Our very own Janice Lee answers, um, six ridiculous questions on Vol. 1 Brooklyn:
3. Do scorpions have rich inner lives? Why or why not?
Of course. I believe all animals and plants and living beings do. Just because we can’t access it doesn’t mean there aren’t worlds within worlds occurring all around us. They think, imagine, dream, just not in the same ways we do.
Megan Kaminski, author of Deep City, is reading our very own Janice Lee.
The Sky Isn’t Blue offers insight into the very nature of perception and observation. The themes of longing, connection, and loss play out in various permutations throughout the book, through remarks on color, episodes of Agents of Shield, and interactions with human and non-human persons.
It’s definitely a book that should be on everyone’s list. Grab yourself a copy.
Our fellow Accomplice Janice Lee with a gorgeous essay on Porochista Khakpour’s Medium magazine, OFF BEAT:
Let’s consider trees. Standing in an immense forest still induces feelings of awe. This isn’t just about sheer size or power, but how a forest, a community of towering trees, affects our perception of interconnectivity and intimacy and breath by reminding us of the forces of life, the impossibility of presence, and the obviousness of influence.
What Humanity Can Learn From Plants by Janice Lee
#TheAccomplices
“Bud Smith is one of the only writers I don’t mind hanging out with in real life. I’ve seen Bud Smith sober and I’ve seen Bud Smith drunk. He’s great either way.”
—Scott McClanahan, author of The Sarah Book
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“Scott Esposito is a true American cosmopolitan—full of ideas and void of pretensions. His way of seeing—inquisitive and gentle—his way of writing—honest and charismatic—are a life-line out of our self congratulatory provincialism.”
—Álvaro Enrigue, author of Sudden Death
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“I’ve never read a book like this in my life and I love that so much I could scream. Ella Longpre’s How to Keep You Alive is a genre bomb love letter to identity dissolution and reformation. I think I held my breath a few times when I felt lyric language kissing the fact of a body, meanings coming apart but then reassembling kind of like the dance that creation and destruction make. Or, more precisely, when we go to tell the story of our lives and our bodies we find that what can be storied can be destoried and restoried. That’s the beauty and terror of memory meeting body meeting language. This storymaking will undo you in the best way, and restory you toward a difference you didn’t know lived in you. We could use that right now. It could save our lives.”
—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan
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“Jared Joseph’s profoundly ambitious Drowsy. Drowsy Baby is simultaneously a mystical text, an autofiction driven by Nabokovian madness, the result of a termite artist eating his way through history, a no-holds-barred conceptual hoax, a personal genealogy. It is a book of fear and a book of defenses: from the violent and treasonous acts depicted in the pages, to the writing techniques of montage and erasure, the book is involved in a constant tugging between violence and protection, attack and defense.”
—Johannes Goransson, author of The Sugar Book
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“Choi recasts the familial legacy of war and displacement, but also of joy and triumph, into a private spiritual kingdom, where “even after the city is destroyed” he writes, “I will touch you on the surface of everything.” This is poetry as preservation, as an unrelinquished archive of ghosts, but mostly, it arrives, to our luck, as a testament of a self earned and re-earned, like how yellowness, caught in its own dizzying light, turns itself golden. This book is golden.”
—Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds
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“This book is so meticulous and so absorbing, I am in awe. It is declamation, reflection, proposal, documentation, blueprint. Gabrielle Civil is revealed as an artist perfectly poised to speak to how race, gender and sexuality enact embodied performativity. She writes and performs herself into history in ferociously intelligent and relentlessly personal ways. How the specificity of identity mixes with desire to confound, comfort or disrupt public space. As with so many things that I love, I want everyone to read this book.”
—Miguel Gutierrez, performance maker
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The essays and poems contained within this anthology are not only compelling but also harrowing stories of sexual assault. None of these pieces were easy to write–and were born out of traumatizing and terrible experiences. CCM believes in providing a safe space within the literary community where we can not only talk about painful experiences and issues but also necessary considering the current political climate.
