My new chapbook!

So I wrote a bunch of poems and bound them together, and the collage artist Katie Skau cut up some images for them, and Ghost City Press crumpled the whole dang mess together and threw it into a book so that you can have it for free. Go here to get it.

HelloGiggles, Automatic-ally

Hey, so HelloGiggles.com featured my new book Automatic as their Item of the Day yesterday!

Besides being (actress-slash-singer-slash-Hitchhiker's Guide wunderkind) Zooey Deschanel and (producer) Sophia Rossi's website, they also feature particularly awesome writers such as Julia Gazdag (who wrote this piece) and Apocalypstick (who's just great), and it's a place that I actually read, which makes it particularly astounding for me to see my book in the same graphic space that I'm used to seeing things that are...well, not my book.

[A]fter blazing through the whole book in one sitting, I sat lost in a puddle of memories I had forgotten I experienced.
I love this book. I also love that even though you can get it for a kindle or as a pdf, you can also get a real life copy that’s handmade. And for $4.99. Including shipping. That’s way more than worth it. I don’t even understand that pricing. I’ve paid $25 for books that didn’t touch me as much as this one did.

Here, read the rest of it!

Gay Jewish Cats (who like my books)

The relentlessly cute band Stereo Sinai just sent over this picture.

In their words:

"The attached photo is of George, our gay cat, sitting on our coffee table by your zines and Goldie's book, extremely happy. The only other time he sits like that is when he's near shoes. He has excellent taste. You should be proud."

I'm glad. I love my zines, but I've always worried that they weren't as cuddly as the real-bound books. "Goldie's book" means Goldie Goldbloom, who also lives in Chicago, whose first novel was just released, and is also awesome. And it's weird -- it definitely didn't happen as fast as the pop-up taqwacore movement, but I do believe we're starting a movement.

My True, Honest Inner Feelings On Robert Smith of the Cure

There's a new interview with me on Cupcake Witch, a fascinating new young-adult lit blog, which is refreshingly dark and refreshingly not gushy about every manner of YA writing. So far they've covered the new Amanda Palmer album and Poppy Z. Brite's handmade journal collection (side-note: ooogle).

And, me. Marie talked to me about Losers, the underground magazines I used to make, and why I'm so attached to stealing titles of Cure songs for my chapters:

Cupcake Witch: I love how several of the chapters in Losers are named after Cure songs. Did you ever see that South Park episode where Robert Smith comes to save the world from Barbara Streisand and at the end Kyle shouts "Disintegration is the best album ever!"? Do you agree with that statement?

Matthue Roth: You won't believe how long I've waited for someone to ask this question. When I saw that episode -- probably the first time it aired -- I was totally incredulous. Disintegration? Really? Not that I don't like Disintegration, but it feels like the default Cure album, the one for people who've barely heard of the Cure. Pornography is so much better.

But, yes, I was out of my seat and standing on the couch the second that the mecha-dinosaur Robert Smith came on the screen. I think that's one of my life goals -- to get made into a Japanese monster movie on South Park.

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