Kitty Snacks

We support YAC!

2011-10-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

And you should too!

We were saddened to hear about the recent cut in funding for the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council in Oxford, MS. The county board of directors have made a huge mistake and we hope they rectify it. Without the funding for arts in Oxford Kitty Snacks wouldn't exist. Wayne and everyone involved with the arts council is a huge part of what makes Oxford the best place in Mississippi. If you live in Oxford please call the board of supervisors and voice your opinion on this matter. If you don't live in Oxford this probably just looks like some Mississippi bullshit, which it is.

Our friends at VOX have also posted on this.

What We're Reading

2011-09-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

Good Offices
by: Evelio Rosero

It’s a short and taut novel. Good Offices by Evelio Rosero, out earlier this month on NewDirections, puts on full display the fallibility of man; in this instance man’sfailure lies in man’s resignation. The main character is a hunchback namedTancredo. His greatest fear is becoming a wild animal by succumbing to hisprimal instincts of love and happiness and rebellion.

Abuse of authority seems to be a sentiment that oftenpervades Rosero’s literature, in conjunction with the haunted characters thatimpel the narrative. Tancredo is the puppet of the Catholic Church and, in somany definitions, Tancredo is a slave of the Catholic Church and it is as hischaracter encroaches upon enlightenment that we see the story progress.

There are many surreal moments in the narrative that aregiven verisimilitude by Rosero that could bring shame to documentary. He isunforgiving and brutal in his treatment of his villains. While some scenes aresomewhat surreal, there is nothing fantastical about the book, except the fantasythat Rosero is likely living through his book of really giving it to the badguys.

Tancredo is not alone in his captivity. The goddaughter ofFather Almida, Sabina Cruz and the Lilias join Tancredo in his repression. TheLilias are three elderly women that are responsible for cooking food for thepoor, huge meals of which Tancredo is in charge. Each day’s meal belongs to agroup of the depraved masses: old people, the blind, whores, families andstreet kids.

It is the lunch in which Tancredo must feed the old peoplethat seems to haunt him most.

“…sooner or later heraises his head and it seems he is still in the company of all those faces withtheir toothless, drooling mouths, which open ever wider and swallow him up, onearm after the other, one leg after the other; they gulp down his head at asingle go. They do not devour him with their mouths alone: they devour him withtheir eyes, those eyes, dead eyes.”

When Father Almida is forced to leave for one night, overwhich Mass must be held, Father Matamoros fills the void. Matamoros, notwithout his own nefarious inclinations, gives the church’s inhabitants aglimpse of freedom. It’s a door that, once opened, cannot be shut. The mostextreme means will be taken to keep this door of freedom ajar.

This is a love story perverted almost beyond recognition,along with a social critique, pleasantly lost to the gripping nature of thecompelling plot Rosero has created in this short book. He does more in 119pages than I’ve seen most authors accomplish in their huge volumes that doubleas free weights.

-C. Hogue

2011-09-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

Kitty Snacks editor, Michael Bible, talks to Michael Kimball on htmlgiant about his new book Simple Machines....

http://htmlgiant.com/author-spotlight/a-kind-of-weird-beauty-michael-bible’s-simple-machines/

What We're Reading

2011-09-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

The Halfway House
by: Guillermo Rosales

Two novels by Rosales are still in existence. The Halfway House is one of them. The rest of his work was destroyed in 1993 moments before he committed suicide at the age of 47. Guillermo Rosales was a schizophrenic, living in mental institutions after his exile from Cuba, which is where he gathered the material for this novella.

There’s a lot of misery packed in a mere 121 pages. The Halfway House gets in deep—to the most crepuscular depths of humanity’s capacity for evil. It’s a cousin of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—the cousin you were never allowed to hang out with growing up. The Halfway House is a dark, dark horse.

Here’s a panoramic view of hell on earth.

-C. Hogue

Table of Contents for Issue #4

2011-06-02T11:58:00.000-07:00

Stay tuned for a video flip through of the entire issue. Buy it here.

Kitty Snacks #4 available now online!

2011-06-02T10:14:00.001-07:00

Just click below to purchase a copy of Kitty Snacks #4 and we'll mail it to you.

Issue #4 Release Party!

2011-05-23T06:54:00.000-07:00

at Southside Gallery in Oxford, Mississippi on Wednesday, June 1 at 8 p.m.

Featuring the psyched out sounds of Oxford's own Gray Things.

Free Beer!

8 bucks at the door (includes a copy of the magazine).

Kitty Snacks #4

2011-05-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

The new issue will be out next week! Be on the lookout for pre orders soon.

This issue features writing by:
John Brandon
Chelsea Hogue
Scott McClanahan
Mike Suave
Hank Martin
Charles Hale
Jack Pendarvis
Catherine Lacey
Rachel Glasser
Sam Pink
Erik Wennermark

photos of Barry Hannah by John Oliver Hodges
tweets by Peyton Houchins

an interview with Neil Hamburger
an interview with Michael Schmelling

and drawings by Josh Burwell

We think it's our best issue yet and it's been in the works for quite a while now. We're definitely throwing a big release party in the coming weeks. So stay tuned!

Sorry about the links!

2011-03-15T08:34:00.000-07:00

Some links on our page--mainly the stories above--are down at the moment. Sorry about this. We're having some weird domain name issues so for the time being you can only access our site through kittysnacks.blogspot.com. We hope to get the issue fixed asap.

Stay tuned for issue 4. It's rad!

Home Clips Vol. 1 : MS SWAG & SMAG

2011-01-25T12:35:00.000-08:00

Check out this short film by our friend Alex about our friends and hanging out in Mississippi over the past few months. Stay tuned for more stuff from Alex in the future and in the meantime check this out:

Home Clips Vol. 1 : MS SWAG & SMAG from James Alexander Warren on Vimeo.

Rest in Peace

2011-01-09T12:57:00.000-08:00

From the Cats Purring blog:

Many of you know we lost a beloved member of our family earlier this week, PEYTON "LARRY" HOUCHINS a.k.a. DJ SCARY MILK a.k.a. DJ KATE BUSCH. Peyton performed with GRAY THINGS and BASS DRUM OF DEATH, and he provided endless support to our music scene in Mississippi. He will continue to be a source of inspiration for his seemingly infinite number of friends, and we look forward to expanding the Cats Purring empire in his memory.

Kitty Snacks Issue #4 will be dedicated to Peyton and will feature some of our favorite tweets of his, as we all know how prolific of a tweeter he was. He will be sorely missed but we'll never forget the good times.

Kitty Snacks #3 FREE DOWNLOAD is up now!

2010-12-23T12:38:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

To get ready for the release of Issue #4 we're offering a free download of Issue #3, which has been sold out for months now. Just click here to begin the download and enjoy.

None of the work featured in Issue #3 may be reprinted without the author's full consent.

Thanks

New Releases We Dig: Begin Again by Kenneth Silverman (John Cage biography)

2010-12-23T12:11:00.000-08:00

Also just read No Such Thing As Silence: John Cage's 4'33" by Kyle Gann. Both are worth checking out.

Kitty Snacks #4 coming soon...

2010-10-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

Check the cover below and stay tuned.

Come Back, You've Disafeared

2010-09-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

by Matthew Salesses

We liked to predict the epidemics on our island before they came. But only one person was ever right. He predicted the epidemic of insomnia and the epidemic of indecision and the epidemic of bad jokes and the epidemic of lost children, though of course he couldn’t predict them all, not even more than two percent. We knew him and once admired him, though recently we’d run him into the hills. He’d developed immunity to the epidemics and that seemed to us why he could predict them. He was not part of them, like we were.

He predicted the epidemic of insomnia before he was immune; those late nights rolling endlessly in our sheets we couldn’t stop thinking of his guess. We thought of it with awe and then anger and we said maybe he’d caused the insomnia and without that to worry us maybe we might sleep. We asked him to predict the next epidemic and we tried hard to catch it, and we felt relieved when he was wrong and it wasn’t an epidemic of kindness, though we had no problem with kindness. We almost forgot about him being right until he was right again.

The second time was after the epidemic of shared dreams when each morning talking to each other we recognized our dreams and felt connected. As the dreams faded he predicted the epidemic of indecision, and indeed we spent months doing nothing, so unable to choose, and the epidemic seemed terrible but also almost nice and lazy and also like it was out of our hands and again we thought maybe it was in his hands.

But another year passed before he predicted the epidemic of bad jokes, as if his joke was to be right again. We thought maybe his prediction was the first joke. Still we enjoyed the epidemic and didn’t blame him—it was good to get all those punch lines off our chests. The children became natural kings and queens of the epidemic and we liked that as well. When they played basketball we called them our court jesters. When they played cards we said they always trumped our hearts. When they played hide and seek we cried, come back, you’ve disafeared!

It seemed the worst joke of all when he predicted the epidemic of lost children, his second right in a row. Then we had to run him up into the hills. He said that he was immune—and we were afraid of him, of him possibly spreading his immunity and of his predictions more prophecy than guess. He said we were all crazy and our children should lose themselves far away, as far as the outside world. But he was supposed to be one of us. After our children reappeared they helped us chase him into the hills and that seemed proof enough that something was wrong with him. The children could sense something wrong.

--------
Matthew Salesses holds an MFA from Emerson, where he is the retiring editor of Redivider. He is the author of a chapbook, We Will Take What We Can Get, and stories in or soon to be in Glimmer Train, Witness, American Short Fiction, The Literary Review, Pleiades, and others.

Kitty Snacks editor, Wilson McBee, has a new story at juked.com

2010-07-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

Check out "Kingdoms" by Wilson McBee over at juked.com.

