NEW EBOOK !! BEST LITERATURE U EVER READ There was an old weed monk named Tasty Cakes who had lived alone in a bare apartment for thirty years. One day Tasty Cakes left his apartment to get some Doritos at the gas station. When the people saw this legendary and mysterious weed monk walking around outdoors they immediately flocked to his side and surrounded him, saying: Tasty Cakes, tell us some of the wisdom you have learned, that we might improve our lives. At first Tasty Cakes refused to speak, but they persisted in their begging until he eventually relented. He said: Before weed! My life was full of troubles and desires. After weed! My life is full of funny YouTube videos of llamas attacking people and cats that wear sunglasses. Before weed! I was consumed with fear of death and decay, and all night and all day my heart wept with loneliness. After weed! I watch free movies online! After he was finished speaking, Tasty Cakes returned to his apartment, which he never left again until the day he died. The people were amazed and awed by Tasty Cake, and they remarked that surely no one else in all of Houston had smoked more weed than he. DOWNLOAD IT HERE: https://gumroad.com/l/MVui

More Information About SHABBY DOLL HOUSE Submissions

Submissions to Shabby Doll House are now open for the first time in a long time.

We will be releasing a new issue at the end of May and we are very excited.

This new issue will be edited by Sarah Jean Alexander, Stacey Teague and Lucy K Shaw.

We are also welcoming Rachael Lee Nelson to our team as an editorial assistant.

For this new issue, for the first time ever, we will be paying contributors for their work!

This feels very important to us.

Also for the first time ever, will be reading submissions anonymously, or ‘blind’.

We want to ensure that we can read and accept all submissions based solely on the quality of the work, completely unrelated from the reputation of the author.

This feels very important to us too.

In the last three years, we have received thousands of submissions and published hundreds of writers and artists from all over the world. It has been a real privilege.

We have worked really hard to put ourselves in this position.

But often when we’re sorting through our submissions, it becomes clear that some of the people who send us their work do not really know anything about Shabby Doll House, and are not particularly interested in the work that we do. We imagine this happens to almost all magazines.

It is frustrating to deal with people who ignore our guidelines and are ostensibly only interested in themselves. It is also extremely time consuming. Because we are a small group of four, we simply don’t have time to receive submissions from those people.

So for this next issue, we have come up with a new system:

We will send everybody who submits a recent issue of the Shabby Doll Reader and enter them into a prize draw to win a selection of books and art objects by various Shabby Doll Alumni.

We will pay everybody who we publish for their work. The amount we will be able to pay will depend on how successful our new system is. We will strive to make this amount as much as possible.

We will also support the work of everybody we publish indefinitely via our social media platforms, in the same way that we have been doing for our contributors over the last three years.

If you have any further questions regarding submissions, you can feel free to contact us via email.

Please read the guidelines carefully before submitting. The deadline is April 28th.

We thank you for your support as we change and grow. And we look forward to reading your work!

the shabby doll reader profiled by dazed digital

this thing right here

this is the whole thing

the moment u forget this thing is the moment u start fucking up

thank u based god

peter asked a lot of internet ppl about their favorite moment of 2014 on his blog, internetpeopleinreallife.tumblr.com i wanted to know what his favorite moment was, so i asked him:

peter bd. @eb.derpt

what was your favorite moment of 2014?

my favourite moment of 2014 was doing my rap thing at popsicle fest. i thought people would either hate it or not get it but everyone seemed to like it.

my other favourite moment was protesting during the millions march. i was out there for 7 plus hours marching from manhattan to bk with all types of people from different backgrounds. it felt like everyone was on the same page and we weren’t afraid to demand justice for black lives. it was inspiring to be a part of that

Poppy Kural x Stacey Teague

my body beneath blankets, lying down on my back so that my breasts roll around to my sides. placing my hand on my breastbone, it is level and i feel my breath, but that is inside. there are bony hips and ribs, ready for dismantling. in the mornings, i have to hold my stomach to keep the fear from spilling out.

today my lips are cracked and i do nothing to repair them. we rely too heavily on balms and ointments, rubbing them into our skin like it’s a religion. instead i will rip off the dead skin until it is bloody and the blood fills up my bottom lip. dabbing at it with my tongue it tastes that strange metallic way that all blood tastes, and in fact i kind of like it. this is one of the small ways that you can distract yourself.

i think about the moon too often. i love how the cool light fills up my bedroom. its craters like lifelines, imprints in the skin. the cliche of it. i have important moon memories, i have moon stories to tell. every poem has a moon, even if it doesn’t explicitly say so. it hangs over the poem, and the poem turns silver.

i need a skin much thicker than this one, one that is resilient, less willing to compromise, possibly waterproof. my own skin is weak, sagging. i poke and prod at it, pulling at it hard between my thumb and fingers. after a while i realise that the skin i have is mine and can’t be altered. i try to smooth over the creases i have made. everything is a threat, but giving up is a luxury.

