ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB | FUNHOUSE by Robert Vaughan

Funhouse is a collection of brilliantly slippery pieces of flash fiction and longer form prose from the author of Addicts & Basements, and Rift (with Kathy Fish), among others. Robert Vaughan is unrivaled in his ability to suprise, stimulate and explore. A magician with a typewriter. He returns here with stories to hypnotize in the tunnel of love, beguile in the hall of wonders, spin you around on the tilt o’ whirl.

What People Are Saying about FUNHOUSE

In Robert Vaughan’s FUNHOUSE, the many mirrors there do not undulate, do not distort, but rather reflect our deeper, fully recognizable selves. With a keen, wise, and stunningly original amalgam of poetry and prose, Vaughan shows us, not only life’s fractures, but its mendings.

—Robert Scotellaro, author of Measuring the Distance and Bad Motel

Robert Vaughan is a writer we need more now than ever: one filled with overwhelming generosity. His characters are allowed to be ugly, funny, kind. He recognizes the joys of collaboration and boundary pushing, putting art above ego. His stories aren’t static artifacts, they’re fluid: jumping into poems into lyrics and back into stories in the span of mere paragraphs. One of the biggest delights of this collection is that with the turn of the page, we’re always somewhere new.

–Megan Giddings, author of Arcade Seventeen

Arresting and sometimes haunting, this book will make your knees quake. With lush and precise prose, Vaughan invites us into lives that are familiar yet not, and never are we disappointed. It’s rare to be so seduced by such rich language, to be both transported and immersed. FUNHOUSE is simply riveting prose and, in a word, Vaughan is a master.

–Len Kuntz, author of I’m Not Supposed To Be Here and Neither Are You, and The Dark Sunshine

Publisher’s Information

PUBLISHER: Unknown Books
ISBN: 978-0998309019
DIMENSIONS: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
PAGES: 260]
PRICE: $15.00
RELEASE DATE: 12/26/2016
PURCHASE HERE

Recommended Works by Robert Vaughan

Favorite Eckleburg Work: http://eckleburg.org/works/fiction/i-guess-i-must-be-having-fun/

Sing the Song by Meredith Alling

A terrific romp of short fiction, Alling’s first collection from Future Tense Books. Delightful, irreverent, and strange, these tales will make a reader want to finish the collection in one sitting. READ MORE

Notes on the Cinematograph by Robert Bresson by Sirens by Joshua Mohr

These random notes are non-fiction flash that enter into the artistic mind and realm of great French Film Director Robert Bresson. A most radiant, innovative stylist and director whose movies contain nothing superfluous and everything is always at stake.

https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Cinematograph-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1681370247/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487115804&sr=1-1&keywords=notes+on+the+cinematography READ MORE

Discussion Questions for FUNHOUSE

1. Why do you combine genres such as flash fiction and prose poetry in the same collection, FUNHOUSE?

2. There are drawings in Hall of Mirrors, “Another Brick in the Wall, part 4.” Did you do them? If not, who did? What was it like to collaborate?

3. In the fourth section, Ferris Wheel, there are longer, more tradition short stories. Have you published any books of them prior to FUNHOUSE?

About Robert Vaughan

Robert Vaughan teaches workshops in hybrid writing, poetry, fiction, and hike/ write. He has facilitated these at locations like Alverno College, UWM, Red Oak Writing, The Clearing, Synergia Ranch and Mabel Dodge Luhan House. He leads writing roundtables in Milwaukee, WI. He was a finalist for the Gertrude Stein Award for Fiction twice (2013, 2014). He was the head judge for the Bath International Flash Fiction Awards, 2016. His short fiction, ‘A Box’ was selected for Best Small Fictions 2016 (Queen’s Ferry Press). Vaughan is the author of five books: Microtones (Cervena Barva Press); Diptychs + Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits (Deadly Chaps); Addicts & Basements (CCM) and RIFT, a flash collection co-authored with Kathy Fish (Unknown Press). His new book is FUNHOUSE (Unknown Press, December, 2016). He blogs at www.robert-vaughan.com.

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Brilliantly slippery pieces of flash fiction and longer form prose from the author of Addicts & Basements, and Rift (with Kathy Fish), among others. Robert Vaughan is unrivaled in his ability to suprise, stimulate and explore. A magician with a typewriter. He returns here with stories to hypnotize in the tunnel of love, beguile in the hall of wonders, spin you around on the tilt o’ whirl.

August 25, 2015July 19, 2017

SELFIE INTERVIEW | Rion Amilcar Scott

Eckleburg: What drives, inspires, and feeds your artistic work?

Rion Amilcar Scott: Restlessness, boredom, Wu-Tang, insecurity, debt, my characters, injustice, my vision, energy drinks, my son, competition, Diaz, Ellison, Morrison…there’s a million other things.

Eckleburg: If you had to arm wrestle a famous writer, poet or artist, either living or dead, who would it be? Why? What would you say to distract your opponent and go for the win?

Rion Amilcar Scott: I would arm wrestle Fitzgerald because I’m always wrestling with The Great Gatsby and I would distract him by calling him “old sport” and remixing his sentences into gangsta rap: “In my younger and more vulnerable years/I drank beers with my father and he gave me this advice/’Get yourself some great gats, b and bust them real nice.'”

Eckleburg: What would you like the world to remember about you and your work?

Rion Amilcar Scott: I hope people remember some sentences from my work that helped them in some way.

Rion Amilcar Scott’s work has been published in numerous places such as The Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, PANK, The Rumpus, Fiction International, The Washington City Paper, The Toast, Akashic Books, Melville House and Confrontation, among others. A story of his earned a place on the Wigleaf Top 50 (very short) Fictions of 2013 list. He was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland and earned an MFA at George Mason University where he won both the Mary Roberts Rinehart award and a Completion Fellowship. His collection, Wolf Tickets, is forthcoming in 2015 from Tiny Hardcore Press. Presently, he teaches English at Bowie State University.

August 23, 2015April 23, 2017

WRITE. HARD. Create with Rion Amilcar Scott

Eckleburg: What is most rewarding about teaching the craft of writing?

Rion Amilcar Scott: What I find most rewarding is seeing students commit to the work of reading and practicing until they find that they have a breakthrough. Perhaps the student has found new way of approaching the work, conquered a long term problem or discovered or a new of seeing what they have created. It always happens, but there is no telling when it might occur.

Eckleburg: What was/is the most rewarding experience as a student of writing?

Rion Amilcar Scott: Once I was taking classes and also writing a lot, but none of it was of any consequence–or so I thought. I was following my professors’ suggestions to the letter and I was happy to be producing, but I was also frustrated that so much of it was bad. I took a step back and when I returned to the page I had an idea to write a story from the perspective of an 11-year old girl. I wrote it almost in a single shot and when I was finished I knew I had something special. My teachers and my peers agreed. It seemed to me I had been struck with inspiration, but really it was the result of writing all the bad stories that preceded it.

Eckleburg: What is your favorite writing exercise or habit?

Rion Amilcar Scott: I am teaching the Short Short Fiction course, a subject of which I am very excited. Flash Fiction revolutionized my writing. My favorite short short fiction exercise is to have students keep a flash journal. This requires students reflect briefly on whatever transpired in their day and then turn whatever happened into a brief story (less than 1,000 words). The story need not be faithful to the facts of the day, but should capture the emotional essence of what happened. For instance, a bittersweet triumph could be represented by a story of a hunter taking down a bear he’s stalked for years. The target may be gone, the goal may be achieved, but an emptiness replaces the years long dream.

Tag: Flash Fiction