MN Year in Review at mnartists.org

The folks over at mnartists.org have collected quite a comprehensive list of artistic endeavors taken on and/or accomplished by artists, musicians, and writers from Minnesota in 2008. And they were nice enough to include a couple of my scribbles on the matter (including a shameless plug for InDigest). First is my review of my good friend Chris Koza's latest disc, which I was lucky enough to hear in its making in a small apartment in Brooklyn a couple of summers ago:

Chris Koza's Dark, Delirious Morning: This album holds some highlights in the impressive canon of Koza albums. "Straight to Video" shows a talented artist refusing to be boxed into what we might expect. This album makes me excited to see what Koza will do next, while leaving me something to work through while I'm waiting.

And then some great books by Dave Schwartz and Geoff Herbach...and a nice little magazine:

Dave Schwartz's Superpowers is an amazing novel by a local author in 2008 that is all the more so because, in less careful hands, the book could have been awful. His handling of the events of 9/11 is heartbreaking and understated and beautiful. Also released last year was Geoff Herbach's The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg (read a great review from Ashleigh Lambert at InDigest here), an unapologetically uplifting book and, as always with Herbach, hilarious. And, lastly, my shameless plug for InDigest Magazine. Although we technically launched in 2007, InDigest came into its own in 2008. From the beginning we've offered a unique home for Minnesota writers and artists to be showcased on a national and international stage, and in our anniversary issue we published many of our favorite Minnesota writers and artists again.

Check out all the lists here>>>

Lastly, if you are reading this today and you are in New York and you don't come to Chris Koza's show at Piano's tonight, then we are no longer friends.

Guernica Magazine Praised on Esquire's Blog

Guernica Magazine, where I am the Blog Editor, got a little praise from Esquire for our fiction section. The Fiction section editor, Meakin Armstrong, has been published twice in InDigest and will be reading at our second InDigest 1207 on Feb. 4, along with Guernica's Poetry Editor, Erica Wright, who we've also published a couple times in InDigest.

Well played, Meakin.

InDigest Has Been Planning Things

InDigest Issue 8

Not sure why it's taken me so long to post this, as InDigest Issue 8 has been up for about a week now, but here it is:

InDigest Issue 8, including new poems, a new short story, new work in the Gallery (including painting included here), and columns from Bedside Stacks, Is That Cowardly?, and The Ulysses Sage.

Hope you like it. Let me know.

It's Been a While

Wow, it's been two weeks since my last post. I have been extremely busy and, like a lot of people, just breathing a long sigh of relief after that great election. I don't have much to share, but Dustin is keeping up a little better: He's obsessed with Randy Newman at the moment, and, in a drastically different opinion than his own, I am astounded that Brad Liening's Daily Poem Factory is still going and I think it's awesome!!!

Look for a new issue of InD soon.

Dustin L. Nelson: "I am Robin Gunningham" on Guernica

My writer/editor partner-in-crime Dustin wrote a cool little article about the artist Banksy, so I put it up on Guernica.

Check it out here>>>