Rabinowitz Featured in HA&L
The latest edition of Hamilton Arts & Letters features the work of NewPages reviewer Sima Rabinowitz. She is doubly honored to have her series “Sima Rabinowitz Writes the Collected Poems of Federico Garc
The latest edition of Hamilton Arts & Letters features the work of NewPages reviewer Sima Rabinowitz. She is doubly honored to have her series “Sima Rabinowitz Writes the Collected Poems of Federico Garc
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their December Fiction Open competition. This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers for stories with a word count range between 2000-20,000. No theme restrictions. The next Fiction Open competition will take place in March. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
First place: Stephanie Soileau (pictured), of San Francisco, CA, wins $2000 for “Chemiere Caminada.” Her story will be published in the Spring 2011 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, out in February 2011.
Second place: Diane Chang, of Chicago, IL, wins $1000 for “The Teacher and the Revolution.” Her story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories.
Third place: Naama Goldstein, of Allston, MA, wins $600 for “Stronghold.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline soon approaching! February Short Story Award for New Writers: February 28
This competition is held quarterly and is open to writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation over 5000. No theme restrictions. Word count should not exceed 12,000. (All shorter lengths welcome.) Click here for complete guidelines.
The winner of the 2009 Anderbo Poetry Prize, judged by William Logan, is Nancy K. Pearson of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her poem, “Prairies,” can be read here on Anderbo.com
McSweeney’s will soon be coming out with The Believer‘s annual Film Issue, “complete this year with a DVD of short films by none other than Karpo Godina, hero of 1960s Yugoslavian “Black Wave” Cinema—and also including Elif Batuman on screenplays by Nabokov, Churchill, and Sartre; Brian T. Edwards watching Shrek in Tehran; Hilton Als on Buddy Ebsen; Ross Simonini v. Harmony Korine; David Mamet’s cartoon film treatments; Avatar jokes; Tron; angry British shrubbery; vérité sheep; and more.”
Yet another intelligently fun non-fiction piece from Lisa K. Buchanan – excerpted here from Meridian 24:
Pandora Seeks Advice Online
Dear Pandora,
My vote: Have your husband open it.
~Eve
Panny Love,
Why didn’t I think of that?
~Epimetheus
Sweet Pandora,
It’s like I told Eve. You will not die. Do you have that straight? Hear me loud and clear. You will not die.
Open it.
~The Serpent
Pick up a copy to read the rest of advice from other notables: Bluebeard, Plato, Francis Bacon, Snow White, Aphrodite, Zeus, and many more – often with exchanges to one another, and including some “real life” comments by equally archetypal figures from Buchanan’s own life.
As founder-owner Sarah Bedell retires, Bookworm, an independent bookstore that’s been a fixture in West Hartford since 1973, will close by the end of this month.
Di Mezzo Il Mare is accepting submissions of snapshots of single pages from your handwritten journal for the Great Handwritten Journal Snapshot Social Experiment.
John King Used Books, located at 901 West Lafayette Boulevard, Detroit, MI, is the subject of a recent photo essay by LAWRENCEcreative. While I often will be sure I have a list of indie and used bookstores to check out while visiting cities, John King Used Books is the kind of place you make the destination of your visit. Unassuming from the outside, it’s like stepping into an alternative universe when you walk through the doors – and one where book people (especially collectors) feel incredibly at home.
As LAWRENCEcreative writes:
“No matter what type of book you may be looking for the next time, it is my suggestion that you forego the trip to Borders or Barnes & Noble, and take a trip to see this place. Upon walking in, and after you have picked your jaw up off the floor, be sure to introduce yourself at the front desk and ask for a map to the 4 floors of adventure. Or, as I have done numerous times, just wander. Let yourself get lost between the shelves and discover something you never knew existed. Find a dark corner with enough light and open up that copy of T.H. White’s ‘Sword in the Stone’, and get away from all the economy bullshit of our daily lives. It will reenergize your soul.”
The Arts Writers Grant Program issues awards for articles, blogs, books, new and alternative media, and short-form writing. It aims to support the broad spectrum of writing on contemporary visual art, from general-audience criticism to academic scholarship. Through all its grants, regardless of topic or category type, the Arts Writers Grant Program strives to honor and encourage writing about art. Deadline April 26, 2010.
