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October 2011 One of my short stories was a finalist in the Cincinnati Review's 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Prose Prize.
September 2011 Photographs from my Tokyo Crossing Series will appear in the fall issue of The Adirondack Review. I was also named a finalist in their 2010 photography contest.
August 2011 My novel, The Hashimoto Complex, received an honorable mention in Starcherone Books' 2011-12 Innovative Fiction Contest..
July 2011 One of my short stories was short-listed in the 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom Short Story Contest.
June 2011 The Heart Is a Lonely Drummer, one of my long stories, was named a finalist in the 2010 Long Story Contest.
April 2011 The Hashimoto Complex is a finalist for Black Lawrence Press's Big Moose Prize. • One of my stories was a finalist in Third Coast Magazine's 2011 Fiction Contest. Writer Brad Watson judged.
March 2011 One of my short-short stories will appear in SpringGun Journal this spring.
January 2011 One of my short stories is a finalist in Third Coast's 2011 Fiction Contest. Novelist Brad Watson will pick the winner next month.
August 2010 On August 15th, my novel The Hashimoto Complex was named a finalist in the Santa Fe Writers Project 2010 Literary Awards. • Pocket Smut has just published my twisted, perverse short short story called Please Don't Eat the Sausage.
July 2010 One of my long short stories, The Heart Is A Lonely Drummer is a finalist for Ropewalk Press's Thomas A. Wilhelmus Fiction Chapbook Prize. The press is a University of Southern Indiana imprint. Its website is here.
May 2010 One of my recent short stories, Protection has been "honorably mentioned" for the 2010 E.M. Koeppel Short Fiction Award.
March 2010 A selection from my Suburban Geometries series is entered in Leica's Oskar Barnack Prize competition
February 2010 I've donated a triptych to art auction benefit for the victims of Haiti's devasting earthquake which takes place on Wednesday, 2/10 at 7pm.
December 2009 At 7pm on Sunday, December 13th, I will give a reading at one of NYC's only leather biker cafes, Motorcycle Federation. Organized by Madeleine Beckman, the reading will also feature Roberta Bernstein, Jean Monahan, and Nicole Sprinkle. More details later.
November 2009 I will have a couple of stories published in the Brooklyn Writers Space first anthology, The Reader. The launch party is on Thursday, November 5th at 7pm at BookCourt, 163 Court Street, in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
October 2009 The Hashimoto Complex won 2nd Runner-Up in the 2009 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Novel Competition. • I will be attending an artist residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts with Antonya Nelson.• Photos of my friend LuLu LoLo's 14th Street Newspaper Boy performance appeared in Domus Web. • My short-short South of the Border is favorably noted in The Review Review.
July 2009 A photograph from my collaboration with LuLu LoLo, Pierrot 2.0, was included in an Italian mail art exposition here.
May 2009 My short story Back Trouble is a semi-finalist (top 27 out of 654) in Nimrod's Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. • Photos from my Suburban Geometries series are published on Polar Inertia's Spring 2009 (#34) issue at the end of May.
April 2009 4/8: Max's cousin Elena Takeuchi was born at 5:24pm Tokyo Time! • My long story The Heart Is a Lonely Drummer is a finalist (top 30 out of 900) in Summer Literary Seminars-2009 Unified Fiction and Poetry Contest judged by Lynne Tillman. • A photo from my Visual Haiku series was published in Shots's Spring 2009 issue (#103).
February 2009 My short short story South of the Border was awarded 3rd Place in the Sonora Review's Third Annual Short Short Contest. The judge was Aimee Bender.
January 2009 My short story Second Act is a finalist won Honorable Mention in Cutthroat Journal's 2008 Rick DeMarinis Short Story Competition. The story will be published in February.
November 2008 Brooklyn Writers Space Reading at Union Hall, Sunday, 11/9, 5-7pm. BWS.
September 2008 Final LMCC Reading at U.S. Custom House, Thursday, 9/18, 6-8pm. RSVP is mandatory because of security. RSVP at LMCC's site here. Map of Bowling Green here.
August 2008 Our Baby Boy Is Due! 8/15 is the due date of our unnamed boy. HE'S HERE! Max Miles Takeuchi was born on Friday, 8-22-8 at 3:33pm! See tons of pix here.
April 2008 Excerpt from Tokyo Crossing appears in Redivider. Readings at LMCC Open Studios 4/26 at 92Y Tribeca, 4/27 at 200 Hudson St. Studios.
March 2008 Short story Please Don't Eat the Sausage appears in WordRiot. Awarded a 2008 Fellowship from the Urban Artist Initiative/New York City. March 28 & 29: LMCC Workspace Open Hours.
February 2008—2/11 Reading at the Telephone Bar. 2/25 Reading at Union Hall with Brooklyn Writers Space writers Amy Sohn and Alex Tilney.
October 2007—Awarded 1st Place Lucie Award (Abstract Nature Fine Art Category) from the International Photography Awards 2007.
August 2007—Awarded 9-month residency at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
July 10, 2007—Short story Please Don't Eat the Sausage read by British actor Alex Woodhall at the Liar's League Sex & Death reading series, London.
