3/26 White Whale Bookstore Presents: The Mold Farmer launch & reading w/ Claypool, Cotman, Isenberg, & McCloskey

7 PM EST FRIDAY, MARCH 26…

Come celebrate The Mold Farmer, the latest from Rick Claypool, who’ll be reading with Elwin Cotman, Daniel McCloskey, and Robert Isenberg!

All these writers’ books are available on our Bookshop.org list for recent and upcoming events. Check out our curated lists and picks on our main Bookshop.org affiliate page, or use the search bar in the upper center-right to look for any book. (Using the book’s ISBN usually works best.)

Please register for this event by snagging a ticket on Eventbrite! There are both free tickets and pay-what-you-can tickets available. Registration will end at 6:30pm ET on 3/26.

 

Think you’ve got a bad job? Take consolation that you’re not scraping mold for a living, that you don’t have any tentacles in your head, and that you’re not sewing tents from the discarded skins of the creatures who’ve taken your world over. A wonderfully odd novella with a profoundly human core.

-Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World and The Warren

At its best, Rick Claypool’s work makes the disturbing and surreal feel believable. The true horror in this book isn’t the alien overlords, but the alarmingly relatable journey of a man navigating a world he will never understand, willing to stoop ever lower just to get by.

-Daniel McCloskey, author of Cloud Town and A Film About Billy

Claypool’s post-apocalyptic novella draws readers into a world that’s compellingly surreal, darkly imaginative, and just not… quite right.

-Premee Mohamed, author of A Broken Darkness and Beneath the Rising

A character struggling between the twin horrors of alien invasion and economic degradation, I found Rick Claypool’s Mold Farmer a voice that held me in its grip. Full-on body horror merges with the most human of concerns – family, and how to protect it – to produce a fascinating, frightening tale.

-Aliya Whiteley, author of The Loosening Skin and The Beauty

REVIEWS

https://babou691.com/2021/01/18/the-mold-farmer/

https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2020/12/30/dec20-wwr/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55905048-the-mold-farmer

https://www.grimdarkmagazine.com/review-the-mold-farmer-by-rick-claypool/

http://vol1brooklyn.com/2021/02/18/the-horrors-of-work-a-review-of-rick-claypools-the-mold-farmer/

READERS

Rick Claypool is the author of Leech Girl Lives (Spaceboy Books, 2017) and The Mold Farmer (Six Gallery Press, 2020). His short fiction appears here and there online and has been anthologized in Not My President: The Anthology of Dissent (Thoughtcrime Press, 2018) and The Future Will Be Written by Robots (Spaceboy Books, 2020). By day he works for Public Citizen researching corporate crime. He spent most of his life in Western Pennsylvania and now lives in Rhode Island, where he goes looking in the woods for fungi as frequently as he can.

Elwin Cotman is a storyteller from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of three collections of speculative short stories: The Jack Daniels Sessions EP (Six Gallery Press, 2010), Hard Times Blues (Six Gallery Press, 2013), and Dance on Saturday (Small Beer Press, 2020), a 2021 Philip K. Dick Award finalist. His work has appeared in Grist, Weird Fiction Review, Black Gate, The Southwestern Review, and Cabinet des Fées, among others. He was a core member of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse Writers’ Cooperative in Pittsburgh, has toured across North America doing readings, and has curated many readings and reading series. Cotman holds a BA from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA from Mills College.

Robert Isenberg is a freelance writer, playwright, photographer, stage performer, and documentary filmmaker. His books include The Archipelago: A Balkan Passage (Autumn House Press, 2010), Wander (Six Gallery Press, 2011), The Green Season (The Tico Times Publications, 2015), and three entries in the ongoing Adventures of Elizabeth Crowne series: The Mysterious Tongue of Dr. Vermillion (Backpack Media, 2015), The Woman in the Sky (2020), and Curse of the Qattara (2020). He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University, where he served as Whitford Fellow. Originally from Vermont, he lived in Pittsburgh for 16 years. For two years he lived in Costa Rica, where he served as a staff writer for The Tico Times. He freelances widely and teaches for numerous institutions, including Arizona State University. Isenberg now lives in Rhode Island, where he is a contributing editor for Providence Monthly.

Daniel McCloskey founded the Cyberpunk Apocalypse, a writers’ project which housed 45 writers from across the US and Canada and hosted hundreds of literary events. He is the author and illustrator of the prose/graphic novel hybrid A Film About Billy (Six Gallery Press, 2012), the comics Top of the Line (soon to appear in graphic novel form as Made Monsters) and Free Money, and the graphic novel Cloud Town (Abrams ComicArts, forthcoming). His work has been anthologized in BOTTOMS UP! True Tales of Hitting Rock-Bottom (Birdcage Bottom Books, 2017) and published on The Nib.

