On the surface, Kathleen Rooney might seem like a literary traditionalist. The DePaul English professor has forged a pretty straightforward path to success, releasing poetry and essay collections as well as nonfiction books on professional nude modeling and the mighty Oprah Book Club. Yet she’s always been fascinated by what she calls hybrid genres: chapbooks of short-short fiction, flash fiction and book-length prose poetry. So, while studying at Emerson College in Boston, she developed Rose Metal Press along with friend Abigail Beckel. “We wanted to give voice to undefinable, multi-genres,” says Rooney. “We saw a lot of really great work by a lot of others that were being pushed through the cracks.”
On June 19, Rose Metal Press is having a launch party for its latest publication, “They Could No Longer Contain Themselves,” an anthology of short shorts that Rooney says explore the Edgar Allan Poe idea of perversion. “Often you have characters who know what they should do, but they still do the opposite. That lack of impulse control.” (Alex Baumgardner)
June 19 at Beauty Bar, 1444 West Chicago, 7pm. Four of the collection’s five authors will read.
“They Could No Longer Contain Themselves: A Collection of Five Flash Chapbooks” By Elizabeth J. Colen, John Jodzio, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Sean Lovelace and Mary Miller Rose Metal Press, 248 pages, $15.95
On the surface, Kathleen Rooney might seem like a literary traditionalist. The DePaul English professor has forged a pretty straightforward path to success, releasing poetry and essay collections as well as nonfiction books on professional nude modeling and the mighty Oprah Book Club. Yet she’s always been fascinated by what she calls hybrid genres: chapbooks of short-short fiction, flash fiction and book-length prose poetry. So, while studying at Emerson College in Boston, she developed Rose Metal Press along with friend Abigail Beckel. “We wanted to give voice to undefinable, multi-genres,” says Rooney. “We saw a lot of really great work by a lot of others that were being pushed through the cracks.”
