JR Round Two: Derby, Mir

Now available: the second pair of stapled pamphlets/booklets/chapbooks from JR Vansant: Matthew Derby's The Snipe, and Stan Mir's Test Patterns.

The Snipe is a story which is even funnier and stranger than it is well-written--and if you've read Mr. Derby's collection, Super Flat Times,you know he can write. Here he takes on women's friendship, loneliness, infidelity, and urban warfare--the cover's not that brilliant peony for no reason.

Test Patterns is the second of three parts of Mr. Mir's long Patterns poem--this installment is a little more open and breezy than the previous Flight Patterns, without losing any of the insight, beauty, specificity, or intensity. Whereas history and reflection took the lead in Flight Patterns, the feeling here is more abstract and impressionistic and "floaty" (um, not to get too academic on you) . . . and there's that spider that keeps coming back.

JR continues its mission of publishing writing of the highest quality in very affordable editions. These two books are $3 each, or there're signed editions (limited to ten copies, and $10 each), but please email before ordering the signed editions, as quantities are low (though there are still a few signed copies available of Flight Patterns and Chris Diken's Some People). We now have a shopping cart as well--link at the top of the page. UPDATE: All signed editions are now available in the JR store.

Coming this fall: the finale of Mir's poem, Holding Patterns, as well as a story or two from Lily Binns (making her fiction debut).

Not-JR: Stan Mir's first collection, Song and Glass, is now available from Small Press Distribution.

--JR

Review from With Hidden Noise + forthcoming chapbooks + news

Mr. Dan Visel of the blog with hidden noise posts a very kind review of Flight Patterns and Some People.

*

The next two chapbooks, Stan Mir's Test Patterns and Matthew Derby's The Snipe, are being designed by the fine folks at Rain Taxi Review of Books (the best literary book review on planet Earth); they should be out by late March.

*

Stan Mir's first full-length collection, Song & Glass, is out now from Subito press. Get it from SPD.

Now available: the first two chapbooks

They are: 'Some People,' a story by Chris Diken which takes place mostly in the men's room of an art museum and which is about true love, a handbook designed for those interested in understanding what it takes to go from onlooker to looked-upon.



'Flight Patterns' is the first of three connected poems by Stan Mir--a poet who has his first two books coming out in early 2010, but JR published him first. ('Flight Patterns' is nearly forty pages! I mean it's almost not even a chapbook at that point.)


These two chapbooks juxtapose one another by disagreeing in every aspect save for the remarkable quality of the writing, complementing each other nicely.

The regular editions (ninety copies printed) of the books are $3 each (to cover postage--everything costs so much these days that JR wants these as inexpensive as possible) payable by Paypal to scottbryanwilson (at) gmail (dot) com. The signed & numbered editions (there are ten of each) are $10 but are almost all gone so email first before ordering. (And if you want your chapbook signed by the author, JR sees them regularly enough that he can probably get your regular edition signed as well.) JR will release (fingers crossed) four books per year, two each of fiction and poetry. Next up: Matthew Derby's shattering memoir 'The Snipe'* as well as Stan Mir's 'Test Patterns.'

Chris Diken is mostly playing music right now, check out his bands (and buy his two previous chapbooks) at uninhabitablemansions.com and http://uninhabitablemansions.com/RadicalDads/.

Stan Mir's two books will be available in 2010 from Pavement Saw and Subito -- check out his blog here.

Matt Derby's excellent book of short stories, Super Flat Times, is available from Powell's, Amazon, you know, 'wherever good books are sold.'

--JR

*Just kidding, JR would never publish a shattering memoir