photo by Amy Sly

We present Slice magazine contributors Koa Beck, Matthew Lansburg, Courtney Maum, and Nick Ripatrazone to celebrate the launch of Slice Issue 8: Lies & Make-Believe.

Koa Beck reads from“Dorian in Germany”
Matthew Lansburgh reads from “House Made of Snow”
Nick Ripatrazone reads from “Good People”

And for a sneak peek of fiction appearing in a future issue of Slice, Courtney Maum reads from “Tourist Season” (Issue 9, Into the Wild, due out Fall 2011).

About the authors:

Koa Beck was born in Lihue, Hawaii, and raised in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Mills College and the 2009 winner of the Ardella Mills Prize for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Bookslut, Daily BR!NK, and the Huffington Post. She lives in Brooklyn.

Matthew Lansburgh lives in New York, where he works for the New York Public Library and is a student in NYU’s MFA program in creative writing. His work has appeared in Guernica, Hobart, WordsWithout Borders, and the Quarterly. To read more of his fiction, including his story “California,” which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2009, please visit him online at www.matthewlansburgh.com.

Originally born in Connecticut, Courtney Maum lived in Paris, France, where she worked as a party promoter for Corona Extra for five years before settling in the sparsely populated town of Sandisfield, Massachusetts, because the only place better than Paris is the middle of the woods. In addition to writing fiction, Courtney works as a dialogist and story developer for film directors and brands. This particular form of labor earned her an Audi Talent Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, but no Audi as of yet. Her fiction has appeared in Black Heart Magazine, Upstreet, The Women’s Times, and Defenestration.

Nick Ripatrazone is the author of Oblations (Gold Wake Press 2011), a book of prose poems. His writing has appeared in Esquire, the Kenyon Review, West Branch, Caketrain, Mississippi Review, and Beloit Fiction Journal. He is completing an MFA from Rutgers-Newark.

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Josephine and the Real Boy

Nobody broke your heart./ You broke your own/ ‘cause you can’t finish what you start.
—Elliott Smith, “Alameda”

Illustration by Charlotte Everest Miller

You were really only in one line of the story in question:

“I had decided—after a remarkably disappointing affair with an artist who paints industrial cityscapes in shades of gray—that I was through with dating.”

What we had was so brief: a few sleepovers, a late-night smoothie adventure, and then a series of unreturned phone calls. So, you see, the story wasn’t even about you, it was about another boy. I met him right after you and he did such a number on me that I couldn’t bring myself to kiss anyone else for a year after he broke up with me on my roof one evening in late May, the rain clouds creeping slowly towards us like an ominous pathetic fallacy.

In another lifetime, before I moved to New York, an ex of mine went on a month-long medieval pilgrimage in northern Spain to swallow the ghost of our love. At the time I thought it melodramatic, but in the wake of everything now I’m not so sure.

Anyway, the story was about that boy, the one I met right after you, and you were only in one line that your girlfriend found in a pamphlet at a pop-up feminist bookstore a friend of mine was running. How she recognized you I will never know. I never even went to the store itself because my friend was in Canada at the time, and I hadn’t seen you since you told me all about your childhood over beers at a bar around the corner from where we both live. And we were friends, kind of… the kind of friends who see each other twice a year and talk well but not again. Your girlfriend, she misread some dates and thought you’d cheated on her with someone who found your art disappointing. I would’ve explained that I never found your art disappointing; I simply found you-with-me disappointing. But you hadn’t even read the story and so you didn’t defend me or give me the courtesy of asking, you wrote me a page-long email telling me I was selfish and dramatic and that you had never meant to hurt me. Your email knocked the wind out of me. I waited a day and then I sent you the story and I told you the truth, that I had turned you into a convenient narrative. But you had written your own narrative. It’s what we do, I guess.

I think a lot about that Elliott Smith line in the epigram. “Nobody broke your heart, you broke your own cause you can’t finish what you start.” I break my own every time I go to the grocery store, or to a French film at a little repertory cinema, or when I hold hands with someone under the table, so no one else will see.

A few days later you told me you were flattered to be in my writing. After all that.