Hey Memphis! Kitty Snacks #3 now for sale at Goner Records

2010-07-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

Go by or check out their website.

Gordon Lish talks

2010-07-20T14:38:00.000-07:00

Great new interview with Gordon Lish over at BOMBlog.

Excerpt:

"BCE: I know you read DeLillo and McCarthy all the time. Would you be prepared to comment on that?

GL: I am always prepared to comment on DeLillo and McCarthy—much in the same way, if not entirely in the same way as I would be prepared to comment on myself. They are geniuses. My mother and my father wanted for me to be a genius. So did I. When I found out a couple of days ago that I couldn’t be I made up my mind to stick as close as I could to those who were. A feat, a procedure one finds one can accomplish, on the cheap by reading. And by reading. And by reading. So I pick up the books of these two writers every day that I am not otherwise busy with the genius of certain women I know and certain children and grandchildren I’m tickled to have."

Be sure to check out Lish's new book of collected fictions.

Kitty Snacks contributors (Mary Miller & John Brandon) signing at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi July 12 & 14

2010-07-05T09:55:00.000-07:00

Kevin Sampsell (A Common Pornography) and Claudia Smith (Put Your Head in My Lap) will also be reading with Mary at the event. For more info go here.

John Brandon will be reading from his new book, Citrus County, on Wednesday, July 14. Joining him will be Jack Pendarvis--both dudes have been published in previous issues of Kitty Snacks magazine. John's book Citrus County was recently picked for the Rumpus Book Club. Check out an interview with John here.

John's book was recently the cover review on the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Read the whole thing here. Listen to a podcast of the above event here.

Barry Hannah in French

2010-06-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

"Things black, things cowboy, things Southern seem to be very special in France now. I have no idea how to market myself, but if I were a real cynic I would probably get on a Lash La Rue outfit, be a cowboy writer, and make a lot of jack. My French reception seems solid. I’ve had good reviews. I’ve only had one book, my last collection, Bats Out of Hell, translated—which took three years. The French translator gave up on about three stories. He thought that they were so Southern that there was no way to idiomize them—which shocked me because I thought I wrote pure American, but I still must be really Southern. I was on the French “Tonight Show,” and my publisher is Gallimard, so I’ve got all the outlines of looking good in France."
-Barry Hannah in an interview with the Mississippi Review (1996)

Barry Hannah vit à Oxford (Mississippi), qui est aussi la ville de Faulkner.

C'est sans doute pour rendre le voisinage encore plus évident qu'en 1973, il remporte le prestigieux prix Faulkner avec son premier roman Geronimo Rex.

Et c'est sans doute aussi pour rendre hommage à son glorieux voisin que les quinze nouvelles de La tête à l'envers se déroulent dans le Mississippi, l'Alabama, la Géorgie, l'Arkansas et le Kentucky, comme un panorama de l'horizon sudiste. Rendre compte de quinze nouvelles aussi denses, noires, tordues, d'un existentialisme grimaçant et qui parlent d'une Amérique dont l'héroïsme se réduit à une horde de menteurs et de lâches minés par l'alcoolisme, le vide et le sentiment de n'être jamais à sa place est une gageure qu'il serait vain de relever.

La lecture de La tête à l'envers laisse l'impression d'avoir assisté à une parade de paraboles, une succession de dix mille phrases étranges et merveilleuses où la violence exulte dans une joie et une bonne humeur d'autant plus surprenantes qu'on se demande, lecture faite, comment on a bien pu se laisser aller à rire d'un monde aussi désespérément condamné à une médiocrité quasi surnaturelle. Une telle amertume serait difficile à avaler sans le soutien d'un cordial si l'écriture de Barry Hannah n'était aussi souvent habitée par la grâce, qui drape l'enfer d'un humour féroce séduisant comme une robe de soie doublée de barbelés.

New Releases We Dig: BECKETT photos by Francois-Marie Banier

2010-06-29T15:15:00.000-07:00

We support this list!

2010-06-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

In response to The New Yorker's "20 under 40" list Dzanc books made their own list of "20 writers to watch." Thanks Dzanc Books for putting this together. Several of the writers mentioned on the list have been published in Kitty Snacks.

Check the list here.

John Brandon's CITRUS COUNTY picked for Rumpus Book Club

2010-05-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

Friend and frequent Kitty Snacks contributor, John Brandon's new book from McSweeney's, Citrus County has been selected as the first book for the Rumpus Book Club.

Also! Congrats! to John and Heather on being parents!

from the Rumpus website:

Here’s how it’s going to work. You pay $25 a month and every month you get a book in the mail that hasn’t been released yet. You’re invited to a moderated online discussion with the author at the end of the month which we’ll edit and run on The Rumpus as a feature article. You can also write a review of the book and we’ll run the best written review on the website. You don’t have to participate in the discussion or review the book, you could just subscribe to receive a new, unpublished book every month.
We’re going to try to only read good books. We’ll fail sometimes. Some books that are out now we would have liked to include are Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask, Emily Gould’s And The Heart Says Whatever, and David Goodwillie’s American Subversive. The books will often be hardcover, but not always. Sometimes they’ll be galleys, also known as ARCs, Advance Reader Copies, pre-printed paperbacks. It’s neat because we’re going to have a discussion about new books, rather than waiting to be told what books are approved for cultural consumption. It used to be that only people in the media got advance copies of books but that wall has come down quite a bit. Now everybody’s a reviewer.
It’ll be easy to unsubscribe from the book club at any time.
Our June book is Citrus County by John Brandon, forthcoming from McSweeney’s. Give it a try!

Babies read Kitty Snacks too

2010-05-07T14:57:00.000-07:00

Kitty Snacks editor, Michael Bible, reads a story for What To Wear During An Orange Alert podcast episode 10

2010-05-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

listen here. buy the chapbook here.

New Releases We Dig: Wyoming: Lost Poems by Terry McDonell, I Was Looking for a Street by Charles Willeford

2010-05-07T14:46:00.001-07:00

Yoknapatawpha Arts Council T-Shirt Ball Tonight

2010-04-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

Kitty Snacks contributed a hand-drawn design t-shirt for tonight's t-shirt ball. Read more about it and show your support here.

shirt designed by third-redneck, third-frenchman, third-Jew Josh Burwell and David Swider

Kitty Snacks Book Klub! March/April picks!

2010-03-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

Announcing the new selections for the Kitty Snacks Book Klub to be read during March and April (we've selected two books because they're both really short):

-A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons

Here is a review of A Jello Horse from The Believer.

-Tumble Home by Amy Hempel

Here is a review of Tumble Home.

Both books can be purchased at Square Books in the back of the store where the book club selections are. You get a 10% discount if you buy them at Square Books. You can also get A Jello Horse from Publishing Genius, which is linked above. We'll be in touch about meeting up for some beers and a discussion. Both books are around 10 bucks.

BOOK KLUB MEETING TBA

The Zoo

2010-03-10T15:52:00.000-08:00

by Jeff McNeil

My name’s Bunny. They call me that cause I get around so quick on my scooter. A scooter is what I call my motorcycle. I call it that cause one time I was paying a visit to my old lady’s ex-boyfriend and there were some kids riding scooters in the street and I pulled them by a rope and then I pulled my old lady’s ex-boyfriend by a rope through some pretty thick briars. I guess I call it that because it reminds me of that time. And it’s kind of funny to call a motorcycle a scooter, mostly because a motorcycle is so much bigger and it gets people expecting something else. It’s funny if you really think about it.

When I’m on the scooter I wear these goggles that cover the eyes like a swimmer wears, only they’re tinted yellow because of the sun. I have a leather jacket, too. When I pull up next to a pretty young lady at a stop light I rev up the engine and stare at her. They love that. I have a few friends I meet down at this place called The Zoo. It’s just a brick shell of a building now, sitting out in the desert with no roof or windows or doors or even a floor. It used to be a nightclub called The Zoo. Even though it burned down we still call it that. We can see the stars where the roof used to be.

I have a tattoo of a bird over my heart because I’m a free spirit. I didn’t start out this way. I used to be a propaganda writer for a guy I can’t name in a country near the middle of Africa. But I slipped up and they tried to take my memory away, but I said, “Uh-uh. No way.” And then I don’t remember what happened. I woke up in a hotel room in Libya with a pretty full beard and a plane ticket paper-clipped to my shirt. When I got back to Arizona I shaved and there were marks all over my face under the hair. Purple and red marks that were almost perfect circles. I let the beard grow back without shaving it.

I live with my mom now. I take care of her. It’s only fair don’t you think? She had an accident and now she’s basically blind but her eyes are also really really sensitive to light so she has to exist in complete darkness all the time like an underground mushroom and I think it has an effect on my eyes too. When I open the refrigerator for beer the light comes on and I can feel my pupils getting smaller. It doesn’t hurt. It feels like I’m getting the chills. Not on my skin but in my eyes. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to show up at The Zoo.

-previously published in Kitty Snacks #1, which is now out of print.

Two poems by Harrison Smith

2010-03-10T15:47:00.000-08:00

You Really Butter My Toast, Sandra Day O'Connor

Pass the goddamn skim milk.
The only reason I'm even here is because
Your senior discount at IHOP is as irresistible
As the creamy mayonnaise skin that covers your bones.
You've been a bitch since '81.
Reagan put shit in your head
And it probably wouldn't hurt if you spilled your drink
And fell two flights headfirst into wicker furniture.

In Support of Ocean's Twelve

I love Don Cheadle.
He is above average.
Slap a high five, Don.

Jason Polan

2010-03-09T08:28:00.000-08:00

Sketch artist, Jason Polan, is featured in Kitty Snacks #3 with his drawings of farm animals and a tiger. Here's an article recently published in the LA Times about Jason's quest to draw every citizen in New York City. Be sure to check out his website and see all the different projects that occupy his time. Oh YEAH! He also draws a new picture for Kitty Snacks contributor, Jack Pendarvis, every month over at The Believer.

