As if you weren't getting enough Funk this month.

So, the Funk contest will be up a little later today, but while you're waiting, you should check this out: editor emeritus (in Kyle Dargan's words) Abdel Shakur has an interview up on Post No Ills. Dargan asks the questions, and Shakur offers some really thoughtful and interesting answers. Definitely worth a read.

Greetings from the Mothership...

The summer issue of Indiana Review is out now and if you don't got a copy, you got to get yourself one. Besides top-notch work from Gary Soto, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Denise Duhamel, Liza Wieland, and T. Geronimo Johnson, this issue also has a funk feature.

What, pray tell, is a funk feature? Well, dear reader, you're going to have to get you a copy of the issue to really find out, but for now let's just say that the funk feature is poetry, fiction, and art with a funk aesthetic. Terrance Hayes, Aracelis Girmay, Patrick Rosal, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Tim Seibles, Jericho Brown, and Ed Pavlic contribute some of the funkiest poetry ever assembled, Honoree Jeffers offers a story all about Mad Dog 20/20 (Duce Duce!) and then there's the art, which is off the hook!

Now, there's a lot of incredible work in the art section, by Thomas Sayers Ellis, Krista Franklin, Scott Chernis, and Noel W. Anderson, but we we're especially lucky to receive previously unpublished art from the four artists who designed the covers for Parliament-Funkadelic. Yeah--all of them. It is off the hook. To get your copy, try our online ordering.

I'm officially done at IR, but since this issue is my baby (as I was so astutely reminded by one of my favorite poets, Marcus Wicker) I'm going to talk more about the issue on my blog, misstraknowitall.blogspot.com.


Also, keep your blue light on because we'll be updating our podcasts with podcasts of authors from the funk feature (actually, Aracelis Girmay and Patrick Rosal are already up). In the mean time, if you haven't already, you need to be checking in with the Indiana Review blog (The Bluelight) to here authors reading some of their work.

--Abdel

Other Blogs We Love: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Reading the highest of highbrow fiction and poetry gets tiring at times. And, as you may have noticed, we here at IR are not afraid to admit that, at times, our taste is decidedly lowbrow.

If you're looking for a good recommendation for your next trashy read, the Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books offer smart and funny reviews of genre lit, with a focus on crappy romance novels of all types. Recent highlights include:

The help-a-bitch-out feature, in which readers help other readers find vaguely-remembered plots (e.g. "The heroine was wrapped up in some kind of rug/carpet/blanket and unrolled for a king or ruler or duke or something of the sort.")

The worst lines in sci-fi erotica

One of the main bloggers' husbands offers a guest review of David Hasselhoff's autobiography, in which the difference between good trashy and bad trashy is thoughtfully discussed.

And you have to love "Covers Gone Wild."

--Hannah