Summer 2009. Thanks to everyone who came out to meet me on this spring's book tour, and particular thanks to my students and many new friends at the Colgate Writers' Conference. I have now been deactivated and with any luck will be spending the summer working on a new novel. Meanwhile, there are many new items on the internet. First off, I wrote an article about my writing habits, "The Truth About Writers", for the L. A. Times's "Off The Shelf" blog--click the link to read it, or check it out in the articles section of this site. I also did a few interviews, including this one on John Kenyon's Things I'd Rather Be Doing blog, and this running feature about Happyland, written by Jason Rice for his blog Three Guys One Book. Ed Champion also interviewed me for The Bat Segundo Show, but the interview hasn't made it onto the site just yet--keep an eye out for that. My reading (of a new story) and craft talk from the Colgate Conference will soon be in its video archive, as well; I will link to those here when they're posted. Finally, the Sonic Youth anthology has come out in the US under the title Noise. It is now in the sidebar. And I've put a few new articles up in the articles section, including my recent L. A. Times and New York Times pieces, and a few older things as well. Enjoy. - June 30, 2009 Spring 2009. A lot going on this week. Click to read a great review of the new books in the New York Times Book Review. Also, I will be at Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn for a reading this coming Thursday night...and that same night a new interview will be broadcast on the Out of Bounds radio show here in the Ithaca area. It will be archived at their website after broadcast. - May 23, 2009 Check out this playlist I wrote for the New York Times' books blog. It's a celebration of six-minute songs. - April 8, 2009 New stuff: an interview I gave last week to Weston Cutter, of the blog Corduroy Books...a wonderful review, from Andrew Sean Greer, of the new novel, and my other stuff, on the blog The Rumpus...and more to come in the next few weeks... - March 27, 2009 Just a small addition here: a half-hour long interview with me, by Santa Monica Review editor Andrew Tonkovich, will be airing this coming Monday, March 9, at noon on LA's KPFK Radio. It will be archived for 90 days, if you'd like to download it later. Also, a new tour date has been added at Prairie Lights, Iowa City, in June. Hooray! A great store. Plese come and say hello. - March 3, 2009 The web site has a new menu, with links to Ward Six and a new page of articles. The articles in question are either previously unpublished things, or things I've written and published over the past ten years that are unlikely ever to end up in a book, and which I am not completely embarrassed to still have publicly available. These include short stories, essays, book reviews, comic miscellany (including my many failed attempts to get into Shouts & Murmurs), and some music writing, mostly for TapeOp Magazine, including the unadbridged version of my long interview with synthesist, engineer, and record producer Malcolm Cecil. There's also a section for photography writing and gear reviews. In any event, enjoy!, and I hope you don't mind the blog-style formatting. I just don't have the energy for HTML paragraph indents. Winter 2009. Posted above is the tentative tour schedule for Castle and Pieces For The Left Hand; I'll leave it at the top of the page and update it when I get more information. Both books were positively reviewed last week in Publisher's Weekly; Castle was given a starred review. A new story is due out, probably this spring, in Epoch, and I'll be teaching a workshop in June, and giving a reading, at the Colgate Writers' Conference. In addition, Graywolf has posted a couple of downloads for readers on their website. One is an audio interview that my friend, the novelist Brian Hall, did with me about the new novel; the other is a FREE mp3 copy of the Pieces For The Left Hand album: 100 very short songs, completely unrelated to the stories, by my musical alter ego, Inverse Room. Find them at the J. Robert Lennon page at Graywolfpress.com. Summer 2008. The new cover is complete for Pieces For The Left Hand, which Graywolf is putting out in paperback in April, alongside the hardcover of Castle. Once again, I'm really happy with it--it's kinda hard to see, but the background image comes from--I kid you not--the Smithsonian's paint-by-numbers collection. (In fact, there it is on the main page of that link.) Looking at the books quick-links over there, I can't believe that it will have been four years since Pieces first came out in the UK, and even longer than that--nearly ten years--since I started writing the stories during my older son's afternoon naps. It will be great to finally have it readily available to American readers. - June 21, 2008 Late Spring 2008. I've been pretty intensely into taking photographs lately, ostensibly as research for a novel I hope to start writing later this year, but mostly because I like it. I've added