard back. Spork is very much not dead, but quick.

On Spork’s site there is an explanation of how they bind books, “Making Special Sporks”. You should really look at the photo that goes along with this text:

“Sometimes we hide things in the spine before closing them up forever. The other copy on this page has hollows in the covers where secret things were hidden forever. You have to destroy the book to find the things we bury, and sometimes you destroy the things themselves through trying to find them. There’s no way to know what’s in there. For one book I took jewelry from my body as I was creating the book and hid pieces in five different places. . .In case you’re wondering, the surface was stabilized (ph neutral), then sealed with flexible PVA before the petals were laid down, follwed by more PVA. So the oils from the petals are encapsulated in glue, and won’t affect the pages or the cover. I have, once, filled the covers and spine with mold, so that the book would destroy itself on the shelf, but that wasn’t one of these, nor was it a Spork book at all. It was just fun. Fun for me, anyway.”

Something that I wrote, EEG, is up at Sidebrow. It’s part of their “Post-hole” project along with things by Derek White, Norman Lock, Miranda Mellis, and others.

I think Sidebrow’s project is a good one. You should consider submitting.

A 64-year-old woman has reported to doctors at Geneva University Hospital the presence of a pale, milky-white and translucent third arm.

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The week my friend died it felt like there were horses everywhere, far many more horses than usual. I was walking to the library early one morning when I passed a funeral in progress. It was not my friend’s – there were lots of funerals then.

(keep reading “A Threat” by Jen Tynes at MiPOesias)

I want to let you know of a few things. First is that the list of contributors for the first issue of Dewclaw is finally final, and now Adam and I are going to be working on layout and settling on a printer. We’re trying to decide between two small printing shops each with at least one friendly, helpful person, and Lulu or some other print-on-demand.

The writing and illustrations in this first issue, well, you will see how good they are. I’ll let you know when you can pre-order an issue. Probably sometime end-of-April.

Another thing: I’m going to be interviewing Claire Donato and Amina Cain and I’ll be posting the outcome of that to the “interviews” page. My interview style has been described in the following way: “I have this crazy idea, have you had this crazy idea too?” We will see if this next round of interviews lives up to that description.

On the topic of crazy ideas: Adam has finished the hive where we’ll soon be depositing three pounds of bees, check it out here.