Firewheel Editions announces the winners of the following two competitions:
2010 Sentence Book Award
Sinead O’Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds by Maureen Seaton and Neil de la Flor
Finalists
Matthew Cooperman
Doug Ramspeck
Trigilio
Semifinalists
John Colasacco
Jeannine Gailey
Daryl Scroggins
2010 Firewheel Chapbook Award
25 Sightings of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker by Re’lynn Hansen
Finalists
Susan Briante
Farid Matuk
Edgar Sager
Neil de la Flor
Jennifer Jean
Marc Levy
Semifinalists
Craig Blais
Elizabeth Kerlikowske
Peter Ciccariello
Check out this FRESH batch of literary magazines reviews:
Agni
Atlanta Review
Barn Owl Review
Beloit Poetry Journal
Cincinnati Review
Colorado Review
Conjunctions
Grain
Habitus
Magnapoets
Mare Nostrum
NANO Fiction
New England Review
On the Premises
PEN America
Per Contra
PMS PoemMemoirStory
Rattle
Southeast Review
South Loop Review
Straylight
upstreet
In his Wasington Post article, The case against banning the word ‘retard’, Christopher M. Fairman begins: “Does the word ‘retard’ have less than three weeks to live?”
Great resource: OnFiction: An Online Magazine on the Psychology of Fiction.
Raymond A. Mar, Assistant Professor of Psychology at York University and contributor to OnFiction to comments on “the blurring boundaries between fiction and nonfiction.” The post includes a YouTube animation video from This American Life. Read his post here: Lights, Camera, Fiction.
Read founder of Pongo Teen Writing Project Richard Gold’s blog post about the poetry workshop he led recently at a women’s prison, about how readily the women wanted to write about some of the most difficult experiences in their lives.
Gold has several other posts that would be of interest to those working with writers, especially in similar populations as Pongo’s focus on teens who are in jail, on the streets, or in other ways leading difficult lives:
A Black Hole in the Spirit (describing silence in the wake of trauma)
How Do You Talk About Violence?
Lost Family and Deep Shame
Feeling Invisible (what happens when other people tell the stories of who we are and what we will become)
Telling Your Story, Claiming Your Life
Hypoplastic Right Hearts (a 501 c3 not-for-profit) presents The Heart’s Content, a poetry compilation featuring work from Chris Ransick, Michael Henry, Patrick Carrington, Ellaraine Lockie, Bill Roberts, Michael Adams, Sharon Auberle, Fredrick W. Bassett, C.E. Chaffin, J. Glenn Evans, Barbara Larsen, Sam Piper, Joy Roulier Sawyer, Stephani Scaefer, Debra Shirley, Shirley Sullivan, Patricia Wellingham-Jones, and Irene Zimmerman.
All proceeds from the sale of this book benefit the Hypoplastic Right Hearts mission of CHD awareness and education, advocacy, and emotional support of families whose children are afflicted with severe congenital heart disease.
Editor Krystal Languell is the driving force behind Bone Bouquet, a biannual online journal seeking to publish the best new writing by female poets, from artists both established and emerging. Bone Bouquet will appear in January and July, online only in 2010 and in print in 2011.
The inaugural issue is now available in PDF, and features the works of Toni L. Wilkes, Meghan Brinson, Sarah Vap, Becca Barniskis, Juliet Cook, Danielle Pafunda, Jenny Boully, Sarah Rose Nordgren, Susan Briante, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Allison Layfield, Paula Koneazny and Carmen Gim
The University of Nebraska Press has received a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The award will be used to support publication of translated works in 2010 and 2011. Among the titles the grant will help support are a short story collection by J. M. G. Le Cl
Prairie Schooner Managing Editor James Engelhardt takes Patrick Gillespie (Let Poetry Die) to task on several issues: “Patrick Gillespie has some interesting takes on the state of poetry. He’s a thoughtful guy, and the article he’s written is interesting, but I kept disagreeing with the piece. I want to sort out some of my reactions, and I thought it might be useful to share those reactions here.” These States of Poetry – Jump in!
