The Thanksgiving Menu Poem 2012 is an annual online event, this year, featuring Guest of Honor: Bill Berkson.

From BlazeVOX [books]: “For two thousand and twelve we are celebrating with a twelve-course meal over twelve hours. This is a book length poetry project matched with haute cuisine, including a full biography of Bill Berkson with poems, links to more poems, reviews and interviews. The whole project will go live on Thanksgiving morning, so be sure to come and have a feast. Please feel free to invite your family, friends, and colleagues.”

Event Info

Date: Thanksgiving Day, November, 22 2012

Time: All day and will be up for the rest of the year

Online Address: www.blazevox.org/index.php/thanksgiving-poems/

Thanksgiving Menu Poems Past:

Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop 2011
David Shapiro 2010
C. D. Wright 2009
Anne Waldman 2008
Ron Silliman 2007
John Ashbery 2006
Robert Creeley 2005
Kent Johnson 2004
Forrest Gander 2003
Charles Bernstein 2002

Created by writer and award-winning blogger Philippa Moorem, Book Ends is a new weekly (Wednesdays) podcast by writers for writers and those who love the written word. Novels, poetry, travel writing, biographies, cook books and all manner of printed works will be discussed: writers in conversation about their work, their inspiration and their advice to those wanting to follow in their footsteps. The program is available online and via iTunes subscription.

Episode 1: Nikki Gemmell
Episode 2: Lisa Jewell
Episode 3: Ivy Alvarez

In the most recent issue of American Poetry Review, Lynn Emanuel, a former student of Adrienne Rich at City College in New York, shares a speech given by Rich during the year of Anne Sexton’s death. “The speech is typed on onionskin,” says Emanuel, “and stained by the tape I used for many years to attach it to the wall above my various desks.”

Emanuel says that 1974 was a “tumultuous year for Rich and her students.” It was the year Sexton killed herself, and it was about the time that Rich published her work Diving into the Wreck as well as came out as a lesbian feminist. Rich’s speech, given to the women in her college workshop, begins:

“Anne Sexton was a poet and a suicide. She was not in any narrow or politically ‘correct’ sense a feminist, but she did some things far ahead of the rebirth of the feminist movement. She wrote poems alluding to abortion, masturbation, menopause, and the painful love of a powerless mother for her daughters, long before such themes became validated by a collective of consciousness of women, and while writing and publishing under the scrutiny of the male literary establishment . . .”

The rest of the speech is printed in American Poetry Review, the November/December 2012 issue.

During a recent interview, Philip Roth told French magazine Les Inrocks that he will retire from writing: “To tell you the truth, I’m done. Nemesis will be my last book.”

According to the Daily Star, Roth says he has spent most of his time in recent years preparing material for his biographer, Blake Bailey: “If I had a choice, I would prefer that there is no biography written about me, but there will be biographies after my death so [I wanted] to be sure that one of them is correct.”

Roth said he had asked his literary executors and his agent to destroy his personal archives after his death once Bailey has finished the biography. “I don’t want my personal papers hanging around everywhere.”

The Literary Review‘s Summer/Fall 2012 issue is subtitled “The Long Issue”: “Because some stories need room to grow.” Not typically done in the magazine world, this issue features only long poems and novellas.

Editor Minna Proctor says, “this issue’s theme came about because one of our contributors flagrantly ignored our submission guidelines and sent us a novella, which so roguishly intrigued us that we changed the guidelines so as to not interfere with the integrity of her winding story. We built an issue around her; a gesture of pure admiration. We built her a furious house of extraordinary writing.”

Included in this issue is poetry by H.L. Hix (“Aggression Cues”) and Joshua Weiner (“Rock Creek Park (II)”) and fiction by Kirstin Allio (“Quetzal”), Paula Bomer (“Inside Madeleine”), and Jesse Ball (“The Neck Verse”).

The future of the printed book is a thought that is probably always at the backs of our minds, as writers, as editors, as readers. American Letters & Commentary‘s newest issue is dedicated to this very topic. “Will technology increase access to literature or restrict it to those who can afford new technologies?” ask Co-Editors Catherine Kasper and David Ray Vance. “Will paper bound books become art objects for antiquarians, restricted to museums and wealthy collectors? Will producing electronic media prove more or less hazardous to the environment as compared with paper production for printed books?”