found text from ‘The Goldfinch’ by Donna Tartt she dug her hand her hand, in mine i caught her hand the flayed hand slid his hand through the skin is off the hand batted my hand clutched my hand hand on my head my hands were slick my hands were cut hand still in the pocket meaty hand uncertain hand hands flapping hands flustering hands in rock and glass hands off me our hands empty-handed

- follow ‘dear everybody collective’ on instagram for more

http://shabbydollhouse.com/THE-RE-UP

bushwickreview:

Very proud to have work in THE RE-UP issue of Shabby Doll House, alongside some of today’s most intriguing writers, artists, and editors in the business. Including, but not limited to: Lucy K. Shaw, Sarah Jean Alexander, Stacey Teague, Chloe Caldwell, Luna Miguel, Liz Bowen, Ana Carrete, Juliet Escoria, Elizabeth Ellen, Carabella Sands, Maggie Lee, Emily Wang, Mira Gonzalez, Chelsea Martin, and Rachael Lee Nelson.  If anyone tries to trot out that tired old whine about lit, alt lit, indie lit, or anything being a boy’s club, well, I suggest you BOW DOWN. 

Thanks to Ariel Fintushel, who drew nice artwork for my story. My story is called “Faith”.

online now

TUESDAY

What was your favorite book that you read this year?

2014 edition

KRISTINA MAHLER: Cunny Poem Vol. 1 by Bunny Rogers & Brigid Mason. I did a reading with Bunny in Vancouver and watching her perform affected me for a long time after. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, the tone of her poems and her voice, the way her language can be juvenile and flippant but also brutally dark and heavy. The aesthetic of the book is also basically perfect, I am a serious Bunny Rogers fangirl now.

ADAM J KURTZ : I really enjoyed reading Meg Wolitzer’s “The Interestings,” which I bought only for the bright cover, because its subject matter caught me in a weird funk and had some good lessons. It was a fun, easy read. Also I enjoyed reading Spencer Madsen’s “You Can Make Anything Sad,” which I read.

MIRA GONZALEZ: my favorite book i read this year was ‘nobody is ever missing’ by catherine lacey. i liked it so much that i’ve been too nervous to email her and tell her that i liked it. it’s one of those books that made me feel simultaneously inspired and deeply insecure about my own writing abilities.

BOB SCHOFIELD: Everyday Is for the Thief by Teju Cole. Because it’s good to take the occasional peek outside your bubble, and remind yourself that the world is always so much bigger and more complicated than you assume.

MASON JOHNSON: Decided not to read any books by straight white dudes in 2014, which led to me being angry that no one (a teacher or anyone I look up to) had forced me to read Eileen Myles’ Inferno earlier. Same goes for Amiri Baraka’s The Autobiography of Leroi Jones. As far as books that actually came out this year, Sara Woods’ Wolf Doctors juggled energy and beauty in ways that make me envious, but in a very good happy feely kinda way, not in the “I’m going to murder you for your power” kinda way.

JAMES GANAS: my favorite book that i read this year was ‘brief interviews with hideous men’ by david foster wallace. the book sets up stories that are cohesive and logically tight in their examination of modern neuroses. i feel like i audibly said ‘oh’ multiple times while reading each story.

TRACY DIMOND: My favorite book I read this year is Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting. Every story used bizarre context to show what women have to do to survive. Sometimes it feels like destruction is the only option, this book put the feeling to page.

GILES RUFFER: i’m going to go with ‘vault’ by david rose. this “anti-novel” is a short (under 200 pages) and existential book. ffo camus and cycling lol.

GUILLAUME MORISSETTE: I just want to recommend, in general, the novels of Elena Ferrante, pretty much any of them. A good starting point is probably The Days Of Abandonment, which is from 2002, and is both pleasurable and distressing to read.

ASHLEY OPHEIM: The best novel I read in 2014 was Clarice Lispector’s Near To The Wild Heart. My heart understood the words in this book better than my mind did, and that’s what I loved about it. Lispector has a way of writing about the invisible worlds that exist within us in a way that shows how human flaws can fuse with divine perfection.

MATTHEW BOOKIN: "Wolf in White Van" by John Darnielle. It has all the puzzle pieces. I probably won’t ever read another novel again.

SEBASTIAN CASTILLO: my choice is easy! I Love Dick by Chris Kraus. Unlike anything I’ve read. I Love Dick changed my relationship with books and reading.

MARK CUGINI: Alexis Pope’s SOFT THREATS. It’s venom. It’s a piano string. It’s everything I’ve ever needed.

