TRNSFR Magazine has to date published four issues of cutting edge poetry, prose, art, and fiction from some of the most amazing talents working today. Each issue has been presented in a unique, innovative format, featuring everything from full-color detachable art inserts and flip movies to hidden texts and fold-out supplements—all bound up in a neat little package by an intriguing wraparound cover you won’t find anywhere else.

So far, the response from readers and contributors has been overwhelming. Sales and subscriptions are way up and submissions are coming in at an inspiring clip. Future issues are shaping up to be among our trailblazing best. And we’ve got big plans in the works, like a quarterly reading series and our new publishing venture, Varmint Armature. Now with Issue 4 about to hit newsstands, we’re setting our sights on Issue 5. Specifically, how to finance Issue 5. This is where you come in.

It’s simple: just preorder Issue 5, or a year’s subscription (four issues), and get a prize package available only here—we’ve got tons of super cool reward packages to express our boundless thanks. From signed and hand-customized books to oddball personal objects from past contributors, there’s a weird and wonderful reward package to suit anyone’s taste. But these packages won’t last! So pledge early to help us keep print literature alive and offbeat and receive unique, one-of-a-kind goodies you can boast about for years.

We’ve got fabulous rewards from indie-lit luminaries like James Greer, Shya Scanlon, Molly Gaudry, Amber Sparks, J.A Tyler, Roxane Gay, Scott Bradfield, Paul Maliszewski, Mark Gluth, Rebecca Wolff, Michael Kimball, Matthew Simmons, and many more!

Find us on Kickstarter!

Brandi Wells
Leif Haven
Jessica Berger
Jon Trobaugh
Neil Kaufman
Shellie Zacharia
Jared Joseph
Francis Raven
Roxane Gay
Arielle Greenberg
Amber Sparks
Brian Mihok
Sara Peck
Brandon Hobson

PLUS!
An excerpt from Rebecca Wolff’s upcoming novel The Beginners!
A 4ft-tall story by Dolan Morgan!
Art cards featuring the text of Moby Dick replaced by thousands of “E”s!

* Seriously, has anyone ever seen the guy? Order Issue 4 ($10) before Thomas Pynchon’s birthday, May 8, and get a free back issue!
Or get 2 free back issues when you buy a four-issue subscription ($32) before May 8!

Send check to: TRNSFR, P.O. Box 1946, Grand Rapids, MI 49501 (Don’t forget to tell us which back issues you’d like [Issue 1 is sold out]!)

1. Reality Hunger by David Shields
2. Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner
3. Black Life by Dorothea Lasky
4. Daddy’s by Lindsay Hunter
5. Ghost Machine by Ben Mirov
6. New York Tyrant 8
7. Burning Your Boats: The Collected Stories of Angela Carter
8. Come On All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder
9. Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor
10. Monkeybicycle 7
11. My Prizes / The Lime Works by Thomas Bernhard
12. The Best European Fiction 2010 ed. Alexander Hemon
13. Selected Poems by Mary Ruefle
14. Microscripts by Robert Walser
15. Notes on Sontag by Phillip Lopate
16. Nox by Anne Carson
17. The Agriculture Reader 4
18. Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
19. Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño
20. Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

(Obviously, not all of these came out in 2010.  But whatevs.)

Shya Scanlon’s Forecast is just out from Flatmancrooked.  If you want a launch copy (signed by Shya, and including a postcard detailing his last acid trip), too bad for you ’cause they’re sold out, foo’!  Shya recently posted on Facebook that he sold 200 copies at a recent reading.  I was like, Did he have fireworks?  A pyrotechnics display?  Naked ladies?  Either way, you ought to get your paws on a copy of Forecast.  If any of the bits of it I’ve read online are any indication, it’s going to be pretty much amazing.  By the way, grab yourself a copy of trnsfr #2 for an excerpt from his next novel, Interference.

I’ve been sicker than shit this week.  This is nothing new to me—I’ve always had sensitive lungs.  The most minor irritants turn me into a itchy, wheezing, hacking asthmatic freak—seasonal allergies, mold, mildew, dust, pet dander, aerosols, you name it.  Thus colds are always a potential tipping point.  And working as a bartender—as I do—is the worst job to have when you’ve got a cold—you’re often too busy to blow your nose or hawk up sputum, not to mention that doing so tends to gross people out.  So viola!—I’ve got pneumonia.  I spent today trying to be a good convalescent and lie low: I cracked open the living room window, then kicked back in my recliner and watched Dorothea Lasky’s Tiny Tour (the Closet edition).  I recently met Dottie at the trnsfr issue 3 launch at Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn—Her partner, Thom Donovan, was one of the readers.  Seriously, she’s one of the nicest—and funniest—people I’ve ever met.  (Fun fact: We have the exact same birth date.)  She is also one of my favorite poets.  (Why the fuck it didn’t occur to me to have her sign my copy of Black Life I do not know.)  Anyway, after looking at the Tiny Tour stuff, I went over to Bomblog’s Phoned In, which is, like, the best thing ever.  I just sat there in my ugly green recliner smiling and wheezing and listening.  I listened to Ben Lerner, who fills me with equal parts envy and joy.  I listened to Ben Mirov.  I listened to CAConrad.  I listened to K. Silem Mohammad.  Which was pretty rad because he reads Sonnagram 40, which was published in trnsfr #2!  How did I not know about this?  Who cares!  It made my day.  So, um, buy trnsfr #2, okay?  While you’re at it, buy #3.  Folks, they’ll blow your socks clean off.  Just sayin’.

