K A R E N's MySpace Blog | My nonfiction blog is at www.eyescorpion.blogspot.com/ PhotoBlog at threeriversfoureyes.blogspot.com/

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Thursday, August 13, 2009

New story at Blink Ink
Category: Writing and Poetry

New Fiction

I have a new story of micro-fiction up at Blink Ink online here

1:48 PM

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Friday, May 01, 2009

Next Readings: Pittsburgh & NYC!
Category: Writing and Poetry

THREE READINGS IN THE NEXT 8 DAYS!
Pittsburgh and then NYC

I have THREE (3) readings coming up, first in Pittsburgh and then in NYC.

I hope to see you soon at one of them!

Pittsburgh:

Tomorrow night, Sat May 2nd, @7:30
ModernFormations, Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh
$3 cover
I will have copies of The Second Elizabeth for sale!
>>This will be Dana Killmeyer's book release party,
other readers include Che Elias, Angele Ellis,
Kris Collins, and Rene Alberts

Manhattan:

Thursday night, May 7th @ 6:30 sharp
Telephone Bar & Grill
Second Avenue and 10th Street, Back Room
FREE admission
http://www.elinornauen.com/events.htm
Readers: Karen Lillis, Rosebud Ben-Oni, and EC Bachner
All readers are included in the anthology WRECKAGE OF REASON,
which showcases women writing experimental prose in the 21st Century
http://www.amazon.com/Wreckage-Reason-Anthology-Contemporary-Xxperimental/dp/1933132639

Manhattan:

Next Saturday *Afternoon* May 9th
2:00pm-3:30pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery @ Bleecker Street
FREE Admission
I'm organizing and MCing a Memorial Reading for NJ / NY poet and storyteller,
Richard Leck

See more about Richard Leck in an East Village blog that ran today:
http://evgrieve.com/2009/05/remembering-richard-leck-he-liked.html

Downtown NY readers include: Athur Nersesian, Bob Holman, Steve Dalachinsky, Jackie Sheeler, Margarita Shalina

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5:28 PM

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Thurs April 16th--Reading at Your Inner Vagabond
Category: Writing and Poetry

Karen Reads at the Poetry Caravan Series: Your Inner Vagabond in Pittsburgh, Thursday, April 16th

Thursday, April 16, 2009
Karen Lillis featured at
Poetry Caravan Series

Open Stage follows featured reading
Your Inner Vagabond Cafe
4130 Butler Street at 42nd Street

Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh
8:00 pm-11:30pm
Free, BYOB
All Ages

Copies of The Second Elizabeth will be for sale!

12:55 PM

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Wednesday, April 01, 2009

New pieces in Lamination Colony, Spring 2009
Category: Writing and Poetry

LAMINATION COLONY, SPRING 2009

Michael Kimball has guest-edited the latest Lamination Colony, and Blake Butler has out-designed himself for the beautiful layout. I'm thrilled to be included with many talented writers, including:

Kim Chinquee, Adam Robinson, Ben Mirov, DS White, Matthew Salesses, Blaster Al Ackerman, M.T. Fallon, Adam Good, Stephanie Barber, J.A. Tyler, Catherine Moran, Cooper Renner, Luca Dipierro, Amanda Raczkowski, Rupert Wondolowski, Whitney Woolf, Lauren Becker, Michael Bible, Robert Swartwood, Darcelle Bleau, Robert Bradley, Jamie Gaughran-Perez, Aimee Lynn-Hirschowitz, Shane Jones, Conor Madigan, Krammer Abrahams, Shatera Davenport, Jordan Sanderson, Stacie Leatherman, Josh Maday, Joseph Young, Jason Jones, Gena Mohwish, Jen Michalski, Aby Kaupang, Jac Jemc, Josh Maday, and Justin Sirois.

