An Apparent Event
a Second Story Books Anthology
An Apparent Event collects nine Second Story chapbooks that were published from 1998 through 2002.
Edited and published by Mary Burger
About
Second Story Books was an independent literary press operating from 1998 through 2008, showcasing cross-genre narrative works.
Excerpt
from the
Introduction
by Mary Burger
Narrative exists in the tension between disbelief and its suspension. The seduction of narrative is that it creates an experience of events in time, but that we are aware, in the midst of this experience, that what we are experiencing is a representation.
These works enact strategies for self-reflexively examining the assumptions and consequences of narrative choices, and implicate readers in doing the same.
Praise
The figures in this anthology — astronauts, comic-book doppelgangers, spooky parents, dog-friends, psychiatrists, a girl called Pamela, foreshortened angels, an erotic autobiographer— mesmerized me. They seem to be in conversation with each other: intensely related by their association in this community of works. I fell in love with writing when reading this collection: how the first questions alter subtly in time, or radically, as biology does when exposed to an originary or future landscape.
—Bhanu Kapil
Chapbooks
Not Right Now, Renee Gladman
A Summer Newsreel, Brenda Coultas
The Television Documentary, Lauren Gudath
Confuzion Comix, Jacques Debrot
A Duelling Primer, Avery Burns
Red, Kristen Prevallet
Spirit’s Measure, Gregory Brooker
Cracquer, Camille Roy
The Boy Who Could Fly, Mary Burger
Full-length Books
Mastering the Dream, Kelly Lydick
The Island, Beth Murray