You thought you saw inside of me, but you were never a real boy. You were only a boy in a story. Say it enough and wrap it around yourself like a chrysalis.

-JD

Also tonight – Slice Calendar’s featured event: Cara Hoffman, author of So Much So Pretty, teams up with Feministing blogger, Chloe Angya, at Greenlight Bookstore’s ongoing series that pairs an author and blogger that share passions, themes, and fascinations, for what will be a riveting discussion covering gender topics from popular culture to the overlooked underclass.

Thursday – We’ll be at Community Bookstore in Brooklyn to start wrapping up our National Poetry Month celebrations with poets Sally Bliumis-Dunn, William Olsen, and Pascale Petit. Nice chance to visit one of the city’s oldest independent bookstore and hear acclaimed poets reading from their own work. A fond farewell to the best literary themed month of the year!

Friday – This week’s PEN World Voices Festival has a National Poetry Month crossover event that will enrich and entertain! At the 92Y, musicians Laurie Anderson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ernesto Cardenal and others will explore the overlapping worlds of poetry and music in a “multimedia extravaganza”.

Monday, May 2nd – Head down to McNally Jackson to celebrate the 37th issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly. Rub elbows with the creative, funny, intelligent, and painfully hip minds that are the McSweeney’s following.

Tuesday, May 3rd – Check out one of two hilarious events. At BookCourt the always amusing Gary Shteyngart will be celebrating the release of his novel Super Sad True Love Story in paperback. At the Fifth Avenue Barnes and Noble foul-mouthed, foot aficionado, New York Jets’ head coach Rex Ryan will be reading from and hopefully motivating the crowd with his new book Play Like You Mean It.

See the Slice Calendar for more events!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Once, when I first moved to the city and had just started working at the bookstore which shall go unnamed, a customer commented on how polite and pleasant I was, and asked where I was from. You’re obviously not from around here, he said, and gestured to the other cashiers as examples of how he knew that. Stay the way you are, he told me, when I he learned I’m from the Midwest. Keep that Midwestern charm, and don’t get jaded like all these other people, he advised.

I tried to stay true to myself, I really did. But there’s a reason the people at my store are the way they are.

Recently I was serving a sentence at the cash register, and was putting receipts away after a transaction when a customer appeared in front of me. She dropped a tiny pointless overpriced notebook on my counter. I looked up at her, mostly not surprised that she’d approached without being called. She was blabbing into a cell phone and made no indication that she’d be completing the call in time to address me.

I did nothing and counted to ten, inviting her in silence to hang up the phone. She talked and talked. I scanned the merchandise and skipped the part of every transaction where I’m required to inquire about membership and email addresses and junk, and flew on to hitting the total button. So what if she could have saved 10% and/or signed herself up to receive coupons? If she couldn’t bother to focus on me, I wasn’t going to do her any favors.

Then it was time for her to give me money. I stared pointedly at the lady. I knew how much she owed me. She did not. She handed me a twenty dollar bill.

It was enough.

After checking its authenticity, I figured out the change and handed the wad of coins and paper to her waiting free hand. I placed the receipt on top of her purchase on the counter between us.

I crossed my arms and stepped slightly back.

Seeing as how there were plastic bags on the counter, the woman fumbled to pick one up. She fumbled to put her money in her purse. She fumbled to grasp her notebook with its receipt, and fumbled more while trying to put the notebook in the plastic bag. I did not get involved.

It was only after much of this fumbling that the woman decided her problem had to do with her phone conversation.

“I have to hang up now, since I’m having trouble putting my purchase in a bag,” she told the phone. Maybe she looked at me with emphasis as she said this. I don’t know, because I looked away. She ambled out of my register area, and the person in line behind her waited patiently for my invitation to come forward. I delivered said invitation with a grand smile.

Later on, all my jaded coworkers agreed that I had handled the situation properly. So much for not being from around here.

-LM

Missed connections

April 10 – Crying on the G train – w4wm – (Brooklyn)

Sunday afternoon, about six. Me: tall, brown hair, wearing flour-mottled clogs, crying uncontrollably. You: Crowded, exhausted, pretending not to listen to or see my racking sobs. I got on the A train at High Street, and we transferred across the platform together to the Queensbound G. I couldn’t help but notice your averted eyes.

