FOREIGN TONGUES: Issue 37 Action Shots!

HEYO. In celebration of Chad Redden’s po3try this week, we have a glorious set of Action Shots, delivered straight into our hot little digital hands from Bulgaria by none other than Operative Delaney Nolan. Let’s go on, continue to rule this:

Yellow. Brick. Sidewalk.

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Among many.

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Legos

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In Delaney’s words:

I wore this patch around Sofia and Plovdiv, Bulgaria, when I was there to read at the Sofia Poetics Festival. I started by wearing it on a free walking tour, and an Austrian, a German, a Bulgarian and a Dutch guy all noticed it and asked to photograph it– they loved the idea, and most everyone in Sofia spoke English, so they could read it.

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Skittle Skeletons.

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w/ Guns.

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I wore it at the mineral springs where I saw a gypsy woman washing her hair. I wore it at the baths– that big broke-windowed building in one photo– which used to be a social/gossip center until they had to close it up because it was falling apart.

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A Riot (of Colors and Flavors)

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MORE

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I wore it by fruit stands and beautiful graffiti and Cyrillic warnings. I wore it to Plovdiv where we went hiking and found sheep grazing in a field around what looked like an abandoned school. My friend wore it in front of that giant monument to Soviet soldiers, which  is slowly, gradually getting torn down by the Bulgarian government.

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You Know He Likes It

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Meet Me at the Gates

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Now it’s made it out to the coast of the blue Black Sea. благодаря, безопасна игла, това е било реално…

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This Is Not a Photograph

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Chad’s story saw lots of wide-open spaces. Wide-open spaces are nice-nice.  Infinite and eternal thanks to Delaney Nolan for volunteering and kicking the ball right out of the park. With a club.

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That’s right. We love our sports metaphors.

Issue Thirty-Seven!!

This week, in our giant whopper THIRTY-SEVENTH ISSUE (whoa! what a number!), our latest story has traveled allllll the way to Sofia, Bulgaria on the back of Operative Delaney to bring you the finest in wearable literature.

Here goes:

ISSUE THIRTY-SEVEN (9/17/12):

featuring

*Blank Wave*

by Chad Redden

Operative: Delaney Nolan (Sofia, Bulgaria)

About the author: Chad Redden wrote a small book about Thursday titled Thursday (Plain Wrap). He lives at  chadasaurusrex.tumblr.com.

About the operative: Delaney Nolan‘s fiction has been in some places and has not been in a lot of other places. Her prose chapbook “Louisiana Maps,” forthcoming this winter, is the winner of the Ropewalk Press Fiction Editor’s Chapbook Prize. She will be the artist-in-residence at Klaustrid in Iceland this January.

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Also, in case you haven’t been paying attention, last weekend we announced our 2012 Best of the Net nominations. Check ’em out.

2012 Best of the Net Nominations!!

GREETINGS.

Welcome, at last, to the Safety Pin Review’s 2012 Best of the Net nominations. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in existence for over a year.

This was an incredibly difficult and stressful decision to make, and we were unable to select all of the stories we wanted to nominate (which would be all of them, duh, and, the window of eligibility doesn’t cover the entirety of the SPR’s storied [ha!] first year.) But we are in love with what we’ve chosen, as we expect you will be too, or already are. Read them all again, for the fortieth time.

The nominees are…

*opens envelope*

“STORIES”:

• Tucker Cummings, “Hic thalamum invasit natae vetitosque hymenaeos.” Issue Nine.
• David Sklar, “The Fisherman’s Widow.” Issue Twenty-Eight.

“POEMS”:

• Doug Paul Case, “On My Spaceship.” Issue Seven.
• Laura Hallman. “The Science of Your Intimacy Phobia.” Issue Twenty.
• Casey Hannan, “Where to Put Your Hand.” Issue Nineteen.
• Brian Hurley, “High Five.” Issue Five.
• Sonja Vitow, “After the Punch, Before the Swell.” Issue Twenty-Four.
• xTx, “When You Take Things That Aren’t Yours.” Issue One.

The quotation marks signify ARBITRARY GENRE DIVISIONS. Word.

Congratulations to all of the nominees, and enormous thanks to all the operatives for taking these stories to such exciting places. Here’s to hoping the SPR fucking storms the competition. With THUNDER-HOOVES.

I am still using the same paintbrush as I was a year ago.

Thank you all, readers and writers, for meaning the world to me.

❤

WALK THE WALK: Issue 36 Action Shots!!

Presenting, at long last, three Action Shots of our Issue 36, chiseled from the finest of operative stone, worn around NYC on the back of Operative Dylan, the very epitome of portraiture. Dig.

A CLOUDY SKY INTERROGATES YOUR LIFE

IN THE WORDS OF THE MAN HIMSELF:

So far I’ve actually often forgotten I’m wearing it until my girlfriend (who is the one snapping the photos) leans over and informs me that someone has been reading the story. Most of the readers that she’s caught sight of have been on subway platforms and trains, though I hope I also had some while I took it with me to a Defiance, Ohio show last night, as I expect many in attendance would’ve gotten a kick out of the story and the project. The story also accompanied me past a Catholic mass at the beautiful church I live next to as I walked to the subway to go to brunch.

(captured via email).

PUT A WIGGLE IN YOUR STRIDE

Operative Dylan also took the story STRAIGHT UP DOMESTICITY LANE, cooking, buying homeware etc. Rumors of spectacle: “other adventures in the works include going to a pass-the-hat show of Americana/ bluegrass music on Wednesday in a spectacular vaudeville-esque theater space.”

Yessssssssssssss.

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Imagine: you stroll these streets. You stop. You step back. You think to yourself the same thing you think every day:

METAGEOGRAPHY IN RUST COLORS

Let’s not do that again.

BOOM. EXPLOSIONS. See you soon.

Issue Thirty-Six!!

HIYA. Welcome back to the best party. We are beyond excited to present our thirty-sixth issue, which is being worn around NYC by fearless Operative Dylan. Let’s get physical:

ISSUE THIRTY-SIX (9/4/12):

featuring

“We step back and watch our lives and are really quite bored”

by Brandi Wells

Operative: Dylan Bargteil (New York, NY)

About the author: Brandi Wells is Managing Editor of The Black Warrior Review and a web editor at Hobart. She is the author of Please Don’t Be upset (Tiny Hardcore Press) and Poisonhorse (Nephew, An imprint of Mudluscious Press). Her writing can be found in Salamander, Mid-American Review, Gargoyle, Forklift Ohio, 14 Hills and many other journals.

About the operative: Dylan Bargteil is a poet and physics student at NYU interested in pursuing alternative methods of distribution for art and literature.

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Coming next week, nominations.