Saturday Morning Post: Barrelhouse

Here's a special Saturday post. I should call it, and will call it, the Saturday Morning Post. Information from local literary journal Barrelhouse. Everyone should know: Barrelhouse actually kind of got started at The Writer's Center. Meaning: Once upon a time, the guys who founded this journal were all taking a workshop here. They met, fell in love, and decided to do something really crazy. Okay, maybe two out of three of those (to poorly and incompletely paraphrase Meatloaf). Anyway, they've got some news I'd like to share to Writer's Center members and readers of this blog. Next month one of the editors, Dave Housley, will be the subject of a Friday interview. He'll introduce the journal and tell us more about how it got started and where it's going. For those of you who want to check this journal out after visiting their website, we do sell the journal at our bookstore. Check it out.

The following info comes directly from Barrelhouse:

SITE REDESIGN

For everything we've been up to check out the new www.barrelhousemag.com. Barrelhouse has just redesigned and relaunched our website. Check it out. Pretty fancy, right? It doesn’t just look shiny and new, we’ve got a lot of new stuff for you, too.

THE SWAYZE QUESTION

For the past five years, we’ve concluded every interview with the same question: what’s your favorite Patrick Swayze movie? We’ve asked Ian MacKaye and Chuck Klosterman and the Hold Steady and Malcolm Gladwell and literally anybody who would talk to us. Now, in honor of Patrick Swayze, somewhat patron saint of Barrelhouse and star of some of our favorite bad movies (and a few of our favorite good ones), we’ve pulled together all the responses to The Swayze Question.


NEW ONLINE ISSUE

A fresh online issue featuring a lament for the wasted life of a Bond villain’s henchman, Elvis obliterating action figures with a rifle while blown out on cocaine, a Facebook note gone awry, lyrics from a cliché-obsessed-Nashville-songwriter-turned-lunatic, a statement on womanhood, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, all by Tara Laskowski, Sean Lovelace, Kevin Winchester, Aaron Gilbreath, Molly Gaudry, and Kevin Wilson, respectively.

GROWLER REVIEWS

Originally a side project, we’ve decided to bring Growler in-house. Growler reviews debut collections of poetry and, soon, fiction. You can read reviews from the archives of first books by Jericho Brown, Timothy Green, Aaron Baker, Anne Boyer, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Fady Joudah, Nate Pritts, Eireann Lorsung, Thomas Heise, and loads more. We’ll be updating regularly so check back to find out the best of the latest.

MIXTAPE

You’re going to have to wait a little longer for this one, but not too long. Mixtape is Barrelhouse’s monthly podcast on the indie lit scene. It’s just like This American Life, but without all the high production values and famous authors with interestingly whiny voices. Our first episode focuses on Baltimore, and features interviews with publishing genius and head of Publishing Genius Adam Robinson, as well as Michael Kimball and Smartish Pace’s Stephen Reichert. Mixtape will launch in mid/late September. We’ll let you know when it’s here.

SUBMISSIONS

We are once again willing to read your writings and make judgments about their value relative to our bottom line. THIS IS A BUSINESS, DAMN IT! For real, though, we’re happy to read your work and appreciate that you’d consider Barrelhouse a home for your stories and poems. We’re open for everything right now—fiction, poetry, non-fiction, online, art, whatever other new genre-bending thing you’re working on.

BARRELHOUSE INVITATIONAL: SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK AND ROLL

And in More Submissions news, we’re launching a new contest – the Barrelhouse Invitational: Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll Edition. Send us your best fiction, poems, and essays on the aforementioned topic (come on, you know you think about it all the time anyway). We’ll choose the ones we like best and print them in a special sexy, druggy, and rock and rolly section of Barrelhouse number 9.

STORE

We’ve got some special deals right now. Five dollar back issues. Fifteen dollar subscriptions. That’s some good bang for your buck. In this economy, you’re not going to find cheaper, high quality, new independent writing unless you look around the Internet some more. One more note, our first issue has been sold out for a long time now so we’ve put the whole dang thing online for free.

THE USUAL

We would have called this section “the ushge” but we couldn’t figure out how to spell it in a way that you’d know what we’re talking about. The ushge, short for “the usual?” Right. We’ve still got all the Barrelhousey goodness you’ve grown accustomed to -- the blog, news updates, and more. So stay tuned and keep plugged in. We’ll keep doing our thing, bringing you the poetry, fiction, pop flotsam and cultural jetsam you love.