This special issue features essays by Joan Retallack and Ander Monson on the subject, and Dimitri Anastasopoulos, Christine Hume, Dave Kress, and Christina Millettii contribute a collaborative piece titled “Story Net” which “examines the concept of ‘tomorrow.'”

And then there is contributing art by Brian Dettmer that you really have to see. He is a book artist. “The richness and depth of the book is universally respected yet often undiscovered as the monopoly of the form and relevance of their information fades over time,” he writes. “By altering physical forms of information and shifting preconceived functions, new and unexpected roles emerge.” He explains his process as such: “I work with knives, tweezers and surgical tools to carve one page at a time, exposing each layer while cutting around ideas and images of interest . . . My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception.”

Other poetry and prose contributors in the rest of the issue include Eric Anderson, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Denise Bergman, Thea Brown, Jennifer Chapis, Suzanne Cleary, Elizabeth Cross, Jesse DeLong, Dan George, AB Gorham, Richard Greenfield, Derek Gromadzki, Kathleen Hellen, Russell Jaffe, Christopher Kondrich, Brandon Krieg, Jason Labbe, Megan Levad, rob mclennan, B.Z. Niditch, Simon Perchik, Marthe Reed, John Phillip Santos, Anne Shaw, Kent Shaw, Carmen Gim

Sips Cards puts short (“lasts as long as a cup of coffee”) fiction and poetry into local coffee shop venues around the country (and in Scotland). Sips Cards is a publication run by artists, for artists. Each business card contains a QR code, loaded with a short story, or set of poems, from a writer meant to last as long as a cup of coffee. The cards include the issue’s author, story title, and website/e-mail.

A QR code is free media media accessible with a barcode reader on any smart-type device, such as smartphones, iPods and iPads equipped with cameras, and other barcode scanning software. RedLaser and Barcode Scanner are two common, well reviewed apps, that are free to download and install on devices. These apps are easy to use and will also read typical linear barcodes.

A list of venues where Sips Cards can be found is available on the publication website, as well as contact information for letting Sips Cards know of a venue near you where you’d like to see the cards available.

Submissions for the Winter Issue (January) will be open through Friday, December 7th. The Winter Issue will contain two short story cards (each with one short story) and two poetry cards (each with one poem). There is a fee for submissions; authors whose works are selected receive payment.

Moved by the plight of people affected by Superstorm Sandy, Brooklyn-based Broadsided artist Ira Joel Haber created the image featured here. Broadsided now asks writers to respond with words for Superstorm Sandy 2012. The editors will select the best responses and publish the resulting collaboration(s) with their December Broadsided feature, a pdf poster download. This is Broadsided’s second “Responses” feature. The first was to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Deadline for submissions: November 20.

The Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, established in 2000 as part of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, highlights authors who are either from Georgia or who have produced a significant piece of work while in Georgia. Among these writers are some very well-known names, but all of the writers’ works “reflect the character of the state—its land and people.” This fall, the Hall of Fame is celebrating its new home in the new Richard B. Russell Special Collections Building.

In accordance with this, The Georgia Review has put out a special fall issue to highlight the work of these authors. The writing included in this issue spans a timeline, and Editor Stephen Corey urges you to read it in order: “you will welcome the experience of observing the historical shifts of style, subject, tone, and even spelling and punctuation across nearly two centuries.” They were not able to highlight all forty-three current members, but they were able to feature thirty-two.

These writers include Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Elias Boudinot, Sidney Lanier, John Chandler Harris, W.E.B. Du Bois, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Conrad Aiken, Jean Toomer, Lilian Smith, Ralph McGill, Erskine Caldwell, Johnny Mercer, John Oliver Killens, Carson McCullers, Byron Herbert Reece, Calder Willingham, James Dickey, Jimmy Carter, Flannery O’Conner, Robert Burch, Raymond Andrews, Harry Crews, John Stone, Coleman Barks, Terry Kay, James Kilgo, Alice Walker, David Bottoms, Philip Lee Williams, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Melissa Fay Greene, and Natasha Trethewey.

Managing Editor Chris Wiewiora let us know that Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment will be moving fully online as a literary magazine after their final print issue, which Wiewiora refers to as “a tome of an anthology.” Flyway will continue publishing online on a rolling basis. They hope to launch the new site around AWP 2013 – so stay posted.

