Matsuki Kousuke

There's something totally unreal about Matsuki Kousuke's photography. Equal parts cinematographic, shadowed, arty and candid, he has an unbelievable way of capturing a moment to film, however whimsical, absurd or mundane. I kind of love it a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Check out his work over on his website (also check out his adorable artist portrait! It is the greatest). 

  

 

 

Sunday Short: Giraffe by Chris Somerville

It took us two days to drive out here. In the car, with the windows down and our backs sweating, Rachel played her learn-to-speak German cassette tapes endlessly. I did try to follow along, but soon enough I’d lose interest and look out the window and worry. I was convinced she was playing these tapes so she could talk without having a conversation. I wondered if she was seeing a man from Germany. I hit pause on the tape player.

Chris Somerville's been around for a while, and has a pretty innate ability at neurosis in a way that's both incredibly funny and incredibly sad. Giraffe is no exception to this. A strangely biting piece about a couple visiting an aging, madding relative, the characters in this are both familiar and surprising. It's really nice stuff.

You can read Giraffe over on the Bumf website.

Friday Finds

i dont want to be infantilized because i refuse to be sexualized 

Lack of capitalisation aside, musician Grimes has written a pretty cool feminist tirade over on her tumblr about treatment of women in music and women generally. It's well worth the read.

- Writer Unboxed has talked to literary agents about what NOT to include in the first chapter of your novel.

- Danielle Binks has put together a really interesting post on the new adult genre and the effect that fad-erotica like 50 Shades is having on the genre and the readership.

- Strange Horizons has also released a study of why you haven't heard of most female SF authors. 

- io9 also has three new books that will prepare you for the future of humanity which is cray. On the note of the above too, all three are awesome lady writers which is great.

- F, Marry, Kill: The 2013 Summer Movie Guide! I can already see a few months in the cinema. There are soooo many movies I want to see coming out.

- Also, how great are these picture of a Brooklyn gang in 1959? I'm really feeling it.

- In tumblr news, poets without clothes exists.

- Annnnd, on the other hand, how great is Ksubi's new collection? I'm loving the sci-fi-ish feel to it.

Your Mid-Week Art Break: Dan Mountford

I'm really feeling Dan Mountford's double exposure photography. The layering of place and person meets so perfectly and create these intricate and compelling works of art. It's all pretty amazing. Check out more of his work over on flickr.

Hana Haley: Ruby

I'm really feeling the photography of Hana Haley lately, a 22-year-old, San Francisco native. Her use of colour, shape, movement and hair to generate narrative in her photos is pretty awesome. You can check out her collections over at her website.

Shameless Self-Promotion

One of the funny things about writing and submitting to publications unsolicited means that you're sort of at the mercy of the people who staff it. Not that that's a bad thing at all, just a thing I guess. As it turns out, I've been submitting quite a bit this year, as a part of a new year's resolution to suck less, and everything has sort of happened at once, meaning I have been lucky enough to have three things published in April (!!). Two fiction pieces and one opinion piece. I keep meaning to write about it on here, but I'm really not all that good at pimping myself out (I'll get better, I swear!)

Anyway, you can read fiction piece one, Russian Dolls online for free care of Seizure and the opinion piece, Just Say Yes at LipMag Online. If you're so inclined too, you can purchase Voiceworks #92 and read fiction piece two, Paper Pilgrims, from the Voiceworks website.

Sunday Short: Scratch 'n' Sniff by Lucy Butler

Sitting on the verandah, watching the wind come up as it does mid-morning late-summer, or is it late-morning mid-summer? (Here she is, impaled on a hyphen again.) Tanning her legs and flipping through a book he’d lent her late one night.

I'm really into this sort of snapshot short fiction at the moment. Writing that captures a really brief moment in a character's life and the rollout of that accordingly. Scratch 'n' Sniff by Lucy Butler is a really good example of that sort of writing, with a scratch 'n' sniff book playing a catalyst for a moment between two people. It's pretty lovely. You can read Scratch 'n' Sniff over at the Rag and Bone Man website.