In the Slipstream: An FC2 Reader

In the last quarter century, the marketplace for serious fiction has been steadily co-opted by corporations, multinationals, and now publishing megaconglomerates that know no national boundaries. In this abyss, FC2 — one of the most unlikely projects in the history of American publishing, run by writers for writers — has created an enduring place for the pure devilish fun of play and change. Along the way, FC2 has introduced readers to the works of Mark Leyner, Russell Banks, Raymond Federman, Ronald Sukenick, Euridice, Gerald Vizenor, and many more. This volume celebrates the first quarter century of FC2’s avant-fun making. Organized in four sections, the anthology showcases the earliest days of the Fiction Collective, the Straight Outta Normal bravado of FC2 and Black Ice Books (pilloried by the Republican right in its war against the NEA), and the Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction.

In this anthology, you’ll find work by Richard Grossman, Samuel Delany, John Shirley, Ricardo Cortez Cruz, Cris Mazza, Evan Dara, R. M. Berry, and many, many more of the most persistently original and controversial voices in North American fiction.

In the Slipstream also includes an introduction by Jonathan Baumbach about the founding of the collective and a complete publishing backlist of the house.

Editors

Ronald Sukenick was on the cutting edge of American fiction and publishing for four decades. He has won an American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement and the American Academy of Arts and Letters prestigious Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, and is founder and publisher of American Book Review. His FC2 books include Last Fall, The Death of the Novel, Up, Mosaic Man, Doggy Bag, Endless Short Story, Long Talking Bad Conditions Blues, and 98.6.

Curtis White has published fiction with the Fiction Collective, Sun and Moon, and Dalkey Archive Press, and a major work of non-fiction, The Middle Mind: Why Consumer Culture is Turning Us Into the Living Dead, with Harper San Francisco. His FC2 books include Anarcho-Hindu, and Heretical Songs.