Carol Novack

Carol Novack's fictions and poems may be found in numerous journals, including 5_trope, Action Yes, Apostrophecast, American Letters & Commentary, Anemone Sidecar, Caketrain, Drunken Boat, Diagram, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction International, First Intensity, Journal of Experimental Literature, Knock, La Petite Zine, LIT, Meanjin, Notre Dame Review, Overland, Salt Flats Annual, Sein und Werden, Tears in the Fence, Web Del Sol Review, Wheelhouse, and Word Riot. Anthologies include "The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets," "Heide Hatry: Heads and Tales," and "The &Now Awards: The Best Innovative Fiction." Her work has been translated into several languages.

Ms. Novack is an erstwhile Australian Arts Council grant recipient, the publisher of the multi-media e-journal Mad Hatters' Review (madhattersreview.com), author of a poetry chapbook, "Living Alone Without a Dictionary," and a cd with custom-made music (available on amazon). She is also a former criminal and constitutional attorney in NYC, who instigated and ultimately prevailed in a First Amendment and Equal Protection action on behalf of visual artists, and holds a Master's Degree in Social Work (community organizing). Ms. Novack recently established a non-profit arts organization and intends to operate a writers' and artists'/composers'/film-makers' retreat in her mountain home in Western North Carolina. She curates a reading series at The Black Mountain Museum & Arts Center in Asheville.

Ms. Novack launched her beautifully illustrated collection of fictions, fusions, and poems, "Giraffes in Hiding: The Mythical Memoirs of Carol Novack," (Spuyten Duyvil Press) in three cities in October, 2010. She initiated her "Poetry, Prose, & Anything Goes" Reading Series in Asheville, NC (Black Mt Museum & Arts Center) on November 20th (7-9 pm). Solo features in Atlanta on December 3rd and 4th are detailed in http://booktour.com/authors/show/31642. Portions of "Giraffes" have been recommended and nominated for a prestigious prize.

Hugh Fox has called "Giraffes": "THE most seductive, original, impacting work I have seen for years. A fascinating combination of Kerouacian street-talk plus a trip through the museum of Modern Art in Chicago, plus a nod-off to Kosty's furthest out experimentalism. Magnifique!"

"She has the literary equivalent of perfect pitch, like those musicians who can specify the hertz of birds and burps. Uncanny tympani!" -- Tom Bradley.

"Carol Novack's Giraffes in Hiding mirrors our weltanschauung by using its own language against it or by using its own language to pry open the circus hidden within it. If we say the world is insane or we say the world is a manic whirl, Novack embraces manic insanity with a great hug of laughter. She flings images, characters, ideas, and language around until they all, finally losing, - no, abandoning - their moorings, collide, crash, ka-bang one into another creating nuclear reactions of the non-sense that is even Emily Dickinson's "divine sense," although Novack would certainly hurl those two words (and that idea) against each other until they radiated. To read this book is to bring the giraffes out of hiding!" -- Martin Nakell

In "Giraffes in Hiding" Carol Novack proves once again that she is the all-time champion of wild, wigged out, original prose/ poetry and poetic prose. The first full-length collection of her work, subtitled "The Mythical Memoirs of Carol Novack," is a feast of fusions, inventions, myths, dreams, forms, and possibilities. There's no one like Novack, and here she is at her best as she chases her ontological tail round and round the intelligible, unknown worlds of her subconscious (and ours). Think Alice in Wonderland on acid simultaneously dancing with Tristan Tzara, Rimbaud, Oedipus, Pandora, Gertrude Stein, Proust, Kerouac, and that weird kid next door who ate all of the heads off your Barbie Dolls and you'll begin to get a feel for what she's up to. -- Mary Mackey

"Carol Novack is a conundrum to literary editors whose ideas of poetry and fiction as forms are rigid. To such editors, Novack might say, as one of her personae does, 'Your imagination has closed walls.' The best term for Novack's typical literary form-- flash fiction qua prose poem qua fusion--is Novack's own, invention. Her eloquent inventions are witty, lyrical, and new, even as they reinvent the themes of family, myth, art, and self. The crux of Novack's art is her imaginative power to bring alternate realities to vibrant life." -- Larissa Shmailo

"She's great at creating a Freudian cage, & trapping the reader in it. 'Tis very powerful." --Rae Desmond Jones

Links to online writings, reviews and interviews may be found at http://carolnovack.blogspot.com. Recent reviews:

http://www.smashcakemagazine.com/2011/02/18/giraffes/

http://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/GiraffesinHidingbyCarolNovack