TO: Seething Resentment Reading Series listserv
FROM: Lucas Klauss
SUBJECT: Our Next Reading
Greetings, fellow writers/competitors,
I hope you’re doing poorly. I look forward to not seeing your name in print. May your queries go unanswered, your projects rot in your Documents folder, and your few publications be in academic presses.
And I know you wish the same of me! So, let us come together, as we always do on the second Tuesday of each month, in the poorly lit back room of a sparsely populated, charmless bar, and grind our teeth in rage as we pretend to listen to those more recently successful than we read from their latest mediocrity. It’s the May edition of the Seething Resentment Reading Series, and it’s going to be infuriating.
Just check out this lineup:
Andrew Kerrish has been called “the wry voice of the New South” by whoever says that kind of shit. And it’s a curious description, given that the dude’s got a teaching gig at the New School and a two-bedroom in Cobble Hill. (A friend told me.) Am I supposed to be jealous that he’s been published in Ploughshares? Well, I am.
Jacinda Talant used to compose tender novels, seemingly written in her own blood, about grown-ups and regret. Then she hopped aboard the young adult gravy train. Now she publishes voicey books about teenage girls with dead dads and has a memoir coming out next month called In Bed. Jesus Christ.
Hannah Tiefel is the overly praised author of the sickeningly personal flash fiction collection, Garbage Men, which had a disgustingly prominent Barbara Kingsolver blurb on the cover. She is twenty-five years old, has a story in the upcoming Paris Review, and I am screaming so hard my throat hurts.
Wesley Z. is a misogynist. Seriously, have you read this guy’s stuff? Has anybody? I’m honestly asking because NOBODY calls him out on it. Is it because he’s Asian? Whatever. He’s been published everywhere I haven’t, plus the six places I have.
Ty Midwood. Fuck you, Ty Midwood.
Benjamin H. Nye, on the other hand, is a whip-smart writer whose work has appeared in Tin House and One Story, and he’s the editor of a refreshingly curated online magazine called verbal gonorrhea. I think it’s one of the best things on the web, and I can’t wait to hear back from them.
And, finally, Pia Desai will read some harmless poems.
And that’s this month’s lineup. What a collection of undeserved-success stories! (Except one!) Why not come clap politely for them, all the while whispering barbs over your second pint of Brooklyn Lager? You’re a writer, or you’re pretending to be, so it’s not as if you have any real friends.
See you there!
Jeers,
Lucas