Lucy K. Shaw's Blog

oscarbrunodartois:

this book i edited has work by some very cool people in it & is out now

it’s $5 on amazon

Hi, here are some interviews re: my second book, WAVES

@ Hobart with Elle Nash

@ Word Riot with Andrew Worthington

@ Cosmonauts Avenue with Sofia Banzhaf

Dennis Cooper recommended it at The Creative Independent as one of ‘Five favorite books by newer writers that I’ve read in 2016′ (!)

You can get it with Sarah Jean Alexander’s LOUD IDIOTS at secondbook.club

bushwickreview:

I highly recommend you buy Sarah Jean Alexander and Lucy K Shaw’s second books. They can be purchased as a two-book double feature for only $5. 

Both Sarah Jean Alexander and Lucy K Shaw are beloved contributors to The Bushwick Review and I love the surprise way these two dropped their second books. Coming off Wild Lives and The Motion, the move reminds me of Kendrick Lamar nonchalantly dropping Untitled Unmastered after To Pimp a Butterfly. 

When I was writing my new book, WAVES, I always had one document open for the text and another one open with old photos I took, for inspiration. Did you ever try this? It is my new favorite way to write. (Although I guess I needed to ~plan years in advance to do it.) 

I put a selection of the photos up on my website. They act as a kind of companion to the book or maybe as a lil trailer depending on if you’ve read it.

LKSHOW.BIZ/WAVES

secondbooks:

LOUD IDIOTS by Sarah Jean Alexander

$5 Double feature with WAVES by Lucy K Shaw

63 pages. April 2016. Cover design by Jake Muilenburg

’ Watching my cat licking her belly on my bedroom floor with her legs stretched out over her head, I think yeah, get in there, fucking get in there, and then I say it out loud.’

Sarah Jean Alexander is an American writer from Baltimore. She wrote WILDLIVES (Big Lucks Books, 2015) and edits Shabby Doll House. She tweets @sarahjeanalex

1. Originally, WAVES was going to be called WHY I AM NOT A POPSTAR and it was going to be a collection of short stories bookended by a couple of essays. I had it all planned out. The essays were going to be, ‘How I Became A Writer’ which I wrote last year and ‘Why I Am Not A Popstar’ which ended up becoming WAVES instead. Only, WAVES isn’t an essay. WAVES is probably best described as ‘a novelette.’ And I decided not to include anything else alongside it.

2. (I was trying to distract myself from another book about life and fear and terrorism that I started writing last year but got derailed from sometime around Christmas.)

3. Remember: when writing about your current terror starts to feel like too much, you can always dredge up some past traumas to distract yourself.

4. If something feels too painful to write about, you can simply wait 5 years and tell a fictionalized version of events through a character.

5. I told Sarah Jean that I wanted to do an ebook and she said that she had an idea for an ebook too and so we started working together, sending pages back and forth.

6. We work in very different ways. Sarah writes really fast and asked me to look at new parts of her book regularly. Every few hours sometimes. I would make a suggestion and she would change something and say, ‘What about now?’ And I would say, ‘Yeah!’

7. But I always feel like I need at least a completed outline of a draft before I can show anyone something I’m working on. I showed the WAVES manuscript to Sarah for the first time when the whole storyline was in place but the text was only 3000 words. Then again at 6000 words. And then again once  it was all complete. She left a lot of comments on my google doc.

8. She would ask me questions like, ‘Does your character still think about her friend who died?’ and ‘What was so great about this guy anyway?’ And then I would go back and fill in the blanks with more information.

9. We have been editing together for four years now. Our own writing and other people’s.

10. The day before the publication of LOUD IDIOTS and WAVES, she wrote in an email to me, ‘[writing this] with you has been more fun than anything i’ve worked on creatively in a long long time!’

11. And I said, SAME.

12. WAVES is a story that has taken me over five years to write.

13. Emotionally, I mean! I couldn’t have done it before.

14. There is this Gustave Flaubert quote that I kept thinking of, it goes: ‘Be regular and ordinary in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.’

15. I happily/temporarily/finally reached that point while I was writing this book. I went to bed early almost every night.

16. And then I woke up really early and continued writing.

17. WAVES was the working title of Kanye’s new album, The Life Of Pablo, for about a week.

18. The Waves is a book by Virginia Woolf, needless to say.

19. Both of those people are referenced in this story so that seemed kind of funny to me, to name it that.

20. Plus there’s a lot of water in it.

21. The cover is by Michael Inscoe. I asked him to make it because, when I thought about the story, I just thought, he will represent it best. I don’t know why.

22. I just love Michael!

23. I’m really happy about the way these two books fit together. LOUD IDIOTS by Sarah Jean Alexander and WAVES by me. I am so lucky to have Sarah Jean as a great friend and a great writer to write weird books with.

24. Anyway, if you’re interested, they are both available now at secondbook.club

secondbooks:

WAVES by Lucy K Shaw

$5 Double feature with LOUD IDIOTS by Sarah Jean Alexander

81 pages. April 2016. Cover design by Michael Inscoe

‘Nobody knew us. Nobody cared about us. Nobody wanted to. We just roamed around the west end of the city like we were totally chill with the recent apocalypse and it was so sweet while it lasted. It lasted about six months.‘

Lucy K Shaw wrote The Motion (421 Atlanta, 2015) and edits Shabby Doll House. She lives in Berlin and tweets @LKShowbiz.

