Dzanc Books

Dzanc Books Signs Stephen Graham Jones to Two-Book Deal!

Dzanc Books to Publish Stephen Graham Jones

 

July 21, 2010 - Ann Arbor, MI—Dzanc Books is proud to announce that it will publish 2 novels by Stephen Graham Jones.   The first, Flushboy, will be published in early 2013 and will be followed a year later by Not for Nothing.  Stephen is the author of 9 books of fiction, including The Fast Red Road—a Plainsong, All the Beautiful Sinners, The Bird is Gone—a Manifesto, Bleed Into Me—a Book of Stories, Demon Theory, The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, Ledfeather and the forthcoming novel, It Came from Del Rio, and collection of stories, The Ones that Almost Got Away: Stories.  Stephen has also published over 100 stories in such places as Alaska Quarterly Review, Hobart, and Mississippi Review.

 

Jones’ work has been called “mesmerizing” and “masterful” by Booklist, and Texas Monthly describes him as “an unapologetic pop-culture savant.”  Jones holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder. 

 

Both hilarious and heartbreaking at times, Flushboy is a novel about the 16-year-old boy working the window of the drive-thru urinal of his father’s latest business venture, The Bladder Hut.  It’s a uniquely told coming-of-age story and more.  Not for Nothing, is in theory, a detective story, but as usual, Jones plays with convention and gives his readers much more than they might expect.

 

“Stephen Graham Jones is a fascinating writer,” Dan Wickett said. “One that hasn’t delved into the same territory twice, and these two novels continue on in that vein. We at Dzanc are very excited to publish these two wonderful novels from a writer that continues to constantly find new ways of storytelling.”

 

About Dzanc Books

 

Dzanc Books was created in 2006 to advance great writing and champion those writers who don’t fit neatly into the marketing niches of for-profit presses. As a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc Books not only publishes literary fiction, but works in partnership with literary journals to advance their readership at every level. Dzanc is also fully committed to developing educational programs in schools, as well as supporting literary community service projects with its Dzanc Prize program.

 

For more information on Dzanc Books and its mission, imprints, books, authors, awards, and programs, please visit www.dzancbooks.org.

 

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Dzanc Books Signs Jonathan Baumbach to New Book Deal

         

Dzanc Books to Publish Jonathan Baumbach

February 18, 2009 - Ann Arbor, MI—Dzanc Books is proud to announce that it will publish a novel by Jonathan Baumbach in early 2011, entitled Dreams of Molly.  Johnathan is the author of 14 books of fiction, including You, or The Invention of Memory, On The Way To My Father’s Funeral: New and Selected Stories, B, a novel, D-Tours, Separate Hours, Chez Charlotte and Emily, The Life and Times of Major Fiction, Reruns, Babble and A Man to Conjure With. He has also published over 90 stories published in such places as Esquire, Open City and Boulevard.

Jonathan, co-founder of The Fiction Collective in 1973 (it was reinvented as FC2 in 1988), the first fiction writers cooperative in America, has seen his work widely praised.   His short stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, O.Henry Prize, and The Best of Tri-Quarterly.  The New York Times Book Review referred to him in 2004 as “. . . an underappreciated writer. He employs a masterfully dispassionate, fiercely intelligent narrative voice whose seeming objectivity is always a faltering front for secret passion and despair."

“Jonathan Baumbach is one of the true paterfamilias of independent-minded writers.”  Steve Gillis said, “A staple in the literary scene for over forty years, Baumbach's latest novel,  Dreams of Molly, is a wonderful addition to his oeuvre.  A love story as only Baumbach can write,  Dreams of Molly  is filled with the longings and lingerings, sex and deprivation, humor and heartache as well as the New York nuances that have driven Baumbach's fiction from the start.   We at Dzanc are very excited to publish this newest work from a true American original.”

About Dzanc Books

Dzanc Books was created in 2006 to advance great writing and champion those writers who don’t fit neatly into the marketing niches of for-profit presses. As a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc Books not only publishes literary fiction, but works in partnership with literary journals to advance their readership at every level. Dzanc is also fully committed to developing educational programs in schools, as well as supporting literary community service projects with its Dzanc Prize program.

For more information on Dzanc Books and its mission, imprints, books, authors, awards, and programs, please visit www.dzancbooks.org.

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Dzanc Books to Publish Dawn Raffel

Dzanc Books is proud to announce that it will publish a collection of stories by Dawn Raffel in early 2010, entitled Further Adventures in the Restless Universe.  Dawn Raffel has previously published the story collection In the Year of Long Division, and the novel Carrying the Body. Her work has also appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, among them Open City, The Quarterly, Fence, NOON, Brooklyn Rail, O, the Oprah Magazine, Monkeybicycle, Opium, and The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories.

Dawn, currently an Editor-at-Large for More Magazine, has seen her work widely acclaimed.  In the Year of Long Division was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, and Carrying the Body has been critically studied at the University of Paris.  The titles received rave reviews from the likes of Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and The Review of Contemporary Fiction.  She lives just outside New York City with her family.