STACEY TEAGUE: the secret history by donna tartt - i read a lot of it during a 23 hour flight and it made me forget bad and weird things, which is good. i lent it to my boss and he lent me donna tartt’s second book, the goldfinch which i’ve nearly finished. also very a++

SAMANTHA CONLON: mine is How Should A Person Be? by Sheila Heti because it’s the first book i ever read that feels really for women. it’s unapologetically feminine and there are things in that book that are truly original. the relationship between sheila and margaux is one of my favourite relationships in a story so far. i feel like its a life changing book and fills me with a lot of nice feelings about being female and makes me feel extremely lucky for having so many brilliant female relationships in my life.

ALEXANDER SEEDMAN: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. I’m not a huge fan of Murakami (I’ve read three other novels by him, one of which, Kafka on the Shore, I adored, and the others I found boring…too symmetrical and predictable). But this is really stand-out brilliant to me because I identified with a really complicated pain in the protagonist’s insecurity with feeling unspectacular.

EMMIE RAE: the miracle of mindfulness by thich nhat hanh because it’s a truly precious book to read at anytime and over and over or when you know your perspective needs to change, even just slightly.

COLIN DROHAN: I read the poet Tim Dlugos’ collected poems, A Fast Life, this year, and have not been able to stop raving about him ever since.

DAVE SHAW: The book I most enjoyed reading this year was, I think, Erna Brodber’s Myal. Reading it felt sort of like having a slightly insane older person whispering gossip at me on the bus.

MEGGIE GREEN: my favorite book i read this year was “nobody is ever missing” by catherine lacey. i miss it and i wish i hadn’t read it yet.

THEO THIMO: Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon. I never actually finished this book but I really enjoyed the first few hundred pages. I would have finished it if my kindle didn’t break. 

TIMOTHY WILLIS SANDERS: my favorite this year was “A Short History of World War I” by James L Stokesbury. i like history and the author is funny and engaging.

CASSANDRA DE ALBA: the book of joshua by zachary schomburg. it was the first time in a while when i had the sense of forcing myself to read slower & take breaks so i could really appreciate it instead of rushing through like i wanted to.

PAUL RIZZA: the luminaries by eleanor catton: against the backdrop of the new zealand gold rush, 12 men try to extricate themselves from a conspiracy veritably dostoevskian in magnitude, involving possible murders and thefts of massive fortunes, each behaving according to the astrological houses the novel assigns them and the real-world planetary movements of 1865 and 1866. stop me when this starts sounding incredible..

JOHN MORTARA: my favorite book that i read this year is called NEXT STOP ADVENTURE! and it’s a book made up of zines about this guy biking and hitchhiking and dumpster diving across the united states and it’s just really positive and motivating and hilarious and fun and it makes me feel brave.

LUCY K SHAW: Excavation by Wendy C. Ortiz or Women by Chloe Caldwell. I read them back to back this summer and they both made me feel inspired to write more honestly. 

ROSHAN ABRAHAM: my favorite book that i read this year was black life by dorothea lasky. i liked it because it gave me lots of feelings and then i felt all of them! here are some of the feelings….whoa….wow…hm…..whaa…haha…uh. holy sh**..wow..prayer emoji… It is written in the voice of an inner child that we have all been trained to suppress but it’s the inner child dealing with pain, embarrassment, existential dread, perpetually delayed gratification, love, terror. i get all worked up just thinking about it! gosh.

RACHAEL LEE NELSON: May-Lan Tan’s “Things To Make and Break,” because every single story was original and interesting, every sentence was perfect, and when I put it down I couldn’t stop wondering how a person could kill it so hard.

ALEX MANLEY: Sorrow Arrow by Emily Kendal Frey - Sorrowful, piercing, vibrant, unexpected. Poetry the way we feel, like shards of concrete pointing up to the sky after an earthquake.

PANCHO ESPINOSA: My favorite book I read this year is called O Alienista (“The Alienist” in English), it’s in Portguese and it is written by Brazilian novelist and poet Machado de Assis. In this book I found a great synergy between prose style and content, one unable to be grasped without the other.

EVAN LEED: my book is The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 1. This was making long-overdue amends for idolizing Henry Miller in my early 20s and I feel like a dumbass for not reading it years ago and I think it’s been a long time since I’ve tripped out so much on something new (to me).

CHRIS DANKLAND: This year I fell deeply in love with The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich. I’ve read it twice this year, and I want to read it again soon. It’s about hobo vampire junkies. I love the complexity of this book, and I love the way it talks to me. An excerpt: “There is something about being 17 and being immortal, like wishing you could turn into a magical being and then waking up, looking into the mirror, and seeing that you are. Cuz you can’t see shit and you know it happened, you turned vampire.

SCOTT LAUDATI: "Murder City" by Charles Bowden details the current state of Juarez. There are about thirty murders per page, so much cocaine, and no happy ending. Plus, he just died, so R.I.P.

