Thursday, December 25, 2014

New Fiction in Day One

My story "Reunion Briefing" was published by Day One today along with a poem from Kyla Marshell and original cover art by Maryanna Hoggatt. You can purchase the issue here.

"Reunion Briefing" is another short story in a series I'm writing that is dedicated to my best friend, Army 2nd Lieutenant Peter H. Burks, who was killed by an IED just outside the Green Zone in Baghdad on November 14th, 2007. 

Day One, featured on the Ploughshares blog yesterday as a literary journal to watch, showcases one writer and poet each week, with issues delivered directly to Kindles or Kindle reading apps. I hope you'll give it a look.

Thank you to Day One editor Carmen Johnson for publishing this story. She had a real heart for this piece of writing and I can't thank her enough for seeing it to publication.

Thank you for reading!

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Short Piece in McSweeney's

On this Christmas Eve, McSweeney's published my short humor piece "Your Great Aunt Is Not Making Another Green Bean Casserole for Christmas." I'm thrilled to have a piece on their site. Big thanks to Tendency Editor Christopher Monks for publishing my work! You can read it here.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Families Among Us made Necessary Fiction's Year-End Recommended Reading List

Families Among Us made Necessary Fiction's year-end recommended reading list, along with great books from Chang-Rae Lee, Jenny Offill, Julia Elliott, Dorthe Nors, Christy Crutchfield, Aaron Burch, and Mike Meginnis. Big thanks to Steve Himmer and Brian Seemann for including me!

I'm humbled to be the only chapbook on this year-end list, surrounded by books published by Riverhead, Vintage, Graywolf, Tin House, Melville House, Coffe House Press, and Two Dollar Radio. Big thanks to Black Lawrence Press for publishing my chapbook, which has been released to more sales and praise than I thought imaginable. So thank you to everyone who has bought a copy, the little chapbook that could.

And if you'd still like to buy a copy of Families Among Us, you can do so here. Thanks! 

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Families Among Us: Great Review at Small Press Book Review

Thank you to Mel Bosworth and The Small Press Book Review for this great review of my chapbook, Families Among Us. Here is a short excerpt:
Lovely and Majestic...Using fantastical elements that push effortlessly through the narratives, Kimzey has fashioned six allegories about the inevitability of change, people trying to love what is different from themselves, and the hardship and heartbreak that comes with being part of a family.
You can read the rest of the review here. And if you'd like to buy a copy of Families Among Us, you can do so here.

Monday, December 15, 2014

Two Author Interviews

Thank you to Kim Winternheimer, fellow fiction writer and founding editor of The Masters Review, for interviewing me about my chapbook Families Among Us (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). Kim asked me some really thoughtful questions that I had a lot of fun thinking about and answering. Topics include putting a chapbook-length collection together, naming characters, transformation, and writing fully into setting. You can read it all here.

Jack Hill also interviewed me for American Microreviews & Interviews. Jack asked a lot of wonderful questions. We talk about forgotten weirdness, layered fiction, Barthelme, radio adaptation, loss and the Iraq War, and what's up next for me. You can read it all here.

Monday, December 1, 2014

Families Among Us: Great Review in Fiction Southeast

I'm thrilled to share this great review of Families Among Us, published in Fiction Southeast today. Here is a short snippet:
Families Among Us is a daring book. It’s not just that Kimzey writes about kids (and adults) turning into animals or magical creatures, taking off their clothes and scurrying or flying into the wild. No, it's that each of these disquieting stories force the reader to experience familiar emotional realities with the wonder and surprise of a child. Kimzey's world is new and dangerous, even sobering, precisely because its strangeness drives us into the heart of the familiar, into childhood's loneliness and consuming anxiety.
This, I suspect, is just what Kimzey wants. Each story, even those told from the perspective of adults, affects a dream-like quality, though not necessarily one of nightmare. This mood is achieved though natural, unobtrusive, even quietly beautiful prose. The understated prose allows us to engage the fantastic without distraction.  And it’s these surprises themselves which meet us again and again in Families Among Us and become the collection’s most immediate source of delight.
As with Kafka’s work, after living in these stories for a couple days, they get even stranger, and new layers emerge.
You can read the rest of the review here. I can't thank Fiction Southeast or reviewer Joel Looper enough for these kind words!

