Blake Kimzey's Online Web Presence on the Net: June 2014

Monday, June 2, 2014

My Literary Mother: Michelle Latiolais

I wrote a short essay about Michelle Latiolais for a new project on female literary influence called Literary Mothers. I loved writing about Michelle, her work, her mentorship, and her great influence on my writing. Michelle is much more than a mentor, and I can't thank her enough for everything she has done for me. You can read my essay here.

Literary Mothers is an amazing project with other short essays by Matt Bell on Christine Schutt, Ashley Farmer on Joan Didion, Lincoln Michel on Flannery O’Connor, Deb Olin Unferth on Gertrude Stein, Alissa Nutting on Lynda Barry, and so many more.

I'd especially like to thank series editor Nadxi Nieto for including me in this very important project!

About me

Blake Kimzey is the Founder & Executive Director of WritingWorkshops.com. His collection of short tales, Families Among Us (Black Lawrence Press), was blurbed by Roxane Gay, Ramona Ausubel, & Matt Bell. His work has been adapted for broadcast on NPR and published by Tin House, McSweeney's, Short Fiction, Longform, VICE, and over 70 other literary journals. Blake is a graduate of the MFA Program at UC Irvine and sits on the Board of the Elizabeth George Foundation, and received a generous Emerging Writer Grant from the Foundation. He also co-wrote, with Kyle Minor, a dramatic WWII movie about the war-time actions of Polish underground hero Jan Karski, set for production in 2025. Blake has been awarded fellowships to attend the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and the Vermont Studio Center and a generous grant from Americans for the Arts Foundation. He has taught in the Creative Writing Programs at SMU, UT-Dallas and UC-Irvine.

Press

Words on my Comedic Short Fiction:

Downright Comical. -Newpages

With Donald Mason, Kimzey manages to capture small town pride and paranoia in a delightfully original voice. -The Review Review

"The Boxer" reminded me of a Barry Hannah story. A force of nature. -Editor Christopher Rosenbluth, Puerto del Sol

Blake Kimzey’s "Breeders" has this great narrator. He’s an idiot, but he’s a charming idiot. -Literary Minded

Very engaging in pretty absurd ways...Kimzey is a new voice to me and when I read ['Donald Mason'] I knew he was a great talent. -Steven Seighman via Luna Park

Very funny (and surprisingly touching). -Shya Scanlon, author of The Guild of St. Cooper

"Little Man" was a beautifully written piece and has stayed with me vividly ever since reading it." -Lisa Glass

Kimzey makes insecurity, alcohol, and assholeish-ness funny. I really didn't like this guy but he made for a great read. -Sara Habein, Glorified Love Letters

Words on my Short Tales:

Each of the stories in Blake Kimzey’s astonishing chapbook Families Among Us are intricate, beautifully written universes unto themselves. These stories blur the lines between what is real and what is possible yet they are also intimate and familiar because they are stories about people and connection and the very human desire to be a part of something greater than ourselves. —Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State and Bad Feminist

These stories are like tiny portholes into worlds teeming with rich, surprising life. Blake Kimzey is a master miniaturist. —Ramona Ausubel, author of No One is Here Except All of Us and A Guide to Being Born

Blake Kimzey has given us all the pleasures our imagination can bear, six stories to savor slowly, to break our hearts and then mend them. I wanted more of these good things. —Kyle Minor, author of Praying Drunk and In the Devil's Territory

In Families Among Us, Blake Kimzey’s inventive prose summons six weird worlds of the imagination—but more than anything else, these imagined worlds conjure not some other space but the forgotten weirdness of the world we know, revealed here in all its wondrous everyday magic. —Matt Bell, author of Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods

Following the likes of Orson Welles and his radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds, Rod Serling and the television series The Twilight Zone, and John Carpenter and his film The Thing, Blake Kimzey and his chapbook collection of short stories Families Among Us delve deep into different, yet equally mysterious phenomena. Kimzey’s collection proposes that we need look no further than our own homes and communities for the source of the curious and the bizarre, and it is through these otherworldly, yet earthly, creations that we discover that which binds us all. -Colorado Review, Center for Literary Publishing

I’m happy to say, in all cases, that Families Among Us takes my defenses apart. Without ever resorting to one-to-one symbolic resonances, or hyperbolic strangeness, these stories strike a balance that leaves me feeling both recognized, and impossibly far from home. I also end up wondering how Kimzey walks this line so well. Even as the book remains, start to finish, at a pleasingly odd level of partial-resolution, engaging me with unnamed characters and situations that feel near to allegorical, for me it delivers this simple truth: though the forest is always possible, the town is, and always will be, what we have. -Green Mountains Review

When a writer tells vibrant stories that bleed into the margins, and when a sharp design meets fitting, fascinating artwork, the result is too great to ignore. In other words, the result is Families Among Us. An entire universe lives within these forty pages, spun into existence with the sincere cadence of an ancient origin story. For readers, this chapbook is a welcome pause from realism, a chance to give in to and live briefly in the fantastical. -PANK

"The Boy and The Bear" achieves what all great flash fiction aims to achieve in that readers live in a fully imagined world, even if for only a short time. This story is both magical and sad, and we were immediately drawn to the quality of the writing and the story’s fable-like quality. Simply put, you won’t forget this one. -The Masters Review

"A fine young writer." -The Smart Set

Lovely and Majestic. Kimzey has fashioned six allegories about the inevitability of change, people trying to love what is different from themselves, and the hardship and heartbreak that comes with being part of a family. -The Small Press Book Review

Families Among Us is a daring book. As with Kafka’s work, after living in these stories for a couple days, they get even stranger, and new layers emerge. -Fiction Southeast

Captivating...[Families Among Us] would go on to win the Black River Chapbook Competition, and rightly so; it’s frickin’ great. -Structo (Oxford, England)

Poetic. -Necessary Fiction, 2014 Best-Of Year-End List

Le texte qui a ma préférence est une nouvelle, “Tunneling”, écrite par Blake Kimzey, dans laquelle l’auteur, en très peu de pages, et dans la suite de ce qu’a pu faire quelqu’un comme Joyce Carol Oates. -L'Hermite Critique Littéraire

Surreal, beautiful, unnerving, and all-round awesome. -Kit Frick, Black Lawrence Press Chapbook Editor

Contact:
bgkimzey@gmail.com
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@BlakeKimzey
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