Press Release for Architectures of Possibility

Here is the official press release for Lance Olsen's upcoming Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Writing.

ARCs of Architectures of Possibility

Advanced reader copies of Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Writing will soon be available. Here's the cover description:


"Ideal for individual or classroom use, Architectures of Possibility theorizes and questions the often unconscious assumptions behind such traditional writing gestures as temporality, scene, and characterization; offers various suggestions for generating writing that resists, rethinks, and/or expands the very notion of narrativity; visits a number of important concerns/trends/obsessions in current writing (both on the page and off); discusses marketplace (ir)realities; hones critical reading and manuscript editing capabilities; and strengthens problem-solving muscles from brainstorming to literary activism.

Exercises and supplemental reading lists challenge authors to push their work into self-aware and surprising territory.

In addition, Architectures of Possibility features something entirely lacking in most books about creative writing: more than 40 interviews with contemporary innovative authors, editors, and publishers (including Robert Coover, Lydia Davis, Brian Evenson, Shelley Jackson, Ben Marcus, Carole Maso, Scott McCloud, Steve Tomasula, Deb Olin Unferth, Joe Wenderoth, and Lidia Yuknavitch) working in diverse media, providing significant insights into the multifaceted worlds of experimental authors' writing.

Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative writing, including the novelsCalendar of Regrets, Head in Flames, and Nietzsche’s Kisses. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, such as Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Village Voice, BOMB, McSweeney’s, and Best American Non-Required Reading. He serves as chair of FC2’s Board of Directors and teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.

Collaborator Trevor Dodge is author of the novel Yellow #10 and short-fiction collection Everyone I know Lives on Roads, as well as co-editor of the Northwest Edge anthologies of experimental narrative. He teaches writing, literature, comics, and games studies at Clackamas Community College in Oregon Cityand the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland."


In March 2012, Architectures of Possibility will officially debut at the annual AWP Convention in Chicago.

Architectures of Possibility

Guide Dog Books is currently working on editing and formatting Lance Olsen's Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Writing, a new and extended edition of Rebel Yell: A Short Guide to Fiction Writing, published over 10 years ago. We're so excited to be putting out this book, a masterful tool for anyone interested in writing of any kind and an especially useful text for courses in fiction writing. More details soon.

Monstrous Creatures on Kindle

Jeff VanderMeer's Monstrous Creatures is now available on Kindle.

Rebel Yell Redux

We were excited to hear this week that the redux version of Lance Olsen's fiction writing textbook, Rebel Yell, is underway. We're very happy to have Lance on board the GDB train. An English prof at the University of Utah, he's the author of more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction and has received multiple awards for his work. Learn more about Lance at his official website.

TOR Reviews MONSTROUS CREATURES

Here's the culmination of TOR's review of Jeff VanderMeer's Monstrous Creatures:

"While it seems the only monsters in this essay are the native animals—dolphins feasting unexpectedly at St. Mark’s, alligators, bears, herons, turtles—the piece is a nice conclusion to the monstrous theme by integrating the Romantic notions of sublimity. There is nothing more monstrous than the confrontation of Nature, an experience that is becoming more elusive everyday thanks to tourism, development, and the threat of man-made disasters. At the core of this sublimity, and what is at the core of most of this book, is that fantasy can be found in the most unlikely places, and is inevitably found in the last place you are looking: the real world."

Read the review in its entirety here.

Goodreads Giveaway

D. Harlan Wilson ran a book giveaway at Goodreads for Technologized Desire: Selfhood & the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction that concluded on April 1. Congratulations to the winners:  Josh Myers, Christopher Davis, Stan Slater, Sabra Onstott, and Traci Goodwin. Signed copies will be posted in the mail next week.