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“‘Fuck understanding,’ Christopher Higgs writes in his yearlong project, “live in confusion.” For Higgs, the self is not so much a mystery as an opinionated porosity. Though purposely artless, Higgs offers some stunning passages, such as an extended rant about his probable deaths, which makes the ground of reality tremble. Simultaneously superficial and profound—like all worthwhile books—As I Stand Living is a highly-relatable manifesto against relatability.”
—Dodie Bellamy, author of When the Sick Rule the World and The TV Sutras
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“Living in San Francisco, I’ve known of Lorenz’s work for years, and now the secret is out. Here’s an artist whose palette holds the colors beauty and brutality, squalor and tenderness. Lucky for us, he mixes them into literary combinations we’ve never known before. One Way Down (Or Another) might be the best debut I’ve ever read!”
–Joshua Mohr, author of Sirens
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“Rathore’s writing is exhilarating; funny, daring, and deeply, deeply moving. This collection is one of the best I’ve read all year; it’s a book of rare ambition and scale.”
–Keiran Goddard, author of For The Chorus
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#CopingWith is CCM’s interview series run by managing editor Joanna C. Valente
Janice Lee’s book, “The Sky Isn’t Blue,” came out on March 11, 2016 from CCM. Of the book, Chiwan Choi has said, “To read Janice Lee’s new book, The Sky Isn’t Blue, is to remember. Not major events or turning points in life, even though she is writing after a huge one in her life, but remembering moments, textures, sounds, pauses. The air that touched my skin once as I walked home. The sound of dust touching glass. How there was blue once above me when I looked up. It makes me remember that my life is about spaces—of things as large as the sky that envelopes me and of the more intimate, like the space that is my body. The book disappeared as it became each second ticking away in my life, reminding me that I will not be able to save it nor will I ever be able to forget. ”
As such, we interviewed her about her book, although instead of asking boring lit questions, our managing editor Joanna C. Valente asked Janice about everything else instead, like what her favorite meal and apocalypse plans are.
Here’s what she said:
Describe your favorite meal.
I love food, so that’s hard. I love donuts, pancakes, ramen, meat, beets, bread, more bread, biscuits, fried chicken… But OK, in terms of a favorite meal, it’s probably Korean BBQ. Cooked at the table. Surrounded by friends and family and loved ones. Meat sizzling on the table with lots of side dishes and veggies and pickled things, lettuce wraps, raw garlic, and cold beer.
What music do often you write to, if at all?
It depends on the project. For the novel I’m currently writing, I’ve had a very strict and curated playlist of the same few albums on repeat:
Russian Circles – Enter
Matt Kivel – Fires on the Plain
Bohren & Der Club Of Gore – Black Earth
What are three books that you’ve always identified with?
War & War by Laszló Krasznahorkai
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers by Kim Hyesoon, trans. Don Mee Choi
Choose one painting that describes who you are. What is it?
Blue Sea by Emil Nolde
Emil Nolde
Choose a gif that encompasses mornings for you.
What do you imagine the apocalypse is like? How would you want to die?
As László Krasznahorkai tells us, “We are living in the apocalypse. The first moment of time was the first moment of apocalypse and death. Please, don’t fear the apocalypse.” It began the day we were born, and it will end the day I die. I’d like to die without fear.
If you could only watch three films for the rest of your life, what would they be?
Can I have like 3 groupings?
Everything directed by Béla Tarr: Satantango, Damnation, The Werkcmeister Harmonies.
Then Ice Age.
And then The Fast & the Furious franchise.
How would you describe your social media persona/role?
moosh / thoughts about the sky / today the sky is blue / today the sky is some other color / more moosh / political action / Entropy / writing / sometimes I eat food and am human / sometimes I have feelings / mooshy friday / trumpwatch / literary community / books
What’s your favorite animal and why?
I love animals right now. I think we need to learn more from them, like I wrote a bit about birds & interspecies communication here.
I love watching birds. Lately, cats have been helping as spiritual guides and with my creative practice. My mooshes (dogs) keep me alive and make me a better human.
What do you carry with you at all times?
Wallet, phone, keys, chapstick.