9/16 Dance on Saturday Book Launch

Elwin sez,

It’s short notice, but y’all know I wasn’t going to release a book without having a launch. September 16, join me for a reading from my new book Dance on Saturday, 7:00 pm PST. I’ll be reading from the final story in the book, “The Piper’s Christmas Gift,” with a Q&A in the middle.

Please RSVP if you’d like to come because Zoom can be a little tricky. Zoombombers, Nazis, and assorted pieces of trash can go elsewhere.

https://zoom.us/j/94880077073?pwd=VXE5dlNRN0pmNzh4UmlNSFRKQXQzZz09

Zoom passcode: 283060

About Elwin Cotman: Elwin is a native of Pittsburgh, PA. He is the author of Dance on Saturday and two previous collections of short stories, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP and Hard Times Blues. In 2011 he was nominated for a Carl Brandon Society Award. He has toured extensively across North America and Europe. He was at work on his first novel. He finished it.

Dance on Saturday: In the title novella, Cotman imagines a group of near-immortals living in Pittsburgh in an uneasy truce with Lord Decay. Their truce is threatened when one of them takes pity on a young woman who knows their secret. In “Among the Zoologists,” a game writer on their way to a convention falls in with a group of rogue Darwinists whose baggage contains a great mystery. A volleyball tournament devolves into nightmare and chaos in “Mine.” In Cotman’s hands, the conventions of genres from fairytales to Victorian literature to epic fantasy and horror give shape to marvelously new stories. Dance on Saturday has received praise from (deep breath) The New York Times Book Review, Locus, Wired, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, and Buzzfeed.

3/6-8 Elwin Cotman @ FOGcon

Hitting up FOGcon 10 MARCH 6-8 at the Walnut Creek Marriott? So is Elwin Cotman, who will have copies of The Jack Daniels Sessions EP (& possibly Hard Times Blues if they get there in time) you can buy off him.

He’s also doing these panels & reading (probably from the new one, Dance on Saturday, which comes out in June from Small Beer Press):

Portal Moments

Type Program Description A “portal moment” is when a character realizes the world is not what they grew up expecting. They step through a wardrobe, find out that their aunt is a witch, are attacked by tentacled creatures, watch an alien spaceship landing… How does a character respond to this revelation? How do we know if authors’ depictions of such moments are realistic when, almost by definition, they have no equivalents in real life? Or do they? Are portal moments solely the domain of speculative fiction? Which authors depict it in the most convincing way? Location Salon F Schedule Fri, 4:30–5:45 pm Panelists M: Debbie Notkin. Elwin Cotman, Bonnie J Erwin, Alex Gurevich, Dominica Phetteplace

History Is Not White — and Neither Is Alternate History

Type Program Description Many of the common tropes/subjects of alternate history are based on European histories — and thus don’t take much of the rest of the world, and non-white people, into account. There are notable exceptions — Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Years of Rice and Salt,” or our Honored Guest Nisi Shawl’s “Everfair” — but what are some other examples? What are the benefits (and the dangers) of tackling this approach? What are some of the (currently) missed golden opportunities for alternate histories involving POC? Location Salon F Schedule Sat, 4:30–5:45 pm Panelists M: Endria Richardson. Keyan Bowes, Elwin Cotman, Jewelle Gomez, Terry Weyna

The Value of Hopepunk

Type Program Description According to a 2019 article by Vox.com, “hopepunk” says that genuinely, sincerely caring about something requires bravery and strength. In a repressive regime, realistic optimism can be a radical act. How do hopepunk and solarpunk offer tools to counter corruption, social inequity, and repression? How does the subgenre help us defeat cynicism and defeatism, or does it? Location Salon A/B Schedule Sun, 10:30–11:45 am Panelists M: Alyc Helms. Keyan Bowes, Jon Chaisson, Elwin Cotman, Ian K. Hagemann

Reading #10
Type Reading Description Location Santa Rosa Schedule Sun, 1:30–2:45 pm Panelists Elwin Cotman, Rebecca Gomez Farrell, Andrea Stewart

3/29 Many Worlds, More Voices: Diversity in Fantasy & Science Fiction @ Cathedral of Learning Room 324

FRIDAY…

Fantasy Studies Fellowship Diversity Discussion

Friday, March 29, 2019, 1-3 PM

Book Signing 3-4 PM

Cathedral of Learning Room 324

New York Times Best-selling author V. E. Schwab will be joining a panel including author Elwin Cotman and Pitt Lecturer Dan McMillan to discuss the representation of diversity in fantasy and science fiction media. The panel will be followed by a raffle and book signing.

