S W E R V E
Taking on a set of basic constrains (involving dice, reference authors and texts, and geographic points), Swerve is a collaborative novel where each nested story is told by a different narrator who plays the role of detective and can be read in any order. Beginning in Ojai, the different detectives move across the US and beyond, uncovering pieces of a mercurial puzzle spanning time and reality. As each story is read through the other, they soon begin to collapse, return, rewrite, and finally illuminate each other. Part detective tale, part metaphysical farce, Swerve blurs genre, seeks the fine lines between fact and fiction, and asks what does it mean to pursue a question when answers lie within? Coming Fall 2019 from Astrophil Press!
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Institutional Garbage Exhibition!
I'm happy to announce that I'm taking part in an upcoming exhibition: Institutional Garbage, an online exhibition that launches on Sep 01, 7-9pm at Sector 2337, during Wasted hours – an evening of performance (curated by Every house has a door) with commissioned works by Michal Samama and Alberto Aguilar, and runs until Dec 31, 2016. Institutional Garbage presents the administrative residue of imaginary public institutions produced by artists, writers, and curators. This residue includes but is not limited to contracts, email correspondences, documented unproductivity, syllabi, scanned objects, and obstacle courses; collecting such fragments in one place, Institutional Garbage illustrates the back-end activities of imaginary bureaucracies in an effort to trace the private life of institutional endeavors. Institutional Garbage is curated by Caroline Picard and Lara Schoorl with support from The Center Program, in response to a 2014 invitation RISD students posed to The Green Lantern Press on the occasion of the Hyde Park Art Center’s 75th anniversary. Participants include: Artists: Alberto Aguilar, Brit Barton, Mara Baker, Kevin Blake, Zippora Elders, Rami George, David Hall, Josh Rios and Anthony Romero, Michal Samama, Naqeeb Stevens, Tina Tahir, Anna Martine Whitehead; writers: Lise Haller Baggessen, Daniel Borzutzky, Mayra Rodrídrguez Castro, Isaiah Dufort, Patrick Durgin, Tricia van Eck, Jane Lewty, Jill Magi, Nam Chi Nguyễn, Rowland Saifi, Suzanne Scanlon, Mia You and Maarten van der Graaf with Fiep van Bodegom and Obe Alkema; & curators: David Ayala-Alfonso, Britton Bertran, Rashayla Marie Brown, Every house has a door, Lucia Fabio, João Florêncio, Stevie Greco, Jeanine Hofland, Renan Laru-an, La Keisha Leek, Sofia Lemos and Vincent van Velsen Online exhibition design: Pouya Ahmadi |
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Books, Books & Books
Big thanks to Laura Pearson over at the Tribune for taking the time to talk about a few of my favorite books -- but alas, there are so many more! While there, check out all the other really great bookshelves and readers profiled in her series, here: Me My Shelf & I. |
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Hidden in Plain Sight:
Finding Voice in Narrative What is voice, where does it come from, and how can we use it in our writing? Join me June 8th in Naperville for a talk about that elusive and beguiling subject of voice with the Windy City Chapter of the Romance Writers of America. |
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Volumes Bookcafe! Come sign up and read with me at the new Volumes Bookcafe June 1st! Volumes is a new bookshop serving coffee, wine, and beer in Wicker Park. Not to mention, the amazing selection of books ranging from small and indie presses to bestsellers curated by the wonderful staff! |
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The Mingle!
