THE2NDHAND

TWO PRISONERS' WIVES, by Sean Ulman

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:42:17 -0500

"In the summer," says Ulman, a Stonecoast MFA graduate, "I work in Alaska as a field technician for a shorebird study. In the winter I live in Delaware, where I write about Alaska," the setting for this tale, an excerpt, Ulman adds, from a novel in progress.

EVENT: BRICK, webcasting live from NASHVILLE 7 p.m. central, Mar. 12

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:56:37 -0600

At 7 p.m. central, Friday, March 12, we will be webcasting the following event live from Portland Brew in East Nashville at THE2NDHAND.com.
--- IN NASHVILLE:
BRICK | a reading series launches! 7 p.m. Friday, Mar 12, 2009 Portland Brew, 1921 Eastland Ave., Nashville Hosted by THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills with an assist by Keyhole Magazine and Press publisher Peter Cole, BRICK is a coproduction that every other month will feature Nashville, regional and touring prose writers -- you'll undoubtedly recognize many in coming months from these halls, including the three featured in the first edition, tip-top, from north to south: Louisville, Ky., writer Jason Jordan is author of two collections forthcoming from avant-garde Six Gallery Press, Cloud and Other Stories and Powering the Devil's Circus, the last a novella paired with several shorts which is a strangely delightful mix of sincerity and absurdity -- each half bolstering the power of the other -- with an honesty of gesture uncommon in these times of narrative duplicity. His work has been published widely, including in both Keyhole and THE2NDHAND. Find him on Facebook or at the site for the online magazine he founded and continues to edit, decomP. East Nashville's own Eric Durchholz is the man behind the recently released novel Heartless, set in and around the bars and shuffling masses at Woodland and 11th and... that other street. A veteran of the nascent Nashville performance scene, Durchholz is also the author of the novels iNVERSION and The Promise of Eden, working as a graphic artist in multimedia. For an excerpt from Heartless, visit heartless.me or the excerpt we published several months back. Prose writer and teacher Lydia Ship lives in Atlanta, where she's likewise a contributing editor to the Chattahoochee Review; her stories, including flash fiction running with the weirdly sublime feel of a good D. Barthelme joint, have appeared in numerous magazines, including THE2NDHAND as well as Neon, A Capella Zoo, Pedestal, Night Train, New South and others.

THE2NDHAND broadsheet 33.2, featuring "Kind of Like Birds," by Mairead Case

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:36:16 -0600

The rules for teaching writing in the local juvie? 1. Don't talk about sex. 2. Or drugs. 3. Or therapy or suicide. In Chicago writer and Literago.org editor Mairead Case's "Kind of Like Birds," the featured story in no. 33.2 of our mini-broadsheets series, protagonist Mary finds her ways in and out of and around the prohibitions in any case in her time on duty there. Atlanta writer Lydia Ship's Robobrother rounds out the issue. Readers, please share with interested parties. Available in pdf and easily printed via THE2NDHAND.com/printjump.html, our mini-broadsheets are designed for portability on mobile devices and for print via readers' desktops. Print pages 1 and 2 on the front and back sides, respectively, of 8.5x11-in. paper, read, distributing in mini-stacks or singly in your neighborhoods’ reading-friendly establishments’ bathrooms and other spaces.

CHARLIE's TRAIN, a novella by Heather Palmer | PART 4

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:37:21 -0600

In the previous installment, Charlie made contact with his first lead source, an accountant/abortionist who offers to tell all over breakfast. Then -- broke, famished -- Charlie passed out. In good company, fortunately....

CHARLIE's TRAIN, a novella by Heather Palmer | PART 3

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:06:46 -0600

In the previous installment, Charlie found lodging and ever-contingent work as a newspaperman on his first test run covering a backroom abortionist... whom he is about to meet.

WING & FLY: THE BRICK COMETH

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:26:34 -0600

THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills details happ's at the coming Brick Reading Series event at East Nashville's Portland Brew coffeehouse Mar. 12.