October 2006—Artist in Residence at Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL.
SpringGun Spring Issue Out
The Hashimoto Complex Is Longlisted
I’m happy to report that Black Lawrence Press has longlisted The Hashimoto Complex for The Big Moose Prize. The prize is given annually for an unpublished novel. The final winner will be announced in a few weeks. Keep your fingers crossed.
LuLu & Dan (East Harlem)
We made a family visit to LuLu LoLo and Dan Evans’ townhouse on E. 116th Street, aka East Pascale Street, named in honor of LuLu’s father, Pete Pascale. Out back is Dan’s chapel, a beautiful, spiritual place full of mementos, bells, and the fresh scent of wood. Below is a detail of one of Dan’s iconic monochrome paintings celebrating the films of Raymond Chandler. You can read more about LuLu and Dan and their art museum-like house in this NYT’s piece from last August.
Ranbir (Chelsea)
John Talbird Reading at Jimmy's # 43 (East Village)
John Talbird, one of my fellow residents at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, gave a fun reading at the subterranean bar, Jimmy’s No. 43, an event sponsored by Essays and Fictions literary journal.
Barry Hannah, R.I.P.
I had the privilege of spending a week with Barry Hannah in 2007, at a summer workshop at Amherst College. Though his love of storytelling was still richly evident, it was clear his failing health was most on his mind. Drink and cancer had ravaged him, and the financial fallout was terrible. Like Orson Welles, who needed to pontificate about cheap domestic wines to pay the rent, Hannah joked that he only did these workshops for the money. Still, I was charmed by his raucous sense of humor and his reverence for his literary forbears. After enjoying brief monologues on the craft of fiction, I got to lunch with him and talk about Faulkner and John Grisham and Larry Brown, and Donna Tartt, his hatred of the label southern writing. He had an amazing, playful way with words. His sentences and characters were wild and fun and irreverent. I have never encountered voices like those in Airships or Geronimo Rex. The horror and grotesque humor of Yonder Stands Your Orphan still haunts me. On Monday, America lost a truly original voice. Read the NYT obit here and an appreciation at Vanity Fair.
J.D. Salinger, R.I.P.
JDS in 1950, photo by Lotte Jacobi
One of the most influential American writers of the 20th Century died on the 27th. The Catcher in the Rye remains one of my favorite books. I wonder if his children will reveal if there was a manuscript their father was working on all these years.
The Straitjacket
My friends LuLu LoLo and Dan Evans are staging a production of The Straitjacket, a fictionalized play about Emily Dickinson in the Metropolitan Playhouse’s Another Sky program on American women writers.
Reading at Motorcycle Federation (NoHo)
Though it was a rainy night, a big crowd turned out to listen to yours truly, Nikki Sprinkle, Roberta Bernstein, and Jean
Monahan (pictured) read at Motorcycle Federation’s cafe.
Should Have Been Burned?
Yesterday marked the official publication of The Original of Laura, Nabokov’s last work in progress. Dmitri Nabokov, the author’s son and executor, agonized over the decision not to burn and send these roughly written 138 index cards worth of notes into the wild. For diehard Nabokovians, it’s a treat, but I don’t think it will do the master stylist’s reputation any good. Reportedly, Lolita, too, was supposed to be consigned to the fireplace, but his wife Vera rescued it and now we all have one of the 20th Century’s masterpieces of literature. But that was a finished novel and this is just the opening notes. For more about TOOL, check here and here. The Times of London got the excerpt exclusive. Will I buy it? You betcha.
The Reader (Cobble Hill)
One of My Short Stories Is Favorably Reviewed
Antonya Nelson Reads at UCF (Orlando)
The ACA writers got to hear Antonya read from Nothing Right at the University of Central Florida.
Recent Published Work
J.G. Ballard, R.I.P.
SJ Rozan Reading
Goddammit I'm Mad Dog
Waiting for the Next Disaster
Q: What Was Bush Doing While the Economy Was Melting?
Animated Film Celebrates Publisher's 25th
Studs Terkel
LMCC Custom House Reading
Final Reading of LMCC Residency
Meeting with Paula Fox
I had the great fortune to meet Paula Fox and her husband Martin Greenberg at LMCC's office. Paula had graciously agreed to read a long story of mine and give me feedback. She's a real pro and full of lots of life with a nice sense of humor. It was a real honor to meet one of my literary heroes.
Houellebecq vs. Mom
Invented Memoirs—A Million Little Pieces Redux X 2
Custom House Outside Details
Custom House History
Into the Custom House!
Propaganda Photos: Which Came First—Chicken or Egg?
OFF
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Kurt Vonnegut—1922-2007
Photo by Jill Krementz (his wife)One of my heroes died yesterday. I started reading the lovable hoosier late in high school and on through my twenties. I must have read every book of his before Galapagos: Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse 5, Player Piano, Mother Night, Deadeye Dick. And I really loved Slapstick, which seemed to be universally panned. He was a true original, a brave patriot, a promoter of free speech. He looked like Mark Twain and smoked as much as George Burns. What a force! What a conscience! I will miss his voice.