March 2013
3 posts
bbirkensnake:
In the movie Amelie, Hipolito is a failed author writing a book about “a guy who keeps a journal. Not about his past but about disasters in his future. So he gets depressed and does nothing.” Later, Amelie writes a sentence from his book on a wall. Think about the transition of private to public writing. Think about writing about doing nothing. Write a story that Hipolito might...
November 2012
1 post
July 2012
1 post
4 tags
June 2012
0 posts
4 tags
May 2012
3 posts
5 tags
1 tag
Open for Submissions
Pachydermini will be returning shortly, hopefully this month with another pack of mini books. In the mean time, we are taking submissions again. We’re looking for short stories 300-700 words long. We’re looking for strange, normal, broken bones, tears, well-made soup, collage of birds, shackles, nostalgia, something utterly new, surprises, boredom, hoops, mirages, etc. Please dazzle...
April 2012
1 post
Haitus
Pachydermini is going to have to take a brief break to retool formatting and all of that terribly boring stuff.
March 2012
6 posts
5 tags
Interview with Carissa Halston
1. “The Dual” is a homonym for “duel.” Was that intended? What connotations do you hope people will read into your title?
The homonym was intentional, yes. It’s both representative of Claire’s struggle with her anti-identity (that is, her denial over being a number-cruncher and her resistance to being a person who can live amicably with numbers) and the role...
3 tags
Interview with Jimmy Chen
1. I hadn’t noticed it before I read “White Girls,” but now in other pieces of yours I see it as well, the love of lengthy layered sentences. What do you think a long sentence conveys that a bunch of short sentences don’t?
I see the long sentence as a linguistic riddle, a way to both expand—and yet, counter-intuitively, condense—an idea through the use of semi-colons, commas, or em...
4 tags
Interview with Nathaniel Hunt
1. Your poem, “Perhaps the Earth Has Only Dreamt of New York City” reminds me of the documentary The Cruise which is about a New York City tour guide who waxes philosophically about NYC as a metaphor for life. In what ways is this poem about you?
Ha! It’s interesting that you bring that up. The Cruise is one of my favorite films, and I was just re-watching it two days ago. Twice...
GIVEAWAY
We’re giving physical copies of the first 3 packs of Pachydermini to anyone willing to write about the stories contained therein. While supplies last. Contact us at: turtleneckpress [at] live [dot] com.
5 tags
Interview with Lucas Southworth
1. Is “Europe” nonfiction?
I don’t consider the story to be non-fiction, even though I was twenty-two when I went into a similar museum in Belgium. It was just an awful museum, but very strange, and it did leave as great an impression on me as some of the Rembrandts I saw in Amsterdam. This story began as a section of a longer piece I wrote about ten years ago and continually returned to...
February 2012
7 posts
6 tags
Interview with Brian Warfield
(interviewed by James Tressel)
1. Your story, “Resplendent,” seems very precise: hermetic, and tightly-wound. What was the seed for it? A dream? A word? Wordplay? A meditation on a theme? A calculated experiment? An unbidden image? I’m interested in body identity integrity disorder which is when someone feels the need to cut off a body part in order to feel whole, usually an...
3 tags
Interview with Berit Ellingsen
1. You’ve said your stories are influenced by philosophies such as nonduality. Does that include “What Girls Really Think”?
Many of my stories are influenced by nonduality, without touching the subject directly. Nonduality shares space with philosophies such as zen and contemplative Taoism, amongst others. All those philosophies concern themselves with what thinking, thought and...
4 tags
Interview with Mark Baumer
1. I try never to read too much into a story or title, to apply any statement in fiction to the author. However, does the title of your story, “I am the McDonalds of American Writing,” indicate something about you personally?
On the day I wrote this story I was homeless. I slept on the floor of a classroom where a man named Bob taught me the tale of Gilgamesh. My pants ripped while I...
4 tags
Interview with Howie Good
1. There’s a painting called Night on Bleak Mountain, was that an inspiration for your piece?
The painting was certainly the source of the title. But that came after the fact. I wrote the poem first and then reached for the title. It caught the mood of the poem. Titles are important to me. A title orients the reader toward a poem. It’s a map of sorts to what the reader is...
Deadline
Our current deadline is 2/28. Submit now.
