New Liberal Arts

New Liberal Arts

New Liberal Arts, a Snarkmarket/Revelator Press collaboration, is the beginning of an attempt to describe topics, disciplines, and methods of inquiry essential to any 21st century education. Ranging from "attention economics" to "video literacy," New Liberal Arts is a glimpse into the course catalog of an idiosyncratic new school—a liberal arts college 2.0

New Liberal Arts went on sale on July 7 in a limited edition of 200 copies at Snarkmarket. The initial print run sold out in less than 8 hours.

Nonfiction, 80pp. Click here to download PDF.

A Dragon Swallowed the Bear

A Dragon Swallowed the Bear: Six Stories by Jeremy Campbell

There is violence here. There are monsters and fire, open veins and desperate loves, edges sharp and blunt, animals that appear and fade like melting snow. Jeremy Campbell's stories are neither fables nor fairy tales, and to describe them is to deal in paradox. They are focused, distinct, but they bleed, and when you finish reading you will find traces of their worlds all around you. Yes, there is violence here, both regrettable and regenerative. There is compassion. Creation. Death. And the sigh of resignation which is the breath of life itself.

Look down. Your belly has been unzipped.

Fiction, 23 pp. Click here to download PDF.

Jeremy Campbell was born in Michigan. He lived there and probably somewhere else, too. He studied English Literature at Michigan State University and a few years after that someone took this photo of him in a parking lot. The ground was wet. The suit Jeremy was wearing looked like it was his, but it wasn't. The suit was really good at pretending.

2007 titles: the year of poetry

Letters to My Sister
by Angela Vasquez-Giroux

Composed as a series of letters to a family member serving in Iraq, Angela Vasquez-Giroux's first poetry chapbook is a vivid evocation of the fear, displacement, and uncertainty that war imposes on those who are left behind. Through images of fragmentation and fragility—misreadings of scripture, partial glimpses of a loved one in a news report—Letters to My Sister speaks of the challenges of survival, both for those in the field and at home. (more)

The Bridge and the River
by Timothy Carmody

From Detroit and Chicago to Harlem to Dublin, The Bridge and the River gives us a poetry as notable for its geographic exploration as its literary ambition. While Timothy Carmody's poems create new landscapes of the temporal, linguistic, and structural, it is, in the end, Carmody's empathy that makes his writing so powerful. (more)

Pure Pop
by Tim Lane

"Pure Pop is just that—a little bit of Coke, a little bit of homage to the Pops of the New York School, and a lot of heart. Tim Lane's gracefully fluent lyrics are celebratory, immediate, full of feeling, and full of life. Without falling into sloppy sentimentality or clunky derivation, Lane conjures his own world while stealing fire from the masters."
—Lisa Jarnot, author of Black Dog Songs and Ring of Fire (more)

Nine Poems
by Gavin Craig

"Nine Poems' minimalism isn't austere, but intimate and guarded, like fragments from a whispered, feverish conversation. Each poem withholds more than it gives. You read them as you would read a bruise hidden under a shirtsleeve, guessing that the discolored surface signals a story that's unlikely to be told. But there's also something bracing and reassuring about their silence, their insubstantiality; the signs of secrecy, a shared moment, a conspiracy."
—Timothy Carmody, author of The Bridge and the River (more)

Nine Poems

Nine Poems by Gavin Craig

"Nine Poems' minimalism isn't austere, but intimate and guarded, like fragments from a whispered, feverish conversation. Each poem withholds more than it gives. You read them as you would read a bruise hidden under a shirtsleeve, guessing that the discolored surface signals a story that's unlikely to be told. But there's also something bracing and reassuring about their silence, their insubstantiality; the signs of secrecy, a shared moment, a conspiracy."
—Timothy Carmody, author of The Bridge and the River

Poetry, 11 pp. Click here to download PDF.

Gavin Craig is a graduate student at Michigan State University, where he co-founded The Offbeat, and served as Editor from 1999–2001.

Pure Pop

Pure Pop by Tim Lane

"Pure Pop is just that—a little bit of Coke, a little bit of homage to the Pops of the New York School, and a lot of heart. Tim Lane's gracefully fluent lyrics are celebratory, immediate, full of feeling, and full of life. Without falling into sloppy sentimentality or clunky derivation, Lane conjures his own world while stealing fire from the masters."
—Lisa Jarnot, author of Black Dog Songs and Ring of Fire

Pure Pop delivers all of the delicious, unmitigated pleasure implied in its title. Tim Lane's poems, jubilant and experientially engaged, prove that joy too is serious stuff.

Poetry, 27 pp. Click here to download PDF in new window.

Tim Lane lives, writes and paints in Lansing, Michigan.

The Bridge and the River

The Bridge and the River by Timothy Carmody

"In the years I have worked with Timothy Carmody I have been frequently amazed and occasionally annoyed by his habitual production of really outstanding work. If The Bridge and the River sometimes betrays its influences—Charles Simic, James Baldwin, Frank O'Hara—it must be conceded that the poet's choices are admirable, and the raw materials are always his own. These are early poems, and in them Mr. Carmody experiments with imagery, narrative, and voice, but his experiments are never simply academic, and the results are both sophisticated and affecting. Place matters. Memory persists. The pleasures of the world, slow and hard-won, are worth savoring. The same can be said of this collection."
—Gavin Craig, editor of Offbeat/1

From Detroit and Chicago to Harlem to Dublin, The Bridge and the River gives us a poetry as notable for its geographic exploration as its literary ambition. While Timothy Carmody's poems create new landscapes of the temporal, linguistic, and structural, it is, in the end, Carmody's empathy that makes his writing so powerful.

