Apexart's Summer Reading Series

I'm very excited to announce that I'll be reading in NYC on July 28th as part of Apexart's Summer Reading Series. If you live in New York, then this is the chance to see me read out loud that you've been hoping for and writing angry letters to your assemblyman about. I'll be reading alongside some pretty awesome people: Samantha Cohen, Tiphanie Yanique, and Emily St. John Mandel. I don't want to oversell my fellow readers, but their work will literally save your lives.

How To Survive The Inevitable Success Of My Book: A Seth Fried Fan's Guide To A Post Debut Short Story Collection World, Part 1 of 8,000

Now that I have a book forthcoming from Soft Skull, I'm sure many of you are nervous about what this means for the future. I wish I could say that everything is going to be fine. But the fact of the matter is that, once my collection of short stories is released, people are probably going to freak out. It will be exactly like the movie Road Warrior, but instead of gasoline everybody will be fighting over tattered copies of my ill-advised and yet brazenly erotic former author photo.

But fear not! There are plenty of measures you can take to help prepare for civilization's descent into Seth Fried Debut Short Story Collection Madness. And since I can't help but feel somewhat responsible for all this, I have taken it upon myself to both introduce you to and expound upon these measures:

#1 Build A Bomb Shelter

Make sure your bomb shelter has a roof. I can't stress this enough, as bombs are incredibly adept at coming from above.

Figure One


Bear in mind that your bomb shelter should also have four walls. Otherwise, the result could be equally disastrous.

Figure Two


#2 Blade Fighting

I don't condone violence of any sort, but, once the world falls into chaos, this blade fighting meme might very well save your life.



#3 Obsessively Check This Blog For More Survival Tips

Don't worry! I'm here to help! We've got 7,999 survival posts to go. And just because the world as you know it is about to unravel into some sort of Boschian hellscape that doesn't mean this can't be fun.

Animalucla in The Kenyon Review

I'm extremely excited to report that The Kenyon Review is going to be publishing a bunch of pieces from my series, Animalcula: A Young Scientist's Guide to New Creatures. Excerpts from this series have appeared previously in Ninth Letter and JMWW. The new pieces are tentatively scheduled to appear in The Kenyon Review's Spring 2011 issue. In the mean time, make sure to check out this unbelievably awesome (or at least charming in an at-least-he-tried sort of way) trailer I made for the pieces that ran in Ninth Letter:

Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre Wins Pushcart

Those of you who refuse to read the titles of blog posts before you read the actual post will be excited to learn that my story Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre has just won a Pushcart Prize. Needless to say, I have been high-fiving strangers all day. Huge thanks to Pei-Ling Lue and everybody at One Story.

Literary Magazine Rankings II: Rank Harder

A lot of people on the Information Superhighway are talking about this list of lit mag rankings put together by Lincoln Michel at The Faster Times. Naturally, I've decided to put together my own list. Enjoy!

First Tier

Magazines put out by people who are passionate, hardworking, and who believe in what they're doing.

Second Tier

Magazines put out by people who are jerks with terrible taste, but who are physically good-looking.

Third Tier

Magazines that have ceased publication.

Fourth Tier

Magazines put out by white supremacists.

Fifth Tier

Things that aren't magazines (hats, drawbridges, etc.).

Sixth Tier

Writing your story on the face of a sleeping stranger.

Seventh Tier

Showing your work to a loved one.