a photo page to the site for anyone who's interested in seeing the pictures. New link added above, as well. In addition, my short story "The Wraith" will finally be coming out in Playboy in October. - June 10, 2008 Reading video. Just posted on Cornell's web site, here's a video of me reading my parodic short story "The Year's Best Fiction 2008: The Authors Speak" as part of the Richard Cleveland Memorial Reading back in March. You'll need RealPlayer. The really, really nice introduction is from George McCormick. (The bar he's referring to is Al's & Vic's, in Missoula, FYI.) - June 9, 2008 I just got the final cover design for Castle from the publicity department at Graywolf. The book won't be out until next April, but I think the cover is fairly enigmatic and intriguing, which is exactly what I was hoping the graphic designer would go for. Watch this space for more information in the coming months. Meanwhile, I'll be doing two events in New York in June. First, on Friday, June 13, I'll give a brief (15 minutes?) reading at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 421 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. The reading is at 8pm, and will serve as the opening act for the amazing Andrew Dinwiddie's dance performance of his work-in-progress, "The Accursed Items." If that sounds familiar, it's because the piece is set to a reading of my story of the same title. This is a benefit show for BAX, and the cover is $15 general admission, $8 low-income. If you're really loaded, come at 7 for a benefit reception, and pony up the $50 suggested donation. I'll be back in the city on Tuesday, June 17 for a Paris Review event; it will be at 6pm at NYU, and I'll be reading with Gish Jen and Ryan McIlvain. Click this link for the details. Finally, I just got a copy of The Empty Page, the anthology of Sonic-Youth-inspired fiction; it's just come out (UK only so far), and my story, "Death To Our Friends," is, conveniently enough, the first thing in it. Click the link to check it out. - May 27, 2008 March 2008. Good news for those who were hoping there might someday be a US edition of Pieces For The Left Hand: the book has been picked up by Graywolf Press, and will come out in paperback sometime next year. Graywolf will also be publishing a new novel, Castle, in hardcover, probably in March or April of 2009. I'll post links and other info when we get closer to the pub dates. Sooner than that--May, in fact--a new story will be appearing in the catalog of a gallery show by photographer Lisa Roy Sachs. The exhibition can be seen at the Luxe Gallery in NYC in late spring...I'll update this site with the details when I have them. Another new story will be appearing this summer in Who Can Save Us Now?, an anthology of fiction about new superheroes. (Mine is a tortured soul called The Rememberer.) The book will be a paperback original from the Free Press. Finally, I'll be joining Ernesto Quiñonez and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon in delivering the Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading at Cornell University on March 27. The details: 4:30 p.m., Hollis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. If you're in town, please come give a listen! Fall 2007. Pardon me for the long delay in posts here. Two things are afoot: new stories are coming out in The Paris Review and Playboy. The Playboy piece is called "The Wraith" and its publication date has yet to be determined. But keep on looking at those naked ladies until you find it. The Paris Review piece is actually several pieces, part of a collaborative project I've been working on with visual artist Lou Beach, and should be available late next month. You might know Lou from his illustrations in the New York Times, or if you're my age, and a dork, you will remember his stunning gatefold cover for Weird Al Yankovic's "Dare To Be Stupid." In additon, I have begun another blog, and will add a permanent link to it over on the right as soon as I come up with a graphic. It's called The Litlab, and is dedicated to publishing experimental fiction. If you have something, send it to me--there is no such thing as too goofy. I have seeded the site with a short story I wrote, "The Cat Text," that employs ONLY words found in The Cat In The Hat. Enjoy! - September 14, 2007 May 2007. Voila! The website has a new look! However, my career remains exactly the same. Please check back for new stuff in the coming weeks. - May 1, 2007 . . . I am part of a new anthology of "flash" fiction, called The Flash, which unfortunately is, once again, only available in the UK. My contribution is "Mikeworld," from Pieces For The Left Hand, which, appropriately, is also only available in the UK. The Writers At Cornell blog has finished its first season, and I'm pretty happy with it--I interviewed nine writers, including George Saunders, Heather McHugh, and Junot Diaz. The site features some of the fastest-downloading mp3's I have ever had the pleasure of posting anywhere--Cornell's servers are outrageous. Check it out, and look forward