Saturday, February 1, 2020
New Personal Essay Published by Hobart
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I have a new personal essay published by Hobart today. I've started the terrifying exercise of writing more nonfiction. As in my fiction, my brothers are my muse here. This piece is mostly about being a late 80s little shit and just being with them. Thanks so much for reading, which you can do so HERE.
09/26/15 - Pygmalion Literary Festival!
04/09/15 - Black Lawrence Press Reading!
11/20/14 - Families Among Us Book Tour!
10/29/14 - Families Among Us Book Launch!
4/17/14 - ALOUD Reading Series!
5/18/13 - UCI MFA Reading Series!
11/16/12 - Don Heiney Tribute!
4/22/12 - Tent Reading!
10/16/11 - UCI MFA Reading Series!
4/28/11 - Underneath the Bunker!
3/16/11 - Monkeybicycle Lightening Round!
2024
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.
story collection
Selected Work:
- D Magazine (Fiction Issue, July 2022)
- A Fire to Light Our Tongues: Texas Writers on Spirituality (Anthology, TCU Press, May 2022)
- D Magazine (Fiction Issue, July 2021)
- SmokeLong Quarterly (March 2021)
- Moon City Review (March 2021)
- McSweeney's (August 2020)
- D Magazine (Fiction Issue, July 2020)
- The Dallas Morning News (April 2020)
- Hobart (February 2020)
- D Magazine (Fiction Issue, July 2019)
- McSweeney's (February 2019)
- Booth 12 (May 2018)
- VICE (November 2017)
- The Los Angeles Review (September 2017)
- Malibu Magazine (August 2017)
- Monkeybicycle (July 2017)
- Malibu Magazine (January 2017)
- Redivider 13.2 (June 2016)
- Faultline 25 (June 2016)
- Booth (January 2016)
- The Boiler 18 (January 2016)
- The Best Small Fictions 2015 (Anthology, Guest Editor Robert Olen Butler, October 2015)
- Hobart (July 2015)
- FLAUNT Magazine (Fiction Issue #142, July 2015)
- Green Mountains Review (March 2015)
- McSweeney's (December 2014)
- Day One (December 2014)
- Fiction Southeast (November 2014)
- The Lifted Brow (Australia, September 2014)
- The Masters Review (May 2014)
- Best of Adroit: 2010-2013 (May 2014)
- Longform (January 2014)
- FiveChapters (December 2013)
- Tin House (October, 2013)
- Surreal South '13 (Anthology, Guest Editor Josh Woods, October 2013)
- NOÖ Journal (October 2013)
- Puerto del Sol 48.2 (June 2013)
- The Adroit Journal 7 (reprint, June 2013)
- Structo 9 (England, January 2013)
- Keyhole 12 (December 2012)
- Monkeybicycle (December 2012)
- The Los Angeles Review 12 (November 2012)
- Juked (October 2012)
- Her Royal Majesty 12 (France, May 2012)
- California Public Radio & NPR (March 2012)
- Unstuck Magazine (Contest, March 2012)
- PANK 6.11 (September 2011)
- Monkeybicycle 8 (March 2011)
- The Lifted Brow 7 (Australia, August 2010)
- Short FICTION 3 (England, November 2009)
Reviews of Families Among Us
Author Interviews
- w/ The Make Meaning Podcast (January 2024)
- w/ Smokelong Quarterly (March 2021)
- w/ World Class Performer (February 2021)
- w/ Shoutout DFW (December 2020)
- w/ The Dallas Business Podcast (November 2020)
- w/ Book Riot (May 2020)
- w/ Forbes Magazine (April 2020)
- w/ The Dallas Morning News (April 2020)
- w/ The Advocate Magazine (November 2019)
- w/ Poets & Writers Magazine (September 2019)
- w/ The Fascinating Podcast (May 2019)
- w/ Point of Departure Podcast (January 2019)
- w/ Voyage Dallas (July 2018)
- w/ Writers' League of Texas (November 2017)
- w/ The Other Stories Podcast (August 2015)
- w/ The Weekly Reader on Minnesota Public Radio (April 2015)
- w/ Structo (UK, March 2015)
- w/ Lit Central O.C. (January 2015)
- w/ The Masters Review (December 2014)
- w/ American Microreviews & Interviews (December 2014)
- w/ Monkeybicycle (April 2011)
- w/ PANK (October 2011)
Book Reviews & Essays
- Washington Independent Review of Books (Winter '17)
- Washington Independent Review of Books (Summer '16)
- Literary Mothers - Michelle Latiolais (Summer '14)
- Washington Independent Review of Books (Winter '14)
- Mid-American Review 34.1 (Fall '13)
- Washington Independent Review of Books (Fall '13)
- Washington Independent Review of Books (Summer '13)
- Mid-American Review 33.2 (Spring '13)
- Mid-American Review 33.1 (Fall '12)
Podcasts of My Stories
- Priced to Sell on Forecast Gallery Podcast
- The Other Stories (And Finally the Tragedy)
- Helicopter Wounds (Fiction Southeast)
- Library Foundation of Los Angeles, ALOUD: Writing Our Future
- Skylight Books Reading (UC Irvine MFA Students)
- Donald Mason's City Inspection and the Stakeout Standoff (Monkeybicycle)
- Up and Away (PANK)
- Little Man (Short FICTION, UK)
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
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
"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
-or-
@BlakeKimzey
-or-
tumblr
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
-or-
@BlakeKimzey
-or-
tumblr
@BlakeKimzey
Reading @ Memphis on Main, Urbana, IL
09/26/15 - Pygmalion Literary Festival!
Reading @ AWP Minneapolis 2015
04/09/15 - Black Lawrence Press Reading!
Reading @ Two Bronze Doors, Dallas
11/20/14 - Families Among Us Book Tour!
Reading @ THE WILD DETECTIVES, Dallas
10/29/14 - Families Among Us Book Launch!
READING @ LOS ANGELES CENTRAL LIBRARY
4/17/14 - ALOUD Reading Series!
Reading @ Skylight Books, Los Angeles
5/18/13 - UCI MFA Reading Series!
Tribute Reading @ UCI University Club
11/16/12 - Don Heiney Tribute!
Reading @ LA Times Festival of Books
4/22/12 - Tent Reading!
READING @ THE GYPSY DEN, CA
10/16/11 - UCI MFA Reading Series!
Reading @ Prairie Lights, Iowa City
4/28/11 - Underneath the Bunker!
Reading @ The Cake Shop, NYC
3/16/11 - Monkeybicycle Lightening Round!
Followers
Artists/Writers I Admire:
- Artist Andrew Casto
- Artist Danielle Kimzey
- Artist Julia Schwadron
- Artist Leigh Ruple
- Artist Michael Perrone
- Artist Tex Grubbs
- Photographer Josh Dick
- Writer Aimee Bender
- Writer Ashley M. Farmer
- Writer Austin Ratner
- Writer Ben Loory
- Writer George Saunders
- Writer Izzy Prcic
- Writer Marisa Matarazzo
- Writer Matt Bell
- Writer Matt Sumell
- Writer Ramona Ausubel
- Writer Ryan Ridge
- Writer Shya Scanlon
Literary Magazines and Other Outlets:
3 comments:
What a fantastic story. Makes me yearn for more.
I loved reading this quick and easy story by Blake for many reasons, but perhaps most of all because it whisks me back to more innocent and forgiving days, while giving me an honest yet brief glimpse of his boyhood world.
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