Author Bart Plantenga has been busy. He's been systematically interviewing all the small press web hosts who published a chapter of his "simultaneously serialized" web novel, BEER MYSTIC, and running these interviews as a blog called the Beer Mystic Burp. The blog appears at Sensitive Skin Magazine, one of my favorite small press finds in recent years. In fact, Sensitive Skin was a print journal from the early '90s that went on hiatus for a decade and a half, then reappeared in 2010 as a web journal. I love the edgy stance, brazen voice, and high quality of the writing at SS, and I love the way the online mag manages to retain all the gritty flavor of a great print journal of the underground. And now the cycle has come around; the mag is back in print, and also starting to publish print books. In its own words, Sensitive Skin publishes "post-beat, pre-apocalyptic fiction, essays and poetry."
Karen the Small Press Librarian ran one of Bart's densely lovely chapters from Beer Mystic here almost exactly a year ago, and so I had the honor of being interviewed recently for his blog. I really appreciated our conversation and Bart's in-depth questions (in an age of short attention spans, no less). We talked about indie bookstores as American refuge, what got revealed in the St. Mark's Bookshop rent crisis, art vs. activism, Occupy Wall Street and the malleable nature of The 99%, and the place of creative writers in the larger public forum, among other topics. I thank Bart for his kind words and thoughtful inquiries. Please follow the link below to read the interview:
"Books--Increasingly Illegal Intoxicants?"
December 29, 2011
Sensitive Skin Magazine
Bart Plantenga interviews Karen Lillis, aka Karen the Small Press Librarian
Follow Bart Plantenga's serialized web novel BEER MYSTIC across 44 websites here: http://bartyodel3.wordpress.com/about/
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