Cries for Help, Various by Padgett Powell comes out today!

It’s not only the latest collection of stories from a writer who adamantly defies classification and makes our tummies flutter with each sentence (check out our rave reviews of The Interrogative Mood and You & Me), it’s also the first book from a new publishing venture called Catapult, which combines the best of Electric Literature with the best of Black Balloon Publishing. If your tummy isn’t fluttering yet, reading these two stories from the collection will help.

We asked the author one question.

How are you celebrating the publication of Cries for Help, Various?

Padgett Powell: Let’s see:

I will celebrate with the observation that I am still alive, not in hospital or jail, yet compos mentis. I will imbibe a short steel tumbler of prune juice to keep the vitamins non-emetic. I will shoot a squirrel if I see one and skin it before girding loins and going to have the TSA feel me up and confiscate my toothpaste and then I will fly to a launch party for the book, which I have not, in my thirty-plus-year career of peddling books so good no one buys them, ever had. There, friends in high literary quarter will read from the book and I hope not embarrass themselves. Roy Blount writes better than I do and I am funnier than he is so he may have trouble. The thing is September 10 somewhere a Facebook link I don’t have on me may reveal to you, maybe my publicist will see this and add it, I invite anyone interested to come.

[Publicist’s Note] It would be great if you could please share the link he mentions. Launch party: Thursday September 10th at 7pm at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in NY, NY.

Get the book here.