The issue:
www.laminationcolony.com

My pieces:
www.laminationcolony.com/klillis.html

3:56 AM

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Second Elizabeth: The Reading Tour
Category: Writing and Poetry

Recession-Proof Reading Tour:

I'll be reading my new novel, THE SECOND ELIZABETH, around Pittsburgh and possibly one New York date in the coming months:

Thursday, March 26, 2009
reading with Lynn Emanuel
Te Cafe Reading Series
Te Cafe
2000 Murray Avenue
Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh
7:00 pm
Free
Open Mic to follow if time allows

Thursday, April 16, 2009
Poetry Caravan Series
Your Inner Vagabond Cafe
Open Stage follows my reading
4130 Butler Street at 42nd Street
Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh
8:00 pm
Free, BYOB

Saturday, May 2, 2009
Modern Formations
reading at Dana Killmeyer's book release party
with Angele Ellis, Kris Collins, and Renee Alberts
4919 Penn Avenue
Garfield/Friendship in Pittsburgh
time TBA
cover charge TBA

Friday, June 12, 2009
Kiva Han Cafe
reading with Savannah Schroll Guz and Kristofer Collins
420 S Craig Street
Oakland in Pittsburgh
8:00 pm
Free

Sunday, July 19, 2009
Sunday Poetry and Reading Series
Carnegie Library Main Branch
4400 Forbes Avenue
Oakland, Pittsburgh
2:00 pm
Free

more dates TBA

Thanks to Six Gallery Press and The New Yinzer for hosting readings I did in October, November, and February.

Second Elizabeth on Amazon

3:19 AM

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Friday, March 20, 2009

Reading at Te Cafe, March 26
Category: Writing and Poetry

TE CAFE READING SERIES

Thursday, March 26th
Te Café Reading Series presents:

Karen Lillis
&
Lynn Emanuel

7:00pm
FREE

With Open Mic afterwards if time allows

Te Café in Squirrel Hill
2000 Murray Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA

7:47 PM

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

City Paper Review of The Second Elizabeth
Category: Writing and Poetry

"A Local Author's Experimental Novella"

A review by BILL O'DRISCOLL
Pittsburgh City Paper

In some fiction and poetry, style is all but indistinguishable from subject matter. That's especially true with experimental writing -- and it might be the best way to understand The Second Elizabeth, a new novella by local writer Karen Lillis from Six Gallery Press, a Pittsburgh-based indie.

Lillis, writing in the first person, tells the (perhaps at least semi-autobiographical) story of a young woman named Karen E. Lillis as she spends a summer working in a deli in small-town Charlottesville, Va., while reeling from the fallout from an unspecified personal trauma. Anxious, introverted and hard-pressed to communicate with others, including a gutsy co-worker named Beth, Karen longs to become the title character -- the more confident, more assertive person she used to be. "My meanings are trapped inside my body, I have a body which is a wall between the words I mean and the words I say," she says.

What is most striking about The Second Elizabeth is the style, which reflects deep concern with the mystery and structure of language itself.

From Karen's opening contemplation of the words that constitute her name, and who chose them and why, the novella relies on the repetition of words and phrases that suggests both a kind of ritual (or magic incantation) and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Contemplating her boot-damaged feet, Karen narrates, "I loved to watch the sores pus and bleed, I loved the pus and I loved the blood; and I wanted to watch the sores heal and bleed both, I wanted to heal them and admire the blood." At one point, Lillis starts 19 consecutive sentences with the phrase "I met Beth and I remembered ..."

Lillis is skillful writer, and rigorous about tone; you seldom feel she's being self-indulgent, though the thickness of the line between prose that's challenging and writing that tries your patience might vary depending on your mood.

Yet Lillis writes lyrically about such things as her story's grittily lush setting, and telling episodes from Karen's childhood. More importantly, Lillis' experiments in language yield results. Karen believes in the magic of names -- "[H]er name is in my middle name," she says of the lionized Beth -- and places so much faith in the significance of coincidences that it's a form of religious belief. Meanwhile, Lillis' daisy chains of sentences are guide ropes, of a kind, through such excursions as an exploration of the power of names. Karen's obsession about why people and places have the names they do reflects her own struggle to earn the right to rename herself.

In Karen's world, trees have language, rail lines carry messages as well as trains, and when she weeps instead of speaking, it expresses "an alphabet too anxious to become words." If Karen summarizes and resummarizes a set of facts, chants phrases, she is merely checking to make sure the words she used a moment earlier haven't fled of their own accord -- a necessary census in her reclamation project of the self.