Barry Hannah (1942-2010)

2010-03-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

We here at Kitty Snacks are deeply sad to have lost our hero and friend, Barry Hannah. He was our Captain.

Kitty Snacks editor, Michael Bible, has written something on Barry at htmlgiant.com. Read it here.

We will miss you, Captain.

Gorilla Math by Michael Bible

2010-03-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

Kitty Snacks editor, Michael Bible, has a new chapbook out from Greying Ghost Press called Gorilla Math. It looks great. Go here for more info and how to buy it. Only 75 available so get 'em while you can. Check out Michael's other chapbook, My Second Best Bear Rug, from Achilles Chapbook Series.

"Michael Bible may have hit what a lot of us were trying, a singular new voice for CEO's to slackers. He's so open, so easy, so fluid, you'll smile with joy turning every page of Mr. Bible."

-BARRY HANNAH

Kitty Snacks #3 is out! Party on Friday, March 5!

2010-02-24T16:10:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce the release of Kitty Snacks #3, a literary magazine based in Oxford, Mississippi. The third issue features stories, poems, photographs, and drawingsby a wide variety of authors and artists.

Kitty Snacks #3 features fiction from University of Mississippi John and Renee Grisham writerin-residence John Brandon, whose novel Arkansas was published by McSweeney’s in 2009. Also featured are Mississippian Mary Miller, author of Big World (Hobart’s Short Flight/Long Drive Press, 2009) ; Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation (McSweeney’s, 2008); Rudy Wilson, author of The Red Truck (Ravenna Press, 2010); Kevin Wilson, author of Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (HarperPerennial, 2009); and George Singleton, who has published four collections of stories, two novels, and a book of writing advice and whose latest novel is Work Shirts for Madmen (Harvest, 2008).. The majority of these writers are connected to the South and many were born in or live in Mississippi. Other writers featured in the magazine include P.A. Levy, Ryan Ridge, Andrew Borgstrom, Isadora Bey, Darlin’ Neal, and Jeff McNeil.

Work by three photographers is featured in this issue. Jane Rule Burdine’s book Delta Deep Down was published in 2008 by the University Press of Mississippi. She lives in Taylor, Mississippi. Los Angeles-based photographer Ward Long provided the cover photograph for the issue as well as color photos in the interior. His work has appeared on TheFader.com. John Oliver Hodges has several black-and-white photographs included in the issue. His photos have appeared in The Oxford American andelsewhere.

Jason Polan and Josh Burwell both contributed drawings that appear throughout the magazine. Josh is a 2009 graduate of the University of Mississippi and currently splits his time between Oxford, Mississippi and Paris, France. Jason Polan lives in New York City and draws for Jack Pendarvis’ monthly column in The Believer. Polan is currently working on a project to draw everyone in New York City and once drew every piece of art in the Guggenheim.

Kitty Snacks #3 can be purchased locally at Square Books in Oxford, Goner Records in Memphis, Lemuria in Jackson, and in many fine bookstores around the country as well as online at www.kittysnacksmagazine.com.

For more information regarding the magazine, subscriptions, submissions and events please go to the website mentioned above or email kittysnackseditor@gmail.com.

Come to the Powerhouse in Oxford on Friday, March 5 at 9 p.m. for the Kitty Snacks #3 release party. The party will coincide with this year’s Oxford Conference for the Book, which is dedicated to Barry Hannah. In honor of Barry we will be raffling off several of his books and John Oliver Hodges will be performing a musical rendition of Hannah’s novel, Ray. Jane Rule Burdine, Ward Long, and John Oliver Hodges will have photographs on display. There will also be readings by featured authors, refreshments, and a raffle for prizes including tickets to a show at the Lyric Theater in Oxford, records from Fat Possum Records, and tons of other goodies. Admission to the party is five bucks to drink and hang out and ten bucks to drink, hang out, and receive a copy of the magazine. There will also be books from several of the featured authors and limited edition prints by Jane Rule Burdine for sale.

An after party at Ajax diner featuring a DJ set with AirFLIGHT will follow the release party. The after party is free and open to the public.

Thanks,
David, Michael, & Wilson
editors

Captain Maximus is out of print!

2010-02-24T16:07:00.000-08:00

Get Barry Hannah's books back in print!

Dear big and small publishers,

Barry Hannah is one of our favorite writers and it's a shame that some of his books are not in print. Anyone who has read these books that have gone out of print will agree that it's insane.

These books by Hannah are no longer in print:
The Nightwatchmen
Captain Maximus
Hey Jack

SOMEONE PRINT THESE!!!! Or donate the money to Kitty Snacks and we'll do it.

Thanks for keeping these in print:
Airships
Ray
Geronimo Rex
The Tennis Handsome
Bats Out of Hell
High Lonesome
Yonder Stands Your Orphan
Boomerang
Never Die

Kitty Snacks Kegger #3!

2010-02-17T16:36:00.000-08:00

Issue #3 release party on Friday, March 5 at 9 p.m.
Location: The Powerhouse in Oxford, MS

Come by after the Oxford Conference for the Book wraps up for the day. Free booze. A raffle with tons of good stuff including signed Barry Hannah books (to celebrate the conference).

Ward Long, John Oliver Hodges, & Jane Rule Burdine will have photos on exhibit.

Stay tuned for a list of readers and performers...

Excerpt from The Big Book of Forgotten Lunatics, Volume 1

2010-02-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

by Kevin Wilson

The King of the Sinkholes

Dr. Wesley Partin (1877-1958)

He was born without ears, his skin bone-white. His mother bled out. His father, a veteran of the Civil War, his left arm a sleeve of fabric, smothered the newborn baby for seventeen minutes with a wadded-up cloth handkerchief but the child did not perish.

He reportedly called sinkholes “the most vaginal of god’s natural occurrences,” though this has been disputed and is probably a case of mythmaking rather than fact.

Wrapped in a thin mummy of his deceased mother’s dresses, the child developed quickly. He discovered his first sinkhole at age seven, noting in the letters section of the June 7^th, 1884 edition of the Gainesville Sun the “slumping fenceposts” and “wilting vegetation” of the affected area. Seven days later, the earth had collapsed, a cone of debris signifying the development.

He once berated an assistant for an error, exclaiming, “This is a goddamned hole, you fool, not a sinkhole. Just a hole.”

At age ten, he was elected to the Southeastern Topographic and Geologic Society. At the initiation ceremony, he allowed the vice-president’s wife to touch the places where his ears should have been. “How do you hear?” she asked. “My teeth,” he answered, and when she ran her fingertip across his incisors, he winced.

He reportedly called sinkholes “the devil punching holes in the earth with his penis,” though this has been disputed and is probably a case of mythmaking rather than fact.

After his father tried to poison him with a fork melted down and poured over his food, he accepted a position with United Fruit in South America. During his three years on this continent, he is credited with the acquisition and study of four separate sinkholes, the most famous of which is the Pacarana Sinkhole, which was single-handedly responsible for the near-extinction of the pacarana, a giant rat first reported in Western science by Count Branicki of Poland. Partin called the loss, “less than regrettable.”

When an assistant was lost in the resulting collapse of a sinkhole in Amarillo, Texas, due to the boy’s attempt to obtain a photograph of himself standing in the widening depression in the earth, Partin called the loss, “less than regrettable.

He returned to the United States in 1900 and quickly began gathering investors for a scientific experiment that culminated at the 1905 World’s Fair in Portland, Oregon, when Partin, three fingers on his right hand now jaggedly amputated, his skin peeling and cracked from exposure to the sun, unveiled the first intentional man-made sinkhole in recorded history. He achieved the feet by pumping acidic groundwater through drilled holes underneath a layer of limestone. Having created an underground cavern, he then removed the water and gradually increased the topsoil weight, causing the sinkhole, which was timed to occur on the third day of the fair. The damage totaled in the millions for the city, but Partin was hailed as a visionary by the international press. Man Once Again Defies God was the headline in the Antwerp Gazette in Belgium, along with a photograph of Partin, covered in particulates, his mangled hand covering his face, backing away from angered onlookers.

He liked to pronounce the word sinkholes in the Spanish way.

After a lucrative, around-the-world lecture tour, Partin returned to the States in the company of a young, deaf-mute girl of thirteen years of age, Beatrice Byerly. She was alternately referred to as Partin’s young ward and Partin’s wife by the press. In a diary discovered after her death, Byerly called Partin “my insane lovely” and referred to his interest in sinkholes as something akin to “a dead tiger reanimated by means of wire and electricity, ferocious and unnatural.”

He referred to sinkholes that did no damage and barely altered the landscape as “Jesus sinkholes, not God sinkholes. Experiments made with a toy chemistry set to show the father that the child understands the methods, but lacking any of the rage that all great occurrences must possess.” Sometimes this is attributed to Graham Moxon, another sinkologist of the era.

In 1923, the noted American artist, Ermil Pageant, painted Partin’s portrait, which currently hangs in the Jacksonville Museum of Art. In the painting, Partin is soaking wet, his hands stained with pine tar, his eyes closed and shoulders slumped as if asleep or dead. The painting was commissioned by the state of Florida in commemoration of the honoring of Dr. Partin as the Floridian of the Year. Partin refused to sit for the portrait and the painting was made only after he fell down a well and was rendered unconscious.

Sink – to bring to utter ruin or collapse.

