All Hands On: The2ndHand After 10 marks the The2ndHand literary broadsheet and online magazine's 10th anniversary, collecting the best of its first 10 years of publishing writing from both unknowns and more established sorts among writers on the American lit train. Call them the budding insurgents of the literary landscape, from whom fantastic work emerges. True to The2ndHand form, the book begins with a section of new, as-yet unpublished work by a cross section of writers, some of whom will be familiar to readers. Others are entirely new to the magazine, with at least one previously unpublished anywhere. The2ndHand began its life as a broadsheet, an 11-by-17-inch page showcasing short prose, launched in 2000 in Chicago as perhaps the last periodical on earth without a prefabbed website to bolster its print matter. Later that year, The2ndHand.com expanded the literary and experimental short fiction publisher's venues, running flash and serial fiction weekly. The blocks of black text peppered variously with photo-illustrations, comics, line drawings and other art that made up the broadsheet were distributed in storefronts first in Chicago, then in an ever-growing list of cities around the U.S. as the little magazine's notoriety grew with the success of its literary events in home bases of operation in Chicago throughout, and later also in New York City, Birmingham, Ala., and Nashville, Tenn., to varying degrees. New writing, simply, has been its focus since editor and publisher Todd Dills founded it, a small format its physicality, a loud mouth and a big heart its most important parts. The 300-plus-page All Hands On collects previously unpublished short fiction by authors ranging from broadsheet mainstays Patrick Somerville (The Cradle), Nadria Tucker, Joe Meno (The Great Perhaps, Hairstyles of the Damned), Susannah Felts and Doug Milam (Still the Confusion, here with a mini-epic poem entitled, simply, 'Chicago') to faces new to its pages if not the American lit world like Michael Zapata, Jamie Iredell (The Book of Freaks), Amanda Yskamp, Matt Cahan and others. Fiction writers featured in special sections include Marc Baez, longtime The2ndHand coeditor C.T. Ballentine (including the entirety of his "Friedrich Nietzsche Waits for a Date" novella), Philip Brunetti, Al Burian (the Burn Collector zine and associated books), music writer Tobias Carroll, Spencer Dew (Songs of Insurgency), Kate Duva, David Gianatasio (Mind Games), Mickey Hess (Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory), Joe Meno, Jonathan Messinger (Hiding Out), Doug Milam, Anne Elizabeth Moore (Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity) with comic adaptation by Josh Bayer, Greggory Moore, Kevin O'Cuinn, Heather Palmer (Complements: Of Us), Michael Peck, the Pitchfork Battalion (a collaborative crew with roving membership, including many of those already listed, plus, featured in the book, Sean Carswell, Jim Murphy, Emerson Dameron and Dominique Holmes), Lauren Pretnar, Patrick Somerville, Jill Summers, Paul A. Toth (Finale, Airplane: A Novel), and Nadria Tucker. The book is a follow-up to the 2004 collection All Hands On: A The2ndHand Reader.

All Hands On: The2ndHand After 10, 2000-2011, a Reader

And Others

Anne Elizabeth Moore

David Gianatasio

Al Burian

Jamie Iredell

Todd Dills

Patrick Somerville

Joe Meno

Doug Milam

Susannah Felts

Nadria Tucker

Kate Duva

The2ndHand

From literary New South yarn to end-of-days dirge, buoyant realism and slapstick satire, the tapestry of style and genre in the 14 collected stories in "Triumph of the Ape" screams with themes of American folly. Written over the first decade of the 21st century, the stories reach back into the past of the author's native South Carolina -- and forward into a grim future where love nonetheless remains humanity's best hope. Todd Dills is also the author of a novel, "Sons of the Rapture" (Featherproof Books 2006), and editor of two collections -- "All Hands On" (2004 and 2011) -- published in conjunction with the literary broadsheet he founded in Chicago in the year 2000, THE2NDHAND. Today, he lives and writes in Nashville, Tenn. Praise for "Triumph of the Ape": "'Triumph' reads, as a whole, like a book might if written by a man who finally, reaching the beach, realizes the bits of wreckage half buried in the sand are everything that mattered, the places of dreams and opportunity. The damn dirty apes win...." --from the Afterword by Spencer Dew, author of "Songs of Insurgency," "Mont Saint Michel and Chartres" "A tremendous collection! 'Triumph of the Ape' outlines the highs and lows of comically self-conscious young men bumming around the free, modern world, armed only with mind, heart and humor. These stories are bursting with warmth and smart lovin’. Reading Todd Dills makes life -– all of it –- feel a little bit kinder." --Patrick Somerville, author of 'This Bright River', 'The Cradle' "'Triumph' is dauntless, daring in its variety of tones and styles, a kind of taunt to the new century and all its ongoing crises. There’s the spirited, Southern slant of the Barry-Hannah-esque 'Color of Magic' and 'Confederate Yankee...,' and elsewhere, the author’s ongoing interest in forms, especially the itinerary, shifts toward the collection’s centerpiece, an imagining of the development of a underground literary movement around a 'Stupidist Manifesto.' Realism, noir, short short -– from lascivious to hilarious –- the range of styles culminates with one-part music essay, one-part end-of-days fabulism, in the closing sound track to the coming Rapture. Again and again, there’s invention, Dills’ inexhaustible gift for language and tireless imagination." --Joe Meno, author of "Office Girl," "The Great Perhaps," "Hairstyles of the Damned" "Every story in 'Triumph' reveals characters 'united in stupidity, not necessarily dumb or incapable of love but senseless with self-love,' typical of Dills’ weirdly entertaining Faulkner-in-the-city touches. Perhaps no other working writer has so benefited from living in two very distinct environments, first the South, then years in Chicago, then back to the South, with countless time spent on the road to here, there and everywhere. Dills deals in lore for apes triumphant in the downfall. He once again proves himself a master of tradition gone haywire in a country addicted to its own mythology, supplying the antidote with his 21st-century folklore." --Paul A. Toth, author of "Airplane Novel"

Triumph of the Ape: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Dew, Spencer

Dills, Todd

Short Stories & Anthologies

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