Losing Luster, by L.Shapley Bassen
Published in Issue No. 284 ~ January, 2021
POETRY
June, 2020
“A Host of Vermillion Poppies” from SCENE & SAID by Whispering Prairie Press in Kansas for their next issue 16
“Brain Coral” and “Freckles 55th edition of Welter http://blogs.ubalt.edu/welter/contributors/ Print issue
May, 2020
“Entanglement” and “Ram Dass Is Ready to Die” https://oyedrum.com/were-tied-up-in-knots/
April, 2020 https://issuu.com/themuse_magazine/docs/supplementary_magazine_april_2020 “COVID-19”is the first one in this special issue, page 9
“Physicists at the Beach” https://www.amazon.com/Gyroscope-Review-Spring-poetry-around-ebook/dp/B08692TM4F/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2EA2121KNBYKI&dchild=1&keywords=gyroscope+review&qid=1594656947&sprefix=Gyroscope+Review%2Caps%2C139&sr=8-2
February, 2020
“Higg’s Moment” accepted by The Journal of Undiscovered Poets
November, 2019
“Gertrude’s Letter to Hamlet” is read/audio starting at 23:00 at https://www.patreon.com/posts/story-of-howl-31051538?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=postshare
FICTION
September, 2020
“The Night Before the Snow Day” will appear in Lunch Ticket Amuse-Bouche. https://lunchticket.org/
June, 2020
“The Rains Down in Africa” https://persimmontree.org/summer-2020/the-rains-down-in-africa/
May, 2020
“A World of Mirrors” [Chi Wing, short]. https://oyedrum.com/?s=Bassen
April, 2020
“St. Anthony, St. Jude, and Deborah Walk into a Bar…” was a contest runner up & appeared at https://jerryjazzmusician.com/2020/04/st-anthony-st-jude-deborah-walk-into-a-bar-a-short-story-by-l-shapley-bassen/
“The Dead Are Always With Us” https://www.unlikelystories.org/content/the-dead-are-always-with-us
March, 2020
“Roger Williams Is an Anthem” in Fiction Friday at
https://manquemagazine.com/2020/03/27/fiction-friday-roger-williams-is-an-anthem/
I have a new story in the February 2020 issue of thewritersandreadersmagazine.com:
Cabochons, starts on page 94, right hand side .. continues through 98 — last story in the magazine!
You can read the story at:
thewritersmagazine.readmag.online/read/28669/full?page=94
Print is available, payment in pounds.
Denatural Selection from Woven Tale Press, as promised, is online and available for order.
Here is link to the online version – starts at page 43: online.flipbuilder.com/eovs/elkg/
And here’s the print: www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1734033?__r=590004
My first poetry collection titled WHAT SUITS A NUDIST is published!
Here is a description from the Clare Songbirds Publishing House:
“To read Lois Bassen’s poetry is to be led by a priestess into a place that is part laboratory, part seraglio, part garden, part observatory and part weapons forge. This learned lady with the nicely turned ankle will show you her intricate and ingenious machines, that contain a bronze and amethyst bird that will sing on the hour. Mistress of metamorphosis, blue-stocking, dangerous mother and wry comedian, she’ll carry you off if you’re not careful.”
~Frederick Turner, Founders Professor, School of Arts & Humanities, UT Dallas
You can order the book by following this link:
www.claresongbirdspub.com/featured-authors/l-shapley-bassen/
Other News:
9/15/19 “Finding Factors of Very Large Prime Numbers” accepted by thricefiction.com and will in late December or early January in 2020.
9/9/19 “Resistance to Decoherence” was accepted by Berlin’s www.thewildword.com
8/30/19 Woven Tale Press accepted “Denatural Selection”. This is especially nice because the fiction editor was a creator of the Ploughshares magazine.
3 pieces of poetry news beyond the book/collection:
9/19/19 “Poet’s Tachycardia” will appear in the British 12/15/2019 Issue 40 of The Blue Nib https://thebluenib.com/
9/13/19 “Ebbtide” was accepted by Gyroscope Review http://gyroscopereview.com
Press nominated “Where the Well Was – 2017” for the 2019 Best of Net http://bit.ly/2k9PElm
My short story Thaw was chosen to appear in the 10th anniversary issue of the Westchester Review.