After a fired assistant referred to Byerly as “dumbed by God in anticipation of her union” with Dr. Partin, Partin beat the young man to death with a rock hammer. The body was then deposited at the bottom of a sinkhole in Huffman, Georgia. For reasons unknown, Partin placed a tuning fork in the assistant’s hand to suggest suicide or misadventure. Partin was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison. This event lead to the popularization of several songs about the murder, including “Hammered to Heaven” and “The Rock Hammer Waltz”.

In a letter to Byerly, he referred to the escape from prison by means of creating a sinkhole as “a damned fool’s errand.”

While in prison, Partin existed on spelt, both boiled and in seed form. He attributed this to his good health while incarcerated and, when released, created the Balda Spelt Company, which introduced spelt crackers to the American public. It was a financial disaster and left Partin nearly bankrupt.

On his deathbed, Partin reportedly called sinkholes “merely one of the many forms by which the earth expresses its displeasure with humanity,” though this has been disputed and is probably a case of mythmaking rather than fact.

His gravestone reads: Here Lies Wesley Partin For As Long As The Earth May Contain Him.

_____________________

Kevin Wilson is the author of the collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009). His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere, and has twice been included in the New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best anthology. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the KHN Center for the Arts. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his son, Griff, where he teaches fiction at the University of the South and helps run the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Kevin's stories appear in both Kitty Snacks #2 and #3.

These Institutions Deserve My Gratitude

2010-02-10T08:39:00.000-08:00

by George Singleton

I would like to acknowledge the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. I cannot, but I would like to do so. Evidently my plan of action regarding The Curious Life and Difficult Times of Transcendental Meditationalist and Kosher Deli-Owning African-American Leroy Pinckney: Conformity and Rebellion, Fresh Meat and Mantras did not sway the voting committee, or whatever they have up there at the NEH. I completely understand. I do not bear a grudge, nor do I wish to exact vengeance on any of the highly-qualified members up there in Washington, D.C. I read recently that somebody received one of the NEH grants in order to work on the Selected Papers of Reggae Icon Bob Marley. Selected rolling papers, maybe. But I understand. Up until my biography of Leroy Pinckney hits the shelves of every college and university library in America (and Jamaica, I suppose), no one will understand how Leroy’s lynching affected our fast-paced modern day society of men and women, the bigoted and the rational.

I would like to offer thanks to the support I received from the National Endowment for the Arts, but, again, I didn’t receive one of their grants, so I cannot thank those people, either. I believe the NEA folks are up in our nation’s capital, also. Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough in my application that Leroy Pinckney was also a folk artist. He hung his primitive, naïve paintings—done with latex house paint on asbestos roofing shingles, cedar plank shingles, tin roof scrap, terra cotta shingles, and pieces of slate roofs. Like other folk artists of his generation, he didn’t paint on plywood, one-by-twelve pine lumber, sheetrock, or refrigerator doors. Why? Because he got the shingles back when he was in the army, learning how to cook fine kosher meals from his friend from Brooklyn who may or may not have been a tyrant in the kitchen. I read somewhere how a supposed scholar received both an NEH and NEA grant to write a biography about the artist Joseph Beuys, who supposedly crashed a German plane in World War II, got rescued by Tartar tribesmen who wrapped him in felt and fat, and then went on to make all these sculptures using felt and fat. I found the book and read it. Well, I read parts of it, enough to know that Beuys made up that story about getting rescued by tribesmen. So one guy gets two big-ass grants to work on a biography of a lying artist, and here I am in Tennessee, dirt poor, living in a fucking campground part of the time, and I can’t get a handshake from the NEA. Maybe I should’ve called my biography The Curious Life and Difficult Times of Lying Folk Artist, Transcendental Meditationalist and Kosher Deli-Owning African-American Leroy Pinckney: Conformity and Rebellion, Fresh Meat and Mantras. But, again, I suppose those people in Washington, D.C. know a lot more about who deserves grant money as opposed to me. Or I. See, I don’t even know grammar, so maybe that should prove to me how come someone who makes a documentary of himself counting the thorns on a rose bush deserves monies, as compared to an independent scholar wishing the world to understand the complex life of a black man in central Tennessee whose mission was to teach the masses about the importance of inspected meats and holding a yoga position for hours at a time.

I want to thank whoever runs that reality-based television program that involves a tyrant chef. Without watching that show, I might not have understood how Leroy Pinckney wanted to prove everyone wrong in regards to his mastery of the kitchen.

The Tennessee Arts Council and Humanities Tennessee offer monetary awards to individuals and non-profit institutions they deem plausible. Evidently they didn’t see my project as worthwhile, so I’m going to thank them kindly when they ask me to participate in the Southern Festival of the Book, and then not show up. From what I hear—and this goes with other state arts councils, from what I understand—if I had woven a basket out of kudzu vines and hand printed “Leroy Pinckney Got Lynched By the Plemmons Brothers” on the outside, they would’ve given me the key to Nashville and a speaking engagement at every honky-tonk on Lower Broad. If I went down to Lower Broad—to Tootsie’s Orchid, Robert’s Western World, and whatever other bars are left down there before the gentrification took place—then I’d more than likely go off on a binge and never return to the Harriman/Oak Ridge area where I belong. So I want to thank the state arts council and humanities people for saving my liver any more trouble than it’s already in.

The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts deserves some respect, though it showed me none. They offer places for people to live, eat, and write for free. I guess, when it all pans out, that’s what I did anyway, so I want to thank the Fine Arts Work Center for giving other people the opportunity that I had when I lived at the Frozen Head State Park Campground, ate bream, and wrote for free. Still, I would’ve liked to have rubbed shoulders with some other writers—even if they weren’t biographers—and told them all about Leroy Pinckney’s plight. And I would’ve absolutely loved to have heard someone from New York City tell me all about his or her novel that concerned an upper middle class couple living in Manhattan, trying to raise a precocious child while enduring the collapse of their finances, two affairs, and a nosy doorman.

I would like to thank these institutions, also: the Authors League Emergency Fund, the PEN American Center Writers Fund for Indigence, and the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund. Well, I guess, to be honest, I want to thank Mr. Cotton Sinclair at the library for pointing out how these people might understand how I couldn’t afford a ballpoint pen and legal pad to finish The Curious Life and Difficult Times of Transcendental Meditationalist and Kosher Deli-Owning African-American Leroy Pinckney: Conformity and Rebellion, Fresh Meat and Mantras, and how perhaps it would’ve helped me from having to A.) walk into banks and hotels to steal their pens; and B.) steal from Oak Ridge Office Supply and Greeting Cards.

I want to thank Mr. Harold Hawkins for not pressing charges.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded by good Morris Dees and Joe Levin in 1971, has done some extraordinary and brave work in regards to civil rights and hatemongers. I would like to thank them for their moral support. After I wrote them all about my project concerning Leroy, they informed me that they didn’t tender financial support, outside of their “Teaching Tolerance” grants. They couldn’t give me money, though, seeing as I no longer taught History 101 at Tennessee Valley Community College after I walked off the job due to Juanita Wilkins’s misdirected allegations. One day, Southern Poverty Law Center, one day!

I hate to admit it, but I contacted the neo-confederate group League of the South in hopes that they would pay me not to publish The Curious Life and Difficult Times of Transcendental Meditationalist and Kosher Deli-Owning African-American Leroy Pinckney: Conformity and Rebellion, Fresh Meat and Mantras. What the hell. Here’s the letter I got back from one of those people, who say that they’re not racists, et cetera, but still want to secede from the union because of black people: “Dear Mr. Ben D. Strawhorn. We dont’ [sic] care about no books [sic] ritten [sic] about no niger [sic] juw [sic] boodist [sic]. If you ast [sic] us, a juw [sic] boodist [six] is nothing more than a Judas. “ It went on some more. Most of it was illegible—evidently supporters of the Confederacy don’t believe in typewriters, much less computers—but I’m pretty sure I made out “die, die, niger-lover [sic]” and “you cain’t [sic] spell ‘triggers’ without ‘grits.’” Have you ever noticed how “sic” and “sick” are close together in spelling? There’s a reason for that. I can’t claim thinking that up myself, though—I’m pretty sure I read it in Dear Abby one time. Anyway, they didn’t give me money to not publish the book, which makes me happy that I published it so more people will understand the hateful commitment of League of the South members, and so on.

I want to thank the Clash for their song “Police on My Back.”

I am indebted to the drug cartels of both Mexico and Colombia. When no one else would send me money to complete the biography, I had no other choice but to go find the sunken motorboat of Juanita Wilkin’s cousin Willie Wilkins, who once transported marijuana and cocaine up and down the rivers of the Tennessee Cumberland Plateau. Willie took three years of Spanish in high school, and got tabbed, somehow. I’m serious. I figured this out sans the help of his cousin: the Hispanic population had infiltrated all of the entire southeast because no one else had the work ethic to pick peaches, apples, burley tobacco, and so on. One of Willie’s classmates had a friend, who had a relative, who had a friend, and so on. Next thing you know, a guy named Guillermo is saying, in Spanish to Willie, “Would you be interested in picking up some drugs and then trafficking them upriver to some people, who will traffic the drugs upriver to some people,” and so on, until the drugs reached Cincinnati, or Detroit, or Woodland Caribou Provincial Park up in Ontario.

Willie got to taking the drugs, as they say. He became an addict, something which I can understand, what with my booze problems. He got to where he took little slivers of the cocaine and ingested them into his nostrils, as cocaine people are wont to do. He pinched off pieces of bud and smoked it in a pipe, much like the pseudo-Rastafarians who read such books as The Selected Papers of Reggae Icon Bob Marley feel obligated. That’s what Spanish-speaking Willie did. Some educators believe that all of us need to know a foreign language, but I’m here to point out that people who concentrate in Spanish might turn to marijuana and cocaine usage, and those who’re inclined to learn whatever they speak in Afghanistan lean toward heroine. I don’t want to make any vast generalizations, but anyone enamored with southern culture might be prone to scouring pastureland in order to harvest and partake of the psilocybin mushroom.

