Gigantic magazine


the blood of the writers and the beer of the bars


GIGANTIC PRESS ROUND-UP

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Last weekend’s LitCrawl–which included Gigantic amongst many other fine NYC magazines and was a featured Goings on About Town in The New Yorker–was a great success. If you missed it, you can vicariously live the excitement in Suzanne Pettypiece’s article for Poets & Writers, Lit Crawl: Postcard From New York City. Gigantic‘s tale starts at the bottom of page one and continues for most of page two.

At 8 PM, right on schedule, the thumping dance music softened and the lights dimmed. A disco ball hanging just overhead splattered the audience and walls with red dots. Author Tao Lin—whose new press, Muumuu House, hosted its own event, Cash-Money-Obama Millionaires—stood up from where he was sitting on the floor, just beside the towering DJ booth, and gave us our first sign that we were about to be served from a nontraditional literary menu.

Also check out this video, the second half of which shows Tao Lin‘s Gigantic microreading as well as a short interview with Gigantic co-editor James Yeh.

tao at lit crawl

Gigantic Microreaders for the night included Ben Blum, Andrew Bulger, Matt Di Paoli, Yuka Igarashi, Tao Lin and James J. Williams III.

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Gigantic received a very nice shout out over at the New Pages blog:

The first issue of Gigantic is out, and it indeed holds up to its name (or rather, needs to be held up). This puppy is big, but in a fun-to-read-on-the-bus sort of way, and I imagine the superlarge, four-color image by Nat Russel of dancing cowboys is going to end up decorating a lot of walls.

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Lastly, McNally Jackson has some financial advice for you:

For $3.00, you could maybe buy a small fancy coffee drink, or a half of a pint of beer, or three normal-sized Snickers. You could also buy Gigantic. Gigantic is a brand new literary magazine, very big with many very small, very great things inside–like Ed Park’s story about visiting a nursing home, Jason Morphew’s poem about balls (yes), and lots of drawings that I only want to call “hand-drawn.” You should buy Gigantic with your $3.00.



Gigantic Microreading at Home Sweet Home, Saturday May 16

cropped-litcrawl1062

Gigantic Microreading

Less is more. More is also more.

Please join Gigantic, a new magazine of short prose and art, for three minute readings and/or artistic presentations from Gigantic #1 contributors Tao Lin, Shane Jones, James J. Williams III, Yuka Igarashi, Ben Blum, Andrew Bulger and Matt Di Paoli.

This event is a part of Lit Crawl NYC 2009. For updates and a full schedule of the night’s events, check it out here.

Saturday 5.16.09, 8pm

Home Sweet Home

131 Chrystie Street

New York, NY

J, M, or Z to Bowery

B or D to Grand

Ben Blum holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Berkeley. He is a fiction intern at The New Yorker and teaches writing to second graders at PS 110.

Andrew Bulger is a Brooklyn based artist and philosopher. He received a graduate degree in Philosophy from the London School of Economics and has since been exploring his preoccupations in art’s own language.

Yuka Igarashi is an MFA candidate in fiction at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Quick Fiction and Gigantic. She lives farther out than you do in Brooklyn.

Tao Lin (b. 1983) is the author of the forthcoming novella SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL (Sept. 2009, Melville House) and four previous books.

James J. Willams III is an artist and curator. He has had solo exhibtions in New York, Paris, London, Berlin and Miami. James is seeking help for his growing Law and Order addicton.

Matthew Di Paoli is a native New Yorker. At Boston College, he received the Dever Fellowship and recently completed his MFA at Columbia.

Shane Jones is the author of the novel LIGHT BOXES (PGP 2009). His next book, THE FAILURE SIX, will be published by Fugue State Press in January 2010.



Gigantic around the city

shoppingcart “Shopping cart” by Andrew Bulger

Busy week for Gigantic contributors and friends (contributors in bold):

Tue 3.3.09 Tao Lin and Justin Taylor interviewed by Todd Zuniga for Opium Magazine Live. 8pm, free, Happy Ending, literary DJ party thing afterward

Wed 3.4.09 Ben Blum and Justin Taylor at Writers & Teachers. 7pm, free, Center for Imaginative Writing

Fri 3.6.09 James Yeh at the 5th annual Howl Festival hosted by Columbia University. 8pm, $10 (?), reading from On the Road by Jack Kerouac, accompanied by former Beat collaborator David Amram

Mon 3.9.09 Tao Lin, Deb Olin Unferth, and Christine Schutt at the International Center Literary Mixer. 7 pm, free, wine & “quiche”



Gigantic #1: One-Sentence Prose Preview

GIGANTIC #1 PREVIEW POST (1 of 3)

Art (with Nate Russell, Todd Zuniga, Jerome Jakubiec and more) and interviews (with Malcolm Gladwell, Deb Olin Unferth, Gary Shteyngart, Sam Lipsyte and more) to come!

gigantictree1

Andrew Bulger

One-Sentence Prose Preview


The look of: I want to tear your bloody head off.
Derek Johnson as distorted by Rozalia Jovanovic

It was just large enough for me to fit my arm through.
Ben Blum

Mostly I drive in search of half-wits at public libraries, all day bars, halfway houses, and Sears Roebucks.
Doug Elsass

…taking a wheel off a skateboard and taping the hamster to where the wheel was and trying to skateboard with one wheel as a hamster…
Tao Lin

It wasn’t like there wasn’t discussion.
Yuka Igarashi

She asks me if I watched the news and I say I don’t watch the news and she should know that.
Matt Di Paoli

GO LOOK AT THE CALENDAR AND WRITE DOWN WHAT IT SAYS THEY DO ON WEDNESDAY YOU’LL KNOW WHAT I MEAN WHEN YOU SEE IT.
Ed Park

Our neighbors had been hosting a slumber party.
Kristen O’Toole

“Are we going to have to participate?” my husband asked.
Anya Yurchyshyn

He reminds me that it isn’t an ocean, it’s a river, and then he asks me what my problem is.
Dan Bevacqua

If asked, I would even say she is sweet all over, and would mean what I said, though of course this is figurative language.
Justin Taylor

Also, we lived in a village of giants.
Shane Jones

347.242.0434
Kenny Aquiles

Then he looked at porn on his grandfather’s computer and accidentally spilled jizz on his grandfather’s tackle box.
Lauren Spohrer

The nightly detonations continue.
Pedro Ponce

“I’m not a bad girl,” she said, as if morality had something to do with it.
Adam Wilson