Find The Second Elizabeth on Amazon:
http://www. amazon. com/..Second-..Elizabeth-..Karen-..Lillis/..dp/..0978296214/..ref=..sr_..1_..1?..ie=..UTF8&..s=..books&..qid=..1233586675&..sr=1-1

1:40 PM

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Friday, February 27, 2009

Reading this Saturday, Feb 28th

Karen Reads this Saturday with 6GP Authors

Come to the Six Gallery Press winter showcase:

ModernFormations Gallery
4919 Penn Ave
Pittsburgh, PA
Sat Feb 28 @ 8:00pm
$3 cover

Reading will be: Renée Alberts, Jessica Fenlon, Dana Killmeyer, Jerome Crooks, Nikki Allen, Karen Lillis, Che Elias, Jonathan Loucks, Kristofer Collins, John Thomas Menesini, Scott McClanahan up from West Virginia (he was a show-stealer last time), Alexi Morrissey, Scott Silsbe, Bill Hughes, and the inimitable Ed Steck. The evening will showcase a combination of poetry and fiction.

5:13 PM

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Thursday, February 19, 2009

Zen Conundrum
Category: Art and Photography

New Art Blog:
Today's Feature=Karen's Request

John Megas recently started one of my new favorite blogs, PANDA LICKING ON A LIGHTBULB: http://johnmegas.blogspot.com. The blog is what I call "paint-on-demand," because John paints to other people's specs and then posts the painting and a few paragraphs about it. One of the things I really like is how uncensored the paragraphs are. I feel like I'm reading John's train of thought, and it's funny, interesting, absurd, cranky, innovative, and a sort of slice-of-life glimpse of the working artist in the 21st Century.

John wanted to paint a picture for me, so when he told me to come up with a subject without thinking too hard, I came up with: "Kitten Being Good." It's a zen conundrum, because inherently, kitten=bad. I wondered if John, who has been painting some pretty absurd and challenging requests lately (including the grammatically correct sentence, "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" [see his blog] ), could paint the impossible: Kitten - Being - Good.

I've had a long history, in fact, with the symboloism of cats. Cats=female, cats=female vulnerability, cats=instinctive. When I was growing up, I was especially aware of the fragility of cats, so when the men in my house hated cats, I hated them, too: it was too dangerous to think of siding with the cats, or even siding with my mother's siding with the cats. I didn't want to show that level of vulnerabilty. Later when I was on my own and thought of having a cat, I always pictured the cat being hit by a car (like the instant it was mine), so I put it off.

Growing up, I was sensitive to all the signals I received that instinctive=bad. Child instincts, girl instincts, teenage instincts. When I began to chip away at my childhood Catholicism with my college feminism, reclaiming my experience grew into expressing myself through art and later writing, which meant I had to reclaim those instincts. As an artist, I had to touch and to wrap my mind around even the worst instincts, and I found that this instinctive and intuitive place was one of great dynamic energy--too fertile to be ignored. It also gave me a whole different equation of what it was to know myself and to reign in what I, not they, decided was my worst.

Which brings us back to kittens. When I finally did get cats as an adult, I let them run practically feral. "Down with repression and the bondage of instinct, I see enough of that in adults all day long! When I come home, I want kittens hopped up on cat mint running around my apartment as they please!" I think "kittens" has become shorthand for the Art Instinct for me, the reversal of all that harnesses me.

So, algebraically speaking, kitten=rampant female instinct="bad" in the societal sense, but rich and useful in the art sense. Therefore, "Kitten Being Good" is kind of like asking someone to paint "Lydia Lunch Being Good." Like I said, zen conundrum. But "Kitten Being Good" is also the charade I feel I'm asked to perform every day when I mingle in polite society. "Kitten Being Good" is the straight jacket of daily adult life.

John himself is a painter with a poignant yet deeply irreverent streak in his aesthetic, which I think helped bring this theme to mind for me. See John Megas' resulting painting,
Existential German Kitten Earnestly Considering What It Means To Be Good.: http://johnmegas.blogspot.com/2009/02/existentialist-german-kitten-earnestly.html

(Apologies but Myspace doesn't like these links, you'll have to cut and paste them into yr browser)

5:52 PM

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