And Willie, of course, got paranoid. He dropped off drugs one day, and took in some money. He dropped off some drugs, and he took in some money. He dropped off some drugs, and he took in some money. I can see him doing all this. His long mullet hair flew in the wind, and he had no one behind him water-skiing. I don’t know if DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) officers actually followed him in a go-fast boat, or if he got all paranoid, but the next thing you know he shot a hole in his own hull, jumped out, and swam to shore. He told me all about it from the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, where he stayed because when he got out of the river he immediately stole a car, and kidnapped a woman, and got caught.

Listen. You take a hungry, poor biographer who can’t get any financial support for his project—let’s say one intent on writing The Curious Life and Difficult Times of Transcendental Meditationalist and Kosher Deli-Owning African-American Leroy Pinckney: Conformity and Rebellion, Fresh Meat and Mantras—and tell him where a sunken boat half-filled with drugs and money might be, what you have is a biographer in a scuba suit. So I thank Willie. I thank the DEA for scaring people enough to think that they’re being followed even when they’re not.

I want to thank that psychologist for teaching me that I can’t be too proud.

____________________

George Singleton has published short stories in a variety of magazines and journals including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Playboy, Zoetrope, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, North American Review, Fiction International, Epoch, Esquire.com, New England Review, Carolina Quarterly, Greensboro Review, Arkansas Review, American Literary Review, and so on. He has published four collections of stories: These People Are Us, The Half-Mammals of Dixie, Why Dogs Chase Cars, Drowning in Gruel; and two novels: Novel and Work Shirts for Madmen.

Look for a new story by George Singleton in Kitty Snacks #3.

Kitty Snacks Bundle of Kittens!

2010-02-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

For a limited time we're offering a sweet deal on Kitty Snacks #2 and the upcoming #3 in a crazy bundle. You'll get both issues for 14 bucks plus a small shipping fee (while supplies last). Just click the buy button below.

UPDATE: No longer available. sorry.

Kitty Snacks #3

2010-02-08T11:11:00.000-08:00

Kitty Snacks #1 available for download NOW! It's FREE!

2010-01-31T12:43:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

Kitty Snacks #1 is long out of print so to celebrate our fast approaching one year anniversary as well as the soon-to-be-released Kitty Snacks #3 we're offering up a free pdf download of our first issue featuring Jack Pendarvis, Geologist of Animal Collective, Selah Saterstrom, Sam Pink, King Khan, Kent Osborne, and more. Just click here and read away.

Kitty Snacks #3 is almost ready and will be available for pre orders this week.

Issue #3 features work by:
George Singleton
John Brandon
Mary Miller
Ryan Ridge
Jane Rule Burdine
Ward Long
Isadora Bey
Kevin Wilson
Rudy Wilson
Deb Olen Unferth
Jason Polan
P.A. Levy
Darlin' Neal
Andrew Borgstrom
Jeff McNeil
Len Kuntz
John Oliver Hodges
Josh Burwell
and more...

Stay tuned!

*nothing from this page or downloaded from this page may be reproduced/sold/reprinted without permission from Kitty Snacks or the authors and artists involved. Thanks!

Kitty Snacks #3 cover photo by Ward Long

2010-01-21T10:01:00.000-08:00

Stay tuned for more info and to order your copy!

See more of Ward's work here.

(sorry about the lines on the photo...

they won't be there in the print version)

2010-01-13T10:16:00.001-08:00

VOX gears up for new book release!

2010-01-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

VOX magazine (our friends and fellow Oxford natives) is getting ready to release a poetry collection by Zachary Bush. More info can be found here.

Issue #3 Update! We're going FULL COLOR...kind of

2010-01-12T15:56:00.000-08:00

Kitty Snacks #3 is almost done and will be going to the printer soon.

We're very excited about the list of writers featured in the issue:
Deb Olen Unferth
George Singleton
Rudy Wilson
Mary Miller
John Brandon
Kevin Wilson
and many more...

Photos by Jane Rule Burdine will also be featured along with a few other photographers in all their full-color glory...

Pre sales will start soon so stay tuned.

Barry Hannah and the 2010 Oxford Conference for the Book

2010-01-12T13:36:00.000-08:00

So, we here at Kitty Snacks are huge Barry Hannah fans. We're excited about the upcoming book conference.

We just got a look at the schedule for this year's conference. Saturdary, March 6 looks like it will be the place to be. Stay tuned here for upcoming info on the conference.

Here's a sneak peak at the Saturday schedule:

SATURDAY, MARCH 6
Program sessions on Saturday will be at the Overby Center on the University campus. The 6 o’clock book signing and party will be at Off Square Books.

10:30 a.m. “Survivors of Geronimo Rex”
William Dunlap, moderator 
Harry Brown, Rae Hederman, Barnett Jones, Horace Newcomb,
Noel Polk, John Quisenberry

Noon
Lunch – picnic celebrating the 40th anniversary of the University Press of Mississippi

2:00 p.m. “Barry Hannah as Teacher”
Tom Franklin, moderator
Anne Rapp, Cynthia Shearer, Jonathan Miles

3:00 p.m. “Teaching Barry Hannah”
Jay Watson, moderator 
Donald Kartiganer, George Saunders, Daniel E. Williams

4:00 p.m. “Barry Hannah as Writer”
Richard Howorth, moderator 
William Harrison, Amy Hempel, Wells Tower

6:00 p.m.
Marathon Book Signing and Party at Off Square Books

Here are some articles/interviews for now:
-from the Paris Review
-Garden & Gun article written by Wells Tower
-Barry on htmlgiant
-Fiona Maazel interview in BOMB Magazine
-NY Times article

That should tide you over 'til March...

Don Carpenter back in print!

2010-01-11T13:05:00.000-08:00

Photographer and friend of Kitty Snacks, Ward Long, recently told us about Don Carpenter's debut novel Hard Rain Falling being back in print by the New York Review of Books. Carpenter was a fascinating character and close friend to one of our favorite writers, Richard Brautigan. This month's issue of The Believer magazine features a great article on Carpenter, his friendship with Brautigan, and his career.

Kitty Snacks Book Klub

2010-01-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

Kitty Snacks Book Klub

So, we're starting a book club. Each month we'll pick a new or reprinted book from an independent press, read it, then talk about it (and by talk about it we mean you can post online or we can get together for a beer or something). The books will be available at Square Books and anyone that signs up will get a 10% discount on that month's title. The books will usually be paperback and inexpensive (10-15 bucks). This is a great way to support independent literature and we're looking forward to finding some great titles.

Our first selection, which will be available next week at Square Books, is THE RED TRUCK by Rudy Wilson (Ravenna Press). You can check out their website at http://www.ravennapress.com. Feel free to order from them if you don't live in Oxford or come by Square Books to get the bookclub discount.

This is the first Ravenna Press edition of Wilson's novel, a cult favorite originally published in 1987 by Knopf, with a new Introduction by Marc Kipniss. It is a great piece of evidence in the controversy over the influence of former Knopf editor Gordon Lish (who edited The Red Truck). Lish edited Wilson as he edited Raymond Carver and Barry Hannah, with dazzling results.

To sign up for the bookclub (so we can figure out how many books to order) please respond to this facebook event as "attending" or write in the comments section that you'd like to join. The book will be about $12.

Here's an excerpt from the book:
"Christ"

Teddianne ran out of the house from the backdoor and up over the front yard hill. Parked on the street was Christ. It looked like a red truck.
It sat, facing down the hill.
"It's too big!" she cried. "I can't get in it. It hurts; the truck, it's too big for my heart."
She pressed her hand to her chest.
But then Teddianne fit in it. She got in it. She opened up and got in it.
In the South, in the wintertime, the ground sometimes sparkles with the morning frost. It didn't snow very often and the thin white would be gone by noon. They shot off firecrackers and Roman candles around Christmastime.
One year Teddianne got the flying bird, with the painted face. One winter she got a tattoo put on. It would be there forever. One year she tied a long red ribbon to the wooden gate in the back, down by the shed. And one day, in the winter, when she came outside, she saw a red truck.

New Releases We Dig: Don DeLillo's Point Omega

2009-12-23T08:49:00.001-08:00

Barry Hannah Reading Tonight!

2009-12-01T08:48:00.000-08:00

Vox Literary Journal of Oxford is hosting a reading with Barry Hannah tonight at Off Square Books at 7 p.m.

Artist Glennray Tutor will also be there to talk about his work on the covers of Barry's books.

Should be great!

From the Vox site:

VOX Artist Series presents An Evening With Barry Hannah!

Join us on Dec. 1st at 7 PM for a sit down with one of America's most inventive and original writers and an acknowledged master of the modern short story. Mr. Hannah will read from his work and then take questions. At Mr. Hannah's request, black-eyed peas and cornbread will be available for a $4.00 donation.

Special guest Glennray Tutor, renowned Oxford photorealist, will discuss his work in designing the iconic cover for Mr. Hannah's classic short story collection Bats Out of Hell and Mr. Hannah's other book covers.

Special guest Tate Moore of The Kuzdu Kings (and owner of the delicious Square Pizza in Oxford) will treat the crowd to special music.

Doors open at 6:00 PM. Program begins at 7:00 PM.

Spend a few hours on a Tuesday evening with VOX and Barry Hannah! Sabers up!

__________________________

Also! The 2010 Oxford Conference for the Book is dedicated to Barry. Hooray!

