Filed under: events, press | Tags: Andrew Bulger, Ben Blum, debut issue, events, Gigantic, james j. williams iii, James Yeh, linked and talked about a little, Litcrawl NYC, Matt Di Paoli, NewPages, tao lin, Yuka Igarashi
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.
Gigantic Microreaders for the night included Ben Blum, Andrew Bulger, Matt Di Paoli, Yuka Igarashi, Tao Lin and James J. Williams III.
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.
Filed under: events, issue #1 | Tags: Bookshops, debut issue, launch party, Website
where you can find it:
on the internets…
pre-website website (new!): www.thegiganticmag.com
on facebook: become a Gigantic magazine fan or join our Gigantic group
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in bookshops…
NEW YORK
St. Mark’s Books
McNally Jackson
Book Culture
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
Spoonbill & Sugartown
Book Court
Envoy Gallery
BOSTON
Harvard Bookstore
Brookline Booksmith
CHICAGO
Quimby’s
IOWA CITY
Prairie Lights
PARIS
Shakespeare & Company
PORTLAND
Powell’s City of Books (Burnside)
SAN FRANCISCO
City Lights
SANTA FE
Downtown Subscription
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in person…
at the launch party at starr space
Saturday, April 25, Listen to readers and live music and enter a raffle for original artwork by artists featured in issue 1. write-up in time out new york here:
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Gigantic #1
DIALOGUES // Malcolm Gladwell / Tao Lin / Gary Shteyngart / Deb Olin Unferth / Joe Wenderoth // FICTION // Kenny Aquiles / Dan Bevacqua / Ben Blum / Matt Di Paoli / Doug Elsass / Howard Good / Yuka Igarashi / Derek Johnson / Shane Jones / Kristen O’Toole / Ed Park / Pedro Ponce / Lauren Spohrer / Justin Taylor / Adam Wilson / Anya Yurchyshyn // SEIZURE STATE // Joe Wenderoth / Jason Morphew // ART // Andrew Bulger / Mark Hewko / Jerome Jakubiec / Kevin Kwan / Joanna Neborsky / Thomas Pierce / Nathaniel Russell / Erin Grey West / James J. Williams III / Todd Zuniga
$3
(online ordering info here)
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and in case you’ve forgotten
Gigantic launch party // Sat. April 25th // Starr Space
108 Starr Street in Bushwick. L train to Jefferson.
$6 dollar donation, comes with free copy of issue #1
Live music by The Five Cents and Adron
Short readings and presentations by Todd Zuniga, Justin Taylor and others
Late night DJing from King Vitamin, DJ HemingYeh and Cormac McBootay
8 pm to 3 am
There is also a flier
Filed under: events | Tags: Adam Wilson, Anya Yurchyshyn, Cormac McBootay, debut issue, DJ HemingYeh, events, Justin Taylor, Kenny Aquiles, Kristen O'Toole, Lauren Spohrer, Todd Zuniga
Filed under: issue #1 | Tags: debut issue, Gigantic, Gigantic magazine, Joe Wenderoth, Seizure State
GIGANTIC welcomes Joe Wenderoth as the SEIZURE STATE Editor
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“The SEIZURE STATE begins when someone understands that it is as impossible to go on as it is to not go on.” – Joe Wenderoth
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Joe Wenderoth, the author of four books of poetry and one essay collection, has created a new culture-agon that aims to unmire itself of poetry and convey how the poetic manifests itself in the SEIZURE of ourselves. It is called INSCRIPTIONS OF THE SEIZURE STATE and it will debut in GIGANTIC Print Issue 1, with work by the first featured SEIZURE PERSON, Jason Morphew.
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GIGANTIC‘s forthcoming website will house the SEIZURE STATE’s corresponding blog, which will be helmed and forced to develop by The Dignitaries of the Seizure State. Dignitaries include Matthew Zapruder as The Grandmother of Whatever Chairs There Are, Stuart Downs as The Secretary to the Green Fire, Gibby Haynes as The Infertile Impetus, and a good few others as others yet. The SEIZURE STATE blog will feature a sort of living poet CANON, an internet porn site CANON, a music CANON, a YouTube CANON, and a SEIZURE cookbook.
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Joe Wenderoth wants everyone to be psyched about THE SEIZURE STATE “generally.”
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WE ARE PSYCHED
Filed under: issue #1 | Tags: Deb Olin Unferth, debut issue, Gary Shteyngart, Gigantic, Gigantic magazine, Joe Wenderoth, Malcolm Gladwell, tao lin
GIGANTIC #1 interview preview post (3/3)
Welcome to the third installment of our debut issue teaser. If you missed them, please check out Prose preview (1/3) and Art preview (2/3)
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DISEMBODIED ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS YOU WILL HAVE TO BUY
THE MAGAZINE TO LEARN
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Gary Shteyngart: Old meat. The Saul Bellow of meats. I don’t know. Sometimes I look at some of these writers, pictures of older writers, I just see all the meat that’s gone into them. Mordecai Richler, case in point. The man looked like a meat at the end of his life. I mean, you know, just put him on a grill and he’s served.
Malcolm Gladwell: Together we killed a goat.
Deb Olin Unferth: They [would] go into a tiny room off the kitchen that held only the TV and a small couch just big enough for the two of them (they were large people) and they’d sit in the dark, not moving, not speaking, the TV flashing, all the lights in the house off. It was a grim scene, man. The husband had obviously stopped speaking years ago beyond the grunts required to stay alive. It was hard to imagine a time when either of them had ever wanted anything. But who knows what pulse was beating in that room.
Tao Lin: Asking me those questions would be like asking a cat “do you think Philip Roth is a good writer or a bad writer who is important?” or something.
Joe Wenderoth: When watching TV, it’s like I become a fond memory of myself. Prior to any bout of watching, Joe Wenderoth lived a life; that life, during the watching, is over—but not annihilated. Instead, it sits comfortably somewhere behind my eyes. I know it’s there, but I rarely consider it. If I do consider it too much, that’s a sign that the show is not working, or that I am not currently capable of agreeing to be dead.