In addition, Flyway has extended the deadline for their Notes from the Field contest, “a non-fiction contest celebrating writing about experience — whether that be abroad, on a familiar sidewalk, in one’s line of work, in a field of interest, or in the most unexpected of times and settings.” The catchphrase this year is: “Get your hands dirty!” Featuring guest judge, travel and non-fiction writer, Rolf Potts. Deadline: November 12

Tonight at 8:00 p.m., Tom Wolfe will be part of 92Y‘s reading series. Wolfe’s newest book is Back to Blood, a novel set in modern-day Miami about “race, sex, art, and immigration.” He will sit and talk with Unterberg Poetry Center Director Bernard Schwartz. They will be taking questions via twitter using the hashtag #Wolfe92Y

Broadsided Third Annual Haiku Year in Review Contest is on!

“Four artists are creating work in response to an event that, for them, dominated a season of 2012. We now ask for submissions of haiku that address the same topics. The art and the poems selected as finalists will be posted online, and YOU will vote on the winning combinations. The whole shebang will be published as January’s Broadsided collaboration.”

See full guidelines here.

About Broadsided:

Edited by Elizabeth Bradfield, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Sean Hill, Alexandra Teague, and Mark Temelko, Broadsided has been putting literature in the streets since 2005. Each month, a new broadside is posted both on the website and around the nation.

Writing is chosen through submissions sent to Broadsided. Artists allied with Broadsided are emailed the selected writing. They then “dibs” on what resonates for them and respond visually – sometimes more than one artist will respond offering a selection of broadsides.

The resulting letter-sized pdf is designed to be downloaded and printed by anyone with a computer and printer. The goal is to create something both gorgeous and cheap, to put words and art on the streets.

The site contains a gallery of past broadsides, a map of cities/state/countries that have been broadsided (and where you can add yours), and links to other broadside sites.

The Malahat Review, a west coast Canadian lit mag, and The Fiddlehead, Atantic Canada’s International Literary Journal, collaborate on their autumn issues to create two unique and complimentary collections. The Malahat Review‘s issue is titled “Essential East Coast Writing” while The Fiddlehead‘s is “Essential West Coast Writing.”

The work inside comes from writers with strong connections to the regions. The editors say, “The poems, short stories, essays, interviews, and reviews they have published in these issues don’t necessarily betray an affiliation to any particular ‘regional’ theme, focus, or aesthetic. However, we believe that ‘sense of place’—and a sense of the lives lived on either coast—does ‘issue’ from a reading and appreciation of each magazine’s take on the other’s region.”

And this was no easy task; the editors have been hard at work planning this venture for two years. And although the issues are now out and being distributed, they aren’t going back to their own corners of the country; they have a special blog dedicated entirely to this project. They hope it will spark dialogue and communication about what differs between east and west coast writing—and what unites it.

With the publication of Canteen‘s newest issue comes the end of Executive Editor Mia Lipman’s work with the magazine. She says that “it’s been more thrilling than dismaying to see the steep evolution of literary media since my cofounders and I first imagined the scope of our journal. We pictured it only in print that night in Brooklyn. But as we put the final touches on our inaugural iPad edition last year, it didn’t feel like a concession–it felt like a natural complement.”

The issue features Joshua Mohr, Rachel Howard, Marina Read Weiss, Marcus Jackson, Greg Vargo, Stacey Duff, Shanthi Sekaran, Gordon Edgar, Marlerie Willens, Matthew Aaron Goodman, Rowland Stebbins, Dave Katz, Sonny Smith, and an intriguing cover by Scott Campbell.

Another fun top ten list from The Guardian UK: Top Ten Books With Maps. Happy to see Winnie the Pooh made the list.

Just in time for Halloween, Ms. Magazine has published two articles on feminist perspectives of horror movies:

Part One: Daddy Knows Best
“If you are looking for a good scare this Halloween season, cast your feminist eye on this recent rash of family-centered horror movies in which inattentive fathers leave their children vulnerable to being taken by aliens, monsters and demons.”

Part Two: It’s Not Just About Vampires
“Since Edward Cullen first graced the pages of a young adult novel in 2005, vampires have been the sexy bad guys du jour. But it’s not just the lingering fear that sex might lead to death that makes these nightmarish manifestations of sexual desire resonate with audiences.”

