Please welcome Amy Jean Porter's horse T-shirt. For the next few days, the shirt is 20 percent off. - - - - |
The new issue is presently on sale at The Store, in Brooklyn and in the McSweeney's 100 stores. Like Issue no. 4, issue no. 7 comes bound as a series of booklets and each piece of fiction or non-fiction has its own cover which features the work of a different artist. The booklets are held this time not in a box but a hardcover shell (gray boards and a blue cloth spine) with a large rubber band holding it all together. The contents information on the front cover and the masthead on the back have been letterpress printed onto the boards. Oddi Printing did a superb job, as usual, on this issue. Contributors include Kevin Brockmeier, Michael Chabon, Ann Cummins, Courtney Eldridge, A.M. Homes, Heidi Julavits, J.T. Leroy, Allan Seager, William T. Vollmann, and Chris Ware. Kevin Brockmeier has contributed a store called "The Ceiling." This story recently won the prestigious O. Henry Award. The cover for this pamphlet is a piece of artwork by Eric White. Michael Chabon's contribution is a "lost chapter" his Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. For this story, called "The Return of the Amazing Calalieri," the artist Chris Ware contributed art for the front and back covers. Ware is the author of Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Boy in the World. Ann Cummins has written a great story called "Red Ant House" that appears in a pamphlet with cover art by Tim Bower. This story was just selected for the 2002 Best American Short Stories collection. Courtney Eldridge contributed a novella called "The Former World Record Holder Settles Down," about the life of a woman who broke the record for consecutive sexual partners. Cover art for Eldridge's booklet was provided by Katherine Streeter. A.M. Homes wrote a powerful story called "Do Not Disturb" about a woman who is a doctor and who learns she has cancer. This story also won an O. Henry Award. Cover art in this case is by Melinda Beck. Heidi Julavits has written a story titled "Little Little Big Man," about a woman and a man and, among other things, his struggles with fertility. Cover art is by Elizabeth Kairys who was the cover art director for this entire issue and has done the same for our forthcoming issue no. 8. J.T. Leroy contributes a story called "Harold's End." Sharon Leong provides a great piece of cover art. We are also proud to republish "This Town and Salamanca," a story by Allan Seager. In the 1930s Seager was viewed as the foremost practitioner of American literary realism, the just heir of Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway. Regular McSweeney's contributor John Warner has written an introduction to Seager's work and Joan Fry and Steven Connelly offer reminisces of Seager. William T. Vollmann contributes a long piece of journalism called "The Old Man," about his travels among and discussions with Muslim extremists in Thailand. "The Old Man" is a case study from Rising Up and Rising Down, Vollmann's as-yet-unpublished study of violence.
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