L. Shapley Bassen

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L. Shapley Bassen’s “Winter” and 4 more poems

Posted by lsbassen on September 17, 2018
Posted in: Poems. Tagged: alice, blue nib, chocolate, dichotomy, false, ketchup, persephone, unhappy, winter. Leave a comment

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.

Photo by Getty Images / iStockphoto

Photo by Getty Images / iStockphoto

L. Shapley Bassen’s interview on Alternative History

Posted by lsbassen on May 28, 2018
Posted in: Novels, Short Stories. Tagged: acnbooks, alternate, history, knives, long, marwa, question, rainbow, summer. Leave a comment

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.

ACN Books interviews LS Bassen

ACN Books interviews LS Bassen

Visit Beneath The Rainbow.

That Is The Question

That Is The Question

L. Shapley Bassen’s “Summer of the Long Knives”

Posted by lsbassen on May 21, 2018
Posted in: Novels. Tagged: acnbooks, alternate, amazon, brownshirts, ebook, epub, history, kindle, knives, long, nazi, summer. 2 Comments

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.

knives-1200-acnbooks-podcast-21.png

ACN Books presents “Summer of the Long Knives”

L. Shapley Bassen’s collection “Showfolk & Stories”

Posted by lsbassen on January 23, 2017
Posted in: Collections, Short Stories. Tagged: fiction, inkception, novella, portrait, showfolk, squid. Leave a comment

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.

Showfolk & Stories

Showfolk & Stories

L. Shapley Bassen’s story “The Titanic Was Huge”

Posted by lsbassen on November 25, 2016
Posted in: Short Stories. Tagged: collective, feminine, thanksgiving, titanic. Leave a comment

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.

Matters of Contrast by Cory Wright

Matters of Contrast by Cory Wright (Flickr, CC, Resized)

L. Shapley Bassen’s story “What Can the Matter Be?”

Posted by lsbassen on September 11, 2016
Posted in: Short Stories. Tagged: dali, kenyon, matter. 2 Comments

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.

La gare de Perpignan by Salvador Dali

La gare de Perpignan by Salvador Dali

L. Shapley Bassen’s novella in “The New Frontier”

Posted by lsbassen on August 6, 2016
Posted in: Collections. Tagged: fiction, frontier, inkception, journey, modernity, Poems, world. 1 Comment

L. Shapley Bassen’s novella “Showfolk” is featured in The New Frontier: Short Fiction and Poems for an Old and New World by Inkception Books. Stay tuned for more of her stories in Showfolk & Stories coming from Inkception soon!

Thirteen award-winning poets and authors celebrate the journey of the human soul from birth, to death, on the road, and through time. From the Pacific Northwest to Texas, London, India, and Russia, these authors tell of struggle, adventure, and modernity.

Editor-in-chief Jennifer Steen. Authored by Phillip Larrea, L. Shapley Bassen, Liam Hogan, Ashley Campbell, Ian Rene Vignes, Vixyy Fox, Kay Elam, Nemanja Krstic, Jim Lester, Rachna Lavanya Saxena, James Seals, Cathy Madson, and Elissa Richert.

Visit Inkception Books.

The New Frontier

The New Frontier

L. Shapley Bassen’s “Eulogy For Miss Eulalie”

Posted by lsbassen on March 14, 2016
Posted in: Plays. Tagged: airplay, colbourn, eulalie, eulogy, kit, spreaker. Leave a comment

I didn’t expect this really rather wonderful recording to be online today … thought it was scheduled for the Ides of March tomorrow … and the actress did such a good job!

AIRPlay presents “Eulogy For Miss Eulalie” by L. Shapley Bassen, performed by Kit Colbourn. Kit Colbourn received her B.A. in Theatre, cum laude, at Florida State University after the prior two years at the University of California, Irvine School of Theatre; she has studied at HB Studios, NY and attended the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training. She also worked with and studied under Charles Nelson Reilly. She attended the School for Film & Television, working with Joan See, Judith Searcy, Barbara Gulan, Drew Birns, Barry Shapiro and others. Kit is a member of Actor’s Equity Association and Screen Actors Guild.

Visit AIRPlay on Spreaker.

eulogy-1200-spreaker-airplay

AIRPlay presents “Eulogy For Miss Eulalie”

L. Shapley Bassen’s “Portrait of a Giant Squid”

Posted by lsbassen on February 18, 2016
Posted in: Short Stories. Tagged: austin, chronicle, giant, portrait, squid. 6 Comments

L. Shapley Bassen’s “Portrait of a Giant Squid” is the first place winner in the 2015 Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest! To see the contest wrap-up and read the winning stories, see “The 24th Annual Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest,” (Arts, Feb. 19).

It would be an understatement to say that in April, Ray was surprised to be his first cousin Donna’s heir. In his mother’s photo albums from the postwar 1940s, Ray appeared as a toddler, and this older cousin had stood over him in that summertime, casting a shadow. His mother had died at 69 in 1987, younger than he was in this August of 2014. Donna’s parents had moved from New York to Los Angeles in the early Fifties. In the past decade of social media, Donna had located more distant members of their scattered family, discovering they were a clan of only children. After Donna friended Ray on Facebook, there had been posts and messages and some emails, never Skype. He’d kept his distance, having no inclination to travel to California. Four decades of international business travel had extinguished wanderlust. Also, he agreed with John Updike: “The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

The legal document said that his cousin Donna’s estate included a painting by a major 20th century artist. Ruth Riesenkalmar’s work had finally emerged from eclipse by her husband’s, and the museum site of their house and shared studios on Long Island had been renamed, hyphenated to include her. After learning about the painting, Ray visited three Manhattan museums exhibiting Riesenkalmars. MOMA displayed two from her cephalopod series. A photo the lawyers sent showed Ray that his newly inherited Portrait of a Giant Squid was as color-saturated and indecipherably abstract as MOMA’s except for its dominant circular center entangled in wavy, sucker-circled lines suggesting a squid’s giant eye and tentacles. He could see from its dimensions it would be an ordeal to install in his apartment.

Read the rest of the story at: The Austin Chronicle.

Illustration by Jason Stout

Illustration by Jason Stout

Frye[d] Pears: A book review by L. Shapley Bassen

Posted by lsbassen on February 6, 2016
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: app, arcadia, digital, frye, ipad, pears. Leave a comment

On Feb. 9, the hardcover of Iain Pears’ ARCADIA will be released. Critic L. Shapley Bassen discusses this fascinating saga in a new review:

ARCADIA is Faber & Faber’s first novel to have been written primarily with digital readers in mind. The British publishers believe it to be the first book of its kind in existence. Shortly after its iPad appearance, the 596-page hardback was published last September 3rd (UK). This February, 2016, Knopf presents a 528-page US edition. “While the hardback is 180,000 words, the app comes to 250,000, offering additional stories and expanding those told in the hardback.”

Get the full story at: Prick of the Spindle.

Arcadia by Iain Pears

Arcadia by Iain Pears

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