- Birthday, Books, Reading, Writing

Happy 66th Birthday, Lance Olsen!: 66 Reasons to Celebrate Lance Olsen

 

I’ve had the deep pleasure of knowing Lance Olsen (for at least thirteen years now), reviewing his work, interviewing him twice, publishing him six times in Big Other, teaching two of his books (Skin Elegies and Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Writing), working as his publicist on five books ([[ there. ]], How to Unfeel the Dead: New & Selected Fictions, Theories of Forgetting, Skin Elegies , and My Red Heaven), all the while impressed by his profound courage, creativity, intelligence, rigor, humor, generosity, and so much more. In fact, here are at least sixty-six reasons to celebrate Lance Olsen:

  1. Always Crashing in the Same Car (FC2, forthcoming 2023)
  2. Skin Elegies (Dzanc, 2021)
  3. My Red Heaven (Dzanc, 2020)
  4. Dreamlives of Debris (Dzanc, 2017)
  5. There’s No Place Like Time: A Retrospective (&Now Books, 2016)
  6. Theories of Forgetting (Fiction Collective Two, 2014)
  7. Calendar of Regrets (Fiction Collective Two, 2010)
  8. Head in Flames (Chiasmus Press, 2009)
  9. Anxious Pleasures: A Novel After Kafka (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007)
  10. Nietzsche’s Kisses (Fiction Collective Two, 2006)
  11. 10:01 (Chiasmus Press, 2005; hypermedia version: Iowa Review Web 7.2, 2005)
  12. Girl Imagined by Chance (Fiction Collective Two, 2002)
  13. Freaknest (Wordcraft, 2000)
  14. Time Famine (Permeable Press, 1996)
  15. Burnt (Wordcraft, 1996)
  16. Tonguing the Zeitgeist (Permeable Press,1994)
  17. Live from Earth (Available Press/Ballantine Books,1991)
  18. Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Writing (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2012)
  19. Rebel Yell: Writing Fiction (Cambrian Press, 1998)
  20. [[ there. ]] (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2014)
  21. In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop, co-edited with Mark Amerika (SDSU Press, 1995)
  22. Lolita: A Janus Text (Twayne, 1995)
  23. Surfing Tomorrow: Essays on the Future of American Fiction (Potpourri, 1995), editor
  24. William Gibson: A Reader’s Guide (Starmont House, 1992)
  25. Circus of the Mind in Motion: Postmodernism and the Comic Vision (Wayne State University Press, 1990)
  26. Ellipse of Uncertainty: An Introduction to Postmodern Fantasy (Greenwood Press, 1987)
  27. How to Unfeel the Dead: New & Selected Fictions (Teksteditions, 2014)
  28. Hideous Beauties (Eraserhead, 2003)
  29. Sewing Shut My Eyes (Fiction Collective Two/Black Ice, 2000)
  30. Scherzi, I Believe (Wordcraft, 1994)
  31. My Dates with Franz (Bluestone Press, 1993)
  32. “Always Crashing in the Same Car” (Big Other, 2021)
  33. “He Can’t Remember, He’s No Longer Sure, Maybe” (Big Other, 2021)
  34. “Beautiful Boy Falling” (Big Other, 2020)
  35. “A Sentence About a Sentence I Love: From Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (Big Other, 2019)
  36. “169 Tweets on the Nature of Possibility” (Big Other, 2019)
  37. Lance Olsen’s “Literary Pillars” (Big Other, 2012)
  38. Between the Covers podcast with Lance Olsen about My Red Heaven
  39. Interview with Lance Olsen on NPR’s Berlin Journal
  40. My interview with Lance Olsen about Head in Flames
  41. My interview with Lance Olsen about Calendar of Regrets
  42. John Domini’s Interview with Lance Olsen about Theories of Forgetting
  43. Interview with Lance Olsen about Nietzsche’s Kisses
  44. “Urgent Possibility: Talking With Lance Olsen on FC2’s 40th Birthday”
  45. “The Difficult Imagination”
  46. “Narratological Amphibiousness, or: Invitation To the Covert History of Possibility”
  47. Marcus Smith’s interview at WBYU’s Thinking Aloud
  48. Rachel Levy’s interview at the Lit Pub
  49. “Blindmanning as Being”
  50. But I Digress… podcast interview with Lance Olsen
  51. “Book Notes” for [[ there. ]] at Largehearted Boy
  52. “Book Notes” for Theories of Forgetting at Largehearted Boy
  53. Robert Lopez’s interview with Lance Olsen
  54. George Salis’s interview with Lance Olsen
  55. Lance Olsen interview for Architectures of Possibility at Audible Authors
  56. Interview about Architectures of Possibility
  57. “Accretive Dreams, Junk Narrativity, & Orphaned Excess in Moderation”
  58. “Embodying the World”
  59. “Learning to Wish for More”
  60. Interview with Lance Olsen at continent.
  61. Scott Esposito’s interview with Lance Olsen
  62. Flashpoint’s interview with Lance Olsen
  63. Pop Matter’s interview with Lance Olsen
  64. Continuum’s interview with Lance Olsen
  65. Pif Magazine’s interview with Lance Olsen
  66. Chiasmus Press’s interview with Lance Olsen

 

  • John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024). His other fiction is published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His nonfiction is published in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.

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