Eggtooth
2014 Missouri Review Audio Contest Prose Winner
This week on The Missouri Review Soundbooth we are featuring the last of our three winners from the 2014 Audio Contest. The winning prose piece was the short story “Eggtooth” by Steve De Jarnatt, with music and mixing by Stephen Day, and a voice performance by O-Lan Jones. We also want to spread the word that our 2015 Editors Prize Contest Deadline has been extended until October 15, 2014, so you still have time to submit your best poetry, prose, and nonfiction to our Fall Contest and have the chance to win $5,000 and publication in the magazine!
Author Steve De Jarnatt grew up in the small logging town of Longview, Washington. After toiling for many years in LA as a writer and director (the cult feature Miracle Mile among umpteen credits), he recently received his MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and broke out of Hollywood to try to make it in the lucrative world of short fiction. His work has been published in Santa Monica Review, Cincinnati Review, Meridian, Joyland, New England Review, New Stories from the Midwest (forthcoming), and The Best American Short Stories 2009 (and was among the 100 Notables listed in BASS 2013). He was a Fiction Scholar at Sewanee Writer’s Conference 2012 and a Fiction Scholar at Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference 2013. He lives and writes now in Port Townsend, Washington and the Abbot-Kinney neighborhood of Venice, California.
Stephen Day, who worked on music and mixing for the story, was born in California and brought up in Canada and France. He has enjoyed an exotic and varied life as a composer, producer, instrumentalist, vocalist and teacher. He studied with world-renowned sarod player, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan in India for three years and works in multiple genres including Western classical, Indian Classical, jazz, folk and rock music. His non-profit Ombience is dedicated to spreading spirituality through art.
And finally, the story is performed/read by O-Lan Jones. She is a full-service artist, being an award-winning actor, sound designer, writer and composer. You may recognize her from some of Tim Burton’s films, NBK, or Seinfeld. She will be appearing in the soon to be released Child of Grace. Miz Jones is also the Artistic Director of Overtone Industries, a not-for-profit company that creates new mythological operas and theatricales; recently Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands, a collaboration of 21 librettists and 11 composers performed in a 25,000 square foot abandoned car dealership; and a full length Medieval opera, The Woman in the Wall. Miz Jones is currently composing a new opera, Iceland, with original songs by singer-songwriter Emmett Tinley. Overtone will be presenting the first phase this summer at Redcat in Los Angeles.
Congratulations to all the artists who worked on Eggtooth and to all our winners!