Workspace is a studio residency program for emerging visual artists and writers focused on the creative process. Residents receive free studio space in Lower Manhattan for nine months, a modest one-time stipend (depending on funding), access to a community of peers, professional development in the form of weekly group and individual meetings with arts and literary professionals called Salon Evenings, and exposure to new audiences through presence on LMCC’s website and public programs like the final Open Studio Weekend. Deadline March 25.
Split This Rock Poetry Festival is looking for artistic, experimental, and challenging film/video interpretations of poetry that explore critical social issues. Selected work will be screened during the Split This Rock Poetry Festival film program. Entries can be up to 15 minutes long. New Postmark extended deadline: Friday, February 26, 2010. Guidelines here. Entry form here.
Continuing their Ten Best Series, The Guardian UK‘s John Mullan picks the Ten Best Pair of Glasses in Literature.
Allen Ginsberg Movie Howl
Tennessee Williams Movie The Loss of A Diamond Teardrop
The newest issue of Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women features “How to Become the Oracle” by Linda Strever, the winner of the 2009 Lois Cranstron Memorial Poetry Prize. Readers of the publication can also go online and offer feedback as to which works by genre they enjoyed best and provide comments for improving the publication. Nice!
“…there’s a difference between writing for oneself and writing for an audience—and that’s a difference that most POD services do their best to obscure.” Wherefore Print on Demand? by Marc Schuster, guest post on The Nervous Breakdown. [via SB]
Tereska Torres hates the fact that her most famous work is considered an erotic classic. So, at 89, she’s going to rewrite it.
Missouri State University-West Plains has published Volume I of its new journal, Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies. Published by the Department of English and edited by Dr. Craig Albin, Elder Mountain is a juried journal that seeks to explore all aspects of the Ozarks through literature, scholarship, and the visual arts.
The inaugural issue features poetry by Andrea Hollander Budy, JaneHoogestraat, Matt Brennan, Dave Malone, Gary Guinn, Billy Clem, fiction Katie Estill, Jo Van Arkel, Ryan Stone, nonfiction by Marideth Sisco, Zachary Michael Jack, Kristine Somerville, Jan Roddy, Matt Meacham, Art Home, and visual art by Gary Kolb and Barbara Williams.
Elder Mountain accepts “Ozark-oriented” short stories, poems, creative nonfiction, and visual art. Submissions will be considered for volume III.
A total of five Joyce Fellows from the Great Lakes region (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin) will be selected to participate in this program in 2010. Fellows will receive stipends of $3,000 to support their attendance at the 2010 Americans for the Arts 50th Anniversary Summit/Annual Convention, 2010 National Arts Marketing Project Conference, and 2011 Arts Advocacy Day. In addition, fellows will have special opportunities to meet field leaders, connect with mentors, and receive individualized career coaching. Must be an emerging leader (Americans for the Arts defines an emerging leader as someone who is under 35 years of age). Deadline March 1, 2010.
Writers, Plain and Simple: Women make up 80% of the fiction reading audience in this country. So why, Guernica‘s guest fiction editor Claire Messud asks, are women authors so frequently left off the best-of lists, and left out of prestigious book prizes? An enjoinder to think again, and to read these seven emerging stars of world fiction.
The Center for the Art of Translation is a San Francisco-based non profit promoting international literature and translation through programs in publishing, education, and public events. The Center is currently seeking an experienced Senior Editor & Literary Programs Manager for our TWO LINES publications program, which includes the annual TWO LINES World Writing in Translation anthology and the World Library series of regional anthologies. The Two Lines Senior Editor & Literary Programs Manager will provide the editorial and artistic vision for TWO LINES publications and curate the Center’s Lit&Lunch event series, manage TWO LINES staff and volunteers, and will represent TWO LINES externally and in strategic internal discussions and decisions. This position reports to the Executive Director. The ideal candidate will have at least five years experience of publishing/editorial work, familiarity with international literature and literature in translation, will have significant management and arts administration experience, and will share enthusiasm and passion for the Center’s mission. The Senior Editor & Literary Programs Manager must be able to manage staff and multiple projects from inception to completion with minimal direction or oversight, including setting and managing milestones for the project within a set timeline. This position will also coordinate shifting priorities, provide regular reports to the Executive Director, and work effectively both leading and working on a team.
