Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm happy to have, as my guest, the newest writers from the little house on the

Bowery imprint that Dennis Cooper edits for Akashik books.

And I have Dennis Cooper here, the editor, Derek McCormick, the author of Grabbag, and

Martha Kinney, the author of The Fall of Heartless Horse.

These are available in paperback from Akashik.

Now, Dennis, I'm curious, really, what is this selection process like?

Do you get tons of manuscripts?

Are you reading all the time?

What's the story?

Yeah, there's a lot of manuscripts,

especially lately because the series is starting to get some,

people are starting to realize it exists.

So I'm starting to get a lot of stuff.

Most of it goes to Akashik and they filter some stuff out for me.

Because it's only North American writers,

but people in other countries

...