buy nothing/tiny rant about la bibliotheque

As you may know, my partner's a librarian, and I am in love with libraries and the people who work there - places where access to books and information is still seen as a fundamental aspect of an engaged citizenry. One of the best things you can do to support small-press literary authors is to urge your library to acquire a copy of their books. Libraries buy what their community wants, and so if they have a budget to buy books often they're quite happy to place an order for a book upon a patron's request. I'm going by my local library this week to request copies of some of my favorite small press books that have come out lately (like Bhanu Kapil's Schizophrene or Pam Lu's Ambient Parking Lot.)

So, let's say you read Green Girl and O Fallen Angel and loved them, and want others to have access to these books, or want to read either to see what you think of them but don't want to or can't buy them. Or any other small-press book that's come out in the past couple of years. I encourage you to go to your public library (or, potentially your university library, especially if you are an adjunct or full professor), look it up in the database, and fill out a request for them to carry it. Books should be available to everyone. O Fallen Angel has been  out forever at Amazon, but libraries should be able to order it on Small Press Distribution. The main distributors for Green Girl are Ingram, Baker&Taylor, and Bookazine.

I'm also today sending copies of my books to the Occupy Wall Street People's Library (along with one of my editor's copies of Bhanu's Schizophrene.) Hopefully not to be destroyed by Bloomsburg's machines. If you are an author, I invite you to do the same. Books can be sent to:


The UPS Store
RE: Occupy Wall Street
Attn: The People's Library
118 A Fulton Street #205
New York, NY 10038



Am brewing an essay on Leaving the Atocha Station and existential novels by men and by women, but have to force myself to finish my rewrite of Part Two of Heroines first. As in, I've now forced myself to reread my recent rewrite, which is a rewrite of a rewrite, which I think is actually a rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite, and it's Just. Not. Good. Enough. So I'm going to start from a blank screen with a mess a mass of pages and rewrite. Hopefully this week. If I can push myself enough. For sometimes I am so afraid, to dig deep, to push myself, I'm afraid - of what? I suppose I'm afraid I will crack somehow.