The Small Press Adventure
Trip Street Press (1993-2003) is a literary small press located in San Francisco and dedicated to publishing avant-garde fiction written in English. Karl Roeseler conceived and founded Trip Street Press as an art event in itself, with a beginning, middle and an end. Part of the original conception was that each book would be very different from the others, and that the audience for each book might cross over to something new.
A collection of 20 short stories about the turn of the millennium featuring both known and emerging writers of innovative fiction. What unifies these writers is their ability to avoid a predictable response to an inevitable event. Stories by Etel Adnan, Margaret Atwood, Frederick Barthelme, Lydia Davis, David Gilbert, Steve Katz, Kevin Killian, Donna Levreault, Harry Mathews, Ameena Meer, Susan Smith Nash, Niels Nielsen, Karl Roeseler, Teri Roney, Linda Rudolph, Kevin Sampsell, Lynne Tillman, Karen Tei Yamashita, Lewis Warsh, and Mac Wellman.
2000andWhat?
A 92-page puzzle of wit and audacious poetic technique by the author of I Shot The Hairdresser. A narrative extravaganza in which characters appear and disappear without warning. Fiction has never been so strange. “Captivating, brilliant prose that may be blinding to the normal eye.” —Kevin Sampsell
Five Happiness by David Gilbert
“Karl Roeseler takes a straightforward situation—a wandering rock star, a lion, seven French maids—and, with good humor and a charming light touch, rings magical changes on it. Particle by particle, with glittering clarity, the world of the fortunate Gesso Martin, the gentle chauffeur-cum-philosopher, gradually accumulates around us in an engagingly fantastic tale...” —Lydia Davis
The Adventures of Gesso Martin by Karl Roeseler
A collection of short stories from the author of A Free Man and Private Agenda. “Lewis Warsh’s stories are devastatingly good. Fragments of plain unlikely lives are enacted in expertly simple, sinuous prose. Characters evolve in a bewitching and scary realm somewhere between event and insight, at the unnerving center of what we take to be reality. These people are all too convincing—we wouldn’t want to be them, but we probably are.” —Harry Mathews
Money Under the Table by Lewis Warsh
A collection of longer stories from the author of Channel-Surfing the Apocalypse. Susan Smith Nash possesses the rare ability to write about topical events and issues without being predictable or mundane. Oklahoma will never be the same. “These brilliant, often riveting apocalyptic narratives are so complex, edgy and darkly funny that it is almost a betrayal of them to point out the beauty of their style.” —Jack Foley
Doomsday Belly by Susan Smith Nash
A collection of 21 short stories with the wicked premise that every story either features the telling of a lie or the presence of a liar. Stories by Etel Adnan, Charlotte Carter, Adrian Dannatt, Lydia Davis, Stephen Dixon, David Gilbert, James Kelman, A.L. Kennedy, Deborah Levy, David Lynn, Colum McCann, ZZ Packer, Karl Roeseler, George Saunders, Gilbert Sorrentino, Philip Terry, Lynne Tillman, Lewis Warsh, Mac Wellman, Dallas Wiebe and John Williams.
Here Lies
Acclaimed, eclectic and irascible, playwright Mac Wellman continues to make trouble with language in his first collection of short stories. This is prose that cuts then tickles, coaxing us to confront the fatal folly of being complacent in our time. “Mac Wellman’s wonderful imagination blurs reality and fiction so skillfully that one is disoriented enough to be mesmerized, and down to earth enough to realize that our world is just one among many possible worlds, and not much more than that.” – Etel Adnan