Best of the Small Press 2012: Ron Kolm

1. Love Does Not Make me Gentle or Kind by Chavisa Woods (Unbearable Books/Autonomedia, 2012)

2. Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming by Carl Watson (Sensitive Skin Press, 2012)

3. The Deceptive Smiles of Bredmeyer Deed by Susan Scutti (Ravenrock Publishing, 2012)

UPDATED:
4. Trust Fund Babies by Steve Dalachinsky (Unlikely Books, 2012)

 --Picks by Ron Kolm, author of The Plastic Factory (Autonomedia, 2010) and longtime bookseller and small press "pusher"
--Read an interview with Ron at Literary Kicks

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Since December 7th, I've been blogging the small press picks of terrific writers and editors in the small press scene, and I'll go through the end of the year. Keep up with them at: Best of the Small Press 2012.

Interview at Sensitive Skin Magazine

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

http://www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/beer-mystic-burp-16-books-–-increasingly-illegal-intoxicants-an-interview-with-karen-lillis/

Follow Bart Plantenga's serialized web novel BEER MYSTIC across 44 websites here: http://bartyodel3.wordpress.com/about/