The literary journal Conjunctions, edited by novelist Bradford Morrow and published by Bard College, has been a living notebook for provocative, innovative, immaculately crafted fiction, poetry, and narrative nonfiction since 1981. As Karen Russell has said, “Conjunctions is a translation into a multiverse of stories and poems and essays and even weirder hybrid forms, the mutant menagerie of literary fiction. I read it with Christmas pleasure.” Rick Moody agrees: “Without a doubt, Conjunctions is the best literary magazine in America.”
The Los Angeles Times has called indie bookstore Book Soup a “landmark of L.A.’s cultural life, shaped by founder Glenn Goldman’s electric, artistic sensibility. It’s equally fascinated with the edgy, the glamorous and the smart, packing sometimes disparate books into its tight space and towering shelves. This is where Patti Smith signs and shops. If a bookstore can be a pair of skinny jeans, Book Soup is one, and they’re black.” Follow the bookstore at @BookSoup.
ABOUT THE READERS
BRIAN EVENSON is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collections A Collapse of Horses and Windeye and the novel Immobility, the last two of which were finalists for a Shirley Jackson Award. His novel Last Days won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009). His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann’s Tongue. His work has appeared in numerous issues of Conjunctions; read or hear his contributions to issues such as Conjunctions:48, Faces of Desire, Conjunctions:55, Urban Arias, Conjunctions:60, In Absentia, and Conjunctions:63, Speaking Volumes. He teaches at CalArts.“Brian Evenson is one of the treasures of American story writing, a true successor to the generation of Coover, Barthelme, Hawkes, and Co., but also to Edgar Allan Poe.” —Jonathan Lethem
“There is not a more intense, prolific, or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson.”—George Saunders
“Brian Evenson is one of the most distinguished, probing, and courageous writers of his generation.” ―Bradford Morrow
“There are many unnoticed contracts that govern us. We go on about our lives never knowing what they are. They are noticed only in the breach. Brian Evenson can somehow see these contracts, and his work is a large attention that charts the breakdown of the very smallest societies, the covenant of just two, three, six or seven people against the darkness, the bleakness, whatever you want to call it. What is complex here is notable; what is vivid, what is tortuous, these things are notable. I hesitate to mention them, for still more notable is the acuteness of mind that generates this sight. It is for this antihuman vision that I read Evenson, in order to see a human being in its folly as a tree or turtle might, as a stone might, with a detachment so severe that what pities us knows us perfectly, yet knows us not.”—Jesse Ball
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AIMEE BENDER (@AimeeBender) is the author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (a New York Times notable book), An Invisible Sign of My Own (a Los Angeles Times pick of the year), Willful Creatures (nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year), The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (winner of the SCIBA award for best fiction and an Alex Award), and The Color Master (a New York Times notable book). Her work has appeared in Conjunctions:48, Faces of Desire and Conjunctions:63, Speaking Volumes (the full text of her Speaking Volumes contribution can be found via the link above). She teaches at USC.“At a time when realism reigns supreme over the literary landscape, one can argue it is absolutely imperative that Aimee Bender be spotlighted for what she is: a vital MVP of modern letters, period.” —Los Angeles Times
“Along with the idiosyncratic George Saunders, she now stands as one of the reigning masters of the eccentric American short story.” –NPR Books
“In The Color Master, fifteen tales dazzle, confound, electrify, disturb, incriminate, and empathize. It is absurd. It is remarkable.” —Chicago Tribune
“Her growing canon of stories is like an army that destroys boring writing.” —Powells.com
“Her growing canon of stories is like an army that destroys boring writing.” —Powells.com
