George Sparling and Shane Allison

This past week at TJ, we had the pleasure of running work by both George Sparling and Shane Allison. Each of these guys have been published in Thieves Jargon since very early on, issues 10 and 14, respectively. As an editor, if you can get your favorite writers to come back to your journal more than once, you know that you're doing something right.

Sparling is interesting, in that you get the sense he's been staggering around since the 60s. He's one part revolutionary, one part Arthur Dimmesdale. His stories published in Thieves Jargon run the gamut from intellectual guilt to suburban sleaze to pill-popping city paranoia. I like an author with range. This story is his most out-there story we've run yet, featuring an omniscient counterculture movement.

Shane Allison I like because he's gay and black and plays around with poetic forms I've never understood. He also pisses off the same people who wouldn't vote for Barack Obama because they think he's a Muslim, and the more of those people who get pissed off, the quicker their ulcers set in. Fine by me. In these two poems, he's seeing Ghostbusters (my #1 favorite movie) as a lad, and fantasizing about a taken man in a diner. Hot.