Janet Hamill

Welcome to New York City. A place where stories lurk around every corner and linger in the hearts of the millions in these five boroughs. In these pages, tales of the underbelly of -modern-day New York City hook-up with hilarious and -poignant stories of love and loss in this annual collection of thrilling short stories by seasoned and fresh writers who know how to tell them. Edited by Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges, these stories are sharp and concise, each an unusual take on the swirling panorama of the streets of New York, from Hell's Kitchen to Greenwich Village and Coney Island to Williamsburg, Queens, and beyond. Readers are transported by a modern noir sensibility, populated by a plethora of characters of our times, carving new notches of experience on the city that still fires up the imagination. Authors in this edition include acclaimed crime novelist Lawrence Block (A Walk Among the Tombstones, 8 Million Ways to Die), Liz Axelrod, Gil Fagiani, Bonny Finberg, Michael Gatlin, Kat Georges, Kirpal Gordon, Ron Kolm, Peter Marra, J. Anthony Roman, Angela Sloan, Paul Sohar, Joanie Hieger Fritz Zosike and Nina Zivancevic.

A young girl with a mystical bend explores the vast arrangement of the stars. She looks toward the heavens for angels, a sense of her own destiny. She becomes a cartographer of sorts, shaping constellations of her own, mapping the sky with words. We were not yet twenty when we met, and though much time has past, I can still picture us. She with her cropped hair and boatneck shirt and myself in school-girl black, reveling in literature, fashion, and rock n' roll. We shared our evolving hopes and the thrust of personal wounds, buoying one another in hard times, staying close as she navigated the dark wake of the unexpected loss of her mother.--from the Foreword by Patti Smith

Tales from the Eternal Cafe, author Janet Hamill's debut short story collection, offers a thrilling, unwinding trail of tales that excite and mystify; drift then deliver a powerful punch that readers will devour. Like Karen Russell, George Saunders, Jose Luis Borges and Isabel Allende, Janet Hamill's writing lures readers willingly into a labyrinth of surprise and suspense, with humor lurking just on the other side of pathos; a tear just moments away from bright, well-deserved laughter. The seventeen crisp stories included in Tales from the Eternal Cafe offer a plethora of fascinating characters and scenarios: a brief memoir from Baudelaire's publisher; a letter from a writer who knows he is going mad; an exasperated Italian film director unable to inspire Europe's most famous actor during the shooting of a brothel scene. The book includes an introduction by the author's lifelong friend, singer-songwriter-poet-author Patti Smith, whose book Just Kids, received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010.

Taking on the streets. East or Westside. Uptown and Down. The pace quickens through the boroughs from necessity. Every move the most important. Too much competition. Looking at each other for someone to blame. Doing anything just to be part of the magnitude. Everybody lost in the expanse. The City doesn't cheat you. It teaches. You absorb either knowledge or the blows. There are days when you find out you can't cut it anymore. And there are others when you come out at the top. The "Have A NYC" anthology series is an intense annual collection of modern short stories set in New York, edited by Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges. In Have A NYC 2, authors include acclaimed crime writer Lawrence Block (Eight Million Ways to Die, Hit Me), contemporary surrealist writers Rae Bryant and Janet Hamill, and Evergreen Review editor Ron Kolm. Other authors include Jeb Gleason-Allured, Sion Dayson, Kofi Forson, Resa Alboher, L. Shapley Bassen, Michael Schwartz, Puma Perl, Jackie Sheeler, Peter Marra, Maria Kranidis, Richard Vetere and Eric Stromsvold.