January 2012
18 posts
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An excerpt from the book I'm working on
Lost and alone in Ise, Japan. What else do you need from traveling? The dark, the night, cold and silent. Owls and frogs in the forest and rice fields reminding you of the animals that live in the world. All the hotels are closed and the hostel isn’t answering. You walk down the highway and it’s been a long time since you were in anything that dark. The convenience store worker takes you to the...
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You can buy four of my poems here. →
THEY WILL STAND ON YOU AND SPIT, A SPLIT ZINE FEATURING WRITING BY ADAM GNADE AND BART SCHANEMAN
This zine is free. What you’re paying for here is shipping and packaging. Feel free to get one, copy it yourself, and pass them around.
Bart’s contributions are four of his best poems. Adam’s are excerpts from the out of print California novella, published in late 2011 by Double...
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Adam Gnade: THE FRONTIER NOW THAT THE FRONTIER IS... →
gnade:
Adam’s great at writing about people like Ben Frank.
Ben Frank is just in from Chicago by way of South Carolina by way of Florida. He wears horn-rimmed glasses and an old dress suit with a paperback shoved in the side pocket. His leather dress shoes are giant, like clown shoes. One has laces, untied. One is wrapped with duct tape. Across the duct…
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Seagulls
I know now why the poets stayed.
It’s been months since I left and still—
I was riding a bike through Carroll Gardens at dawn,
trying to make a decision not to hurt anyone.
On the waterfront in Red Hook,
the lights of Manhattan bright against a dark sky,
a paper cup of red wine between my knees.
I was afraid when the man from the block
stood over me on the stoop and asked me
if...
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The Year We Fought The Landlocked Blues With... →
I wrote this essay about Bright Eyes, Lincoln, Nebraska, and being a believer.
canyouhearthehum asked: Hello! I read your article on Thought Catalog about living abroad. I've been working on going to Germany next year and although I'm excited, it's been a pretty significant source of stress. Your article really helped with that stress, so thank you very much. Hope you're well!
whatthoznthinks asked: I from the United States, currently doing an internship in Shanghai. It is looking like I could start a career here after I graduate, but I don't know if I could do it. What makes you want to stay in Seoul?
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Thought Catalog included my essay about the “fickle nature of the publishing industry” in their Top 25 Articles of the Year.
December 2011
26 posts
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I wrote this article for Thought Catalog about... →
“Take comfort in knowing that once you got beyond your country’s borders you already began winning. If you can stay out for at least a year then there’s a very real chance you’ll be able to stay out in the world indefinitely. I spent my first two decades in America. That’s a quarter of a normal life in the same country. More than enough. Once you get the foreign-life inertia in motion, the...
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victorianinsanity asked: How do you feel about putting your writing on the internet? I want to share things like short stories and poems, and I have, but now it's getting heavy. I have two novels and collections I'm diligently working on and I've been warned to not put anything out there, even if it is "copywritten"by the site itself. What is your input? Thanks a lot.
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Good People Are The Best Kind Of People
1. The comments from the 17 story were affirming like little else I’ve had in a while. Writing for a vocal community like Thought Catalog can be unnerving—no writer is so self-confident that scrolling down to read comments on a personal essay isn’t at least a little frightening. But when there is a positive reaction, when people tell you that what you did impacted their day for...
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New story about adolescence up here at Thought... →
“It was us against everything. Against the adults. The older kids. The younger kids. Against age. Against time. Against not having enough money and not being able to really work for it, but not really wanting to work. Always music and always loud. If we couldn’t change the landscape where we lived, we could change the way it sounded.”
Anonymous asked: What motivates you to write? What do you hope to change in doing so? What ideas are you pushing for?
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Every place we know well holds memories within it. They live there, always, and if we’re lucky enough to leave a place once we’ve lived there for a period of time, then we have the ability to look back at the place and think about how we were when we lived there.
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Put together this irreverent, lighthearted piece... →
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The Red Olds
This is the only year
in either of our lives
when you’ll be exactly twice my age
and I’ll be exactly half of yours.
I remember how you and I
stopped once at Harry’s to get gas.
It was spring and I was 25.
You had 30 years on me then,
have always had 30 on me.
I watched the pump
as you went in to pay.
A red Oldsmobile pulled up.
A blonde about your age got out
in sunglasses and a...
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I was standing there and I couldn’t get myself across the way I wanted. You know what that’s like, right? You’re standing there, in the middle of this crucial moment, and you know if you don’t say exactly what you should say to this other person then you’re going to have to work it out later. This isn’t l’esprit d’escalier. This is wit of the wit of...
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Anonymous asked: all i have to say is: Fucking good job. Its good to see people work at something they believe in.
the-pensiveteen asked: Your writing is remarkable. I'm still a student in high school, I take a French Literature course in school cause I study in a French establishment, not so lucky. I see you've published a novel ? I'm very curious, can you tell me what that's like ? How does it work ? And how did you proceed into writing one ? What inspired you in writing "The Green And The Gold ?"...
wairauroad asked: Like the anon, I also find your writing motivates me to write and push past the mediocrity that most often is what I end up coming up with. I'm finding it difficult to construct the setting and action for my characters though as I feel like I haven't lived enough to be able to write about real life and real, honest things. The sort of things that Adam Gnade writes about. I'm not...
Anonymous asked: thanks for responding so quickly, I was pleasantly surprised. time to get to work. besides that, I really love your honesty. I'm going to buy your book and read it this week, I'm pretty excited about it. -Rachelle
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A Picture of Success
I just don’t understand it. How do these people think everything in the world today wasn’t gotten by work? I made my money by doing what I was told I needed to do growing up–work hard, live clean, and do right by others. [The old man pauses to set his glasses down on the glass-topped end table next to his chair.] Take my son for instance–we didn’t exactly start in the same place, growing up he had...
Anonymous asked: every time I read your blog, my interest in writing is reignited. not to sound cheesy, but how did you get where you are? how did you move past the bullshit, especially what you were writing about in "these times"? if you find this question to be trivial & don't feel like posting a response, I completely understand.
mikedeltagulf asked: Two things I'm curious about, first is Carrick based on one particular person, a multitude of people/stories you've heard, or fragments of your own self? And second I would like to know the publishing process for your book. Did you go out and try to get it published off a major publisher/indie publisher etc?
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These Times
These times. This is no time for a man who would be a man, he says, taking a shot of tequila off the bar. Where is the honor? Where is the chance at glory? Drink up. What else is there? A woman passes and gives them both a challenging glance. Fffff. A woman. What do you want? You come here for the same thing we all do. You want someone to take you away from yourself. I drink to quiet myself. I...
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The meadowlark sings from the fencepost. It is gold and black and then it is off. Now a spot in the sky, now gone. ****** ********* squints beyond it toward the horizon, where the sun hangs large and orange, harvest-moon size almost, seeming closer somehow. There is a normal thirst that pulls on your sleeve and asks to have a drink of water, and then there is the thirst that can’t talk...
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November 2011
19 posts
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Actually, you know what? Fuck that—there are good people out there. We do stupid shit and don’t know why we’re doing it. We do it out of love. We do it because we care. We do it because we weren’t thinking about you.
I don’t really know why people do a lot of what they do. But I do know it’s up to you to become jaded. And letting shitty things make your life...
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You know what you should do? You should preach a bunch of certainties, truisms, act really wise. Do the right thing. Treat people as well as you can. Tell everyone the truth. Make people believe that you have shit figured out. Hell, even believe it. Act positive. Be at peace and hopeful. Get comfortable. Like your life, even. Forget that people can be terrible to each other and not even know why...
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New writing about the international district in... →