“Having really enjoyed Dawn’s previous two titles,” Dan Wickett said, “we are thrilled at the opportunity to bring her third title, and second collection of stories, to the reading public.  The addition of Further Adventures in the Restless Universe to what we felt was an already strong 2010 catalogue, and to add somebody of Dawn’s stature to Dzanc’s growing roster of extremely talented authors, is really exciting.  Her writing is one-of-a-kind and this collection will only continue to elevate her reputation.”

More Authors Sign with Dzanc!

March 18, 2008

(Ann Arbor, MI)  Dzanc Books is very excited to announce the signings of some truly exciting authors and books.  Over the past month or so, we’ve rounded out our 2009 catalogue, and having been overwhelmed by a number of fantastic manuscripts, pushed our projected list through 2010, into 2011.

In order of when they’ll be published:

Peter Selgin’s novel, Life Goes to the Movies, will be published in April 2009.  Peter was recently announced as one of the 2007 winners of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction by the University of Georgia Press, and will see his short story collection, Drowning Lessons, published this fall by them.  Peter also runs an annual workshop each June in Vitorchiano, Italy, and has published By Cunning & Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers.  He is also the fiction editor for Alimentum, and well known for his paintings.  www.peterselgin.com

Henning Koch’s short story collection, Love Doesn’t Work, will be published in June 2010.  Henning, a Swedish writer, who until recently had been living in Italy, was formerly heavily involved in the Swedish film industry as a screenwriter.  After years of seeing his words altered or deleted, he decided to go back to his original writing love – fiction, and to incredible results.  His stories are exciting, and odd, and funny, and one of the stories in this collection will be available soon in the next issue of Absinthe:  New European Writing.

Terese Svoboda’s novel, Pirate Talk, a novel in dialogue will be published in September 2010.  Beckett meets Moby Dick might be the most apt description of this work.  Terese has published widely to date, non-fiction, story and poetry collections, the novel Tin God, which was a University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction selected, and most recently with Black Glasses like Clark Kent, winner of the 2007 Graywolf Non-Fiction prize.

Peter Markus will publish his second title with Dzanc, and fourth story collection overall, in February 2011 when We Make Mud hits stores.  This collection will concentrate on his stories of two brothers, the dirty river they live near, mud, fish, stars and everything else that is constant in the world Peter has created and written about so feverishly this past decade.  As it was Peter’s stories that led us to find his novel, Bob, or Man on Boat (June 2008), we are thrilled to be able to publish a collection of the stories.

Dzanc Books is thrilled to be able to publish the fantastic books by these award winning authors and believe they are all excellent additions to the incredible start we have given ourselves with Roy Kesey’s, All Over (Dzanc Books, October 2007), and Yannick Murphy’s In a Bear’s Eye (Dzanc Books, February 2008), not to mention the other titles forthcoming before these new authors reach the shelves.

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Dzanc to Publish Laura van den Berg!

January 14, 2008 - Ann Arbor, MI—Dzanc Books is proud to announce that it will publish a collection of stories by Laura van den Berg called What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us in late 2009.  Laura’s work, both flash and short fiction, has appeared widely in magazines.  This collection concentrates on her longer stories. 

“I had enjoyed Laura’s writing in the past,” said Dan Wickett, “but when Steve [Gillis], Keith [Taylor] and I all read the fiction she submitted when she won the inaugural Dzanc Prize, we all felt we needed to find out where she was in completing a full manuscript of stories.”  Van den Berg was awarded the Prize for the quality of that fiction sample and her proposal to teach writing to prisoners in the Boston area. It turned out to be great timing as van den Berg’s agent, Katherine Fausset, had just begun submitting the manuscript to publishers. The Dzanc team, equally as impressed with the rest of the collection as with the initial story, made an offer immediately. We are thrilled that this incredible young writer is as excited to have her work become a part of Dzanc’s catalogue as we are to add it.

About Laura van den Berg

A native of central Florida, Laura van den Berg is the editor-in-chief of Emerson College’s literary and arts journal, Redivider, and a Ploughshares staff member. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Indiana Review, The Literary Review, StoryQuarterly, American Short Fiction, and One Story, among others, and has received awards from Glimmer Train and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She previously taught writing at Emerson College, and currently teaches fiction at Grub Street, an independent center for creative writing in Boston.

Dzanc to Publish Kyle Minor in 2008

Dzanc Books to Publish Kyle Minor

November 26, 2007 - Ann Arbor , MI —Dzanc Books is proud to announce that it will publish a collection of stories and a novella by Kyle Minor in late 2008.  Kyle Minor's work has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, among them The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Surreal South (Press 53, 2007), and Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers:  The Best New Voices of 2006 (Random House, 2006). His work, much of which falls into the category of longer stories, has been nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes, and one of the stories won the Tara M. Kroger Prize for Short Fiction.

Kyle is also co-editor, with Okla Elliott, of The Other Chekhov (New American Press, 2008). His writing has been lauded by The Atlantic Monthly, The Columbus Dispatch, and Random House. Originally from Florida, he now lives in Ohio, where he is Visiting Writer at the University of Toledo.