HIDEOUS BOUNTY: THE FRONTIERSMEN

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:24:55 -0600

Find here the newest in the hideously comic illustrated series, a beautifully mannered yet cosmic distillation of man unmoored. Artist Andrew Davis brings it to you from Indianapolis, Ind., where he works with ceramics, college students, comics and paint -- the series began in November 2008.

COTTON CANDY AND BURNING TIRES, by Alexis Thomas

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:19:40 -0600

A fantastic transformation of protagonist/antagonist into octopi in this Thomas' debut at THE2NDHAND.com. She lives and writes in Chicago, where she'll be featured in the all-city finals for the competitive Windy City Story Slam this Friday, Feb.26, at the Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee, Chicago.

CHARLIE's TRAIN, a novella by Heather Palmer | PART 2

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:03:05 -0600

In the first installment, Charlie disembarked in Chicago on a mission of as-yet-indeterminate nature -- here we find out he's got some big ideas about the women who sent him, and things begin to get disturbing.

SODIUM VAPOR, by Zachary Cole

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:10:01 -0600

A 'Manhattan Transfer' in miniature, and in Maine, where Cole is based. Check out his "Blue Carts," too, in case you missed it, after this (Elwood from this story, if we remember correctly, figured prominently there).

CHARLIE's TRAIN, a novella by Heather Palmer

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:04:31 -0600

Herein find the first installment of a novella by Chicago-based Palmer, to be serialized over the next few months at THE2NDHAND.com. In this first edition, Charlie disembark's from train 5991 to find a city unready for him. . . .

SO YOU THINK YOU HAVE NERVES OF STEEL?, by Jill Summers

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 21:14:41 -0600

The first-run work growing from our Chicago reading series of the same title. Summers is a regular on the Chicago lit scene, and to THE2NDHAND's halls -- read on for something between philosophical exegesis and short fiction, rumination on the notion of steel and nerves made of it, in which the shit flies, literally and...

THE2NDHAND broadsheet 33.1, featuring 1997, by C.T. Ballentine

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:40:58 -0600

In 2007, THE2NDHAND coeditor C.T. Ballentine toured with the Chicago band 1997, intending to pen a novelistic account of the tour. In the intervening months, circumstances both monetary and creative intervened to keep the project from becoming a reality. Nonetheless, Ballentine garnered much gunpowder from the experience, and his explosive distillation of the lot is here, in this Feb. 2010 first in our mini-broadsheet series in 8.5-by-11-inch format. We encourage readers to print pages 1 and 2 on the front and back sides, respectively, of somewhat heavy paper, folding once if desired, and distribute hand-to-hand, DIY style in mini-stacks in your neighborhoods' establishments' bathrooms and other reading-friendly spaces, or however you see fit. For more about the band 1997, visit their site. For more from Ballentine, including his 2006-07 novella "Friedrich Nietzsche Waits for a Date," follow this link. This issue also features a short by longtime THE2NDHAND contributor Doug Milam, author of the wonderful collection Still the Confusion. HAND with the personal epistemology of the accident...

BROADSHEET no. 33 released, featuring Kate Duva, C.T. Ballentine

Sun, 6 Dec 2009 10:47:45 -0600

LIFE ON THE FRONTIER, by Chicago resident and native Kate Duva, is THE2NDHAND’s 33rd broadsheet. Duva's been plying the brains of THE2NDHAND readers for several years now, and her mix of arch-weird with arch-real makes for a explosively brittle manifestation of reality in this the longest story she's published in these halls, about a young woman's sojourn at what she sees as the edges of American civilization, working as a nurse in state group homes for aging mentally challenged people. Catch Duva Feb. 8, 2010, at Whistler in Chicago at the second installment of our new reading series, So You Think You Have Nerves of Steel? This issue also features a short by THE2NDHAND coeditor C.T. Ballentine.