John Counts On The Internet

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  • The Women of Brotherhood in Printers Row Journal

    “The Women of Brotherhood” keep flinging themselves from an old train bridge over the Bear River valley. The story appeared in the Sunday, Dec. 13 edition of the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal. First paragraphs: Debbie Somsel stood behind the counter at the Brotherhood EZ Mart flipping through a celebrity magazine. The pages fluttered from…

    John Counts

    December 13, 2015
    Uncategorized
  • Big Frank in Current

    Big Frank = Sambuca. Deer hunting cabins. Beefcake mags. Frozen meats. Just another day in Bear County. Big Frank was runner-up in Ann Arbor’s Current magazine’s fiction contest: First paragraphs: They left the windows unlocked in his wing of the Bear County Rehabilitation Facility. The authorities figured that if you ended up there, you had…

    John Counts

    November 3, 2015
    Uncategorized
  • The Nudists in Joyland

    The Nudists in Joyland. Indeed. First paragraphs: Shelly Bowman had to save her mother from the nudists. One summer day Shelly’s father informed her that Margery Bowman, who previously had been best known for her rock collection and pot roasts, had run off to “some sex camp” on the shores of Lake Michigan in Bear County,…

    John Counts

    June 11, 2015
    Uncategorized
  • 1st Place Investigative reporting; 2nd place best feature story and best writer

    The results of the aforementioned Associated Press journalism awards: 1st Place: Best Investigative Reporting 2nd Place: Best Writer 2nd Place Best Feature Story http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2015/05/mlive_media_group_sweeps_gener.html  

    John Counts

    May 17, 2015
    Uncategorized
  • Journalism awards

    I’m a finalist for the Michigan AP Awards in the following categories: Best Writer, Best Feature Story and Best Investigative Reporting. These nominations are based on several stories I wrote for The Ann Arbor News in 2014, including a day spent out in Howell, Michigan after some high school students sent some racist tweets and…

    John Counts

    February 26, 2015
    Uncategorized
  • A Collision on Western Avenue in Anthology of Chicago

    Here’s a short story from Anthology of Chicago, which features fiction and poetry set in various Chicago neighborhoods.  I met this girl at The Mutiny and we got shitfaced. I mean beyond balls-out fucking blitzed, downing shots of Jameson and sucking down those big-ass mugs of Old Style as tall as your face from chin…

    John Counts

    December 20, 2014
    Uncategorized
  • Contributor spotlight interview in Midwestern Gothic

    The good folks over at MG recently posted a contributor’s spotlight interview I did with them. Here’s the first question: How long have you been writing? I started writing in earnest around 14, mostly poetry and song lyrics because I was starting a band around this time. I launched into a first novel when I…

    John Counts

    September 24, 2014
    Uncategorized
  • Lucy and the Bear in HYPERtext

    Another installment of life in Bear County, Michigan —  “Lucy and the Bear” in Chicago’s super-hype HYPERtext mag: First paragraphs: The little girl wanted to be a bear. Whenever she walked, she imagined the muscles in her arms and legs expanding, ripping off her shirt and pants and sprouting coarse, black hair. The little girl…

    John Counts

    August 30, 2014
    Uncategorized
  • Welcome to Gilbertville (formerly Detroit) in Belt magazine

    Some thoughts on Dan Gilbert’s berserk real estate binge in downtown Detroit for Belt magazine out of Cleveland. First paragraphs: To average people with average amounts of money, the very wealthy can come off like the hereditary elite did to struggling and hungry pre-democracy populations. The super-rich are the object of both envy and derision.…

    John Counts

    July 26, 2014
    Uncategorized
  • Blog relay: Talking Jerry Darn for “About a Character”

    This is part of a blog relay to which the Great Lakes Review editor Rob Jackson invited me to participate in. Rob was invited by Don DeGrazia, author of “American Skin” and my thesis advisor when I earned an MFA at Columbia College Chicago. Basically, it’s a chain of writers all answering the same questions…

    John Counts

    July 14, 2014
    Uncategorized
    character, Chicago, fiction, Jerry Darn
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