KEEGAN CRAWFORD: Endgame by Samuel Beckett was the most memorable work I read this year. It was kind of funny, kind of nightmarish. It’s a really unsettling play.

OSCAR BRUNO D’ARTOIS: my favorite books of 2014 as far as i can remember were sprezzatura by mike young & hill william by scott mcclanahan. (can u pick 2 if one’s fiction & the other’s poetry? well anyway that’s wat im doing.) Here’s my reasonings: sprezzatura i found myself halfconsciously repeating phrases from in my head (normal for me), reciting bits & pieces of out loud (less normal b/c less socially acceptable) & even accidentally memorizing the first poem of (dont think ive memorized a whole poem, intentionally or otherwise, since the 4th grade). as for hill william, it sort of ‘sold’ me on scott’s writing, & i think in comparison to say crapalachia it felt a bit ‘underrated’ to me, like there is one kind of weird scene where 3 of the characters r watching porn & one of them ‘whips it out’ & the other is upset by this & well anyway u can read the book yrslf if u wanna find out wat happens, but the point is this scene the buildup to it & its aftermath just seemed to kind of ‘justify’ the whole sometimes dramatic sweep of scott’s writing, & made me feel understood & fricked & filled w a kind of, ah, sense of the tragi-comico-erotic nature of life? or something.

SARAH JEAN ALEXANDER: The best book I read in 2014 is Mark Cugini’s “I’m Just Happy To Be Here.” There is a poem in it titled ‘Appoggiaturas’ which is the best poem I’ve read this year. Here is part of it:

there’s no such thing as a meaningful voice mail anymore—

there’s nothing left but silence in my pocket,

the 2 AM walks to the corner deli that

neither of us needed, and the 600 empty calories

that prove pain, too, is a flavor.

JOHNNY BRYAN: Beauty Was The Case That They Gave Me by Mark Leidner – because it’s too good, it made me want to quit poetry… but then it also reminded me of whatever it was that made me write poems in the first place, whatever reason anyone could possibly have to write a poem… and I carry it around with me in my backpack a lot, and I keep going back to it like I keep going back to poetry.

FISAYO ADEYEYE: One thing I liked reading this year was Matthew Henriksen’s Ordinary Sun. It’s narrative was sparse but somehow also seemed pretty densely packed. Reading it felt like watching hundreds of angels fall from the sky into a lake.

MATT NELSON: i just read wittgenstein jr and it was fun! alexis pope’s new poetry book is wonderful.

EVAN BENDER: Art in Theory 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas , my art history textbook for the past year or so, It’s got lots of artist manifestos and excerpts from books, I guess its interesting to think that people I have met may end up in a book like this someday.

JENN KUCHARCZYK: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. While Atwood is this pillar of Canadian lit, I associated her novels with my mom’s book club circles growing up. I didn’t anticipate being so mesmerized by this book that was sharp and uncomfortable and presented an all-too-probable post-apocalypse that was clocking doubletime, looking at issues of sexual violence, class politics, our want to control but be free of responsibility… It felt like a good dose of honest therapy. And still managed to be funny enough. Really, I mean, there’s no one that’s entirely likeable, and you kind of see yourself in the one of many psychopaths. 

JACOB PERKINS: The best book I read this year was “Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit, which I read last night front to back. While mostly about The Patriarchy as it pertains to women, so many (almost all) marginalized peoples came to mind. Books like this suck the blood out of the Darren Wilsons of the world, and the courts who protect them.

NATALIE CHIN: rly strong tie between Bark by Lorrie Moore — all eight of the short stories mostly abt trying to understand the end of desire, in people around you + yourself — & Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez — felt nice to sink back into a book with a heavy rolling perfect plot

P.S the new issue of SHABBY DOLL HOUSE is coming later this month. more announcements soon <3

Six Word Story  (via hefuckin)

my advice to all aspiring writers: be recognizable in silhouette

from sometime around Thanksgiving, 2010

Against Winter

The truth is dark under your eyelids.

What are you going to do about it? The birds are silent; there’s no one to ask. All day long you’ll squint at the gray sky. When the wind blows you’ll shiver like straw.

A meek little lamb you grew your wool Till they came after you with huge shears. Flies hovered over open mouth, Then they, too, flew off like the leaves, The bare branches reached after them in vain.

Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldier Of a defeated army, you’ll stay at your post, Head bared to the first snow flake. Till a neighbor comes to yell at you, You’re crazier than the weather, Charlie.

_ Charles Simic

Dorothea Lasky is on Other Ppl Podcast w/ Brad Listi

listen to it here

THE MOST INSPIRING 3 MINUTE’S OF LIFE (See if u cry… 90% of people cry) - Steve Roggenbuck