2/15-17 Elwin Cotman @ Boskone 56, Westin Boston Waterfront

Hitting up this scifi & fantasy convention in Boston? So is Elwin Cotman, author of The Jack Daniels Sessions EP & Hard Times Blues. Here’s what this year’s guest of honor Elizabeth Hand had to say about the latter.

With its intoxicating blend of rock and roll and the supernatural, crazed religion and visionary prose, Hard Times Blues is a wild ride down the same shadowy American sideroads traveled by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Greil Marcus and Samuel R. Delany. A marvelous collection by a strikingly original new voice in contemporary fiction.

Here’s the full schedule & where & when you can find Elwin:

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15

3:00 PM (free to public)
The Other Others in Urban Fantasy
Elwin Cotman, Nicholas Kaufmann, Clea Simon, Leigh Perry (M), John Langan
Harbor II · 50 min · Panel
Urban fantasy sections in bookstores are filled with zombies, werewolves, and especially vampires (sparkly and otherwise) almost to the exclusion of other entities. Indeed, too many times those creatures define urban fantasy. But there are a plethora of other fantastical beings from the myths and legends of Europe — and every other continent. Authors like Seanan McGuire and Laura Anne Gilman revel in the variety, using it to populate the back streets of their chosen cities. Let’s join them (and our panelists) to explore the road less traveled.

8:00 PM
Speculative Films for the Ages
Bob Devney (M), Gillian Daniels, Garen Daly, Elwin Cotman, Daniel M. Kimmel
Marina 4 · 50 min · Panel
Star Wars and 2001 are perennial front-runners in the list of greatest SF/F/H films of all time. Would you include The Beast from 20, 000 Fathoms, since it inspired Godzilla? The Matrix? Blade Runner? And how about non-Western films? Come ready with your roster — and your reasons — to challenge the choices of our film-buff panelists.

9:00 PM
Where Do Elves Come From?
Sarah Smith, Melanie Meadors (M), Elwin Cotman, John Clute, Greer Gilman
Marina 3 · 50 min · Panel
Elves have their roots deep in northern European folklore, and their branchings support much of modern fantasy literature. Why? What makes elves so interesting? Are there different kinds of elves? Are Tolkien’s elves — beings who are almost preternatural humans — different in kind from cute Victorian elves, or from the grimmer elven folk of Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword? And what about the modern elves that appear in the night in many urban fantasies — why are they there? What’s the significance of a separate magical or supernatural race of human-like beings?

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16

11:00 AM
Autographing: Shannon Chakraborty, Elwin Cotman, Christopher Golden, Fonda Lee
Christopher Golden, Elwin Cotman, Shannon Chakraborty, Fonda Lee
Galleria – Autographing · 50 min · Autographing

2:00 PM
The History of Black Horror
Tonia Thompson (M), Elwin Cotman, Kenesha Williams, Errick Nunnally, Grady Hendrix
Harbor II · 50 min · Panel
Black horror didn’t start with Get Out (2017), and this horror film didn’t put black horror on the map — but it was a wake-up call to Hollywood and book publishers that there are financial rewards for working with black creators and their horror projects. From Linda Addison to Jordan Peele or newer novelists such as Justina Ireland or Victor LaValle, black horror is a rich source of fiction and film entertainment, but it wasn’t always that way. The history of black horror ranges from blaxploitation films to secondary characters who rarely make it into the second chapter. Let’s chat about where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going in the realm of black horror.

6:30 PM
Boskone Book Party
Brenda W. Clough, Erin Underwood (M), Cerece Rennie Murphy, Isadora Deese, Christopher Paniccia, Steve Davidson, Suzanne Palmer, S.L. Huang, Clea Simon, Jane Yolen, Adam Stemple, Julie C. Day, Karen Heuler, Jeff Hecht, KJ Kabza, Grady Hendrix, Kenneth Rogers Jr., Clarence Young, Elwin Cotman
Galleria – Stage · 50 min · Event
Come join the fun at Boskone 56’s Book Party — and meet the presses and authors who have new books coming out at the con! This is your chance to see what’s new from writers you already love, as well as those you have yet to discover.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17

11:00 AM
Reading by Elwin Cotman
Elwin Cotman
Independence · 25 min · Reading

12/16 Holiday Book Sale Redux @ Irma Freeman Center for Imagination

12-5PM SATURDAY…

Join us for a SECOND CHANCE to browse great books from Pittsburgh authors, publishers, and booksellers.