to some more great stuff this fall--the fall series is looking very promising. Not much else going on--I'm in the final stretch of a new novel. Stay tuned! - April 28, 2007 . . . A Short story, "Zombie Dan," is now running in the March issue of Playboy. The illustration is...oh my God...you will love it. Also, the new Inverse Room album is now up for download on iTunes, here. I can never get those direct iTunes links to work right, myself, unless iTunes is already open, but if worse comes to worst you can just search for Inverse Room in the iTunes store. If you prefer a different download service, the album will be there soon, if it isn't there already. - February 27, 2007 . . . Susan Tomaselli of Dogmatika, guest blogging at 3am Magazine, has interviewed my wife and me about our work and our blog. The interview's in two parts, here and here. - February 4, 2007 . . . I've removed a couple of things from the menu: the blog and the Inverse Room page. The reason for the de-blogging is that Ward Six is working out very nicely, and more than satisfies my blogging urge, thank you. The reason the Inverse Room page is gone, however, is that there's a new one, which you can access by clicking this here picture of the new Inverse Room album, American Recluse. The title refers to the President, and it also refers to me, and it also refers to a poisonous spider. The connections among the three remain vague, in the classic obscure-indie-rock style. The new inverseroom.com includes a PayPal link for buying the album, and the obligatory audio samples, videos, links, and studio pics. Stop by, it's super sexy. Or dorky. Or something. Finally, thanks to everyone who stopped by Five Chapters last week to check out "The Creek." Dave Daley's serial fiction project continues this week and I hope many to come...visit there often! - February 1, 2007 . . . A new story of mine, "The Creek," will be running next week, starting Monday, at Five Chapters, the short fiction serial website. Please give it a look! For those of you interested in the musical stuff, I sent the new Inverse Room album off to the pressing plant this week. It should be up here for purchase in a couple of weeks, and available as a download sometime next month. More soon, including audio samples... - January 19, 2007 . . . My wife and I have started a literary blog. It's called Ward Six, after the Chekhov story of the same name, and will consist of literary analysis and opinion. Stop by, leave comments. We'll be posting daily, so please visit often!

Buy books. Castle. Novel, coming 2009. A man buys a large plot of wooded land in upstate New York, only to find that someone has built a castle in the middle of it--and the castle is inhabited. Further investigation leads to a journey into the past, and into the darkness of 21st century America. . . . Pieces for the Left Hand. Story collection, 2005. 100 very short stories; or, alternately, a novel about a guy who writes 100 stories, with the text consisting only of the stories. . . . Mailman. Novel, 2003. A frenetic bildungsroman about a doomed upstate New York mail carrier, taking place over ten days in the summer of 2000. . . . On the Night Plain. Novel, 2001. After the Second World War, a man leaves his home on a Great Plains sheep ranch. He returns to chaos and despair, and decides to devote himself to setting things right. . . . The Funnies. Novel, 1999. A failed installation artist inherits his father's syndicated comic strip, and is forced to come to terms with his dysfunctional family. . . . The Light of Falling Stars. Novel, 1997. The lives of five people--a college student, an elderly woman, a married couple, and an Italian tourist--are changed by a plane crash in a small Montana town. . . . Noise. Anthology, 2009. A collection of stories inspired by Sonic Youth songs, including the JRL story "Death To Our Friends." Also featuring Mary Gaitskill and Katherine Dunn. . . . Who Can Save Us Now? Anthology, 2008. A collection of stories about new superheroes, including the JRL story "The Rememberer." Also featuring Jim Shepard, Cary Holladay, Graham Joyce. . . . The Flash. Anthology, 2007. A collection of really short stories, including one of JRL's--"Mikeworld," from the Pieces for the Left Hand collection. Also featuring Rick Moody, Steve Almond, Steve Aylett. . . . So, What Kept You? Anthology, 2006. Stories inspired by the journals of Chekhov and Carver. JRL went with Chekhov. Also featuring David Means, Andrew Crumley, Ali Smith. . . . big bad wolves . . . Links of interest. Ward Six Blog. A daily discussion of books, writers, and writing by JRL and his wife, novelist Rhian Ellis. . . . Writers At Cornell Blog. A series of audio podcast interviews, produced by JRL, with writers who visit Cornell University. Between 15 and 20 shows per year are planned; so far you can download discussions with George Saunders, Heather McHugh, and Junot Diaz, among others. . . . Creot Radio. A free podcast of all-original music by Creot Records artists and their friends. Rock and roll that only a mother could love.