Kitty Snacks #2 now available at Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi

2009-11-11T14:43:00.000-08:00

If you live in central Mississippi you can swing by Lemuria Books to grab a copy of Kitty Snacks #2.

Kitty Snacks on CNN

2009-11-11T14:36:00.000-08:00

Michael and I were recently interviewed
by Neal Moore for CNN iReport.

Illiteracy to Literature in the Enlightened South - Part I

By NEAL MOORE

OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI (CNN iReport)

From the basic grasp of consonants to the next step up the ladder of literacy - actually craving the concept of literature - I found the idea of introducing a literary mantra in the epicenter of what some folks refer to as the “Enlightened South” an interesting prospect.

David Swider and Michael Bible are affable and giddy and very much sincere about literature. I joined the duo for a beer at the Square’s greasy spoon, Ajax, to talk shop about the region before sitting down for an interview back on their work-turf of Square Books. Their energy plays off each other when they talk, turning every conversation into a brainstorming session of what would be cool or what could work out literary-wise for the literary journal, Kitty Snacks. At ages 25 and 28, respectively, David and Michael are relatively young to undertake the launch of a literary magazine – but this is their point. They want to make the rather daunting idea of literature a possibility for folks of all ages by offering it to the public as bite sized snacks.

According to Michael Bible, Mississippi “is the fattest, poorest, dumbest state in the country – that is full of geniuses. You have people that can’t read right next to people that win Nobel Prizes – and it’s this weird kind of dichotomy that works to both illuminate that kind of difference but also recently, bring it together.”

“The book is kind of a hard commodity right now,” explains Wayne Andrews, Executive Director of the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, who immediately saw the potential for the journal and helped to get it published. While “publishers [are] not taking risks on new authors [nor] publishing diverse works, we’re finding new ways to do it.” According to Mr. Andrews, quarterly publications like Kitty Snacks are “leading [people] down the path to discover a magazine and then hopefully discover a book.”

Check out Part I of this report by clicking here: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-351049

An excerpt from Kitty Snacks #2: On Water by Leni Zumas

2009-10-08T09:42:00.000-07:00

Dear Sister,

I have left you alone with them, and I am sorry. Don’t be angry. Please don’t be.

I am riding a castle in a moat the size of God, manned by men too stupid or too criminal for the navy. They deck themselves in ribbons, no shoes, their hair braided in patchy thrusts; and I dress as they do. Walk jack-hipped as they do.

My hands hurt from working the ropes and my nose bled twice and I miss you, but I am not discontented. In the morning, you should see it, how the day comes like horses. And at night the night is so black that my voice is the only proof I am here. At home we had our candle. Remember how we frazzed our lashes at it, and Mother noticed our bald lids? That was worth being whipped for, to feel the heat so close without going blind.

The captain, they say, wears a merkin. It is sinful to cut the private hair, but he has cut it; and his little wig sticks there, under the belly. I don’t know what color is the wig, nor does Ned, the boy who told me of it.

Ned with his rosy plumules, zit-ricked lad, scrubs daily with salt and cinder but no good, he is bad afflicted. Crab-face! yell the sailors and Ned rushes his hands to his cheeks. He is the only one on this castle who knows what I am. He came to me the third night, down in the hold where I lay crunched, and said very low, Are you a lady? and I said No, I’m a boy, and he said, You’re not a boy.

When the sea churns the green sailors fall to swithering. But the churn is nothing more bad than a quease from the monthly. Some of the boys cry. Boys young enough to cry are here, younger than we were when our hairs came. In sleep they call for their mothers; awake, they puke. Two are brothers, with heads the red of a schoolhouse, both sick from the minute we left shore. The younger can’t stop throwing up. The older is bony too, but his brother has shrunk to the bigness of a rabbit, no food in days, only spoonmeat. Being a soft creature, bred up in softness, he can’t stand the fling of the water. Ned advised to cut an eel into portions and feed the kid the raw bits; but the older refused. Instead he trickles biscuit into cups of milk, tilts them careful at his brother’s mouth.

Many of these boys are dotted with trout-lice, a worm like a clove or pin that sucks your moisture. I am nervous of getting a sug on me, so I wear all my clothes to sleep.

When we are bored, which is a lot, Ned tells stories from home. There lived in his road a keeper of bears, who cared for the sick or hurt or old ones that had been removed from the pit. I said what did he mean, pit? The bear-pit, he said. Our town has no pit, I said. It’s a hole in the ground where bears are, Ned explained, to be watched by the public. The public is not amused by sluggish animals; they want frisk and cavortion. So the bear-keeper tended the outcasts. Until one ate him. I don’t believe you, I said happily. I swear on my own grave, Ned said. He was found half-munched, by the man’s very daughter! Then you swear on water, I pointed out, because sailors have no grave but the sea. And water can’t be sworn on.

Poor sicklepod Ned, his cheeks coarse with oozy lobules—he is the kindest of any man I have met. This is thanks, I think, to his not being a man quite yet, no need of a razor. When I change between my two shirts, he looks away.

*****

To read the rest of On Water please see the print version of Kitty Snacks #2. You can purchase a copy by clicking the link on the right.

New Releases We Dig: Padgett Powell's The Interrogative Mood

2009-10-07T08:18:00.000-07:00

Photos from Issue #2 Release Party

2009-10-02T13:44:00.000-07:00

Photos by Erin Austen Abbott.
Thanks to John Brandon and Mary Miller for reading.
Thanks to Southside Gallery for hosting the event.
Thanks to everyone that attended.

There are a few prints (first photo above) available. Email kittysnackseditor@gmail.com if you want to buy one.

If you missed the party you can buy a copy of Kitty Snacks #2 at Square Books in Oxford for online here.

2009-09-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

Kitty Snacks Kegger #2

2009-09-22T19:50:00.000-07:00

Kitty Snacks #2 Release Party!

Tuesday, September 29 at 8 p.m. at Southside Gallery on the Square in Oxford with an afterparty at Ajax Diner right down the street at 10 p.m.

Readings, short films, raffles and booze at Southside Gallery from 8-10 p.m.

Admission: 10 bucks (gets you a limited copy of the magazine, free booze, and a raffle ticket)

The afterparty will start around 10 p.m. at Ajax and will feature Oxford's best country band Cowboy Maloney's Electric City...and it's free.

So come to Southside to get a copy of the magazine, mingle, drink, hear some readings, watch some films, and hang out. Then head down the street to Ajax for some music and more booze.

Kitty Snacks #2 features work by:

Mary Miller
John Brandon
Leni Zumas
Kevin Wilson
Ryan Dilbert
Suzanna Best
Krammer Abrahams
Savannah Louise
Isadora Bay
Ben Segal
Howie Good
Meg Pokrass
Phil Estes
Jimmy Chen
& Hastings Hensel

a comic by Kent Osborne

interviews with filmmakers Ross McElwee,
Matt Wolf, and Matthew Robison

art by Len Clark and Josh Burwell

If you can't make it to the party you can purchase a copy online at kittysnacks.blogspot.com or at Square Books.

Jack Pendarvis has a new column in The Believer

2009-09-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

Friend of Kitty Snacks and funny man Jack Pendarvis has a new monthly column starting in the September issue of The Believer. The column is called Musin's and Thinkin's and can be read here.

Jack's new book Shut Up, Ugly will be out this fall. An excerpt from the book can be found in KS #1, which is sold out.

New Releases we dig: William Eggleston's Paris

2009-08-25T14:23:00.001-07:00

Kitty Snacks #2 is here!

2009-08-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

Kitty Snacks #2 is back from the printer. Get ready!

For those who pre ordered Christmas is coming early. Copies will be in the mail asap.

For those who haven't ordered now would be a good time. You've been warned.

Featuring work by Leni Zumas, Mary Miller, John Brandon, Len Clark, Josh Burwell, Ryan Dilbert, Ben Segal, Howie Good, Phil Estes, Jesse Bradley, Meg Pokrass, Jimmy Chen, Suzanna Best, Savannah Louise, and more.

Interviews with filmmakers Ross McElwee (Sherman's March), Matt Wolf (Wild Combination about Arthur Russell), and Matthew Robison (Silver Jew).

Thanks

Kitty Snacks #2 PRE ORDER UP NOW

2009-07-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

Get in line to receive KS #2. They will be shipping out in a few weeks but there are only a limited number 0f 250 so get one while you can. Just click the "buy now" button over there ==>

Don't forget to donate as well. See the donation levels to the right.

Here's the lineup for #2:

Mary Miller
John Brandon
Leni Zumas
Kevin Wilson
Ryan Dilbert
Suzanna Best
Krammer Abrahams
Savannah Louise
Isadora Bey
Ben Segal
Howie Good
Meg Pokrass
Phil Estes
Jimmy Chen
& Hastings Hensel

a comic by Kent Osborne

interviews with filmmakers Ross McElwee,
Matt Wolf, and Matthew Robison

art by Len Clark and Josh Burwell

What we're reading: Mary Miller's Big World

2009-07-08T10:14:00.001-07:00

Finally got a copy of Mary Miller's Big World and for a such a small book it packs a punch. Mary's stories are some of the best I've read this year and for only 10 bucks you'd be stupid not to buy it.

Check it out. Order one here.

Read a review here.

Kitty Snacks #2 also features a story by Mary Miller.

New Releases we dig: CONQUEST OF THE USELESS by Werner Herzog

2009-06-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

Announcing the lineup for Kitty Snacks #2 ...we're aiming for the fences!

2009-05-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

Kitty Snacks #2 will feature work by...

