What is the best way to tell a story?

In this anthology, the first-ever collection of essays by innovative, cutting-edge writers on the theme of narration, forty of the continent's top experimental writers describe their engagement with language, storytelling and the world. The anthology includes renowned writers like Kathy Acker, Dennis Cooper, Nicole Brossard, Daphne Marlatt, Lydia Davis and Kevin Killian, writers who have spent years pondering the meaning of storytelling and how storytelling functions in our culture, as well as presenting a new generation of brilliant thinkers and writers, like Christian Bök, Corey Frost, Derek McCormack and Lisa Robertson.

Contemporizing the friendly anecdotal style of Montaigne and written by daring writers of different ages, of different origins, from many different regions of the continent, from Mexico to Montreal, these essays run the gamut of mirth, prose poetry, tall tales and playful explorations of reader/writer dynamics. They discuss aesthetics founded on new explorations in the field of narrative, the mystery that is the body, questions of how representation may be torqued to deal with gender and sexuality, the experience of marginalized people, the negotiation between different orders of time, the 'performance' of outlaw subject matter.

Brave, energetic and fresh, Biting the Error tells a whole new story about narrative.

With writing from Kathy Acker, D. L. Alvarez, Betsy Andrews, Dodie Bellamy, ChristianBök, Bruce Boone, Taylor Brady, Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite, Nicole Brossard, Mary Burger, Lydia Davis, Jeff Derksen, Aja Couchois Duncan, Michael du Plessis, kari edwards, Corey Frost, Renee Gladman, Robert Glück, Rob Halpern, Carla Harryman, Laird Hunt, Kevin Killian, Chris Kraus, Pamela Lu, Nicole Markotic, Daphne Marlatt, Douglas A. Martin, Steve McCaffery, Derek McCormack, Robin Tremblay-McGaw, Laura Moriarty, Eileen Myles, Doug Rice, Lisa Robertson, Camille Roy, Leslie Scalapino, Kathy Lou Schultz, Gail Scott, X. I. Selene, Aaron Shurin, Nathalie Stephens, Anne Stone, Lynne Tillman, Paul VanDeCarr, heriberto yepez, Magdalena Zurawski.

Biting the Error is edited by Mary Burger, Robert Glück, Camille Roy and Gail Scott, the co-founders of the Narrativity Website Magazine, based at the Poetry Center, San Francisco State University.

Gail Scott is an experimental novelist. The Obituary (New York, Nightboat, 2012; Coach House, 2010), a ghost story set in a Montreal triplex, was a 2011 finalist for Le Grand Prix du Livre de la Ville de Montreal. Other novels include My Paris (Dalkey Archive), about a sad diarist in conversation with Gertrude Stein and Walter Benjamin in late 20th century Paris, Main Brides and Heroine. Spare Parts Plus 2 is a collection of stories and manifestoes. Essays are collected in Spaces Like Stairs and la theorie, un dimanche (translated as Sunday Theory from Belladonna, NY, 2013). Scott's translation of Michael Delisle's Le D'asarroi du matelot was shortlisted for the Governor General's award in 2001. Scott co-founded the critical French-language journal Spirale'(Montreal) and is co-editor of the New Narrative anthology: Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (Toronto: Coach House, 2004). She is currently completing a memoir based in Lower Manhattan during the early Obama years.

Gail Scott's profile page

Robert Glück is the author of nine books of poetry and fiction. His books include Jack the Modernist, Margery Kemp, Denny Smith, Elements of a Coffee Service and Reader. Glück was an associate editor at Lapis Press, co-director of Small Press Traffic Literary Center and director of the Poetry Center at San Francisco State, where he teaches creative writing.

Robert Gluck's profile page

Camille Roy is a writer and performer of fiction, poetry and plays. Her books include SWARM, The Rosy Medallions and Cold Heaven. She lives in San Francisco and teaches creative writing privately and at San Francisco State University.

Camille Roy's profile page