We had a great time at World Horror this year and although The Troublesome Amputee did not win a Stoker John has been overwhelmed by all the support he recieved from everyone who kept their fingers crossed for the book. Thanks!!

See pics from WHC.

We would like to introduce our newest staff member, Shelby Gunnerson, who will function as Book Club Liaison. She has started a Bizarro Book Club in Mesa, AZ which will have it's first meeting April 18th.

For more info please visit the Bizarro Kult site. If you would like to start a book club in your own area and qualify for a 30 percent discount on our books please email Shelby, BizarroBookClub@yahoo.com

April 4 - 7
The Science Fiction/Fantasy Area
of the Popular Culture Association
PCA/ACA 2007 National Conference
Boston Marriott Copley Place
Boston, Massachusetts
D. Harlan Wilson

April 11th • 1 pm
Triton College Bookstore
2000 Fifth Avenue
River Grove, IL 60171
(708) 452-1180
Reading & Signing with Eckhard Gerdes and Larry Fondation

April 13th, 5 - 9 pm
Artist Reception: "Carrie Ann Baade: Virtues & Vices"
Her work is featured on the cover of Text:Ur  and the book will be on display at the reception
Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts
200 Madison Street,
Wilmington, DE 19801

April 18th, 7 pm
Bizarro Kult Book Club Meeting
The Willow House Cafe
149 West McDowell Road
Phoenix, AZ 85003

April 22, 3:00 pm
Poet Christine Boyka Kluge (Text:Ur contributor) and Fiction Writer Deborah Batterman read at Ruth Keeler Memorial Library (formerly North Salem Free Library), 276 Titicus Road, North Salem, NY
Admission Free

April 24th
Ronald Damien Malfi will be speaking &
signing copies of is books at
Anne Arundel Community College

April 30, 7:00 - 9:00 pm (2nd hour = open mic)
Poets Pamela Hart and Christine Boyka Kluge read at Somers Library, Reis Park and Route 139, Somers, NY
Call 232-5717 to register
Admission Free

John Lawson & Ron Malfi were guest speakers at A Writer's Weekend Retreat. The event provided a chance for writers to meet editors and work on their manuscripts. It was a great opportunity for new writers so John and Ron were happy to share their knowledge. Our new Assistant Editor, Dustin LaVallet took lots of pictures, see pics them here.

Brooklyn Rail interviewed Jennifer Barnes about the current state of the publishing business and its outlook for the future.

Booklist is the official review magazine for the American Library Association and this is what they had to say about Dr. Identity:

"Madcap, macabre black comedy…Wilson's sardonic, riotously imaginative vision of the future holds a mirror up to our own increasingly chaotic society and makes provocative entertainment.”
—Booklist

Subscribers to this newsletter can get signed hardcover copies of both Last Burn in Hell: Director's Cut and The Troublesome Amputee: Scarred Edition for just 35 dollars including postage by using this link: http://preview.tinyurl.com/ysnlzd

Remember, if your order is going outside of the US contact us first to find out the cost of shipping.

The new issue of Bare Bone is now available and it's got a killer line-up. The so-called 'Blue' issue features the story Blue by Tom Piccirilli and also includes D. Harlan Wilson, Ronald Damien Malfi, Jeremy Robert Johnson, Cody Goodfellow, Mark Justice, John Platt, Kendall Evans, Jeremy C. Shipp and Donna Lynch.

For a limited time copies ordered directly on our website will be signed by Tom Piccirilli.

Wakelin, frontman of seminal rock group The Hinge, once wrote a poem so prophetic that to ignore its wisdom is to doom yourself to drown in blood. After realizing the power of his words he faked his own death. Now one obsessed fan is tracking Wakelin down...can he be found before it's too late?

“Amazing, inventive, risky and highly entertaining.”
—Howard Kaylan, member of The Turtles and The Mothers of Invention

Fish, Soap and Bonds has a very ‘spare’ style. How would you describe it?
It’s an unconventional novel. I don’t like labels, but when I was asked once, I said I thought of myself as “an experimental realist.” This book fits that bill. At one level it’s simple—it’s in 3 parts—they start out in Skid Row, get in trouble with the cops, then have to “move.” The subject matter and the writing itself are close to the ground, the “real,” but the style and devices are “experimental,” in the sense that Ron Sukenick or someone like that would be considered experimental, but not obscure or difficult, though. Anyone from the 6th grade on could read one of my books.

How does “experimental realism” help you tell this particular story?
The book has newspaper clippings in it, lists, many short chapters etc. All this creates a choppy style—trying to represent life on the streets, which is choppy. It stems from my sense that the margins tell us most about the whole.

You seem to get a lot of your inspiration from your work. Explain a bit about what you do.
I have been an organizer. I’ve worked in Watts, Compton, East LA, etc. The idea is that poor neighborhoods stay poor because people don’t have any power. Organizing is bringing enough people together to have clout, but first you have to teach the skills of power. So the issues change, it could be jobs, health care, building new housing, but the core idea is to build an organization where people can represent their own interests. Writing doesn’t directly bring about change, but it can shed light on what’s going on—as Hal Jaffe says, make things visible.

What’s involved in working with people in low-income communities?
The process of gathering people together and from there knitting together an organization, a lot of teaching of practical power skills, negotiating, thinking politically, etc, then picking fights and winning them. For example we led a campaign to raise the minimum wage in California.

How are your organizing and your fiction linked?
Both fiction and organizing revolve around uncovering stories. My fiction is at the very underbelly end of things. I think we understand the whole better when we understand what happens on the edge.