New essay in PEN America

An essay I wrote about Flannery O'Connor is in the new issue of PEN America.

The first line:

There’s a great moment in her 1964 story “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” where Flannery O’Connor writes of a snobby wannabe writer’s complicated feelings toward his ancestral Southern home: “He never spoke of it without contempt or thought of it without longing.”

Mid-May Update, Bike Experiment Week 6 Wrap-up

I wrote a short thing about email for the new issue of PEN America, "PEN America 12: Correspondences."

I wrote three very short things forthcoming in the new online and print issues of Ben Mirov and B.C. Edwards's Pax Americana (link forthcoming).

I wrote about comic book artist Dash Shaw for the Greenpoint Gazette.

I sent some stories/novel excerpts out to places and people I like.

The new May mini-issue of Gigantic Online is up.

Been listening to a ton of Arthur Russell and micromixes by Bradford Cox, of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound renown. (Download "Micromix 16: Bus Ambience" here.)

One of my favorite contemporaries Aaron Lake Smith wrote a beautiful essay on Aaron Cometbus and "zine life" at the Rumpus

Been riding more. Here are some updated stats:

42 days
~432.0 miles
40x bridges (williamsburg 28x, manhattan 3x, queensborough 4x, pulaski 4x)
25 subway rides

somebody taught my story

edward hopper "chop suey"

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joan downs blogged at the pen america blog about teaching my story "some kind of change" to her adult literacy class in nyc.

i'm pretty seriously floored. it's one of the nicest and most flattering things somebody's ever said about my work. i can't send enough thank you's to her and her students.

i liked the quotes from the class discussion of the story: “He’s dorky and smart. She’s pretty, not smart. But he’d like to hit on her.” “They’ve had an affair.” “No, she’s a tease. She cheated on her boyfriend, but not with him.”

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story available here: "some kind of change" by james yeh

updates

a lot of stuff recently:

i have a story in pen america 10, available now.

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i did a video interview with ellen frances, in which we discussed the anxiety of creating a facebook event, the way to sit like tom waits, and gigantic's ideal reader, jeff goldblum.

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illustration by andrew bulger

i interviewed the writer gary shteyngart for gigantic, in which we discussed the russian hamburger, the virility of vegetables, and the age-old question of whether it is appropriate to eat the hors d'oeuvres at a literary party.

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the gigantic launch party at starr space was a big success. thank everybody for coming.

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UPDATE (5/1/09):

i have been blogged about a little slash mentioned in passing on blogs i like and frequent: htmlgiant, heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com, and awfulwaffle. thank you matthew, tao, and nicolle.

I have been accepted for publication

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Happy/sad day:

-My story "Some Kind of Change" has been accepted for publication in PEN America, Issue 10.

-Clemson lost.

Very excited and honored, though, to be published with Etgar Keret and Lydia Davis, along with many others not listed in the blurb.

Earlier tonight at dinner, before I had found out about my story's acceptance, I was reading the first few stories in Keret's latest book The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories. The title story and the second story "Goodman" absolutely killed me. Three pages in and already smacked in the face and gut and chest with sad, beautiful words. Telling myself to "keep it in", there, in the tiny empty pizza place. The only witnesses two employees, your typical pair, ornery owner/chef guy with white coat and stubbly gray beard and his mistreated delivery boy, "Where is my spatula Miguel?"

Damn, Etgar. Well done.

Either that, or I'm just feeling particularly unpunk today.