Janice Lee is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), and most recently, The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). She is Editor of the #RECURRENT Novel Series at Civil Coping Mechanisms, Assistant Editor at Fanzine, Executive Editor of Entropy, and CEO/Founder of POTG Design. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (ELJ Publications, 2016), & Xenos (2016, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Feminist Wire, BUST, Pouch, and elsewhere. She also teaches workshops at Brooklyn Poets.
“To read Janice Lee’s new book, The Sky Isn’t Blue, is to remember. […] The book disappeared as it became each second ticking away in my life, reminding me that I will not be able to save it nor will I ever be able to forget. ”
–Chiwan Choi, author of Abductions
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“Love letters. Love poetry. […] Johannes Göransson’s letters to an ex-lover Ra — as well as the letters in this book to the radiator, history, Susan Sontag, America, poetry itself–come from a poet whose ‘heart [and poetics] belongs to a drive-by shooting.’ Reading them is to be invited into the theater of utterly mixed metaphors where nothing follows.’”
–Steve Tomasula, author of The Book of Portraiture
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“In the spirit of Donald Barthelme, Dolan Morgan queers the every day and leaves a sinister domestic scene behind.”
–Catherine Lacey, author of No One Is Ever Missing
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“Told almost entirely through lyrical fragments and beautifully-observed scenes, Alexandra Naughton’s American Mary is the latest incarnation of the Great American Novella, at once unsettling and moving.”
–Michael Kimball, author of Us
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“Reading Ashley Farmer’s The Women is like reading a cubist painting. […] Even as she unapologetically documents the power that systemic oppression has over our daily lives, her women emerge as brave, hungry, and resilient. The Women simultaneously made my blood boil and made me feel less alone.”
–Megan Martin, author of Nevers
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“Gary Shipley’s conception of reality is more like our actual present reality than our literary culture’s usual inbred narrative realism can afford. […] Literature almost doesn’t deserve this maniac, and thank hell he’s here.
–Blake Butler, author of Three Hundred Million
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“With pop pastiche, lyrical pirouettes, and sage insights parading as ‘confessions,’ these poems position—like a ballet class at its bar pivoting towards the mirror—the young against the old, the native against the new, and the innocent against the cynical to show them how, together, they more beautifully out of sync.”
–Monica McClure, author of Tender Data
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Cover design by Ryan W Bradley
CCM is pleased to announce the first annual CCM COMPENDIUM. This is an idea that’s been bouncing around in the back of my mind for at least a year now, and thanks to the help of Ryan W Bradley (who created this fabulous hardcover wraparound cover design) and dozens upon dozens of CCM authors, the idea is now a reality.
Acting as a synergy of present and future, the 2015 CCM COMPENDIUM will feature work by every author published by the press in 2015 as well as samples of work from every author with a forthcoming publication in CCM’s 2016 Catalogue. What does this mean? It means you can expect writing from:
(2015 Catalogue) xTx, Brandi Wells, AT Grant, Andrea Kneeland, Jayinee Basu, Sean H Doyle, Katie Jean Shinkle, M Kitchell, Darby Larson, John Colasacco, Jamie Iredell, Brandon Hobson, Mark Katzman, Ben Brooks, Ryan W Bradley, Kirsten Alene, Brian Oliu, Corey Zeller, and Evan Retzer
(2016 Catalogue) Janice Lee, Johannes Goransson, Alexandra Naughton, Dolan Morgan, Matthew Simmons, Gary J Shipley, Ashley Farmer, Laura Marie Marciano, Justin Sirois, Sara June Woods, Madison Langston, Carolyn Zaikowski, Tobias Carroll, Joshua Jennifer Espinosa, Andrew Miller, Ctch Bsnss, Wendy C Ortiz, Henry Hoke, Helen McClory, and Mathias Svalina
At the conclusion of every yearly Catalogue, CCM will publish a Compendium to celebrate the passing of the torch, of sorts, from one year to the next. Each Compendium will be published in a high quality hardcover edition, designed to sit next to both its representative Catalogue of titles as well as other, future Compendiums. It’s my hope that by offering this showcase, readers will be able to enjoy some of their favorite writers’ work in one convenient place as well as discover (and anticipate) the work of writers they might not have known about prior to the Compendium.
The 2015 CCM COMPENDIUM will be available January 13th 2016 wherever books are sold. We’re coping.