Favorite Free Alt Lit PDFs

I am a fan of free things. I post all of my writing for free, all of the music I make is free, free is good. I like when writers make their writing freely available through PDFs, it makes me feel like they care about the people reading their writing more than they care about 'being popular', whatever that means. Thankfully, the majority of the writers who are a part of the online community have at least some kind work freely available (even the 'big' names). The most common of these free mediums is the PDF. They're easy to make and they're very visually pleasing. They can be uploaded to different websites and can quickly be sent to another person. I even have quite a few PDFs on my phone to read whenever I wish. Getting to the point, I've comprised a list of some of my favorite freely available PDFs that are at least related to 'alt lit' in one way or another. I still have a lot downloaded that I have read yet, so this list is as of right now. Hopefully you'll check out some of these as well.

(In no order)

JAPANESE RED LEAF MAPLE
BY LEIF HAVEN
 
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I had the pleasure of meeting Leif at a reading here in Portland with Steve Roggenbuck. He was a really nice guy and I enjoyed his writing a lot. He stood out to me as someone connected to 'alt lit' who didn't have the same kind of copied Tao Lin style that many people replicate. This ebook is comprised of quite a few poems of flarf poetry assembled from Portland Craigslist ads. Some are really funny, some are more introspective and interesting. Very nicely done.


I AM READY TO DIE A VIOLENT DEATH
BY HEIKO JULIEN


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This ebook is almost (or already is) at cult following status in alt lit, whatever that means pertaining to the community. It even has it's own audio book now. This was the first Heiko Julien ebook I read. I've also read Am I Cool, which was great, but I enjoyed this one more. Reading this made me feel like I was being told that 'life is okay, just be cool'. The ending was like the ending of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, I can't really explain it, you just have to read it. Heiko sets himself apart from other writers. You know it's him when you read it.

I WANT TO DIE PEACEFULLY IN MY SLEEP LIKE THAT OLD LADY FROM TITANIC BUT I WANT CELINE DION TO SING MY HEART WILL GO ON AFTER I DIE AND NOT HAVE SOME CHICK JUST HUM IT LIKE IN THE MOVIE OR WHATEVER BECAUSE MY LIFE IS ALREADY A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT
BY WALTER MACKEY
 
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Walter Mackey was the first person to introduce to the alt lit community. I had read all of the Tao Lin books and that was about it, at the time. He commented on something I posted on Tumblr and I thought his blog title was funny, so I looked through his blog and found that he also liked Tao Lin, enough to have a tattoo of his art on his arm. I am greatly in debt to Walter, especially for being the first person to publish my stuff on Screaming Seahorse. He put out this ebook around the time we became URL friends so you could say it was the first 'non Tao' alt lit that I ever read. I enjoyed the basic-cable pop culture references, the obscure ways he'd want to go out, the brevity of the poems, and the book's overall simplicity.

DOWNLOAD HELVETICA FOR FREE.COM
BY STEVE ROGGENBUCK
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Steve needs no introduction. A fantastic collection of flarf poetry, blown up in Helvetica. You may be wondering why I'm choosing this over Crunk Juice. While I did love Crunk Juice, I guess this one just has more of a nostalgia factor for me. Really, the two are hard to compare. If you don't know about his ebook, Steve is known for being a fine 'Google-bomber' (creating keywords to steal traffic from what people are actually trying to find to give them something else, such as with 'Poetry by Emily Dickinson'). The title diverts people looking to download the font and leads them to a collection of flarf poetry he put together from his past IM conversation logs. Everything about the book is very pleasing and friendly. Over 100 poems including the 'b-sides'.

LESS OF EVERYTHING
BY DAVE SHAW
 
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I first experienced Dave Shaw through his poetry he glued to various fruits that was in the first Screaming Seahorse issue I was in. This was the first 'non-fruit' Dave Shaw I had read, and I loved it. I actually put off reading this for a while because I hate the cover, but the content is much better. The writing is very authentic and very fluid. It's alt lit, but it's still different. Names are changed to symbolic words relating to his life. I like that he actually talks about Pop Serial and a few other alluded alt lit references. I feel like this ebook could be a short film.

COME TO MY OCEAN
BY KELSEA BASYE (AKA MOON TEMPLE)
 
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Moon Temple is a newer writer that I am excited to see more from. I feel like I can relate to her 'brand'. I can sympathize with working at Subway. This is her first ebook and I felt like 'yeah, I get this'. The whole time I felt like I was sinking while drowning, kind of struggling for the top at times, but eventually accepting it and letting myself fall. I do not mean this in a bad way, I mean it in the sense that she expressed herself in a fashion that made others understand what she was trying to express. It very much felt like an ocean.

PINKY PROMISE ME THIS
BY ANA CARRETE

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I was very torn between this and Internet Girls. They're really about an even 50/50, but I decided to include this one because I haven't seen it on any blogs or anything, and it's a little older so people might have forgotten about it. Ana Carrete's style is very refreshing. It's brisk, playful, and kind of flirtatious. Her ebooks are fun. She blows up the fonts, plays with the colors, and she even puts a Youtube link in this one. It feels like a conversation, but not with someone you don't know, someone you're friends with.


I hope this interested some people enough to read these PDFs. Please download them and check them out. I would not have written this if I didn't think they were worthwhile.