Events Featuring Caleb Archives

Blogging, Tweeting, and YouTubing from AWP all this week

Between February 2nd and 5th I will be attending the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference in Washington DC. During this time I’ll be temporarily relocated.

Check often at the following places, where I (and a team of writers) will be reporting on the happenings at the conference all week. Be sure to subscribe to the blog, YouTube channel, and Podcast feed, and follow the Twitter stream.

My AWP Blog (www.calebjross.com/awpblog)

Expect summaries of panels and daily roundups of general goings-on

AWPtweets (http://twitter.com/awptweets)

As the majesty of Twitter has allowed and encouraged, expect disposable minutia here

AWP Channel (www.youtube.com/awpchannel)

While I would love to upload videos of every reading and panel discussion I attend, I assume AWP would have some copyright issues with that. So, expect instead videos of selected readings and perhaps a few quick interviews from the book fair floor. We’ll see.

The Velvet Podcast (www.thevelvetpodcast.com)

Because The Velvet Podcast isn’t something reserved specifically for AWP (as the above mediums are), expect interviews and discussions that cross from the academic focus of AWP to the noir-lit yet still intelligent focus of the Welcome to the Velvet forums. At least that is the plan. The Velvet Podcast tends to be pretty receptive of almost anything, so, I guess, expect almost anything.

February 1, 2011

Jonathan Franzen: “The whole culture of selling has become personalized”

Mr. Gordon Highland and I took in a Jonathan Franzen reading this evening at the Kansas City Unity Temple (presented by Rainy Day Books). Franzen read from the same stage on which I met (re: awkwardly shook hands with) Chuck Palahniuk a few years ago. I bring these two authors together here not just because of their temporal-turned-spacial bond, but because the association allowed me to ponder their very different approaches to the live author reading.

Via a video posted on August 14^th, Franzen noted his “profound discomfort” in having to make promotional author videos, basically, to me, implying that any promotional discussion taken place off the page stands in contrast to the intimate nature of a novel…

I get that. In fact, I may even sometimes agree with that. So I was glad when one of the audience members during the night’s reading asked a question that allowed Franzen to tangentially elaborate on his remarks (I post the abbreviated question below to show that Franzen wasn’t specifically addressing the above video, but instead a matter that relates to the video’s message):

Q: When the writer reaches a certain level of prominence, does the focus on the author’s personality threaten to overshadow the work or become an irrelevant distraction?

“The weird thing is, the way people think they know who you are is based on very little information…Obviously the point of that entire episode (referencing the infamous 2001 book club situation between himself and Oprah Winfrey), was not to teach one person, me, not to trust media representations of the actual personalities of people, but that is the lesson I took from it.”

“It’s not bad in the same way that it was bad when Hemingway and Faulkner became public figures because I think the culture wasn’t so distracted back then…The whole culture of selling has become personalized. I don’t think it’s all bad. The kind of frenzy and the kind of gotcha culture….and the opinions based fourth- or fifth-hand on something, that’s an artifact of our electronic culture, and probably bad. That’s what good books are supposed to be helping to resist.”

So on to Palahniuk, who seems to embrace the idea of a novelist performer. His events are the anti-reading, full of fainting fans, inflatable sex dolls, and morally questionable book inscriptions, on top of the reading itself. The performance has become the reading for Palahniuk fans.

What is the author’s role in performance-based book promotion? Should authors resist performance, forcing the reader (and the reader’s forum discussion, online book reviews, and, ahem, blog posts) to testify for a book? Or, should authors embrace the possibilities of our changing culture? Perhaps in the world of Kindles and Nooks, the author video will become to the new book cover, the new visual representation of a book.

Awkward Palahniuk handshake

And for no real reason, here’s a photo I took of Denis Johnson singing
Bob Dylan songs at the 2004 Tin House Writers Workshop

September 23, 2010

This Day In (Made) History

Today is my birthday. I’m not much of a celebrator of this, or any, traditionally celebrated day. I’m not a scrooge, a prude, or a buzkill. I’m just lazy. But my dis-affection hasn’t stopped others from wishing me all the best on this day.

From family, to Facebook, to forums, virtual and physical friends alike have been fantastic.

