"True Story" Rocks it This Friday....Atlanta Mag Gives Shout-out

Rah-rah, ATL Write Scene!

A piece in this month's Atlanta Magazine recognizes Write Club, Carapace, Kill Your Darlings, the Wren's Nest, and (gasp,) all the other lit-tastic happenings around the city--including True Story. Hurrah!

What a lurvely Christmas present.

We'll see you Friday, right?

That's when Thomas Wheatley, Justin Heckert and John Jeremiah Sullivan will kill it. We can pretty much guarantee a bang-up time: about as much fun for absolutely free on a Friday night as you've ever had, at least since the last time you were doing dishes and held that impromptu dance party all by yourself....or maybe just since the last True Story. We can't be the judge of everything.

Anyway: 8:00, Kavarna. See you there.

True Story #12: We can't promise a dance party won't break out.

True Story #12 Readers: Where You've Seen 'Em Before

At the intersection of nervy journalism and rogue writing.
Friday, December 9th.
8:00 pm.
Kavarna.
Dig.

John Jeremiah SULLIVAN
He is a memoirist (Blood Horses), award winning writer (GQ, NY Times Magazine, etc), and an editor for the Paris Review. He also writes for Harper's Magazine and the Oxford American. His work in those publications has twice been given the National Magazine Award (for best feature and best essay, respectively). He has also received a Whiting Writers' Award and a Pushcart Prize. Sullivan is the author of Blood Horses (FSG, 2004) and Pulphead (FSG, 2011). He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Read the Publishers Weekly starred review of Pulphead here: www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-374-53290-1

From "You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!” The New York Times:
Something you learn rearing kids in this young millennium is that the word “Disney” works as a verb. As in, “Do you Disney?” Or, “Are we Disneying this year?” Technically a person could use the terms in speaking about the original Disneyland, in California, but this would be an anomalous usage. One goes to Disneyland and has a great time there, probably — I’ve never been — but one Disneys at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. There’s an implication of surrender to something enormous.

One night my wife, M. J., said I should prepare to Disney. It wasn’t presented as a question or even as something to waste time thinking about, just to brace for, because it was happening.


Justin HECKERT
Justin Heckert lives in Decatur, Ga., with his wife, Amanda, and their dog, Cooper. His work has been published in Atlanta magazine, Esquire, ESPN The Magazine, Men's Journal, the Oxford American, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, among others. In 2005 he was named Writer of the Year by the City and Regional Magazine Association. Some of his work has been anthologized in the Best American Crime Reporting and noted in the Best American Nonrequired Reading, Best American Essays and Best American Sports Writing.


From “And In The End,” Atlanta magazine:
The man’s chest was completely open after a few moments, the layer of his upper chest folded to tickle his nose. Then, beneath the fat, the organs. Organs upon organs in the gorge of the open body, stacked and miraculously fit together, delicate as rose petals. When looking inside of a cut-open body, during an autopsy, one cannot help but get a sense of wonder. The human body is a miracle. The lungs and heart and kidneys are a miracle. The intestines, how they stretch and bend, what they can hold, how they function, the sheer length of them—miracles. That blood can flow through a maze of veins thinner than mechanical-pencil lead is nothing less than a miracle.


Thomas WHEATLEY
An Atlanta native who spent nearly 12 lost years in the suburban wilderness, Thomas is an award-winning staff writer at Creative Loafing, Atlanta's alt-weekly, who covers transportation, the environment, urban development and state and local politics. A graduate of the University of Georgia and former New Yorker, he enjoys crossword puzzles and C-SPAN. He has an intense fear of spiders, clowns and old black-and-white movies in which men court women. Prior to joining CL, he was a staff writer at a weekly newspaper in north Fulton County and a contributing writer at Flagpole, Athens, Ga.’s altweekly, where he wrote about pigeon racers, nudist resorts and mountain town professional wrestling organizations. He lives in Decatur with his wife and two cats.


From “Sober,” Creative Loafing:
On Thanksgiving Day in 2006, I was alone in the bathroom of my Tahitian lagoon bungalow, shaking and vomiting blood. Outside, a lushly tropical island jutted up from the water and topless newlywed brides sunbathed on the decks. But in my all-expenses paid room – courtesy of a contest I'd won on "Live With Regis and Kelly" – the shades were drawn. I looked in the mirror and told myself to stop drinking, yet kept washing my mouth out with vodka. I hadn't eaten anything of substance in two days. I was doing exactly what I promised myself time after time I wouldn't do again.

I spent seven days puddle jumping to different islands in Tahiti, and I can tell you more about my hotel room than I can about the archipelago. My ritual consisted of cleaning out the mini-bar, ordering room service or making my way inland to pick up food that was easy on my stomach – bread, butter, crackers. More importantly, I'd buy two bottles of vodka so I wouldn't have to return to the store the next day. Even though the mini-bar and room service were only footsteps or a phone call away, I wanted options. When I went on my sole excursion – a jet-skiing trip around Bora Bora – the tour guide took a look at me and asked if I'd been partying the night before. No. I was just a guy who'd stayed up all night in his room drinking vodka.

Unlike Christmas, True Story #12 Actually Is Right Around the Corner

Hey!

So, we'll see you Friday, December 9th at 8:00 pm at Kavarna, right?

Good.

Because this True Story's gonna be the best one ever.

(Because, let's face it, each new True Story always seems the best one ever.)

And we would not want you to miss it.

You want true tales ? You want rogue writers? You want nervy journalists?

The True Story stage has it all, in the misleadingly mortal forms of...

Justin HECKERT!

Thomas WHEATLEY!

John Jeremiah SULLIVAN!

Mark your calendar and stay tuned for more info.

Just announced! John Jeremiah Sullivan to Take the "True Story!" Stage in December!

Hey! Isn't that John Jeremiah Sullivan, who wrote that incredible article that I emailed to everyone I know and some people I don't know?

A fierce fall and wicked winter approaches in True Storyland, folks. Our October 21st reading includes memoir'y-prose from Krista Derbecker, storytelling from raconteur Shannon McNeal (of Carapace, and well...Shannon McNeal fame,) and wordsmith'y prose from poet Jason Myers.


And then there's December--
--when, we're really downright psyched to announce: one of our favorite writers walking the streets of this nation today is traveling to Atlanta to take the "True Story!" stage: John Jeremiah Sullivan.

If you don't know Sullivan, here's a sampling of his work--just so you'll know to clear you calendar on Friday, Dec. 9th and get to Kavarna.

There's "Upon this Rock," his celebrated essay in GQ a few years back--about covering a Christian rock festival.

Recently, he wrote this piece for the New York Times about what happens when family, your stoner friend and the latter-day phenomenon known as "Disneying" collide.

More: A story about Gulfport, MS, just after Hurricane Katrina, and shorter pieces on Leonard Cohen and Kurt Cobain in the New York Magazine.

He recently won a Pushcart Prize for his essay "Mister Lytle," published in The Paris Review.

And, is this appropriate to say?, we've also see John read before, and it's incredibly worthwhile. Furthermore, we've also actually spent the past ten minutes arguing among ourselves about whether or not it's appropriate to add in the additional fact that he's a really swell dude.

So obviously, you have to be there, fool. We think John will be reading from his new book of collected essays, and you may be able to buy one that night.

Meanwhile, see ya in October. We can't wait.