I know I was crying like someone died but really it’s just that my job is hard sometimes, and before I got on the train that day someone came up to me and said hey, this is too hard for you, here let me take this and make it easy so you won’t collapse in on yourself and then you can do better, be your best. And I was trying not to make eye contact, or audible sadness sounds, but it’s hard just staring at my ugly sensible shoes all the time, so I had to look up. And then I saw you.

Young redheaded man with the messenger bag and nice face who spent a lot of time helping a girl with the map, you seemed kind, and like you wanted to say something, but I get why you didn’t. Lady with the Sunday church crown, I really could have used a hug, but I’ll suppose I’ll have to take the sidelong glances and exasperated sighs. Girl talking about how annoying and embarrassing it is when people cry on the train, you know, I mean, you’re right kind of, but  sitting right across from me, just to say that, that’s sorta cold, no? Old man in whose face I could see the young man you once were, I know it’s hard to avoid staring at a crying girl but my boobs, they were not crying, no need to be gross, man. But I really feel like we had something, all of us. And anyway I loved your shoes, and was totally intrigued by that book you were peering at from behind your sweet glasses. Hit me up if you feel the same.

- cm

Wednesday – It’s 4/20 so ya’ll know what that means…It’s still National Poetry Month! Two blazin’ events at two smokin’ joints:  The Academy of American Poets is hosting an event at Housing Works Bookstore featuring Anne Waldman, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Timothy Donnelly. You can get a free issue of the latest American Poet magazine just for showing up. In Brooklyn, Greenlight Bookstore is honoring Poetry Month with three BK poets. Priscilla Becker, Matvei Yankelevich, and Christian Hawkey will all be reading selections from their acclaimed works. Great opportunity to expand your mind and get your higher learning on with poetry.

Also tonight – Vol. 1 is hosting “The Greatest Three-Minute Food Stories Ever” at Matchless in Greenpoint. Amongst the dozen storytellers are Slice’s own Alex Fredericks and Caitlin MacCrae!

Thursday – Another great event night at Fort Greene’s Greelight Bookstore. Comic writers Bob Powers and Jason Reich host the monthly literary comic series, “Steamboat”. This month’s featured guest is Colin Nissan a frequent contributor to McSweeney’s, the internet’s Mecca of literary comedic writing for the plaid and bespectacled.

Monday – Peer into the life of William Styron author of classics such as Sophie’s Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner at BookCourt in Cobble Hill. His daughter, Alexandra Styron has a newly published a memoir about life with her famous father that not only comes from her own experiences but also culls from her father’s papers and work from Duke University to piece together the conflicted and sometimes troubling life of the celebrated artist.

See the Slice Calendar for more events!

Slice is back with our Spring Literary Game Show Fundraiser! To celebrate our eighth issue, we’ve invited teams of authors, editors, and agents to a Literary Jeopardy challenge unlike anything Alex Trebek has ever seen.

There are a few tickets left! Tickets are $25 and include a copy of issue 8, beer compliments of Slice‘s official sponsors Sixpoint Craft Ales, an assortment of tasty snacks, and the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when helping out a good cause.

Stop by early for a publishing mingle at 6:30pm before the game show shenanigans begin. Meet the teams and chat with fellow writers, editors, and agents over free Sixpoint beer and light snacks. Who knows? You may even help them brush up on their last-minute trivia skills.

The Teams:

Authors: Returning Jeopardy champ Lev Grossman, Time magazine book critic and author of The Magicians; Not Eating Out in New York blogger and author of The Art of Eating In, Cathy Erway; and Simon Van Booy, author of The Secret Lives of People in Love

Editors: Lorin Stein, editor at The Paris Review; Rakesh Satyal, senior editor at HarperCollins and author of Blue Boy; and Marian Lizzi, editor-in-chief at Perigee/Penguin

Agents: Scott Hoffman of Folio Literary Management; Kate McKean from the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency; and Anna Stein from Aitken Alexander Associates

Reserve your ticket at:

http://www.slicemagazine.org/jeopardy.html

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Publishing mingle starts at 6:30pm
Jeopardy begins at 7:30pm
The Wings Theatre
154 Christopher Street
New York, NY 10014

Wednesday – In case you didn’t know, April is National Poetry Month, and there’s no better way to celebrate with a former Poet Laureate. Billy Collins will be the Union Square Barnes & Noble reading from the recently published Horoscopes for the Dead.