“Both Steve and I had been well aware of Kyle’s fantastic non-fiction writing,” said Dan Wickett, “but it wasn’t until reading his incredible novella, “A Day Meant to Do Less,” in The Gettysburg Review that we had really thought about the possibility of publishing his fiction.  When we investigated, it turned out he was nearly ready to put finishing touches on his manuscript, and it was during these talks with Kyle that we realized how much of his material we had read, and enjoyed, and remembered fairly vividly.  We are really excited to bring the first full book of Kyle Minor-only fiction to the literary world.  He’s an incredible young writer to keep your eyes on.”

About Dzanc Books

Dzanc Books was created in 2006 to advance great writing and champion those writers who don’t fit neatly into the marketing niches of for-profit presses. As a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc Books not only publishes literary fiction, but works in partnership with literary journals to advance their readership at every level. Dzanc is also fully committed to developing educational programs in schools. For more information on Dzanc Books and its mission, books, authors, awards, and programs, please visit www.dzancbooks.org.

Announcement of More Titles

Dzanc Books is proud to announce its forthcoming catalogue, signing another five exciting authors to publish six works of fiction over the next three years. We will also publish an annual series titled The Best of the Web, an anthology of stories, poetry and non-fiction originally published online.

In addition to the titles previously listed in our catalogue by Roy Kesey, Yannick Murphy and Peter Markus, we will be publishing the following:

* Best of the Web 2007, edited by Nathan Leslie, guest editor tba - Spring '08
* Based on a True Story, a trio of novellas, by Hesh Kestin - Fall '08
* The Death of Purple, stories, by Michael Czyzniejewski - Winter '09
* Best of the Web 2008 - Spring '09
* Misfits and other Heroes, stories, by Suzanne Burns - Summer '09
* Kamby Bolongo Mean River, a novel, by Robert Lopez - Fall '09
* Best of the Web 2009 - Spring '10
* The Devil's Moor (tentative title) , stories, by Stefan Kiesbye - Summer '10
* <Untitled>, stories, by Robert Lopez - Fall '10

These will bring the Dzanc catalogue up to a total of 15 titles by 2010, and we are getting very close to finding the titles that will be Dzanc’s first African and European books as well.

Some information about the above listed authors:

Hesh Kestin is a recovering foreign correspondent who reported on local wars, global business and exotic mayhem in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for such publications as Forbes, Newsday and the Jerusalem Post, and wrote for US magazines as diverse as Playboy and Inc.  Cited by “Media Guide” for best foreign correspondence, his work has garnered Clarion and National Headliner awards and constant threats of reprisal.  “If they don’t wave a gun or call in the lawyers,” he says, “You’re not doing your job.” Before hanging up his trench-coat to return to his roots as a novelist he founded the Israeli daily The Nation and the prize-winning expatriate weekly The American, and wrote a non-fiction book, “21st-Century Management” [Grove Atlantic], about a major software company whose leadership is currently in federal prison.  Kestin now lives in the
Hamptons, the New York exurb where the greatest danger is being run down by a Ferrari –and likes it that way. “In fiction if someone pulls an AK-47 on you,” he explains, “you just make sure it jams.”   Set in World-War-II Africa, Polynesia and Hollywood, the three novellas that make up Based On A True Story –by turns comic and tragic, erotic and violent, global and intensely personal-- reveal the roots of contemporary life in a world at war with itself.

Michael Czyzniejewski was born in Chicago and grew up in its south suburbs.
He attended the University of Illinois, where he received his BA, and Bowling Green State University, where he earned an MFA. After graduating from BGSU, he stuck around, and has taught English courses there, including composition, creative writing, editing, and literature, ever since. At the same time, he has worked as an editor of Mid-American Review, serving as Editor-in-Chief since 2000. His stories have appeared in journals such as StoryQuarterly, Quarterly West, Another Chicago Magazine, American  Short Fiction, Other Voices, New Orleans Review, Bat City Review, Northwest Review, Quick Fiction, among many others, while one was reprinted in Pushcart Prize XXXI. Since 1989, he has also worked at Wrigley Field, selling beer in the aisles since his 21st birthday. He currently lives in Bowling Green with his wife and son.

Suzanne Burns has previously published two collections of poetry, Blight from Archer Books and The Flesh Procession from Bleak House Books. Her writing has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and she is the recipient of two poetry fellowships. She is a freelance editor who is currently working on a new novel.

Robert Lopez is the author of Part of the World, a novel from Calamari Press.  His fiction and poetry has appeared in dozens of journals, including; Bomb, The Threepenny Review, The Mississippi Review, Indiana Review, New England Review, New Orleans Review, Blackbird, Nerve, etc.  He teaches at The New School in New York City.

Stefan Kiesbye received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan.  His novella, Next Door Lived a Girl, was published by Lofi Press.  His short fiction has been published widely, and been included in Stumbling and Raging:  More Politically Inspired Fiction.  Some of his work can (soon) be read in Hobart, The Stickman Review, Konundrum Literary Engine and The St. Petersburg Review. Stefan lives in Ann Arbor with his wife Sanaz.