WritingBLEED Channel
Vodcasts interviews with innovative writers and artists discussing their creative processes, inspiration, concerns and amusements. Gertrude's Basket
Gertrude's Basket: Exploring the avant-garde Click here to go: http://gertrudesbasket.blogspot.com or: http://webdelsol.com/index-GertrudesBasket.htm Interviewed by Dr. Kent.
Interview on Sound Authors, hosted by Dr. Kent Gustavson - December 7, 2007 Personal Effects
Published in Mad Hatters' Review, with audio excerpt. Nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize Interviewed by Chris Packham of The Pitch.
Chris Packham of The Pitch interviews Debra Di Blasi and five other Kansas City writers about "shallow pool reading." The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions
Innovative short stories from Debra Di Blasi. Prayers of an Accidental Nature
Short Stories published by Coffee House Press. Interviewed by Steve Paul of The Kansas City Star.
Debra Di Blasi discusses her new book, The Jiri Chronicles & Other Fictions, with critic Steve Paul of The Kansas City Star. "What the Crow Delivers"
featured in sleepingfish.net, an innovative journal of image + text, published in New York by Calimari Press, Derek White publisher. Read now at: www.sleepingfish.net/09375/Debra_di_blasi_crow.htm "Seed"
"Seed" won first place in Big Ugly Review's "And So It Begins..." flash fiction competition. The beginning sentence was, "I had never seen a tree on fire before." CONCEPTUAL WRITING
Definition and examples of conceptual writing by preeminant U.S. writers This collection of conceptual fictions enacts the misalliances of lovers, coworkers, families, and friends, following out the unlikely conjunctions of postmodern America to their often preposterous ends. At the work's comic center is an invention that transgresses the boundaries of fiction and fraud. Just who is Jirí Cêch? A businessman, vampire, and artist from Czechoslovakia? A website? A hoax? An American con artist whose racism and sexism, although obnoxious, only heighten his allure? Or is he Debra Di Blasi herself? Obsessed with everything as enigmatic as himself, whether platypuses or Emily Dickinson, Jiri seems determined to become an obsession for us as well. In her third work of fiction, Debra Di Blasi explores the process of writing, not merely as an arrangement of words, but as the creation of pages, of signifying colors and forms in two-dimensional space. The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions is writing for the eyes, with illustrations and digital images defining this work as a response to our collective lust for visual information. Di Blasi's ability to generate tension results from her integration of these pictorial codes with exquisitely designed sentences: The poet bored of living dead, so loving the living dead - Emily with her clever dash of pause and breath, little here-to-there line demarcating the fat-swarming world here she inhabited there on her page in her mind, that line a slit through which she'd slip, like a finger between labia, and all the wetness of creation a swooning banquet of word-interlaced silence. These mixed-media fictions are as fun as they are intellectually provocative. The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions is a masterful work by one of America's creators of a new literary medium. Madhatters Review
Extensive interview of Debra Di Blasi by Marc Lowe, covering topics from war to academics, feminism to primatology. And, of course, lengthy discussions on creative process and product. Drought & Say What You Like
Drought & Say What You Like won the 1998 Thorpe Menn Book Award. It was adapted to a film that won a host of international awards and was one of only 6 U.S. films invited to the Universe Elle section at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Published by New Directions, 1997 (distributed by W.W. Norton) Critical Acclaim: "Both Di Blasi's style and her objective distance and comprehension of her chosen subject mark her as a very psychologically driven, very talented writer." —Publishers Weekly "Di Blasi...is young, brash, hard-nosed, and talented.... Her minimalist style, in Drought & Say What You Like, is brilliantly detailed, like the eye of a camera looking outward at carefully chosen elements of the landscape that make an impression of the whole." —Voices in Italian Americana "What's interesting about Drought is how it sustains the tension between the generic elements of tragedy and its precise manifestation in the mundane details of everyday life." —The Review of Contemporary Fiction "Di Blasi is a bold talent and succeeds in a teasingly abrupt style." —BookLovers "A stunning piece of writing... spare and lean, sexy, psychologically charged and extremely visual.... A compelling journey into [Di Blasi's] own heart of darkness." —Neon, Nevada Council for the Arts Magazine  PRAYERS OF AN ACCIDENTAL NATURE "Sex doesn't equal love -- or does it? If it doesn't, then why do we expend so much energy on merging our bodies with others' while we so rarely connect in spirit? If it does, then why isn't sex enough to bind two people together against the world's insistence on ripping them apart? Such questions are among the chief preoccupations of ''Prayers of an Accidental Nature,'' Debra Di Blasi's arresting second book of fiction.... In clear, resonant prose, laced with bittersweet humor, Di Blasi imparts her understanding of love's multiple ironies. – The New York Times Book Review "Debra Di Blasi writes about sex and love with thrilling originality and insight. Prayers of an Accidental Nature is a remarkable collection." – Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winner for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain "Di Blasi's themes of sexual obsession, physical beauty, and lost love ignite this notable effort to define the perils of intimacy." – Publishers Weekly Download music.
CDs and DVDs of music, interviews and weirdness. "Machine Ghosts"
Finalist in Drunken Boat's Panliterary Awards "Petroleum / God"
A poetry diptych, "Petroleum / God" will appear in the final issue of The Melic Review. "Ways A Father Dies"
Prose poem published in The Melic Review. Paintings & Drawings
See images from Debra's new paintings and drawings, "muons, gluons, pions & strings: Homage to Edward Witten." And digital prints from "The Collector" book (in progress). Plus hear Jirí Cêch rapping about David Letterman. Interview with Debra Di Blasi.
Interview with Debra Di Blasi at writester.net discussing influences, experimental writing, and life without plumbing. "King of the Jungle and Rock & Roll"
Short-short story published at www.zygoteinmycoffee.com, a refreshing blend of underground graphics and new writing. Bridge: A Story for the Season
What happens when two people who hate each other from a distance meet up close? Translation
A multi-media installaton at Juniata Museum of Art, derived from Unbroken View, exhibited at Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art. Both Translation and Unbroken View were collaborations with visual artist Sharyn O'Mara and sound designer Chris Willits. Art Columns
Click to read articles on visual arts Gass Pain
Hypertext essay online. |
 The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions This collection of conceptual fictions enacts the misalliances of lovers, coworkers, families, and friends, following out the unlikely conjunctions of postmodern America to their often preposterous ends. At the work's comic center is an invention that transgresses the boundaries of fiction and fraud. Just who is Jirí Cêch? A businessman, vampire, and artist from Czechoslovakia? A website? A hoax? An American con artist whose racism and sexism, although obnoxious, only heighten his allure? Or is he Debra Di Blasi herself? Obsessed with everything as enigmatic as himself, whether platypuses or Emily Dickinson, Jiri seems determined to become an obsession for us as well. In her third work of fiction, Debra Di Blasi explores the process of writing, not merely as an arrangement of words, but as the creation of pages, of signifying colors and forms in two-dimensional space. The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions is writing for the eyes, with illustrations and digital images defining this work as a response to our collective lust for visual information. Di Blasi's ability to generate tension results from her integration of these pictorial codes with exquisitely designed sentences: The poet bored of living dead, so loving the living dead - Emily with her clever dash of pause and breath, little here-to-there line demarcating the fat-swarming world here she inhabited there on her page in her mind, that line a slit through which she'd slip, like a finger between labia, and all the wetness of creation a swooning banquet of word-interlaced silence. These mixed-media fictions are as fun as they are intellectually provocative. The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions is a masterful work by one of America's creators of a new literary medium. |
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