Responsibilities include the following:
EDITORIAL: Oversee artistic vision, editorial planning and production of all publications, including selecting guest editors, regions and/or languages for World Library, soliciting and evaluating monographs for publication, cultivating contacts within the publishing and translation fields, evaluating annual anthology submissions, and editing and proofreading introductions and translations. Provide editorial support on periodic grant writing and fundraising materials.
LITERARY PROGRAMMING: Curate Lit&Lunch series and other events, including event programming and annual publication party planning, act as artistic spokesperson at all Center events, coordinate translation workshops and other collaborative events and pursue partnerships and collaborations with publishers, translators, and cultural institutions.
MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION: Manage TWO LINES staff, volunteers, guest editors, translators, language readers, and copyeditors and act as program representative in staff and executive management meetings. Ensure tasks are coordinated, schedules and budgets are maintained, and provide biweekly reports to management. The Senior Editor & Literary Programs Manager will also develop a process to build TWO LINES supporters in the literary and translation communities. Assist with research to identify potential grants and donors.
PRODUCTION: Oversee the production of all TWO LINES titles, including the production timeline, submissions guidelines and production procedures, submission processing, copyright permissions, final proofreading and editing, and book design.
DISTRIBUTION, MARKETING & PUBLIC RELATIONS: Oversee distribution of all publications and provide feedback and support to marketing staff to develop and implement marketing and public relations plans for publications. Inform Development Director of any potential funding leads or creative fundraising ideas. Seek opportunities to raise awareness of and interest in TWO LINES publications, promote the Center and build connections with other translation and literary organizations, act as a representative of the Center and lead discussions and/or presentations at literary events, forums and conferences (3-5 per year).
Qualifications
• Strong background (5+ years) in book publishing, particularly in a management role
• Experience as a literary translator, editor of translation, or director of a literary center
• Excellent team building skills and the ability to both lead and be a part of a team
• Able to offer contacts within the publishing and translation industries
• Enthusiasm and passion for the Center’s mission
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills, including editing and proofreading
• Strong organizational sense with a sharp eye for detail
• Ability to prioritize and follow up on activities in a timely manner
• Energetic and a good team player, flexible and willing to learn
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office, familiarity with the Mac environment and excellent analytical skills
• Experience with FileMaker Pro a plus
This is a full-time position with an initial probationary period. The Center is an equal opportunity employer and offers generous vacation package, retirement plan and benefit stipend. Our office is located South of Market near public transportation. To apply, please email [email protected] with a resume and cover letter addressed to:
Erin Branagan
Acting Executive Director
Center for the Art of Translation
35 Stillman St., Suite 201
San Francisco, CA 94107
Web: www.catranslation.org
How to Apply:
To apply, please email twolinesresume-at-yahoo-dot-com with a resume and cover letter addressed to:
Erin Branagan
Acting Executive Director
Center for the Art of Translation
35 Stillman St., Suite 201
San Francisco, CA 94107
Creative Writing Programs – MA, MFA, PhD
This directory of university creative writing programs includes creative writing graduate degree programs. It is still being updated, and we’d appreciate hearing from you if you know of programs not yet listed. Whenever possible, links lead directly to the home page for the creative writing program.
In February and March of 2010, Litmus Press is celebrating some early titles with an Author Spotlight & Book Sale. Every two weeks they will highlight two authors & offer their books for $10 each or 2 for $18. The first Spotlight (February 1st-15th) is on Keith Waldrop (The House Seen from Nowhere) and Mark Tardi (Euclid Shudders).
Alimentum: The Literature of Food is accepting submissions of poems for their 4th annual menupoems broadside (looks like a menu but has poems on it!) to celebrate April National Poetry Month. Visit their website for more details and samples of previous menupoems. Deadline: March 1
Booth is a national literary magazine, sponsored by the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at Butler University. Each monthly issue features a piece of prose, a handful of poems, and some kind of “bonus feature.” The power source behind booth includes Butler graduate students, MFA Fellows, and adjunct faculty working in collaboration. Current staff includes: Robert Stapleton, Katie Rauk, Bryan Furuness, Alessandra Lynch, Gautam Rao, Jim Walker, and a large handful of readers.
The current issue of Booth, available as a PDF, includes works by Erica Plouffe Lazure, John Gallaher, Mab Graves, Brian Buckbee, C.J. Hribal, and Jonathan Lethem. Submissions are open for art, poetry, prose, lists, and literary comics. The editors welcome submissions by both emerging voices and established writers.