And if you'd like to purchase the book, you can do so here. Thanks for reading!

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Pushcart Prize Nomination!

I'm honored Black Lawrence Press nominated my story "A Family Among Us" for a Pushcart Prize! The story appears in my chapbook Families Among Us, winner of the 2013 Black River Chapbook Competition and published by Black Lawrence Press in September 2014.

"A Family Among Us" was also adapted for radio broadcast on NPR-affiliated stations across the country, which you can listen to here.

I can't thank Black Lawrence Press enough for their ongoing support of my writing. This is my third Pushcart nomination and I'm hopeful this is the year I make it into the anthology!

Thursday, November 13, 2014

New Story in Fiction Southeast

My story "Helicopter Wounds" was published by Fiction Southeast today. This story is dedicated to my best friend, Army 2nd Lieutenant Peter H. Burks, who was killed by an IED just outside the Green Zone in Baghdad on November 14th, 2007.

I'm so grateful to founding editor Chris Tusa for believing in my work enough to publish it next to short fiction by Ron Carlson, Brad Watson, Aimee Bender, Donald Ray Pollock, Kevin Wilson, and Joyce Carol Oates, among many others. You can read "Helicopter Wounds" here. Thank you so much for reading! 

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

The Pegasus Reading Series - 11/20 @ 7PM

I'll be a featured reader in support of Families Among Us at The Pegasus Reading Series on Thursday, November 20th at 7pm. I hope you can make it! The evening is sponsored by WordSpace Dallas and will take place in Lower Greenville at Two Bronze Doors, which was recently named 2014's Best DIY Venue by The Dallas Observer and also featured on NPR.

I'm very happy to be part of this great monthly forum for DFW-area poets and writers. And I'm thrilled to be reading with Jenna Hockema. If you can make it, please RSVP here. And thank you so much to Sebastian Paramo & Robert Torres for hosting the evening and inviting me to read! 

Monday, November 3, 2014

Families Among Us - Small Press Bestseller!

Thank you to everyone who has purchased a copy of Families Among Us thus far, making my chapbook a Small Press Bestseller for the months of September and October. I'm very honored to be on this list, and I can't thank y'all enough for supporting this book and my writing over the years!

I'm currently finishing my first novel and polishing my first full-length story collection. Hopefully I'll have more for y'all soon! 

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Book Launch & Reading 10/29 @ The Wild Detectives

The Wild Detectives. Read. Drink. Laugh. Buy a book(s).
I'll be celebrating the release of my book of short tales (Families Among Us) with a book launch and reading at The Wild Detectives bookstore, located in the Bishop Arts District of Oak Cliff on Wednesday, October 29th at 7pm.

I hope you'll join me for what I think will be a very fun evening. I've read in Vermont, New York City, Iowa City, and Los Angeles, and this will be my first reading in Texas, and I'd love for you all to be there for this special evening.

If you haven't yet read about The Wild Detectives, as featured in the New York Times, it is a beautiful new independent bookstore that is part coffee shop, part bar, and 100% awesome. It is a wonderful place to launch a book, and I'm lucky to have such wonderful hosts. KERA, the local NPR affiliate in Dallas, has thrown their Art & Seek support behind the evening as well.

Please let me know if you think you can make it. The Wild Detectives would appreciate an estimated head count.

For directions and more information, you can find The Wild Detectives on Yelp. I can't wait to talk with you and share a drink on October 29th! Thank you so much for all of your love and support.

Photo from the evening:

Thank you to everyone who came out!

Monday, September 1, 2014

Fiction in The Lifted Brow

My story "Breeders" was published by the Australian literary beast known as The Lifted Brow today.

This story, a Brow favorite, originally appeared in print in The Lifted Brow #7 back in 2010 and I'm so happy they wanted to re-publish it four years later.

Big thanks to editors Sam Cooney and Simon Collinson for featuring my work at one of my favorite literary magazines on the planet, now a partner with McSweeney's Publishing.

You can read "Breeders" here, and I hope you will!