Below is an especially warming well-wish:

This day in history (courtesy of Mr. Nic Young)

1775	The Spanish establish a presidio (fort) in the town that became Tucson, Arizona.
1833	Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States, is born (d. 1901)
1858	Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace’s same theory.
1890	H. P. Lovecraft, American writer, is born. (d. 1937)
1907	Alan Reed, original voice of Fred Flintstone, is born. (d. 1977)
1920	The first commercial radio station, 8MK (WWJ), begins operations in Detroit, Michigan.
1920	The National Football League, (NFL), is founded in the United States.
1931	Don King, American boxing promoter, is born.
1948	Robert Plant, British Musician (Led Zeppelin), is born.
1953	The Soviet Union publicly acknowledges that it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
1966	Dimebag Darrell, American guitarist (Pantera and Damageplan), is born. (d. 2004)
1970	Fred Durst, American singer (Limp Bizkit), is born. Yeah, sorry about that.
1982	Caleb J. Ross, American author, is born. Caleb spent the majority of his formative years in a storm-wrecked grain silo, where he lived off the remains of the injured and dying animals he cared for with a measured degree of ineptitude. The general ambiance of his youth would inspire a keen interest in amateur taxidermy, a hobby that many historians believe caused the ostracization that led to the dark, anti-social themes of his written works. Caleb was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in the August of 2012, whereupon he shed much of his acquired social stigma, but not the smell of formaldehyde.
1986	In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.

August 20, 2010

Back from the AWP Conference in Denver, CO

So, I’m back, after four short days of writing-related debauchery. All-in-all, a great time. The highlight, of course, was the OW Press The Velvet reading, which took place on Friday, April 9th at Leela European Cafe. Fourteen readers came together to read current works, works-in-progress, or never-to-be-published works. A damn fine time. I managed to meet a lot of people I’ve only communicated with over the Internet, which made the trip both surreal and important.

Also, I posted about the AWP Conference as it was happening, over at the Denver AWP blog that I set up. Myself, along with a few other writers, posted about our experiences as they were happening. I’m sure more updates will trickle in over the coming days, as hangovers and jet-lag wear off.

April 11, 2010

The Velvet Podcast, Episode 003: INTERVIEW with Brian Evenson

A very special Episode #003 of The Velvet Podcast just went live a few hours ago. I interview one of my very favorite authors, Brian Evenson about his upcoming AWP Conference panel, Crime, Horror, Sci‐Fi, and Fantasy… Seriously.Extract below:

(Anthony Smith, Brian Evenson, Stephen Graham Jones, Tod Goldberg, Mark Smith, Seth Harwood) Six writers of genre fiction who also teach and/or have graduated from university creative writing programs discuss how they approach genre fiction as a serious literary pursuit rather than as a lesser form of fiction. In addition, they discuss attitudes towards genre fiction in the university and how those attitudes have changed over the years.

I want to personally thank Mr. Brian Evenson for taking time out of his day to chat with me. He has made this fanboy quite happy. Be sure to visit his website for details about this amazing author.

Please, give it a listen. Subscribe via Feedburner, Podcast Alley, RSS, or iTunes.

April 5, 2010

Interviewed on Blog Talk Radio

Yesterday I appeared on ASNYCNOW’s Blog Talk Radio where I discussed my book, my role as an editor at the Outsider Writers Collective, my future publications, The Velvet, my upcoming AWP reading, and on top of all that self-promotion, I was inundated with compliments from the unbelievably nice Vicki S. Nikolaidis.

Though technical issues had me cutting in and out through much of the discussion, and my voice had a space echo, all in all I had a great time.

Thank you, Vicki!

Click below to listen:

Caleb J Ross on Blog Talk Radio’s ASNYCNOW

March 15, 2010

Not a loud lesbian nor a story of masturbation; how will I succeed?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ll be one of a great group of writers to read at Leela European Café on April 9^th in Denver. I’ve done a few readings in the past, despite the live aspect being something writers don’t often get to experience. I’ve been lucky, I guess.

I am perhaps more excited to see and meet these people more than I am to actually read some of my own work. That’s natural. I’m humble by nature. Humble and handsome.

The unwritten rule is that writers should read from something either freshly published or contracted for publication. For me, that would be my story collection, Charactered Pieces. But another, perhaps not entirely unwritten rule, is that when crowds and drinks are involved, the best type of material to read is work both funny and short. Charactered Pieces, though it contains elements of each, doesn’t contain any stories that would fit both of those qualifications equally enough to warrant the rapt attention of the audience (which I expect to be huge! You hear me! Be there or be dead!). The bar is high, as I’ve been to both Chuck Palahniuk readings (refreshingly interactive meets his morbid material makes for strange group of lit lovers, videos here, and don’t forget all the people who fainted during his Guts tour) and Dorothy Allison readings (the last, her 2009 AWP appearance which was followed by the only performance worthy of her opening, a performance from Mucca Pazza (this review calls them a ragtag band…they simply don’t know the wonder that is Mucca Pazza).

So, I’ve decided to write two entirely new pieces for the event. One involves my plea for corporate sponsorship. The other involves my plea for free beer. It’s a bit scary to debut something in front of a crowd of strangers, but I guess that’s better than waiting until a piece is printed before finding out it sucks.

What sort of material do you (or would you, if you’ve never been to a live reading) want to hear?

February 26, 2010

Category: Events Featuring Caleb