Great news! One of my fictions, “Suspension as a Unit of Experience; or, What She Remembered of the Vanishing Lines,” will appear in Conjunctions:60, In Absentia, alongside work by Matt Bell, Robert Walser, J. W. McCormack, Kim Chinquee, Gabriel Blackwell, Carole Maso, Can Xue, Robert Coover, Stephen O’Connor, Joanna Ruocco, Samuel R. Delany, Benjamin Hale, Ben Marcus, Elizabeth Hand, and many others.
Thanks, Bradford Morrow and everyone at Conjunctions!
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Tagged Ben Marcus, Benjamin Hale, Bradford Morrow, Can Xue, Carole Maso, Conjunctions, Conjunctions:60 In Absentia, Elizabeth Hand, Gabriel Blackwell, J.W. McCormack, Joanna Ruocco, John Madera, Kim Chinquee, Matt Bell, Robert Coover, Robert Walser, Samuel R. Delany, Stephen O'Connor
Jef Lee Johnson died on Monday, January 28, 2013 in Roxborough Memorial Hospital of complications of pneumonia and diabetes. He was 54.
Jef was an incredible musician. I always enjoyed our conversations, which would cover music, art, politics, and sometimes dark and sad matters. I’ve been listening to his music non-stop since I heard the news of his passing. I still can’t believe he’s dead.
“Jungle” was one of Jef’s signature songs. In concert, Jef would sometimes stretch the song out to last half an hour or more. Like all of his performances, they were overwhelming expressions, where the dynamic of tension-and-release became something you could touch, or, rather, that could crush you.
Here’s my tribute to him:
I’m looking forward to reading with Amber Sparks, come November 11, 2012 at Ada Books, one of my favorite places in Providence, RI.
Ryan W. Bradley designed the bizarre image for the reading, and he’s available for your design needs. Check out more of his work here: http://www.aestheticallydeclined.net/
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Tagged Ada Books, Amber Sparks, Fiction Stranger than Fiction #2, John Madera, Reading, Ryan W. Bradley
Dawn Raffel, Editor at The Literarian, asked me and other writers to “cite visual artwork that has informed or inspired [our] work.” Here’s an excerpt from my answer:
Writing, sensu stricto, is also a visual art, and thus, the question of what visual artist or particular work of visual art has provided inspiration for me as a writer is akin to asking me what visual art or visual artist has provided inspiration for me as a visual artist. I’m being a bit facetious, here, but I feel it’s important to begin answering the question by addressing how easy it is to forget the sheer physicality of the graphic symbols we use to communicate ideas, meaning, story, or whatever else.
Click HERE to read the rest of the piece.
JOHN MADERA—Writer, Editor, Publisher 