Franny Choi, author of “Body/Paragraph,” chats about graphics, charts, “walking pornos” and the Absurd.

People often complain that nothing ever happens in my fiction. It has something to do, I think, with having a background in poetry—it’s so much easier to sit in one place and just describe, describe, muse, muse, wordplay, wordplay. But actually moving bodies through space and time? As much as I love stories, I’ve always had trouble telling them without worrying that I was boring people to death. Especially in a culture that increasingly prefers to get its news in the form of graphics, timelines, interactive slideshows, sound bites, and bullet points, the thought of narrating action with big blocks of text can begin to seem archaic, a waste of time, even.

This isn’t me taking a dump on text. Long live text, and long live the rambling complex sentence! In fact, I prefer to think of the graphics in this story as complex sentences, just reorganized in a way that allows the reader to explore them at his/her own pace, from multiple entry points, and, above all, visually. If one is creating literature to be experienced visually, why not optimize that visual potential?

Naturally, thinking about graphic literature... more »

It’s all very well and good to imagine launching thousands of messages-in-bottles across the Atlantic, to see them bobbing for years before nestling into the shores of distant and beautiful beaches, where they will cause a welling of emotion in all who discover them. It is quite another thing to collect all of those bottles and haul them to the beach in the family sedan.

With the Fiction Project, and similar others, the Art House Co-op makes beautiful ideas reality. More than that, they make them tangible.

The logic is simple: Most people long to express themselves, but they are nervous about taking that first step. Even when the step is taken and something beautiful has been crafted, self-consciousness can set in and that thing of beauty gets shoved into a junk drawer, or thrown out, or simply lost.

The good people at the Art House Co-op do away with all of those scary grey areas. Potential creative geniuses (that means you) need only sign up and wait for their notebooks and suggested themes to arrive in the post. That’s right. The post. If the prospect of receiving a package doesn’t make you shiver with antici…pation then I don’t know what will.

Participants in... more »

Fringe had the opportunity to chat (virtually, at least) with Laura van den Berg about her debut story collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, published by Dzanc Books in October 2009.  The stories, a collection that blends the intricacies of human relationships with the magic of myth, have been generating a good amount of praise, and Laura was featured as part of the Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” program.

Here are a few of Laura’s answers to our burning questions:

This is your first collection. How was the publication process compared to your expectations? How did having your stories published in journals like One Story, American Short Fiction, and Boston Review prepare you for the experience?

Since it was my first book, I didn’t really know what to expect, but I’ve been really happy with the notice the collection has received. And I feel very lucky too—there are a lot of books out there, so finding an audience or recognition of any kind can be challenging.

In terms of story publications, publishing a book was a very different experience than publishing individual stories for me; the stakes, in a number of ways, felt much higher. But one thing... more »

When I saw this photograph, taken at the Bedford Avenue L subway station in Brooklyn yesterday morning, I had to run through all the possible scenarios as to why a pair of perfectly good gold heels was splayed on the tracks. Below, see my imagining. What do you think happened?

*photo credit: Joe Gallagher, 2009

It had been a long night. Evan wouldn’t even look at her, so Brittney kept drinking PBRs–seven, to be exact, but she lost count around 4. The other girls were all slung over their bike messenger rockstar wannabe boyfriends, their arms protectively crossed over their concave chests like the straps of those messenger bags they always wear. Her gold platforms, which seemed so perfect when she was getting dressed, seem ridiculous now, in this dank basement bar, full of Converse sneakers and combat boots. In the graffitied bathroom mirror, her eyes are lost in a smudgy cloud of eyeliner and mascara. The straps of her dress keep falling down.

Apparently, the look works, because one of the wannabes, complete with leather jacket and skinny jeans, is buying her beers now, putting his hand possessively on her hip. It’s a long way back to Astoria, and her platforms are... more »

Another in our series of updates on Fringe’s past contributors, here is what some of our fiction writers have published since being featured in our pages:

• Jackson Bliss, author of Issue 13’s “Change Gonna Come,” has since been published in South Loop Review, Kenyon Review, Connecticut Review, Notre Dame Review, and African American Review. He also writes two blogs (neither of which have “Review” in the title).
• Based on his story in Issue 17 of Fringe, Mark Brinker was solicited by The Black Boot, which published his piece entitled “The Works.” He also placed a story in Yankee Pot Roast, which can be found here.
• Two time Fringe all-star Amy Letter has since published fiction in Quarterly West and Louisiana Literature, a five-poem series in Center, a book review/author interview on The Rumpus, and a poem in the recent “Best Of” issue of storySouth. And you thought you were doing well.
• Issue 18 contributor Joseph Scapellato published “Her Dream of Ending” in this summer’s edition of Willows Wept Review.
• Nancy Lynn Weber, author of Issue 10’s short short “Sugar Cone,” published a story called “Alaska and Hawaii” in Issue 118 of Evergreen Review. (She also gave a shout-out to Fringe in her bio, which warms our cockles.)

Keep up the good work, Fringe contributors. And if we’ve missed any of you,... more »

Here’s my response to last week’s Meta Exercise. Since Julio Cortázar used a narrative piece of art, a novel, to construct his excellent short short. I thought I’d give myself a challenge and try to do the same thing with a less experiential sort of art, in this case, sculpture. Points to anyone who can identify the sculptor.

Daphne

Inside the museum, she allowed herself to be politely interested in the art, the pale statues he loved so much, David twisting back his arm, a grim set to his mouth, Poseidon’s hand against Persephone’s thigh, hands sunk into the cool marble as if it were a marshmallow. He had arranged for this private trip to the museum; he had paid for their first class plane tickets to Rome, but that was to be expected.

At first, she’d found his attentions in the bar where she worked flattering but overwhelming. His lavish words and gifts masked a paucity of spirit, a blindness, an inability to admire things for anything more than the surface.

At his request, their guide left them in a small room at one corner of the museum. He had wanted to look at a particular sculpture, by themselves, in the quiet. Her... more »

An interview with Claire Mapletoft, author of “My Magpie Eyes, My Trampoline Heart”: