FANZINE

Joshua Cohen’s short story for Fanzine “Identical City” was selected by Brian Evenson for Wigleaf’s annual list of the Top 50 Very Short Stories. Author Amelia Gray says Cohen’s story “blows her mind a little bit more each time I read it.” Fanzine contributors Matt Bell and Jimmy Chen also made the list. Check out Chen’s inventive and very funny story “Everybody Loves Ramen” which appeared here as well as the story selected by Wigleaf “A Brief Autobiography in Palindromes” which was published in Thieves Jargon. Fanzine published Matt Bell’s story “Greyson, Griffin, Guillermo” from a forthcoming novel in shorts in January with some accompanying beautiful and eerie paintings by artist and graphic novelist Joshua Hagler. Wigleaf digs his story “Brother There is a Field” published in Noo journal and it seems likely that you would as well. In his introduction, Evenson remarks, “The future of short-short fiction seems to me increasingly to be found online.” Thanks very much to Wigleaf for their appreciation of these authors.

Speaking of auspicious moments on the calendar, don’t miss out on Joshua Cohen’s recently published Witz, an enormous novel about the untold history of Y2K: “On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child.” Pick up a copy here. -BB