birdsong #13 and Junior High Yearbook

Friends and lovers,

In case you haven’t heard it through the grapevine, the new issue of birdsong (#13, theme: buzz) is fresh off the press and ready for your perusal. It features new things to read by: Roy Pérez, Tommy Pico, Max Steele, Tatyana Kagamas, Katie Naoum, Geoff Trenchard, Chantal Johnson, Jane Yoo, and Daniel Portland; new things to look at by: Jess Paps, Cara Fulmor, Patrick Dyer, Cat Glennon, Will Varner, and Julia Norton; and new interviews with: Zan Amparan, Edie Fake, Brando Skyhorse, Justin Taylor, and Rachel Zolf. The cover was designed by the inimitable Blanco and printed with tender loving care by Gabriel Cohen of the Bread and Butter Collective. Pick up a copy at your favorite place to find zines, or, if it’s more convenient for you, order one off the internet.

Also, remember that we’ll be celebrating the release of birdsong #13 unto the world this Saturday evening. All the details are here.

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in other news, i have a zine report for you:

junior high yearbook

fiction by carolyn tuttle hansen, chris besinger, + spencer keralis

print on paper w/cardstock cover, 43 pp.: (5.5 x 8.5 in.)

littleton, co: laughing mouse press, 2003. second edition: 2010.

http://laughingmouse.net/

admittedly, the pic to the left is not the cover of junior high yearbook, but it does say junior high on it, so just roll with me. anyway, if there’s one thing i don’t need to remember, it’s my own junior high yearbook, so i’m glad to see the word fiction on the actual cover of this zine. as these stories attest to, however, sometimes you don’t need the promise of pictures in a yearbook; the experience of junior high is formative enough to be recalled without them. so, how might you relate to the stories in this petite collection? well, the first is a magickal realist account of girlhood and self-affirmation; the second is from an (arguably) more administrative perspective and about the banalities and epiphanies occasioned by such a position; the third is, in short, the delightful story of a couple young sodomites. choice line: ‘i had blurry fantasies of myself on a louis quinze settee, directing lithe boys in pornographic little speedo swimsuits to fetch me this book or adjust the lamp just so.’