A wide-ranging anthology of experimental writing—prose, poetry, and hybrid—from its most significant practitioners and innovators  A variety of names have been used to describe fiction, poetry, and hybrid writing that explore new forms and challenges mainstream traditions. Those phrases include experimental, conceptual, avant-garde, hybrid, surfiction, fusion, radical, slip-stream, avant-pop, postmodern, self-conscious, innovative, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing, alternative, and anti- or new literature. Conceptualisms: The Anthology of Prose, Poetry, Visual, Found, E- & Hybrid Writing as Contemporary Art is the first major anthology of writing that offers readers an overview of this other tradition as it lives in the early decades of the 21st century.Featuring over 100 pieces from more than 90 authors, this anthology offers a plethora of aesthetics and approaches to a wide variety subjects. Editor Steve Tomasula has gathered poems, prose, and hybrid pieces that all challenge our understanding of what literature means. Intended as a collection of the most exciting and bold literary work being made today, Tomasula has put a spotlight on the many possibilities available to writers and readers wishing for a glimpse of literature’s future.Readers will recognize authors who have shaped contemporary writing, as among them Lydia Davis, Charles Bernstein, Jonathan Safran Foer, Shelley Jackson, Nathaniel Mackey, David Foster Wallace, and Claudia Rankine. Even seasoned readers will find authors, and responses to the canon, not yet encountered. Conceptualisms is a book of ideas for writers, teachers and scholars, as well as readers who wonder how many ways literature can live.The text features headnotes to chapters on themes such as sound writing, electronic literature, found text, and other forms, offering accessible introductions for readers new to this work. An online companion presents statements about the work and biographies of the authors in addition to audio, video, and electronic writing that can’t be presented in print. Visit www.conceptualisms.info to read more.

These audacious stories shine with artistic nuance and fearless emotional intensity. Tragic, lyrical, hilarious, and politically controversial, they exist in a world where fact is as strange as fiction, and fiction is often disguised as fact. ""The Jiri Chronicles & Other Fictions"" is divided into three sections, each a unique literary experiment. In ""Snapshots: A Genealogy in Flight,"" Debra Di Blasi draws inspiration from real family photographs to create a haunting portrait of successive generations of a fictionalized Midwest family. ""Hyperfictions"" features writing that is interactive and nonlinear, dissolving borders between poetry and prose, visual art and music. At the work's comic center is an invention that transgresses the boundaries of fiction and fraud. Just who is Jiri Cech? A businessman, vampire, and artist from the former Czechoslovakia? A website? A hoax? An American con artist whose racism and sexism, although loathsome, only heighten his allure? Or something greater or smaller than the sum of these parts? This astonishing collection challenges the stylistic and thematic boundaries of traditional literature, questioning what it means to be human - and awake - in the post-millenium.

A wide-ranging anthology of experimental writing—prose, poetry, and hybrid—from its most significant practitioners and innovators  A variety of names have been used to describe fiction, poetry, and hybrid writing that explore new forms and challenges mainstream traditions. Those phrases include experimental, conceptual, avant-garde, hybrid, surfiction, fusion, radical, slip-stream, avant-pop, postmodern, self-conscious, innovative, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing, alternative, and anti- or new literature. Conceptualisms: The Anthology of Prose, Poetry, Visual, Found, E- & Hybrid Writing as Contemporary Art is the first major anthology of writing that offers readers an overview of this other tradition as it lives in the early decades of the 21st century.Featuring over 100 pieces from more than 90 authors, this anthology offers a plethora of aesthetics and approaches to a wide variety subjects. Editor Steve Tomasula has gathered poems, prose, and hybrid pieces that all challenge our understanding of what literature means. Intended as a collection of the most exciting and bold literary work being made today, Tomasula has put a spotlight on the many possibilities available to writers and readers wishing for a glimpse of literature’s future.Readers will recognize authors who have shaped contemporary writing, as among them Lydia Davis, Charles Bernstein, Jonathan Safran Foer, Shelley Jackson, Nathaniel Mackey, David Foster Wallace, and Claudia Rankine. Even seasoned readers will find authors, and responses to the canon, not yet encountered. Conceptualisms is a book of ideas for writers, teachers and scholars, as well as readers who wonder how many ways literature can live.The text features headnotes to chapters on themes such as sound writing, electronic literature, found text, and other forms, offering accessible introductions for readers new to this work. An online companion presents statements about the work and biographies of the authors in addition to audio, video, and electronic writing that can’t be presented in print. Visit www.conceptualisms.info to read more.

These audacious stories shine with artistic nuance and fearless emotional intensity. Tragic, lyrical, hilarious, and politically controversial, they exist in a world where fact is as strange as fiction, and fiction is often disguised as fact. ""The Jiri Chronicles & Other Fictions"" is divided into three sections, each a unique literary experiment. In ""Snapshots: A Genealogy in Flight,"" Debra Di Blasi draws inspiration from real family photographs to create a haunting portrait of successive generations of a fictionalized Midwest family. ""Hyperfictions"" features writing that is interactive and nonlinear, dissolving borders between poetry and prose, visual art and music. At the work's comic center is an invention that transgresses the boundaries of fiction and fraud. Just who is Jiri Cech? A businessman, vampire, and artist from the former Czechoslovakia? A website? A hoax? An American con artist whose racism and sexism, although loathsome, only heighten his allure? Or something greater or smaller than the sum of these parts? This astonishing collection challenges the stylistic and thematic boundaries of traditional literature, questioning what it means to be human - and awake - in the post-millenium.