Time:
Saturday, October 23 · 6:00pm – 7:30pm

Location:
PETE’S CANDY STORE
709 Lorimer St.
Brooklyn, NY

SHYA SCANLON is the author of the poetry collection In This Alone Impulse, published by Noemi Press. His novel, Forecast, will be available from Flatmancrooked in December. Shya received his MFA from Brown University, where he was awarded the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction.

MOLLY GAUDRY is the author of the verse novel We Take Me Apart (Mud Luscious, 2009) and the editor of Tell: An Anthology of Expository Narrative (Flatmancrooked, 2010).

THOM DONOVAN lives in NYC where he edits Wild Horses Of Fire weblog and co-edits ON Contemporary Practice. He is a participant in the Nonsite Collective and a curator for the SEGUE reading series. His criticism and poetry have been published widely in Art21, BOMB, PAJ: art + performance, Modern Painters, The Brooklyn Rail, Performa07, Museo, Fanzine, EXIT, and at the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet weblog. Currently he is working on a collection of critical writings, Sovereignty and Us: Critical Objects 2005-2010, and on the Project for an Archive of the Future Anterior (with Sreshta Rit Premnath). His book The Hole is forthcoming with Displaced Press this fall.

CATHERINE LACEY‘s work has appeared in Blackbook, Forklift, Ohio, Lamination Colony and others. She has finished a nonfiction book about Mississippi and has just opened a Bed and Breakfast in Brooklyn called 3B.

We feel confident that if you, Reader, had a dollar for every article you’ve read on the subject of a) print media, b) its hypothetical future, or c) the cultural gravity assigned to this future, you would be able to purchase thousands of magazines filled with thousands more such articles and still have enough left over for that Taschen book you’ve been coveting.

This is not one of those articles. If you read literary magazines—as we do—you’ve already decided to behave as if print does matter. trnsfr’s aesthetic plays with the possibilities of print. Each issue features a flip movie, hidden texts, full-color detachable art inserts, a fold-out supplement devoted to a single author or theme, and an intriguing cover-wrap design you won’t find anywhere else.  An exciting art object that’s entirely unique unto itself, it’s as interactive as a website, but without the pesky Flash animations or pop-up ads.

So here’s the pitch: We’ve got exciting projects in the works—like a monthly reading series and competitions that will highlight innovative voices—and we need capital in the form of your subscription to bring them to fruition. As trnsfr is not yet a 501(c)(3) non-profit, your subscription provides vital operational support, and helps ensure a prosperous future.  We’d be thrilled if you would join us.

Here’s what’s in store for our next issue, The All Fiction Issue:

• Six life story postcards by Michael Kimball
• A gigantic illustrated broadside by Paul Maliszewski
• Blake Butler on the many uses of JIF brand chunky peanut butter
• The family living in Kierkegaard’s hair
• Core Elf Meltdown and YOU: a three-point program (Scott Bradfield elucidates)
Plus!
• Matthew Simmons rifles through your wallet

Subscribe right now for the discounted price of just $30—That’s HALF OFF the cover price!—and get 6 full issues, including The All Fiction Issue.

Cris Mazza, who’s “Frostless Hybrid” appeared in trnsfr No. 2, will be reading Monday night at Corez Neighborhood Eatery & Bar in Grand Rapids, MI, as part of the Cherry Bomb Reading Series.  Mazza is the author of over a dozen books, including Waterbaby and Disability.  A native of Southern California, she grew up in San Diego County.  Mazza currently lives 50 miles west of Chicago and is a professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Chicago at Illinois.

Fiction
“Someone Else”
“She Does, He Doesn’t”
“Various Men Who Knew Us As Girls”
“Junior Year”
“Anybody Here Seen Our Old Friend John?” (w/Davis Schneiderman)

Interviews
Chiasmus Press
Soft Skull
Bookslut
Web del Sol

Podcast
Chicago Public Radio

Video
UHV/ABR Reading Series