SATURDAY, December 16th
12-5pm
Irma Freeman Center for the Imagination
5006 Penn Avenue
Penn Avenue Arts District
Free admission
Street parking

Confirmed vendors so far:

Air & Nothingness Press
Hyacinth Girl Press
Lilliput Review
Karen’s Book Row–with many books from Pittsburgh publishers!
Six Gallery Press
Very Important Books–fiction & zines
Authors signing books!

I’ll be sharing a table w/ Don Wentworth at this, so visit us for all your Six Gallery Press & Lilliput Review needs. Pictured are Manual for Wayward Angels by Jessica Fenlon, the Low Ghost love poem anthology Unconditional Surrender, & Muskrat Friday Dinner by Scott Silsbe, three great books from 2017 (I’ve at least skimmed the other ones & strongly suspect they’re also pretty good). The latest Six Gallery titles Viva Arletty! by Mark Spitzer & Arkansas Ghoulash by Scotty Lewis, Manchild by Alan Olifson, & Under the Kaufmann’s Clock by Angele Ellis w/ photos by Rebecca Clever, will be available too, along w/ selections from the back catalog by Ally Malinenko, Chuck Kinder, Elwin Cotman, Jason Baldinger, John Grochalski, Victor Navarro, book sale organizer Karen Lillis, & more.

6/18 Freaky Flea & Offbeat Craft Fair @ Cattivo

THIS SATURDAY…

Looking for stuff that’s a little out of the ordinary? This is the fair for you!

FREE FOR ATTENDEES!
BAR & KITCHEN WILL BE OPEN!
ENJOY LIVE ENTERTAINMENT!
SCORE GENTLY USED AND NEW UNIQUE ITEMS!

-Clothing/shoes/accessories
(vintage/retro, drag, costumes, goth, punk, steampunk, medieval, fetish…and more!)
-Unique/handmade jewelry
-Rare/occult/horror themed books/movies
-Occult/horror themed games/toys/collectibles
-Underground music
-Offbeat/horror themed crafts
-Unusual handmade art/decor

Karen Lillis will be there slinging small press books, so make sure you buy all of them. Looking for specifically occult/horror-themed tales to tingle your mind & blow your spine? Check out the great Elwin Cotman’s collections The Jack Daniels Sessions EP & Hard Times Blues!

UPDATE:

Karen says,

This Saturday from 4-8pm I’ll be selling books with my pop up bookstand in Lawrenceville at the FREAKY FLEA Market, held at Cattivo on 44th Street. I’ll be bringing the freakier end of my indie book collection, but let’s be honest, my collection doesn’t need to be tweaked that much. From edgy feminist fiction to addiction memoirs to dark poetry to saloon zines to urban speculative fiction to apocalyptic novels to queer sci fi to obsession stories to working class bohemian narratives, my bookseller’s taste runs left of center.

The Freaky Flea features all kinds of DIY vendors, selling vintage and handmade items. Admission is free, there will be live entertainment, and kitchen and bar will be open during the sale.
CATTIVO is at 146 44th Street, two blocks off Butler (toward the river).
The Facebook event page has some previews of what other vendors are bringing:

Hope to see you there! If you can’t come but you are in the market for a summer read, you can always let me know what kind of book you’re looking for. Small Press Roulette is always open, and I’m also adding some collectible items to my online store as well.

LATEST PUBLICATIONS

If you haven’t caught my latest bookstore memoir excerpts, please enjoy:

Susan Sontag Wants the Manager, Richard Hell Needs the Bathroom Key at LITHUB

A Clerk in the House of Poetry at THE BROOKLYN RAIL

Some People Who Led to My Self Publishing at CABILDO QUARTERLY (ask me for a paper copy of this great broadsheet if you want one)

Coming soon: The Uses of Sidewalks in Bookselling in KULCHUR Magazine (A new print mag out of Cleveland)

4/21 InsideStorytime SUPERPOWERS feat. Elwin Cotman @ downstairs room under the Armory Club

THIS THURSDAY…

InsideStorytime SUPERPOWERS at The Armory Club on Thursday, April 21st at 7:00 pm –  (Please note the venue change — this event will now take place in the downstairs room under the Armory Club, 1799 Mission Street @ 14th Street.)  InsideStorytime SUPERPOWERS will feature Seanan McGuire (INDEXING: REFLECTIONS), Charlie Jane Anders (ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY), Daryl Gregory (HARRISION SQUARED), Elwin Cotman (HARD TIMES BLUES), and Jessica May Lin.  With guest MC Dhaya Lakshminarayanan.  Borderlands will be on hand to sell books; do not miss this irresistible lineup!

