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Even though I didn’t win the 1/2K Prize, The Indiana Review is going to publish “Two On A Horse 1,” “Two On A Horse 2,4,” and “Two On A Horse 3,” hopefully in the December issue.

Yes!

The results are in, and though I didn’t win, I think it’s probably worth announcing that several pieces of “Two On A Horse” were named finalists in Indiana Review’s 2012 1/2K Contest, judged by the inimitable and amazing Michael Martone.

Just found out that “The Mammoth Horse Waits” took second in the University of Missouri’s George Mahan Fiction Contest. Let us now enjoy this once-celebrated polydactyl horse, the Norfolk Spider.

If anyone’s in Louisville next Friday, and awake at 9 AM, I’ll be bringing the gospel of the exploding mule to The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900 at the University of Louisville. Program information available here.

I just got word that “The Mammoth Horse Waits,” my story about 19th century showmen, Carter the American Lion King, and a giant horse named General Washington, will be published in cream city review.

Look out for it!

I just received word that “Motion Studies,” my short story about Eadweard Muybridge’s sequential photography, will be published in the Fall 2011 print issue of The Portland Review.

It’s going to be a special issue focusing on film, television, and video, so Occident (Muybridge’s horse) and I should fit right in.

From their blog: “The Film & Video issue will be released in late September/early October, and will contain fiction, essays, poetry, and whatever else we want to share with our readers, all on the subject of movies and the formats they come in.”

I just received the rather nice news that “The Mammoth Horse Waits,” an (as yet) unpublished story of mine, has been named as the finalist in Salamander’s 2011 Fiction Contest.

The judge was National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard. The winning story was “The Aerialist” by Hester Kaplan and honorable mention went to “The Blue Demon of Ikumi” by Kelly Luce.

Thank you very much!

Next Thursday night at 7 p.m., come see me read at Get Lost! Bookshop, located at 8 South 9th St. in Columbia, MO. The reading is part of the bookstore’s Cold Reading Series, and I’m sharing the bill with the gracious and talented poet Stephanie Kartalopoulos, as well as Chris Stephens, who is going to play the sitar.

The sitar, people! THE ONLY SITAR IN ALL THE WORLD. How awesome is that?
Apparently there will also be wine and beer.
And it’s free, but you can shop for great books, both used and new.

Lovely place.

I think I’ll be trotting out (ahem) some new work. I’m assuming that if you’re reading this, you already know about me, so here’s Stephanie’s bio to pique your poetic interest:

Stephanie Kartalopoulos (poetry)
Stephanie is a Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at the University of Missouri, where she is also studying towards a PhD in Creative Writing & Literature. She holds an MFA In Creative Writing from the University of Florida and a BA in English from Harvard and has taught at Boston University, Lesley University, the educational non-profit Year Up, Cambridge College, and The University of Florida in addition to Mizzou. Stephanie’s poems appear and are forthcoming from a variety of journals that include 32 Poems, Phoebe, Harpur Palate, Waccamaw, Barn Owl Review, Subtropics, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Fifth Wednesday, and St. Katherine’s Review.

COME COME COME!
-J.

And thus, another story involving horse manure is unleashed on the unsuspecting public!

Read it here…

Linking someone to the Spring 2010 issue of Redivider, I found this review of my story “Shooting A Mule.” Devlin Farmer writes for a site called “The Review Review.” Just like it says on the tin, they review literary reviews. Here’s what Farmer had to say about “Shooting A Mule.”

“Pages 118 and 119 of Redivider illustrate how the magazine runs into problems. On page 119 is an archival photograph from 1881 of a headless mule. (The mule’s head was blown off by explosives strapped to its neck, the detonation of which was photographed.) The preceding pages are J. Bowers’ entertaining re-imagining of the circumstances leading to this actual historic photograph, “Shooting a Mule.” However, setting this disturbing image on the facing page to Cecily Park’s poem “Savage” is so distracting that I actually had to fold the magazine over lest my eyes strayed to the flying blood and mule pieces. (Threaded seemingly randomly throughout the magazine are visual images which, in black and white, are starkly set in the middle of each page. Unfortunately I found them to be a bit too random, in many cases doing a disservice to both artists and writers represented.) Why not set this image opposite the story it belongs to instead of polluting Park’s poem?”

WHY NOT, INDEED.

(And for the record, I’d like to apologize to Cecily Park for inadvertently spraying dead mule detritus all over her poem.)

-J.