Poetry, 25 pp. Click here to download PDF in new window.

Timothy Carmody was born in Detroit, Michigan. He currently lives with his family in Philadelphia, where he studies Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania.

Letters to My Sister

Letters to My Sister by Angela Vasquez-Giroux

Composed as a series of letters to a family member serving in Iraq, Angela Vasquez-Giroux's first poetry chapbook is a vivid evocation of the fear, displacement, and uncertainty that war imposes on those who are left behind. Through images of fragmentation and fragility—misreadings of scripture, partial glimpses of a loved one in a news report—Letters to My Sister speaks of the challenges of survival, both for those in the field and at home.

Poetry, 15 pp. Click here to download PDF in new window.

Angela Vasquez-Giroux is a textbook middle child. Her fascination with words began at age three, when her mother taught her to say extraordinary. She lives in Lansing with her partner and daughter.

2006 titles

Fiction

Line Jester and Other Stories
by Michael Duncan

Michael Duncan's debut chapbook takes the reader through surreal landscapes, where art is both necessary and impossible. Throughout his writing, the force of Duncan's ideas is matched with an exacting attention to language and detail. Line Jester and Other Stories offers a bracing reminder of the power of beauty, and a singular, expressionist aesthetic. (more)

Poetry

The Nijinsky Poems
by Meg Sparling

In The Nijinsky Poems, Meg Sparling has crafted a sensitive and insightful revisiting of the life of one of the 20th Century's greatest artists. Combining the biographical with the lyrical, Sparling's writing embodies the power and contingency of the dancer. The Nijinsky Poems is a haunting tribute to a delicate and beautiful man, and a nimble, unerring performance of its own. (more)

Drama

Between the Water and the Air
by Andrew Hungerford

By turns wistful and compelling, Between the Water and the Air is the story of a father and a son, a brother and a sister, a girl, and a mechanic. Ken, a former scholarship student with a habit of running away from responsibility, is forced by his father's declining health and increasingly insistent family to confront his sense of displacement within his own life. (more)

The Nijinsky Poems

The Nijinsky Poems by Meg Sparling

In The Nijinsky Poems, Meg Sparling has crafted a sensitive and insightful revisiting of the life of one of the 20th Century's greatest artists. Combining the biographical with the lyrical, Sparling's writing embodies the power and contingency of the dancer. The Nijinsky Poems is a haunting tribute to a delicate and beautiful man, and a nimble, unerring performance of its own.

The artist in light

Nijinsky stands in a room of glass—
the laughter of light around him.
Color is absent here,
but makes its absence known.
(In this room his mind is crazed with color.)
Three chairs line the far wall—
the middle facing opposite the others.
His daughter sits in this chair,
swatting playfully at nothing.
"Papa, a bee, Papa," she shrieks.
Her sound is a fragile surface here.
Silent Nijinsky stands in the light,
clothed in gravity’s love.

Poetry, 19 pp. Click here to download PDF in new window.

Meg Sparling grew up in a small town in northern Michigan. She attended Michigan State University, where she was general editor of Red Cedar Review. She has been writing stories since the first grade; in third grade she plagarized a story about dragons from her teacher, but she promises that everything written since has been completely original. She lives in New York City.

Also by Meg Sparling: "On a recent rainy Wednesday"

Between the Water and the Air

Between the Water and the Air by Andrew Hungerford

By turns wistful and compelling, Andrew Hungerford's one-act drama Between the Water and the Air is the story of a father and a son, a brother and a sister, a girl, and a mechanic. Ken, a former scholarship student with a habit of running away from responsibility, is forced by his father's declining health and increasingly insistent family to confront his sense of displacement within his own life.

"Andrew Hungerford is a writer with a voice you can use to reckon. His play is full of quiet little images calculated to remind you who you were when you were you."
—Michael Burnham, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music

Between the Water and the Air debuted at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2005, and was performed at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival the following year.

Drama, 65 pp. Click here to download PDF in new window.

Andrew J. Hungerford is originally from the suburbs of Detroit. He earned degrees in Theatre and Astrophysics from Michigan State University and holds a Master's of Fine Arts in Lighting Design from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He is currently an itinerant freelance lighting designer.

Line Jester and Other Stories

Line Jester and Other Stories by Michael Duncan

The stories in Michael Duncan's debut chapbook collection take the reader through surreal landscapes, where art is both necessary and impossible.

In the title story, a performer meets a colleague who shows him how to take his performance to supernatural heights. "On the Death of the Baroness of Silence" presents a musician who considers an offer of financial security in exchange for hanging up his instrument. "Namelessness" and "On the Occasion of the Downed Wire" examine questions of meaning and identity in circumstances that provide neither.

Throughout his stories, the force of Duncan's ideas is matched with an exacting attention to language and detail. The fables in Line Jester and Other Stories offer a bracing reminder of the power of beauty, and a singular, expressionist aesthetic.

Fiction, 33 pp. Click here to download PDF in new window.

Michael Duncan was born in Michigan and attended Indiana University where he received degrees in Mathematics, Economics, and Psychology. He currently works for W.W. Norton and lives in Harlem.

Also by Michael Duncan: "Suggested List for Further Reading," parts 1 and 2