Fiction Transmission FC2

"Dissolving Newspaper, Fermenting Leaves," by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, from The Book of Kane and Margaret, published by FC2 in 2020. Read by Madeleine Lambert. In the second part of the program, Kiik is joined by writer and FC2 Editorial Board Chair Joanna Ruocco.

Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi writes dreampop speculative fictions and darkwave minimalist poetry that can be enjoyed on a bus ride or in line for coffee. All his best stories have something to do with talking insects. His best poems are X-Men fan fiction. In addition to The Book of Kane and Margaret, he is the author of Disintegration Made Plain and Easy, forthcoming from 1913 Press.

Joanna Ruocco lives among the fig trees in North Carolina, where she teaches in the English department at Wake Forest University. She is the author of numerous novels and stories, including Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith: A Diptych, winner of FC2's Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. She writes commercial romance as Joanna Lowell. Since 2018 she has served as Chair of FC2's Editorial Board.

"The Secret of Chloe the Dog," by Angela Buck, from her collection Horses Dream of Money, published by FC2 in 2021. Read by Madeleine Lambert. In the second part of the program, Angela is joined by writer, social critic, and FC2 co-founder Curtis White.

Angela Buck has worked in hotels, hospitals, libraries, grocery stores, restaurants,  bookstores, schools, amusement parks, museums, and universities. Her first book, Horses Dream of Money, was a finalist for the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction and was published in 2021 by FC2. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts—Amherst and a PhD in English from the University of Denver. She is Assistant Professor of English at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

Curtis White was born in San Lorenzo, California, a little pre-fab paradise for veterans of World War II. He published his first book of fiction, Heretical Songs, with the Fiction Collective in 1980. In the winter of 1989, with Ronald Sukenick and others, he reorganized the Fiction Collective as FC2, a non-profit, author-run press under a governing Board of Directors, with Sukenick as Board Chair and White as Managing Director. He stepped down from his position as Managing Director in 1999. He is the author of fifteen books, including both fiction and social criticism, most recently Living in a World that Can't Be Fixed: Reimagining Counterculture Today.

"My Horse," by Stacey Levine, from the anthology An Illuminated History of the Future, edited by Curtis White and published by FC2 in 1989 — reprinted in My Horse and Other Stories, from Sun and Moon Press. Read by Barry Press. In the second part of the program, Stacey is joined by writer Evelyn Hampton.

Stacey Levine is the author of four books of fiction. Her story collection The Girl with Brown Fur, which was longlisted for The Story Prize, was also shortlisted for the Washington State Book Award in 2012. Her novel Frances Johnson was shortlisted for the Washington State Book Award in 2005, and her collection My Horse and Other Stories won a PEN/West Fiction Award. My Horse and Levine’s novel Dra— were published by the much-lauded Los Angeles-based Sun & Moon Press. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Levine received a Stranger Genius Award for Literature in 2009, and her fiction has been translated for Japanese and Danish publications.

Evelyn Hampton is the author of Discomfort, The Aleatory Abyss, and the chapbooks MADAM, Seven Touches of Music, and We Were Eternal and Gigantic. Her collection Famous Children and Famished Adults won FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize. An excerpt from her novella Billy Material can be found at Blazing Stadium. She lives in Denver.

"Bad Breath," by Gerald Vizenor, from the anthology An Illuminated History of the Future, edited by Curtis White and published by FC2 in 1989. Read by Mia Ellis. In the second part of the program, Gerald is joined by poet and activist Kimberly Blaeser.

Gerald Vizenor is the author of over forty books of fiction, poetry, and criticism. He has received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writer's Circle of the Americas, the New York Fiction Collective Prize, two American Book Awards, and numerous other awards and prizes. An enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation, his teaching career includes professorships at Lake Forest College, Bemidji State University, University of Minnesota, University of Oklahoma, University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Santa Cruz.

Kimberly Blaeser, former Wisconsin Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections including Copper Yearning, Apprenticed to Justice, and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. A UW–Milwaukee professor and MFA faculty for Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, Blaeser is founding director of In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets.

"Doing the Nasty," by Ricardo Cortez Cruz, from Straight Outta Compton, published by FC2 in 1991. Read by Mia Ellis. In the second part of the program, Ricardo is joined by poet Douglas Manuel.

Ricardo Cortez Cruz is the author of two novels from FC2, Straight Outta Compton and Five Days of Bleeding, as well as more than fifty pieces of fiction in journals and anthologies. He was the keynote speaker at the 2018 PEN/Hemingway Award Ceremony. He is a Professor of English at Illinois State University.

Douglas Manuel has served as the Poetry Editor for Gold Line Press as well as one of the Managing Editors of Ricochet Editions. His first full-length collection of poems, Testify, won an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry. In 2018, he traveled to Egypt and Eritrea with The University of Iowa's International Writing Program to teach poetry. In 2020, he received the Dana Gioia Poetry Award and a fellowship from the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts to travel to San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico to write.

"Story," by Mary Hope Whitehead Lee, from the anthology Chick Lit: Postfeminist Fiction, published by FC2 in 1995. Read by Mia Ellis. In the second part of the program, Mary Hope is joined by Marream Krollos. In addition to "Story," they discuss Mary Hope's poetry and collage volume Nuclear Waste, published by F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS in 2019.

Mary Hope Whitehead Lee lives on settler-occupied land in that region of the Sonoran Desert known as Phoenix, Arizona. She is an active member of the Cardboard House Press Cartonera Collective. Three of her Frida Kahlo poems won a grand prize and two first prizes from the 1998 Dancing Poetry contest; the grand-prize poem was choreographed and performed at the Dancing Poetry Festival on October 3, 1998, at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Her poetry, short fiction, and reviews have appeared in This Bridge Called My Back, Callaloo, Essence Magazine, Language in Society, The Journal of Creole Studies, Feminist Studies, and the inaugural edition of Little Somethings Press.

Marream Krollos is the author of Big City, and a member of the FC2 Editorial Board. She was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and has since lived in Los Angeles, New York, Seville, Seoul, Christchurch, and Riyadh. She received her PhD from the University of Denver. She previously lived in Jeddah where she taught one of the very few creative writing classes in the kingdom.