Thursday – Karen Russel, Tea Obreht, and Alison Espach. Like Hansel in the early part of this century, these ladies are so hot right now. The KGB Bar is hosting them all under one roof this Thursday. Ms. Russel’s Swamplandia! and Ms. Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife are easily two of the most anticipated novels that have been released this year.

Friday – WORD Bookstore is hosting the “Just Working On My Novel” second birthday! The series, if you are unaware, is a drunken party combined with a literary support group. Read from your unpublished work and hear what your peers have to say while they are not busy drinking wine.

Sunday – If I told you there is a talk about a legendary author on a Sunday at 11am, Charles Dickens would be in your top five for “most likely subject”, right? At the 92Y, Dickens’ expert and biographer Michael Slater will flex is knowledge and captivate a crowd with a story of how a young English lad turned into the standard bearer of an era.

Next Tuesday (4/19) – Slice Magazine is hosting a literary Jeopardy event! Come see authors, editors, and agents battle it out for the title of Nerdiest Literature Buff. There will also be a publishing mingle before the game begins. With the price of admission you get Slice issue 8 (hot of the press!), free Sixpoint beer, snacks, and a great time!

For more events check out the Slice calendar.

To see captions watch the slideshow here.

by Josephine Daniels

You were tall and pale with a bushy red beard, standing quietly in front of my bookshelf, running your long, thin fingers along the spines of my books. I couldn’t help but think you looked a bit like the ghost of an eighteenth century sea captain or a Civil War veteran, standing there so calmly and intently in the 3 am moonlight. You might have found all kinds of things hidden in my bookshelf. I had an ex-boyfriend who used to paste type-written notes onto random pages of old Rilke paperbacks he’d find at some church book sale or a little bookstore in some cobble-stoned corner of Montréal. At the time I was studying marginalia in early medieval books. I was obsessed by all the things on the edges, the worlds between text and everything outside.

Your fingers danced right over Autobiography of Red without pause. How could you know what would fall out of that slim volume if you shook it? Everything that felt so lost between the lines of text? How could you know the way I had slipped it into someone else’s duffel bag on his way out of town to his parents’ home on the beach a few summers back? The way he was tired and he was trying to figure it all out; running away from unemployment, from another bigger love, from hurting me? The way I had told him months before that I wasn’t good at this gray area stuff, and yet that summer felt like just one night, one long night waiting until 4 am to see if he’d come home with me? The way I’d crawled into his twin sized bed, my feet still sticky and rough with sand, while everyone else was watching Lord of the Flies in his parents’ living room? The way, before he’d shuffled up the stairs, I knew I would follow him and I knew this would be the last time? The way I couldn’t sleep that night and how I watched the moon settle on a glass of water that was resting on the now beach-worn book I’d given him? The way I’d hoped that book could be the thing that made him see me as the girl I wanted to be in his eyes? The way he told me he’d loved it, he’d read it several times? The way he emailed me “The Glass Essay” when I got back to Brooklyn, and how I put my head on my desk and cried? The way I learned everything I know about love and its necessities in that moment?

I told you that you couldn’t live without reading Anne Carson. You took a copy of Denis Johnson’s Angels out of your backpack and gave it to me as insurance. I rolled my fingers over the glossy cover, thinking how there’s something about those Vintage Contemporaries imprints from the eighties that makes me think of boozy male writers snorting cocaine, getting in fights, and daydreaming about cowboys.

A few weeks later I still hadn’t cracked it open. I texted you, asking if you’d read Autobiography of Red yet. You hadn’t.

“Sounds like we might have diverging taste in literature.”

“Sounds like neither of us wants to find out.”

-JD

Illustration by Charlotte Everest Miller