Photo via Ms. Magazine: Courtesy of Patricia.Pictures via Creative Commons 2.0

Creative Nonfiction magazine announced major changes to its website, subscription options, and submission process. The magazine debuted a new website design improving navigation through new web-exclusive content and digitized content from past issues.

Some of this material dates back nearly twenty years, including founder and editor (and “Godfather behind creative nonfiction”) Lee Gutkind’s intros to all 46 issues, which serve as a veritable time capsule of the genre.

“With our 20th anniversary coming up in 2013, we’ve been thinking a lot about the history and development of the genre, but we also have our eye towards the future,” says Gutkind. “We’re proud to debut this new digital content, which we think will make the site a necessary destination both for readers who already have an artistic stake in creative nonfiction, and for anyone looking for an introduction to the genre. In the past twenty years, we’ve seen creative nonfiction become the fastest-growing genre in the publishing industry and within creative writing programs, and we know the audience for news, resources, and great writing within the genre is only going to grow.”

In addition, Creative Nonfiction has unveiled a digital subscription option, which will be powered through Zinio. The new digital subscription option lets readers download the magazine to a computer, iPad, Android device or KindleFire. A four-issue (full-year) digital subscription is $25. Single issues are also available.

The magazine will also begin accepting general submissions online, providing a more green and convenient method for writers to submit their work.

The Idaho MFA in Creative Writing Program has established a new writing retreat fellowship that gives students the opportunity to work in Idaho’s world famous wilderness areas. The competitive “Writing in the Wild” fellowship fully supports a student to spend a week at either the McCall Outdoor Science School (MOSS), which borders Payette Lake and Ponderosa State Park, or the Taylor Wilderness Research Station, which lies in the heart of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Both campuses offer year-round housing.

The writing retreats will allow students to concentrate solely on their fiction, nonfiction or poetry. Because both locations often house researchers, writers will also have the opportunity to collaborate with foresters, geologists, biologists and other scientists. Students visiting MOSS or Taylor Ranch will find expansive reaches of space to engage with rivers, lakes and forests.

Two “Writing in the Wild” fellowships will be granted in 2012-2013. Future plans include additional fellowships, as well MFA writers sharing their wilderness experiences in K-12 schools to demonstrate how the state’s natural wonders can foster creativity, innovation and inspiration.

Full application materials can be found on this page under Writing in the Wild Fellowships.

The special feature of the new issue of The Bitter Oleander features an interview with the Swiss Francophone poet Jos

A couple changes at The Georgia Review:

As of their spring 2012 issue, The Georgia Review is available in both print and digital formats. The publication is offering a “combo” price for subscribing who would like to receive the magazine in both formats (with prices going up in January, so now would be the time to subscribe for the best deal).

The Georgia Review has also archived its entire run from 1947 through 2008 for viewing through www.jstor.com.

And, lastly but not leastly, longtime managing editor Mindy Wilson has stepped down, making room for her successor, Jenny Gropp Hess. Welcome Jenny!

Armchair/Shotgun magazine, which reads all pieces blindly (without knowledge of the author’s name until the piece has been accepted for publication), proudly announces that the current issue, “by happy accident,” is filled with writing only by female writers. “A writer’s resume . . . is no guarantee of a compelling story—good writing knows only story, and writers of all backgrounds may craft exciting tales,” says the editorial staff. “Our previous issues featured a gender-balanced split of male and female poets, fiction writers, and visual artists. So when we de-anonymized the Issue 3 acceptances, we were surprised and delighted to see that we’d inadvertently created a roster of 11 amazing female writers.”

VIDA, each year, puts out a gender breakdown of writers, reviewers, and books reviewed within well-known publications. “The difference between our outcomes and the average VIDA results—which indicate a male dominated roster of published authors—is notable,” says the staff.

This issue features Alanna Bailey, Elliott batTzedek, Genevieve Burger-Weiser, Allison Campbell, Diana Clarke, Sarah Goffman, Inge Hoonte, Debbie Ann Ice, Liana Jahan Imam, Danielle Lapidoth, and J.E. Reich. The issue also includes an interview with Reif Larsen, author of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet; the paintings of Steve Chellis; and the photography of Andrew Wertz.