NEW BOOK

subbedin:

I was first introduced to the community of Subbed In under a big fig tree with a glass or two of white wine in me; the simple viewer. The second time, I was a flighty acquaintance to Subbed In, now as a: “I’m-trying-to-look-three-dimensional,” reader. This has been the most thrilling juxtaposition I’ve ever experienced in my life thus far. It beats that one time I was with upper-class city friends waiting twenty minutes for a train at my local station. Mind you, my local station has a burnt down tattoo parlour and IGA on one side, and on the Other Side, we have what my friend calls: “the best damn burger” from a blatantly racist tuck-shop and yet another IGA. Heavenly I know.

Founded in March 2015, Subbed In showcases literary talents of local and interstate champions (and plain old emerging artists) by the work from the wonderful Dan and Stacey. Subbed In, since it’s launch, has showcased more than fifty writers, playing across sharehouse kitchens, backyards, parks and The National Young Writer’s Festival. Subbed In keeps everything peachy sweet and simple – it’s all about the art folks! Subbed In plan to mix it up with more readings, dual readings, publishing fairs and music events over the coming year and beyond.

Before Subbed In, I always considered the fact that because I was born and raised (I say with hyper-masculinity) in Western Sydney, I was a bit useless. No one takes you seriously when you say you’re from Mount Druitt. No one takes you seriously when you say you’re from Mount Druitt and you’re a writer. No one takes you seriously when you say you’re from Mount Druitt and you’re a writer and you study at Western Sydney University and you’re not white and you get Centrelink every now and then and…It’s safe to says there’s a lot of factors as to why a lot of people look over Western Sydney in general. And if we are “seen,” we are seen as a location with something to pity and fear.

I have a lot of friends who want to be something. Including myself. Creatives in Western Sydney do indeed exist. We are a collective community who has never asked for the pity of the privileged. We only ask to be equal and respected. A lot of people think Western Sydney is small and therefore small-minded. I wouldn’t necessarily say that a region spanning 8,941 square kilometers with 14 regional councils and over a hundred cultures and spoken languages other than English, something small.

What I adore most about Subbed In is that the creators have always been about equality. Every Subbed In event always acknowledges that Australian land is Aboriginal land; poets are given the chance to define themselves without social judgment, and audience members sit with attentive respect and utter love for the creativity in language. It occurred to me, in that Newtown backyard, that no one in Subbed In is defined by what others have once told them to be. No one is afraid to be who they are. No one cares that I’m from Western Sydney. Subbed In has been the first ever space within the City that I felt complete disconnect – meaning myself. I am from Western Sydney but I am not Western Sydney itself. Everyone at Subbed In treated me almost like a newborn human. I came straight out from a warm, dark womb as an adult and read some poetry. People wanted to ask me about the themes in my work, take note on how my hands shook as I performed, but how soothing my voice was. I wanted to compliment everybody. I wanted to shout excitedly about the books I have read, my desire to research, and my continuous thoughts about androgyny/memory/physicality. Not once did anyone ask me where I was from.

I would like to take this space to thank Subbed In for creating the closest damn thing I will ever feel to creative equality for now. Subbed In allowed for my first big step in writing, and I felt comfortable and memorable throughout the entire process. It’s so difficult to create such an equal space, but the right people, with the right love of art, makes everything look so easy.  

Winnie Dunn is currently in her third year of studying a Bachelor of Arts Pathway to Secondary Teaching at Western Sydney University. She majors in English and sub-majors in Modern History and Education. Winnie has been published in WSU’s magazine, and she blogs for The Red Room Poetry Company.

When I was 20, I found an edition of Frank O’Hara’s selected poems and it felt like the best party I have ever been to. Up until then, I don’t think I had ever actually enjoyed a poem, so that was a major revelation for me. Here are some things I have done to celebrate:

1. In college, I spray painted ‘oh god it’s wonderful’ onto a wall…
2. When I moved to Toronto, I cut out the words, ‘I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world’ and arranged them onto another wall…
3. I found a mannequin on the street and brought it home and hand-wrote the poem ‘My Heart’ on its chest with a sharpie.
4. For years when I was an anonymous internet user, my blog was titled, ‘that painting’s not so blue’ and the tagline was, ‘in a sense we’re all winning (we’re alive)’
5. When I was depressed and delusional and alone in Barcelona, I went to the Travessera de Gracia to see why he would rather be ‘having a coke with you’ than sick to his stomach on that street.
6. When I was depressed and delusional and alone in New York, I stood outside a house he had lived in and felt like a creep.
7. On the day after Amy Winehouse died, I tried to write a poem in the style of ‘The Day Lady Died’, his tribute to Billie Holiday. (Good in theory.)
8. I started Shabby Doll House.
9. I wrote a book of stories and used a section of his manifesto, Personism, as the epigraph, including the words: ‘You have to take your chances and try to avoid being logical. Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you.’
10. I brought the same copy of his selected poems to every country/city/apartment I have lived in for eight years and still have it here right now. The only consistent object in my life, maybe…
11. I gave myself permission to believe in love because of his poem, St Paul And All That? (Too much.)

Anyway, happy world poetry day. I often catch myself thinking, ‘I hate poetry’ but actually I think it is one of the best things there is.