• .: Welcome To OWC :.

    We are about promoting the under-acknowledged. Here you will find reviews, interviews, rants, prose, and poetry from some of the most important independent voices around. The Outsider Writers Collective can't be everything underground; but we believe that the underground can be everything.

  • Brian K. Le Lay Jr.:

    Posted By victor on January 5, 2009

    Normally I prefer poems which ’show’ rather than ‘tell’, but who could resist the sentiments Brian writes about?

    “Gone to the Dogs”

    tossing stacks
    of freshly
    printed currency

    at freshly
    printed problems (more…)

    todd moore: ‘blind whiskey and the straight razor blues’

    Posted By victor on January 5, 2009

    todd moore
    “blind whiskey and the straight razor blues”
    Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books
    POB 54, Manasquan, NJ 08736
    Reviewed by: Victor Schwartzman

    Victor emails regularly with Todd Moore.

    As this review is being written, Israeli ground troops are invading Gaza in a both brutal and hopeless attempt to crush its enemies. Violence is being used to stop violence, although in the end it only creates worse carnage. (more…)

    Half Empty by Tim Hall

    Posted By calebjross on January 3, 2009

    half_remast_cover-sm“Yuppie: someone who has moved into your neighborhood six months after you” (24).

    With such apparent hostility, so early, one would expect Tim Hall’s novel, Half Empty, to be a singly motivated separation/dissection of social strata. Not the case. Dennis, the recently alcohol independent protagonist, lives a closet yuppie life, maybe even hates himself for it, but isn’t above an open-minded caste-rummage in search of smiles and perhaps a woman to share them with. (more…)

    A Midsummer Night’s Press Guidelines

    Posted By CATownsend on January 2, 2009

    For the 2009 editions of this exciting new series celebrating the best in gay/lesbian poetry, A Midsummer Night’s Press invites submissions of poems PUBLISHED during 2008 (more…)

    For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Carelessly Destroyed… by Hosho McCreesh

    Posted By David Blaine on January 2, 2009

    Cover

    Review by Scot Young

    The title says it all: this book is full of beautiful, wretched, and useless things that, like everything, are doomed. It’s about this one simple truth that we all must face: finding joy even as we slowly fade. - Hosho McCreesh

    I can’t say it any better than that.  His seventh chap and the latest from sunnyoutside is just the book to read in that quiet spot, shutting out the noise of the world and enjoying a look at life through the eyes of McCreesh.

    (more…)

    Featured Poet of January: Christine Hamm

    Posted By AleathiaD on January 1, 2009

    On Dying in the Kings County ER

    You slip from your wheelchair
    to the floor: it’s too dark outside
    in the tiny windows, too late at
    night, the sky all one dark pupil,
    and the coffee machine
    at the nurses’ station is broken.

    An orderly kicks your foot, perhaps
    she hears a sigh from somewhere
    else, thinks it’s you, believes you
    are still breathing. (more…)

    Calls For Submissions 12/30/08

    Posted By CATownsend on December 30, 2008

    OW Weekly Calls For Submissions- featuring: Barrelhouse, Red Herrings, Toronto Quarterly, Off Beat Pulp, Wigleaf, Fissure, The Battered Suitcase, Poetry Warrior, In The Mist, Voice, Swivel, And Coffee Time Romance.

    (more…)

    An Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey

    Posted By Tim Hall on December 29, 2008

    oprah_wideweb__470x3120Dear Oprah Winfrey:

    For years you have been one of the best friends that the publishing industry has ever had. You championed literature at a time when so many others in the media were beginning to abandon it, using the power of your show and book club to bring attention to deserving authors. Your recommendations sold millions of books, enriching many in the process. And what have you gotten in return? A series of punches to the head, kicks in the ass, over and over, from a miserable and ungrateful industry that hates your guts.

    (more…)

    Tin Roof by Crystal Folz

    Posted By OWCAdmin on December 29, 2008

    crys2We hear him skulking in the backyard. He lingers over the snapped branch, and I imagine his eyes brittling like ice. We don’t know when he will speak so we stand in the backyard with our fingers entwined, listening to his heavy breathing and the rain misting the treetops. (more…)

    The Way to Get Here by Gavin Pate

    Posted By calebjross on December 28, 2008

    Gavin Pate’s novel, The Way to Get Here, is a rare example of literature passionately produced, enough so to imbue the reader with a sense of that creative energy. Every word feels siphoned from the author’s own personal violent well. From the distorted sense of place through to the impressive intelligence so many of the novel’s characters possess, this novel feels like its author. I’ve never met Gavin Pate the person, but I have the author; I doubt the two ever exist separately. (more…)