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Families Among Us - Available to Order

Black Lawrence Press is publishing my chapbook of six short tales, Families Among Us, in mid-September. Winner of the 2013 Black River Chapbook Competition, it is now available to order for the low-low price of $8.95.

I hope you'll give this little collection a look and get a copy for yourself and/or as a gift for the person in your life who loves to read. You can order the book here, which will be giving future you a gift when it arrives via post later this month.

And here are some awfully kinds words about the book:

These stories are like tiny portholes into worlds teeming with rich, surprising life. Blake Kimzey is a master miniaturist. —Ramona Ausubel, author of No One is Here Except All of Us and A Guide to Being Born

Each of the stories in Blake Kimzey’s astonishing chapbook Families Among Us are intricate, beautifully written universes unto themselves. These stories blur the lines between what is real and what is possible yet they are also intimate and familiar because they are stories about people and connection and the very human desire to be a part of something greater than ourselves. —Roxane Gay, Author of An Untamed State and Bad Feminist

Blake Kimzey has given us all the pleasures our imagination can bear, six stories to savor slowly, to break our hearts and then mend them. I wanted more of these good things. —Kyle Minor, author of Praying Drunk and In the Devil's Territory

In Families Among Us, Blake Kimzey’s inventive prose summons six weird worlds of the imagination—but more than anything else, these imagined worlds conjure not some other space but the forgotten weirdness of the world we know, revealed here in all its wondrous everyday magic. —Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods

Thank you for supporting my writing!

Monday, June 2, 2014

My Literary Mother: Michelle Latiolais

I wrote a short essay about Michelle Latiolais for a new project on female literary influence called Literary Mothers. I loved writing about Michelle, her work, her mentorship, and her great influence on my writing. Michelle is much more than a mentor, and I can't thank her enough for everything she has done for me. You can read my essay here.

Literary Mothers is an amazing project with other short essays by Matt Bell on Christine Schutt, Ashley Farmer on Joan Didion, Lincoln Michel on Flannery O’Connor, Deb Olin Unferth on Gertrude Stein, Alissa Nutting on Lynda Barry, and so many more.

I'd especially like to thank series editor Nadxi Nieto for including me in this very important project!

Monday, May 5, 2014

"The Boy and The Bear" - Short Story Month

The Masters Review is celebrating Short Story Month with new fiction, interviews, and essays all month long from the likes of Aimee Bender, Kevin Brockmeier, Ashley Farmer, and others. I snuck in there as well, and you can read my short story "The Boy and The Bear," which The Masters Review published today. Thanks for reading!

Monday, April 21, 2014

ALOUD Reading Series: Writing Our Future

Along with Eugenie Montague, my friend and classmate at UC-Irvine, I had the honor of reading at the ALOUD reading series at The Library Foundation of Los Angeles on April 17th. We read with students from CalArts, Otis College, UC Riverside, and USC. It was an amazing night in the beautiful Mark Taper Auditorium at the Central Library in downtown L.A, and it was an evening I won't soon forget.


There is a podcast from the reading, which you can listen to here. If you don't have time to listen to the whole program (which I recommend), but are curious about what I read, you can fast forward to the 16:00 minute mark. I read from the first six pages of the novel I'm working on.

I'd like to thank Louise Steinman for having us at the ALOUD series. And special thanks to Michelle Latiolais, Ron Carlson, my friends in the UC-Irvine MFA Program, and The Library Foundation of Los Angeles!

Okay, thanks for listening!

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Focused on the Novel

I'm nearing the end of year three of three in the MFA Programs In Writing at UC Irvine. Late last summer I finished my first full-length short story collection, Talking Past The Close. Right now it is just a document sitting in the Dropbox cloud. I've been lucky to place stories in some great places (Tin House, FiveChapters, and others). I've been working on my first novel since the end of summer (a dark comedy influenced by The Sisters Brothers and Fargo, among others, which will be my thesis project here at Irvine). I'm about 60,000 words into it and I think a complete first draft is in sight. Writing is rewriting. I know as soon as I write THE END on the novel that is when the real work will begin. I'm looking forward to that. Until then!