It is fairly apropos to have been drawing sharks at the same time as I was reading the Autumn 2011 issue of Granta themed around Horror. (The last couple of days I was in Phoenix I went to Changing Hands Bookstore for a last hurrah and felt my longtime love of ghost stories being reinvigorated.)

For all I enjoyed the issue, I think it would better have been called the Despair issue – a few pieces were appropriate to Horror (Will Self’s essay, and the stories by Sarah Hall and Stephen King, maybe D.A. Powell’s poem), but for the most part the work evoked a blighted-field feeling – disease, war crimes, terrible compulsion, all dictated in the clinical voice of a fact-finding functionary. Don DeLillo’s main character in “The Starveling” seemed to be channeling a combination of Ignatius P. Reilly and The Moviegoer, which, again, is sad, but not actually horrifying.

Anyway, it was worth reading, but mostly didn’t give me the creeps I felt I was entitled to. Oh well.

In happier news, I have a new story out in the most recent issue of Carve Magazine! Please do go over and take a look if you are so inclined – I’m very pleased with it, and with the entire issue, which is quite lovely. Working with the Carve editors was a complete delight.

And since I seem to be theming my thoughts today around literary journals and literary society in general, let me round things out with a few more recommendations:
1. My friend Branden Boyer-White has an outstanding story in the current issue of Third Coast, which you should surely pick up if you are able.
2. Lovely poet Allyson Boggess has a poem in the current issue of The Collagist.
3. S.G. Redling, whom I met as a part of the Esquire workshop with Colum McCann last year, came out with her first book – Flowertown – yesterday. If you are looking for a summer thriller, check it out!