Mary Miller
John Brandon
Leni Zumas
Kevin Wilson
Ryan Dilbert
Suzanna Best
Krammer Abrahams
Savannah Louise
Isadora Bay
Ben Segal
Howie Good
Meg Pokrass
Phil Estes
Jimmy Chen
& Hastings Hensel

a comic by Kent Osborne

interviews with filmmakers Ross McElwee,
Matt Wolf, and Matthew Robison

art by Len Clark and Josh Burwell

Get excited because we are!

Pre-orders will start shortly so stay tuned!

We're also going to throw one hell of a release party for this one! Kitty Snacks Kegger #2!

Kitty Snacks #2 cover art by LEN CLARK!

2009-05-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

Our friend Len Clark did the cover for Kitty Snacks #2. It's scary as shit and totally badass. It was printed from a hand-carved woodblock and is gigantic. We'll be offering limited edition hand prints of the full spread soon. Stay tuned for an official release date.

Also, there is still time to get your ugly mug drawn by Josh Burwell in Issue #2. Just donate $75 bucks or more and you can be a part of it all as well as get Kitty Snacks in the mail for the next two years. Help us out and we'll help you out.

WE FUN by Matthew Robison

2009-05-13T07:21:00.000-07:00

Kitty Snacks Issue #2 features an interview with filmmaker Matthew Robison. The majority of the interview is about his film Silver Jew, which follows David Berman and his band through the Holy Land. He's got a new film that was just viewed at the Atlanta Film Fest called WE FUN. You can see it for free on Pitchfork.com starting Friday, May 15. WE FUN documents the Atlanta music scene and follows bands like Deerhunter, the Black Lips, Mastadon, Kitty Snacks interviewee King Khan.

There will also be a screening in Oxford, MS (Kitty Snacks home town) on June 1 at the Lyric Theater.

Check it out! and Check out the interview with Matthew in the upcoming Issue #2.

For the Arthur Russell fans: Director Matt Wolf interview in Issue #2

2009-05-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

Kitty Snacks chatted it up with Matt Wolf on his recent documentary on avant-garde musician Arthur Russell, Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell.

Before his untimely death from AIDS in 1992, Arthur prolifically created music that spanned both pop and the transcendent possibilities of abstract art. Now, over fifteen years since his passing, Arthur's work is finally finding its audience. Wolf incorporates rare archival footage and commentary from Arthur's family, friends, and closest collaborators—including Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg—to tell this poignant and important story.

This is a great documentary on a truly strange and brilliant man. You can check out more on the film here and be sure to read the full interview with Matt in Kitty Snacks #2 (OUT SOON!).

Kevin Wilson comes to Oxford!

2009-04-20T12:07:00.000-07:00

Friend of Kitty Snacks, Kevin Wilson, was in Oxford last week to support his latest collection of short stories, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth. The reading at Square Books was great. The book is great too. Some of Kevin's stories will be featured in Kitty Snacks Issue #2.

Kevin's blog is here.

Get your face in Issue #2

2009-04-14T09:46:00.000-07:00

Time is running out if you want your face drawn in the second print issue of Kitty Snacks. Donate $75 or more and we'll secure your history as a friend of Kitty Snacks as well as a work of art. You'll get your face drawn by the fantastic Josh Burwell whose drawings are featured in Kitty Snacks #1 as well as a two year subscription to the magazine.

Check out the donation levels to the right ====>

We thank you for your much-needed support!

Kitty Snacks Editor featured interview at Orange Alert!

2009-04-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

Check out a new interview with Kitty Snacks editor, Michael Bible, at What To Wear During An Orange Alert. We love this blog and you should too. So go there and read the interview.

Issue #2 Preview-Interview with Ross McElwee

2009-04-07T14:43:00.000-07:00

Documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee (Sherman's March) was kind enough to answer some questions about his work. Be sure to check out his films and read the full interview in Kitty Snacks #2.

"For the past twenty-five years, Ross McElwee has given new meaning and flair to first-person non-fiction cinema. Always wise and irreverent, ever the unreliable narrator, McElwee makes the grandest themes of human comedy his artistic province: love and death, chance and fate, memory and denial, the marvelous and the appalling."
- The Museum of Modern Art

Here's an excerpt from the interview:

Kitty Snacks: You've written about influences from literature like Walker Percy.
Have you had other significant literary influences? Do you find
yourself using the narrative techniques of an author when you make
your films?

Ross McElwee: I strive to achieve a non-literary quality to my narration - that is, something that doesn't feel written, but rather felt or thought. So there's not particular Southern author's techniques I try to emulate. Rather, my narrative style has probably evolved form the sense of being introspective and somewhat ill at ease and out of the loop - perhaps an overall Southern condition. Many Southerners have sailed this ship - Thomas Wolfe, Eudora Welty , but Walker Percy appears to lead the flotilla.

Quimby's in Chicago

2009-03-30T10:00:00.001-07:00

Check out Kitty Snacks on the front page of the Quimby's website. Don't be afraid to buy it from them or from us...

Issue #1 now in stores! Selling like hot cakes!

2009-03-16T09:34:00.000-07:00

If you live in Oxford, MS you can pick up a copy of Kitty Snacks #1 at Square Books.

If you live in Chicago you can pick up a copy at Quimby's.

If you live in Memphis you can pick up a copy at Goner Records.

or you could just click the "buy now" button over there and we'll mail you one, but it's good to support your local stores.

Clarissa's mom reads Sam Pink's Harm Another Human Being into Admiring You at the Kitty Snacks Issue #1 Release Party!

2009-03-13T13:04:00.001-07:00

Clarissa's mom reads Sam Pink from david swider on Vimeo.

Thanks to John Rory Fraser for filming the event and thanks to Clarissa's mom for reading.

Issue #1 Release Party Photos! (taken by Joey Miller)

2009-03-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

Issue #2 preview

2009-03-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

We're moving ahead and Issue #2 is looking damn fine and features an interview with Matthew Robison, producer of the film Silver Jew based on poet/musician David Berman. The film is excellent so be sure to check out the interview in the upcoming issue of Kitty Snacks.

For now here's the trailer for the film:
Silver Jew Movie Trailer

Enjoy!

2009-03-10T21:32:00.001-07:00

Almost Gone!

2009-03-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

Issue #1 is almost SOLD OUT!

If you haven't ordered a copy now is a good time.

If you have ordered a copy it's on its way! Thanks!

A Baby

2009-03-06T08:10:00.001-08:00

by David Erlewine

Three nights after their daughter was born dead, an umbilical cord strangling, John’s wife woke up screaming. He cowered under his hands, his heart on the verge. Her face contorted in a way he’d never seen. He rocked her in his arms, shushing her back to sleep. At breakfast, John’s son stared at the empty table. John got up and made him some juice and set out a box of Cheerios. His son threw the box in the trash. “Stale, Dad.” John hoped the boy didn’t ask about his mother, who was in bed, legs splayed, waiting to be changed.

Her psychiatrist asked what her name was. She put her thumb in her ear and said, “Goo goo goo goo.” Later, while she sucked on what would have been Melissa’s pacifier, the good doctor suggested immediate hospitalization. John rubbed his wife’s shoulder. “Not yet.” In the car, John helped her into the front seat and buckled her in. He whispered, “Snap the fuck out of this.” The pacifier fell in her lap. She fumbled at it with her left hand.

A few weeks later, he located and assembled an adult crib that to him looked like a cage. “This is what it has come to.” She nodded and crawled in. The next few nights before bed he pretended to chase her; she giggled every time she crawled in.

Her brother flew in for the weekend. He left Saturday afternoon.

John consulted with her psychiatrist, their son, friends, and then her. She stared as he explained the predicament. As he held her in his arms, he reminded himself that taking her to the hospital might be the only thing to bring her back. During the intake procedure, or maybe upon seeing her room, she just might snap back in place.

The first night in her new bed, she wouldn’t sleep, crying and screaming. A tall woman came in to check on them. A few minutes later, she returned with a bottle of formula milk. He tested a few drops on the inside part of his wrist, recalling how he had done so for their son years before, how the little boy writhed in her arms, waiting. John flicked the little lamp on. He grabbed his wife’s shoulders and shook them, snapping her head back and forth. Her eyes filled with tears. He stuck the bottle in her mouth before she could scream.

David Erlewine's stories appear (or soon will) in Mud Luscious, Keyhole Magazine, 971 Menu, elimae, CEllA's Road Trip, and other journals. He edits fiction for Dogzplot. Check out his blog at http://www.whizbyfiction.blogspot.com/

The Rabbits

2009-03-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

by J.A. Tyler

There was a pop and some red, nothing else. It was a video my dad ordered over the phone, telling the operator YES. YES. YES, and then a string of numbers.

Here they run from bush to bush, covering themselves from us, our walking, the strollers and wagons and all the ways they know we accidentally crush them. Hiding in the lawn, here, the other zoo animals unnoticing them, their tiny rabbit bodies.

SEE. THEY JUST PEEL IT OFF. And they do, in my dad’s video, their rabbit skin coming off of them like a coat, unzipping and coming off their shoulders.

The heads have been chopped off, these rabbits in this video of my dad’s. They are headless, these rabbits.

WHERE ARE THEIR HEADS? I ask. GONE he says.

Gone, these rabbits, their heads.

I WANT TO KEEP MY HEAD I tell him, my dad watching this video, where the meat comes off the bones. BE CAREFUL THEN he says, headless rabbits on the screen, the ones that I guess weren’t careful enough.

J. A. Tyler is the author of the forthcoming novella SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (ghost road press) and the chapbooks THE GIRL IN THE BLACK SWEATER (Trainwreck Press) and EVERYONE IN THIS IS EITHER DYING OR WILL DIE OR IS THINKING OF DEATH (Achilles Chapbook Series). He is also founding editor of mud luscious / ml press and was recently nominated for a Pushcart. Find more info here: www.aboutjatyler.blogspot.com.

