LEST WE FORGET: BUFFALO IS A BEAT CITY/POVERTY IS ANGELIC
I live in Buffalo, New York. I teach literature and fiction writing at Medaille College of Buffalo. In 2000, I founded Starcherone Books (pronounced "start yer own"). I named it that because nobody but my own press would publish my first collection of stories, Endorsed by Jack Chapeau. But that edition sold out and an expanded 2nd edition is now available. Among other new work, this revised edition contains the secret to decoding right wing dominance in recent presidential elections, "Republicans and Erectile Dysfunction." Starcherone is now a non-profit publisher of innovative fiction that has published 20 books to date, with another full season planned for 2009. Starcherone is a collaborative effort, and would not exist with the efforts & creativity of a number of wonderful and amazing people, Starcherone's Board and Staff, all of whom have volunteered their time and effort. In addition to having introduced a lot of terrific writers, Starcherone also publishes PP/FF: An Anthology, featuring over 60 of today's best hybrid poets & fictionists, including Lydia Davis, Brian Evenson, Eleni Silkelianos, Laird Hunt, Raymond Federman, Joyelle McSweeney, Martha Ronk, Ethan Paquin, Diane Williams, and many more.
There's a Frank Lloyd Wright house two doors down from my rented apartment here and one night last year I went to dinner with a visiting poet -- and in the restaurant, just a regular restaurant, were two other poets, one of whom was the former winner of a MacArthur grant. Another that lives in town won a Pulitzer.
And poverty, America? We beat you there. We've been in a recession... gosh, really, since before the first time I got here, 1983.
Kerouac: "Everything belongs to me because I am poor."