Borderlands Books

3/30-4/2 2016 AWP Conference & Book Fair @ Los Angeles Convention Center & JW Marriott Los Angeles

Provided we make it there intact, Six Gallery Press will be representing at #AWP16 this weekend. Sharing scenic table 558 will be 6GP scribblers Daniel McCloskey (A Film About Billy), Elwin Cotman (The Jack Daniels Sessions EP, Hard Times Blues), & Robert Isenberg (Wander), plus Jess Simms of nascent literary institution The Haven.

In addition to books by this sick crew, we’ll have recent selections from Ally Malinenko, Che Elias, Joseph Musso Jr., Chuck Kinder, Don Wentworth, & Jason Baldinger, plus a selection of hits from the back catalog.

We’ll also have books by a duo of fellow Pittsburgh small presses, Low Ghost & Coleridge Street, featuring the poetic stylings of Adam Matcho, Scott Silsbe, Bob Pajich, & John Grochalski, PLUS the Good Noise! anthology by Thrasher Press, featuring even more Pittsburgh poets writing on musical themes.

Feel free to visit us & buy all the books so we don’t have to lug them all home on the Greyhound!

3/8 Well-RED w/ Elwin Cotman & Doren Robbins @ Works/San José

THIS TUESDAY…

Well-RED
Reading Series
Tuesday, March 8, 7pm
Elwin Cotman and Doren Robbins

at Works/San José
365 South Market Street
in downtown San José
doors open 6:30pm
$2 suggested donation, no one turned away
Works is on the Market Street edge of the San Jose Convention Center,
just to the right of the parking garage entrance

Elwin Cotman is the author of two short story collections, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP and Hard Times Blues. His work has been published in Black Gate, The Southwestern Review, and Grist, among others. As a performance artist, he has performed at hundreds of venues across North America.

Originally from Los Angeles, Doren Robbins’ is a poet and mixed media artist from Santa Cruz, California. After twenty-something years traveling, living in Colorado and Oregon, raising a family, and working as a cook and as a carpenter, he started teaching a variety of creative writing and literature courses through an extended personal and moral interpretation of Kenneth Burke’s idea of “literature as equipment for living.” His work has appeared in over one hundred publications, including The American Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, 5 AM, Hotel Amerika, The Indiana Review, and The Iowa Review. Past collections of his poetry, Driving Face Down and My Piece of the Puzzle were awarded the Blue Lynx Poetry Award 2001 and the 2008 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Poetry Award. Robbins is also the author of a collection of monologues, short fiction and prose poetry, Parking Lot Mood Swing. His recent collections are the chapbook Title to Pussy Riot and two full collections of poetry Amnesty Muse from Lost Horse Press and Twin Extra: A Poem In Three Parts from Wild Ocean Press. As a poet and an artist Robbins organized readings and produced posters to benefit The Romero Relief Fund and The Salvadoran Medical Relief Fund during the Salvadoran Civil War; and for poetsagainst-thewar.com during the ongoing American-Iraq War. His writing has been awarded fellowships and grants from Oregon Literary Arts, The Loft Foundation, The Chester H. Jones Foundation, The Judah Magnes Museum, The Indiana Review, and a few other inoffensive organizations and readable periodicals. Since 2001, he has taught literature and creative writing at Foothill College.

Admission: $2 Suggested Donation; No one turned away.

Open reading follows the featured reading.

For more information about Poetry Center San José, visit www.pcsj.org

You can also catch Elwin w/ Six Gallery, Cyberpunk Apocalypse, Backpack Media, Low Ghost, & The Haven at AWP table 558 in L.A. later this month.

11/27 Elwin Cotman, Vernon Keeve III, & Katherine McDonald @ Nomadic Press

THIS FRIDAY…

Join us for a very special evening of readings by Elwin Cotman and Vernon Keeve III, as well as music by the ever-so-talented Katherine McDonald.

Donations will be kindly requested, though no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Parking

We have a new bike corral right outside the Workspace, so bike if you can!

There is ample street parking, but just to make it easy, there is an O’Reilly Auto Parts/Walgreens on the corner of Fruitvale and Foothill with a huge parking lot. Here’s a Google Map link: https://www.google.com/maps/place/O’Reilly+Auto+Parts/@37.789393,-122.233008,14z/data=!4m5!1m2!2m1!1so+reilly+auto+parts+near+Foothill+Blvd,+Oakland,+CA!3m1!1s0x0000000000000000:0xa74c9fbc2152bd68

Nomadic Press should show up on that map as well. We are just in between Austin and Rutherford on Foothill.

Hope to see you soon!