If you dig these horoscopes, some from last year made their way into my new book, Steal Like An Artist—coming out February 28th!

Pre-order link →

30 Must-See Tumblr Blogs | NewsFeed | TIME.com

His redacted masterpieces have won him both a book deal and a line of art prints sold through online gallery 20×200. The focus of his Tumblr, however, is his fans. Anyone with a marker, a newspaper and a little creativity can submit to the site. The result is a kind of free-form word search, with people providing one-liners that range from funny to enigmatic to genuinely thought-provoking. Whether or not you consider it actual poetry, it’s definitely not a bad way to recycle your morning paper.

Thanks very much to TIME readers who recommended the site and to all who’ve submitted poems in the last couple of years. Strangely enough, the site is almost exactly 2 years old! I knew there should be a site where people could submit their own poems, but I was waiting around for the right platform to come along. Luckily, a few months before the book came out, Tumblr started allowing users to submit posts. And that was that. Today the site has over 25,000 readers.

I’m still accepting poems, so feel free to send me yours: NewspaperBlackout.com→

A new 20×200 print, “So Many Places,” is available through WestElm.com.

the world is so many places! — yet home is the word we’re encouraged to find

See the rest of my prints→

Here’s an excerpt of a mini-interview I did with the West Elm folks:

How do you live with art?

My wife and I work together in a home studio, so we like to surround ourselves with art by filling our walls with pieces from artists we love. Sometimes I’ll even frame and hang pictures of (mostly dead) artist heroes of mine — they’re like friendly ghosts, I can feel them pushing me on while I work. (It’s way less morbid than it sounds.)

What is a favorite gallery or museum that you particularly love or that inspires your work?

Here in Austin, Texas, I really like to stop by Yard Dog Art Gallery on South Congress and see the stuff they have up. Because I’m both a writer and an artist, my absolute favorite spot in town is the Harry Ransom Center on the University of Texas campus — their archive is massive and their exhibits are terrific. I’ve seen everything there from original Frida Kahlo paintings to James Joyce manuscripts.

Read more→

what is the most fun / is to grab you / and find something wrong to do

In plenty of time for Valentine’s Day, here’s a new blackout print from 20×200!

Thanks to Nicole Frehsee for writing such a nice little piece on Newspaper Blackout in the February 2012 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine!

Read the article online→

Read more horoscopes →

Christopher Hitchens said that “the great thing about writing a book is that it brings you into contact with people whose opinions you should have canvassed before you ever pressed pen to paper. They write to you. They telephone you. They give you things to read that you should have read already. [Putting out a book is] a free education that goes on for a lifetime.”

Last month I got an email from Mike at The Encyclopedia Show Austin, telling me about Censored Mother Goose Rhymes—a charming little book featured in the Ransom Center’s excellent “Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored” exhibit.

Published in 1929 by a writer and editor named Kenneth Banning, it was dedicated to “THE CENSORS who have taught us how to read naughty meanings into harmless words” and was supposed to be a demonstration “of the effect of censorship upon anything it touches.” If I’m not mistaken, it was even passed out to congressmen in the middle of the censorship debates.

It’s a very very funny book.

Anyways, Mike asked me if I’d do something with the book, and while I almost never read my poems publicly, I think this book is even better read aloud, so, with the help of my iPhone, I read a few at the show.

Watch the video →

See the slides →

To close out 2011, writer and artist Austin Kleon discusses the myriad of ways he works to end the messy divorce between words and pictures.

Here’s a 30-minute interview I did with Jeremy Fuksa of The Cocktail Napkin, talking about Newspaper Blackout, Steal Like An Artist, and doing stuff online. (You can get it as an audio podcast—thank God—so you don’t have to look at my ugly face the whole time…)

de-Signs = iPhone photos of signs with some of the words erased. If you follow me on Twitter, you can see them as I post them: @austinkleon.

	Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry “I’m sure partial to the evening,’ Augustus said. ‘The evening and the morning. If we just didn’t have to have the rest of the dern day I’d be a lot happier.”
	Decoded Jay-Z “We were kids without fathers…so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves…Our fathers were gone, usually because they just bounced, but we took their old records and used them to build something fresh.”
	The Dog of the South Charles Portis “My wife Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone.”
	Moby-Dick Herman Melville “Small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught–nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”
	The Art of Fielding Chad Harbach “All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. You told it with a hint of doom. You included his flaws. You emphasized the obstacles that could prevent him from succeeding. That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph. Schwartz knew that people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn’t do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you.”
	Skippy Dies Paul Murray “‘But, Dennis, do you think Mr Slattery’d be teaching it to us if it was really about anal sex?’ ’ What does Mr Slattery know?’ Dennis scoffs. ‘You think he’s ever taken his wife up the road less travelled?’”
	Believing Is Seeing Errol Morris “The essays in this book should be seen as a collection of mystery stories.”
	After the Apocalypse Maureen McHugh “Cahill lived in the Flats with about twenty other guys in a place that used to be an Irish bar called Fado. At the back of the bar was the Cuyahoga River, good for protection since zombies didn’t cross the river. They didn’t crumble into dust, they were just stupid as bricks and they never built a boat or a bridge or built anything. Zombies were the ultimate trash.”
	The Medium is the Massage Marshall McLuhan “Xerography—every man’s brain-picker—heralds the times of instant publishing. Anybody can now become both author and publisher. Take any books on any subject and custom-make your own book by simple xeroxing a chapter from this one, a chapter from that one—instant steal!”
	Where Good Ideas Come From Steven Johnson “Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent.”

Ten other good books I read:

• Jonathan Lethem, The Disappointment Artist
• Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
• Lynda Barry, Everything: Volume 1
• Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
• Tina Fey, Bossypants
• Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library #20
• Maira Kalman, The Principles of Uncertainty
• David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man
• Grafton & Rosenberg, Cartographies of Time
• Maggie Nelson, Bluets

See my past reading years: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006

See also:

• My Watching Year, 2011
• My Listening Year, 2011

PS: I post stuff I’m currently into on my Tumblr.