Author Spotlight: Jason Fisk

Photo by Jason Pettus

Jason Fisk says he prefers the term writer to poet, and after having read much of his body of work, I tend to agree. His stories and poems tread much common ground, and both his poetic sensibility and clear love of storytelling refuse to be outshone by each other. He is the author of the poetry collection: The Fierce Crackle of Fragile Wings (2011), the chapbooks Decay (2011) The Sagging: Spirits and Skin (2009), and Trapped Within Myself (2009), as well as a fascinating book of fiction that sort of defies description called Salt Creek Anthology (2011). Salt Creek Anthology, you may remember, was the subject of some buzz earlier this year for being released in a hand-made box, with the reader encouraged to shuffle the book's pages (each page a single micro-fiction standalone sliver of a larger story) and read it out of order, giving the reader a truly one-of-a-kind and potentially unrepeatable experience of reading the book.

Like past guests Ben Tanzer and Davis Schneiderman, Fisk is also a dad, and this fact is not lost on his audience. Families and, perhaps more specifically, the proverbial ones-we-love figure prominently in his work. The contemplative way he approaches this subject brings roaring, sustaining relevance to otherwise disarmingly quiet, understated prose and poems. He also doesn't shy away from tackling the harder-to-swallow moments of everyday life in a masterful way that will leave you feeling at first like everything's going to be okay, and later like maybe you aren't so sure.

While I'm thinking of it, note that three of the books above were released in 2011, which makes this year something a hat-trick for Fisk.With so much recent work you might imagine he's relatively new to writing, but you'd be very wrong about that. His poetry and/or prose has been featured in ChicagoPoetry.com, remark, Black Book Press, Blowback Magazine, True Poet Magazine, Showcase Press - Online Journal, Literary Fever, decomP, Word Riot, Litsnack, Boston Literary Magazine, Alternating Current, Breadcrumb Scabs, Ex Cathedra... (deep breath) ...Leaf Garden Press, Mastodon Dentist, The Medulla Review, Midwest Literary Magazine, The Circle Magazine, Zygote In My Coffee, Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry, Underground Voices, Laura Hird Poetry Showcase, Thieves Jargon, The Orange Room Review, This Zine Will Change Your Life, What to Wear During an Orange Alert, Origami Condom, Nibble, Pure Francis, See You're Not Really Reading This Anymore Are You This List Is Just Enormous I Could Type Anything Here And You'd Never Even See It Banana Sheboygan Darth Vader Applesauce Twelve Cockpit Elephant Sombrero, Nerve Cowboy, Oak Bend Review, In Between Altered States, Gloom Cupboard, Experiments in Manhood, and New York Quarterly.

Whew.