Forthcoming: Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie is one funny guy. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry and short stories, adult and young adult novels, and four screenplays, including the 1999 award-winning film Smoke Signals. He was the recipient of the National Book Award prize for Young People’s Literature in 2007, and the PEN/Faulnker award winner for his novel War Dances in 2010. Yet despite his many successes, Sherman Alexie maintains an easy going attitude and a witty, self-deprecating sense of humor. From my own experience seeing him speak at the kick-off of ASU’s Project Humanities last February, I can attest to the fact that Alexie really knows how to work an audience. When he read his poetry, you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium. But most of his speech was riotously funny, and whether he was recalling an anecdote about his daily life or poking fun at ASU’s president Michael Crow, he had the audience crippled with laughter.

What makes Sherman Alexie’s humor so outstanding is his fearless confrontation of difficult subjects. During his speech for Project Humanities he discussed racial stereotypes, sexism, and homophobia, always with his trademark wit. If you visit his website or follow him on Twitter (which I highly recommend), you will see the same thing: his unflinching willingness to speak his mind about social issues. Yet his convictions never overtake his artistic integrity. Instead they connect his work to the day-to-day world and prompt the reader to reconsider their assumptions about privilege, race, and class. Sherman Alexie is truly one of America’s most valuable writers, and we are very pleased to publish his work in Issue 8 of Superstition Review.

Visit his website at www.fallsapart.com

 

Checking In/Checking Out & Airplanereading.org

Recently, Christopher Schaberg and Mark Yakich released Checking In/Checking Out, a two-sided book dedicated to “airplane reading.” In a continuous effort to expand airplane reading, the co-authors launched a corollary website: airplanereading.org. With the intent of collecting stories about air travel and making such stories available to the public, all stories submitted are “archived indefinitely.” The website encourages submissions of unpublished nonfiction (1000 words or fewer) related to air travel.

The categories labeling the anecdotes on the website range from Atlanta to Cell Phones and Death to Enhanced Pat-Downs. The stories are, for the most part, humorous, though not all of them are about specific experiences; rather, some are more collective such as “One Flight Stands” by Lauren Frederick. Others are pastiches, like Harold Jaffe’s “Docufictions.” And still others are serious re-tellings and explorations of how airplane travel came to affect the authors.

The spectrum of subject matter is so varied, so nuanced, that often the motif that links them to together—air travel or planes—is but a shadow. And yet, this variation is what perhaps will manifest Schaberg and Yakich’s vision, that will garner for airplane reading a vehicle to “rejuvenate the experience of flight.”

Airplanereading.org is always accepting submissions of air travel related nonfiction, and posts daily. On the right side of the web page, the link to submit is clearly marked, “Everyone has a story to tell…Submit yours here.”