The issue is available through Amazon
On Monday morning, I learned that 5 new poems appeared in The Blue Nib magazine for their new Issue 35: “Unhappy Alice”, “Winter”, “Ketchup’s Find”, “The Persephone False Dichotomy”, and “Chocolate”. What do you think?
Winter
Now once again the trees are stripped
of autumn’s leaves and all the other
autumns’ before forgotten as well.
In winter, spring is beyond imagination
and summer beyond hope. But not only
solstice assures the return of the sun
…
Read the rest of the poem at: The Blue Nib.
Here’s my follow-up conversation with ACN Books about Summer of the Long Knives, including the interview questions and a link to “That Is The Question”, the coda-chapter for New Marwa. This Indie Beginning podcast episode lasts 12 minutes.
If you could go back in time and rewrite a historical moment, what moment would you choose? LS Bassen wanted to revisit WWII and more specifically, the death of Adolf Hitler in her tale Summer of the Long Knives. In this episode, Marie and Benjamin discuss reviews left for the story as well as their thoughts on the topic of Alternative History.
Visit ACN Books.
Visit Beneath The Rainbow.
So here I am writing about the remarkable online site, ACN Books, that accepted Summer of the Long Knives for a pretty long reading. An Indie Beginning podcast of 37 minutes!
ACN Books features the indie novel Summer of the Long Knives by LS Bassen as read by Benjamin Franke. After an attack by a band of roving Nazi Brownshirts, Lisel Ganz, an artist’s model in Berlin, suffers an injury that gives her the ability to catch glimpses of the future. It is already too late for many, but Lisel now can see that an even greater evil lies ahead. Taking refuge in the home of artist Albert Entrater, Lisel meets Konrad, a Catholic priest involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Amid great betrayal, loss, and danger, Lisel must act while there is still time. A novel of what literary critic George Steiner has called alternity, Summer of the Long Knives explores the hopes and horrors that emerge from history’s darkest moments.
Visit ACN Books.
Last year was a busy year!
In August 2016, L. Shapley Bassen’s novella “Showfolk” was featured in The New Frontier by Inkception Books. In September 2016, her short story “What Can the Matter Be?” was featured in The Kenyon Review website. And in February 2016, her short story “Portrait of a Giant Squid” was featured in The Austin Chronicle website. But now in 2017, all 3 stories and more are gathered together in her new collection Showfolk & Stories by Inkception Books!
Eight portraits of players onstage and off. Eight stories about New York. Stories of theatre life in the 1980’s. Including “Showfolk”, “Yesterday”, “Portrait of a Rotary Phone”, and “Portrait of a Giant Squid”. Plus 4 bonus royalty-free scripts for performers!
Author L. Shapley Bassen brings together a new and fresh collection of shorts and scripts. As a finalist for the 2011 Flannery O’Connor award and native New Yorker, Bassen gives us theatre folk, 1987, and life in the Big Apple. She is a winner of the 2009 APP Drama Prize and Mary Rhinehart Fellowship.
Visit Inkception Books.
Happy Thanksgiving! L. Shapley Bassen invites you to take a look at her new online story “The Titanic Was Huge” featured on the very first page of the Feminine Collective website and its Featured Articles section. She adds, “I didn’t expect it this soon!”
Thanksgiving was in the past, and the New Year, as ever, in the future. It was winter in New York, a season for parties.
Accompanied by his fourth wife, Carl Fish attended only the finest, which he defined by his attendance. Often, these affairs were fundraisers although this one was not. Even so, Carl expected that before the evening ended, he would be asked to donate, attend, or approve, and the absence of such solicitation would be his cue abruptly to depart.
Read the rest of the story at: Feminine Collective.
L. Shapley Bassen invites you to take a look at her very short story “What Can the Matter Be?” featured on the very first page of The Kenyon Review website and its KR Online section (Fall 2016). She adds, “Anyway, it’s a short short story … and I’m kinda proud of it … and where it is.”
When Homo sapiens or its hybrid heir has outwitted death, will tragedy be missed or transcendence possible? When history has long revealed the mental limits implicit in that question, what could matter about the centennial and jubilee of August 2014? Would the law of the conservation of matter still be on the books? What were books?
Read the rest of the story at: The Kenyon Review.