What are you doing Thursday, Feb. 11? I'll tell you what I'm doing, I'm reading with three other excellent writers, Rachel Slotnick, Lily Mooney and Ben Tanzer at the Mingle Reading Series at the marvelous Ravenswood Used Books. Come around 6pm, mingle, and get a copy of Minotaur's Daughter or the just released, Lit Windows while you're there! |
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Now Available! Lit Windows
You can get my new novel, Lit Windows, before it's in bookstores through the publisher here, or through Amazon. Coming to select independent bookstores in April! Some advanced praise: Lit Windows rolls uneasily forward, like a car keeping pace with someone walking. Our task, as readers, is to keep our eyes on the road ahead and the mark beside us at once. Full of absurd minutiae and oblique horror, Saifi delivers us assuredly to a destination we've never been before. -- Jac Jemc, author of A Different Bed Every Time. Rowland Saifi is a writer of unquestionable talent whose Lit Windows inspires readers to unearth their own covetous desires as the intimate secrets in his prose are revealed on every page. -- Joseph Cooper, author of Porlock |
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Impossible Voices Review:
The Minotaur's Daughter The amazing, writer, artist, and landscape architect (who better?), Mary Burger has written a review of Minotaur's Daughter over at Your Impossible Voice. Check it out here. And some of Mary's books here. |
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Announcement:
Lit Windows I'm pleased to announce that my book, Lit Windows, is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil Press next year. |
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Absinthe and Zygote #23:
Beauteous Roof What are you doing June 19th? I'll be reading along with Tobias Wray, Emily Barton Altman, and Nina Corwin as part of Absinth and Zygote's 23rd installment, Beauteous Roof. Come out and see some poetry, some prose, and enjoy a Chicago roof! |
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Liminal Camera (pt.2)
Lauren Bon, Richard Nielsen, and Tristan Duke of the Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio are back in Chicago with the fruits of their labors from last visit culminating in two shows: a series of landscapes at the DePaul Art Museum, and a collection of portraits (that I'm happy to be a part of) at Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport. Go check them out!! |
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Watching the Hand Dig: Allen C. Shelton’s Where the North Sea Touches Alabama
"When will we have sleeping logicians, sleeping philosophers," asks Andre Breton in his Manifesto of Surrealism. Allen Shelton answers with Where the North Sea Touches Alabama. I recently reviewed this collage-like eulogy for the artist Patrik Keim over at Newfound Journal. |
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What How & With Whom:
Two Questions for Rowland Saifi I did a micro-interview with Christopher Higgs over at Entropy Magazine. And while you're there, take a look at the other great writers and a great magazine! |
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Woodland Pattern Marathon Reading
I'll be taking part in the Woodland Pattern Marathon Reading Fundraiser Jan. 31st-Feb. 1st at Woodland Pattern Bookstore in Milwaukee. Come on up and see a huge group of readers. Don't forget, you can sponsor readers too! All for an excellent small press bookshop where I always spend way too much money! |
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Liminal Camera
My friend Tristan Duke rolled into town this week in a giant camera as a member of a project headed by Lauren Bon and the Optics Division of the Metabolic studio. The Liminal camera is a shipping container sized camera that has been roaming around the US and elsewhere capturing images on up to 5' X 6' paper negatives. They source water from the location of their shoots to develop the images inside the camera itself. If you encounter it on the road, stop and talk to them, and climb inside. |
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powerHouse Arena Review:
The Minotaur's Daughter Check out a great post about The Minotaur's Daughter from the powerHouse Arena blog. Includes excerpt! Thanks to Hal Hlavinka for the enthusiasm! |
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Now Available! The Minotaur's Daughter
I'm pleased to announce that my new book, Minotaur's Daughter, is now available from Amazon, direct from the Spuyten Duyvil Press, or (soon) through your local independent bookstore! The commercial world subjugates and trivializes. What defense can we mount? How can our lives unfurl in the finest ways? Rowland Saifi’s The Minotaur’s Daughter is a primer on how to make meaning. With an elegance that is itself a kind of understanding, Saifi’s prose delineates a sharp path of words that leads out into a concourse of startling beauty. Jesse Ball, author of Silence Once Begun This book of beautiful sentences and powerful mysteries, of hard-hitting subtleties and curious deceptions, this The Minotaur’s Daughter by Rowland Saifi is a gem, the many-faceted, glass-carving, frighteningly, bracingly intricate kind. Laird Hunt, author of Neverhome There’s great pleasure in getting lost inside Rowland Saifi’s labyrinth. How will you find your way out? ‘You a you, but not all at once.’ I think the best thing to do is surrender; let yourself be swept along by his rhythmical, probing prose. Danielle Dutton, author of S p r a w l |
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Brass Monkey Reading
What are you doing first Sunday of May? I know what I'll be doing, I'll be reading at the Red Line Tap for the Brass Monkey Brunch series. Come on out and see some storytelling, some comedy, and some whatever else. It's like Vaudeville with a full brunch menu and booze! |
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Holiday Reading at Ipsento
Come One, Come All: On December, 12 I'll be doing a holiday reading at the wonderful Ipsento Cafe with Kevin Kilroy and Naomi Buck Palagi! |
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Announcement:
The Minotaur's Daughter I'm pleased to announce that my new book, The Minotaur's Daughter, is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil Press in 2014! |
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Hot Chicago Writer?
I did a short interview with Sarah Terez Rosenblum for her "Hot Chicago Writer Blog" over at The Chicago Sun-Times website. A warm thanks goes out to Sarah, whose is also the author of Herself When She's Missing. Check it out. |
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Announcement:
Pinball Press Publishes Mary Burger New from Pinball Press Editions, Time-Scaping, an interview with Mary Burger by Angel Dominguez. An unofficial follow up to Time-Stopping, an interview Burger did with Kevin Kilroy in 2005, Time-Scaping continues Burger's deep interest in language, its form, and confrontation with landscape, the body, and recoverey. Although this was a limited release, Tract/Trace||Trace/Tract has published the interview online. |