If My Name Was Liam I Would Fake an Exotic Accent to Get Laid

2009-03-06T08:03:00.000-08:00

by Nathan Tyree

I discovered a walrus living in my freezer. I beat it to death with my ex-girlfriend's femur (I don't know why the femur was still in my apartment, you'd think she would have taken it with her when she left), then I took the walrus out to a nice restaurant, but I made it pay the bill.

When you are sleeping I will evolve into a bird, then devolve into a reptile. When you wake up you will be upset by my lidless eyes staring down at you.

The scent of Bubble Yum makes me horny.

I love you so much that I want to use a rusty box cutter to slice you open from your cunt to your chin, then hollow your body out and build a pillow fort inside you. I will be a king inside your body. When I get tired of the fort I will fill the cavity with whisky and swim around in it. First I will have to learn to swim.

Fuck you! I look good in this hat.

I wish I was a dog because then no one would be really mad when I piss on their carpet.

Your eyes make me want to dismantle the stars and suffocate the moon. No one really needs those things anyway.

The thing about the Walrus was a lie. I paid the bill (but I made him get the tip).

Nathan Tyree's fiction and poetry has appeared in over 100 journals, including Dogmatika; Dogzplot; Heroin Love Songs; Edifice Wrecked; Poor Mojo's Almanac(k); Diddledog; Gutter Eloquence; Word Riot; The Beat; decomP; Mad Swirl; The Flash; Flesh and Blood.

Audubon

2009-03-06T08:02:00.000-08:00

by Lydia Copeland

He points to the Swan's back full of cygnets, runs a finger over the dip of neck. He is her son and has inherited all her loves. Their hands draw invisible alphabets into the pictures. She shows him how an S bends away from itself. T is a table with the guests cleared away. She thinks of rivers on maps, routes. The air outside of their house.

There was a trip West with a boyfriend once, and she watched the land slide into desert and the ice melt in the drive-thru cups. The boyfriend had spilled gasoline on his shoes, and the smell stayed with them through the red dust and saguaro, through the firewheel flowers. They watched a car on fire, rolling down the interstate. A woman on the side of the road watched with them, crying about her paintings burning in the trunk. Her summer's work. Her nose was bloody. Her hands shook. They put a blanket over her shoulders and waited for the police. She and the boyfriend slept in the car that night, and she kept waking at every sound. The boyfriend found pancakes for them every morning. He seemed to always know how to find the empty places out of the way, where the waitresses came to your table without a pen and memorized your order. There was always a George Jones song and a guy at the counter eating eggs before work.

Now she has a husband, who drives in and out of weeks and comes home for three day stretches. On these days the house is warm from cooking meals. Her husband sleeps on his side, face to her face. Now her son has learned the birds of their neighborhood. The seagull, the pigeon, the cormorants in the bay. He knows the difference between starling and sparrow in parking lots. She walks with him to the neighborhood across the street to watch mallards in a stream, floating in pairs over roots and sand, letting the water take them. Her husband returns each week with a new book. Audubon or Sibley. When he leaves again, she stacks the books on the dinner table and places their wedding photos at eye level again. Her son holds the pictures sometimes, points at the lips and eyes of his father.

When they first moved to this neighborhood, she would place her son in a stroller and walk along the Bay after dinner. The water there did not roll like the ocean further out, but lapped like a minute hand inching forward. They were always alone in these evenings, and at some point she would carry her son on her hip and point to the cargo ships, the dredger shifting the silt from the water's bottom. Once they watched an egret, standing like a ghost in tide. She knew its slow flight and its neck like a loosened ribbon. Her son was quiet in her arms, his head under her chin. She thought his eyes might be closed. She thought he might not see. Fish hid in the shadows under the water. The egret didn't move when seagulls called over them, or with the horn of the tugboat. A boy and girl from the high school held hands and walked beside them and then behind the path lined with elms and down into the long grasses where no one could see them. She rocked her son in the wind and watched the sky turn gray, the birds circling the shore.

Big Thanks!

2009-03-05T07:15:00.000-08:00

Michael and I want to thank everyone who attended the launch party. We had a blast.

Stay tuned for videos and photos of the event as well as tons of new content.

The magazine is now available by clicking the "buy now" button up there or by going to Square Books in Oxford, MS.

Thanks again.

Don't be Late! Donate!

2009-03-02T21:00:00.001-08:00

Issue #1 pre-order starts NOW!

2009-02-12T15:10:00.000-08:00

Kitty Snacks Issue #1 is now available for pre-order. Just click on the "buy now" button at the top right of this page and you'll have a copy of the magazine in your mailbox as soon as they're back from the press. This is a very limited issue so don't miss out. They'll go fast. If you plan on attending the release party you should hold off on buying it right now as they will be available for sale there.

New chapbook from Kitty Snacks editor Michael Bible

2009-02-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

Be sure to check out My Second Best Bear Rug, a new chapbook from Michael Bible. You can buy your copy at Square Books in Oxford or online from Achilles Chapbook Series.

"Here's the Bible that should be in every motel room in America. Makes me think of black coffee, a shot of whiskey, a piece of meat, apple pie with a slice of yellow cheese on it, more coffee, a cigarette. Doesn't make me think of dope, though there is a lot of dope in the stories. Bitterly funny, touchingly innocent. Words of love. Read your Bible!"

- Jack Pendarvis

Kitty Snacks Kegger Tuesday, March 3 at the Powerhouse

2009-02-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

Stay tuned for full details on the Kitty Snacks Issue #1 release party at the Powerhouse. There will be music, readings, beer, raffles and more.

Snackin'

2009-01-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

The first issue is well on its way and should be ready any day now. We'll be hosting a party! Stay tuned.

For now, here is another poem by Sam Pink. Look for him in the first print issue along with some other great writers. Check out Sam's new chap book out now!

DEAD WHITE PERSON

by Sam Pink

The underwear I want is the kind made from your barely-slept eyelids.

I have kindness for you that is in a drawer in my chest.

I want a new face fashioned from the muscles I disconnect from your ribcage.

The hand I want is the one I have and I don't want anything to ever be inside it.

And there is nothing inside right now except all of the air in the entire world.

One of us is an earthworm in a Dixie cup full of sand.

And the other is the person watching.

I wonder if doctors that deliver babies ever do a trick similar to that "quarter-in-your-ear" trick except with like a nerf football soaked in fake blood.

ALSO! We're almost done compiling submissions for the second print issue of Kitty Snacks so if you're interested in making a submission please send as soon as possible.

Drawings by Josh Burwell

2008-12-30T12:16:00.001-08:00

More drawings by Josh Burwell can be seen in the first print issue of Kitty Snacks.
-click image to make bigger-

Another preview from Issue #1

2008-12-16T19:27:00.000-08:00

Here's a brief excerpt from an interview with Geologist from Animal Collective. The full interview can be read in the first issue of Kitty Snacks. Be sure to check out their new record, Merriweather Post Pavilion.

KITTY SNACKS: What did you think of Mississippi?

GEOLOGIST: We had an awesome time in Mississippi. We've gone to different places to record for a lot of our records and this was the first time we actually felt included in the community and made some new friends. We saw some shows at Proud Larry's, played shuffleboard a lot at Jubilee (I think that was the name), got our coffee at the Bottletree, ate lunch at Ajax most days, ate catfish in Taylor, and hung out a few times at the late night parties on Pierce Ave. We had to be careful of that though because we usually ended up pretty hung over and less than able to work the next day. The only slightly negative thing was the food; it was a bit heavy for us, even those of us who are vegetarians. I mean it tasted great, but usually put us in a coma for a while afterwards. We drank way too much sweet tea and then would have crazy sugar crashes afterwards. Also should say we thought we would be going somewhere a bit warmer. Oxford was still pretty chilly in February and the weather was kind of extreme in terms of rain, hail, and that tornado you guys had come through the area, but in a way, that worked for us since we were thinking about how the new songs all seemed to be visually related to extreme weather patterns. I would also like to say that Sweet Tea is an incredible studio. Easily one of my favorite places we've ever worked.

Thanks to Geologist for the interview.

Issue #1 preview

2008-12-15T15:21:00.001-08:00

UNENDING PARANOIA
by Sam Pink

One day I want to wake up to someone telling me they hate me. I want that person to follow me around all day, telling me how much s/he hates me. That person can tell me as many times as seems necessary and in any way s/he wants. At night I will cook that person dinner so s/he doesn't get too weak to stop telling me about hating me. I will try to make sure that person gets enough blankets when we're going to sleep, so s/he doesn't get too cold to tell me how much I am hated. And I will try not to pull the blankets off in the night even if it's totally accidental (and if I accidentally do pull off the blankets, I hope that person is not a asshole about it or at least I hope that person is not so upset that s/he stops telling me how much I am hated). I feel like I need to hear it for at least a week straight to return to normal.

another poem by Sam Pink is featured in the first print issue of Kitty Snacks. Buy it to read it. Out soon.

First Issue out January 2009

2008-12-06T13:14:00.001-08:00

The first print issue of Kitty Snacks will be available in January 2009 in a limited edition of 100 hand-numbered copies. The magazine features work by Jack Pendarvis, Selah Saterstrom, Wilson McBee,
Kent Osborne, Jeff McNeil, interviews with Animal Collective and King Khan, art by Will Bryant, Josh Burwell and more. It will be available for purchase online and at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, Quimby's in Chicago and Goner Records in Memphis.

Kitty Snacks Launch!

2008-12-06T12:14:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Kitty Snacks, a magazine of existential erotica. Our first print issue is underway and will be published January 2009 from Oxford, Mississippi. The magazine will feature stories, poems, art, and interviews from established writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers as well as new voices.