After five and a half years, Equator Books of Venice, California will be closing this week.
Josh Emmons and Joshua Kryah have selected the 2010 winners for the annual Prism Review contest:
Poetry: “Tarantula Fire,” by Kelly Madigan Erlandson
Fiction: “From The Factory Where They Manufacture Blue,” by Sara Flood
The Broadsider is an annual magazine of limited edition, numbered and signed poetry broadsides. All poems selected for publication are solicited. The editors choose previously published poems only and publish the individual broadsides from January thru November of each year. In December, a limited number of complete sets of all broadsides are compiled into two issues and offered for sale: a Limited Edition Issue (numbered and signed), and a Regular Issue (unsigned). Each issue contains a minimum of 20 or a maximum of 30 series broadsides.
The Broadsider, Volume 1, Series 1-30 features the works of Paul Fericano, Angelica Jochim, Cielle Tewksbury, Klipschutz, Dan Gerber, Ann Menebroker, Barry Spacks, Ellen Bass, AD Winans, Joyce Odam, Edward Field, Robert Bly, Joyce La Mers, B.L. Kenned, Wanda Colemanm Hugh Fox, leah angstman, Irene McKinney, Carol DeCanio, Roger Langton, Gerald Locklin, Laurel Speer, Ron Koertge, Lyn Lifshin, Penelope Rosemont, Perie Longo, and Ligi.
Pictured: “Phone Booth” by Carol Decanio, The Broadsider: Volume One, Series Twenty-Two. Regular Issue.
Seth Fischer on The Rumpus responds to WSJ’s article on the death of the slushpile: A Necessarily Incomplete But Hopefully Helpful List That Proves The Slush Pile Has a Pulse – includes a short list of “mags that writers have reported are good about actually reading and publishing from the slush pile” and reader comments.
Park University has a position open for a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in English. Cherie Smith, Human Resource Services. March 1
Wayne State University tenure track Instructor/Assistant Professor, Creative Writing (tenure track) Department of Language and Literature.
Lecturer in Creative Writing (Fiction) for the Department of English & Philosophy at Murray State University. Full-time, non-tenure track position to begin August 2010. March 5
Brandeis University English Department seeks a poet with a distinguished publication record and teaching experience for a half-time appointment (2 workshops per year, 1 per semester) as Ziskind Poet in Residence in the Creative Writing Major of the English Department to begin Fall 2010. First consideration Feb 5.
Pending budgetary approval, Creighton University’s English department seeks to fill a tenure-track, entry-level Assistant Professor position in Creative Writing (area open).
Taunton Press of Newton, CT currently has several openings:
Assistant Editor – Books
Associate Editor – Fine Cooking
Customer Sales/Service Representative
Director of Creative Marketing Services
Director, Product Development & Market Innovation
Senior Acquisitions Editor – Books
River Rock School in Montpelier, Vermont, is looking for LEGOs: “We are in need of many, many LEGOs for our summer LEGO camp. Check out our website to learn more about us. No LEGO collection is too big or too small. A small bag of 50 or 100 LEGOs would be greatly appreciated. Please call 802-223-4700 for details (or email [email protected]), or to arrange pick up of your donation (locally). Or mail them to River Rock School, 252 N. Main St., Montpelier, VT 05602. Many thanks!”
Hey Oscar Wilde – It’s Clobberin’ Time! is an “extension of a personal art collection of various artists interpreting their favourite literary figure/author/character.” [via Jacket Copy]
The newest edition of Antioch Review couldn’t be more timely, with its focus on “Celebrity Houses.” The issue opens with an essay by Daniel Harris, who takes readers into the newest realm of “celebrityhood – politicians as celebrity.” The issue includes a several essay on France “all of which praise it, its citizens, an the French way of life,” and includes a look at their celebrities and politicians in turn.
The Norman Mailer Writers Colony is accepting applications for the Second Annual Norman Mailer Writers Colony Fellowships at Provincetown, MA.
Fiction and non-fiction writers can apply for a 28-day residency in Provincetown, Massachusetts, near Mailer’s home beginning July 5, 2010. Seven Fellows will be selected. In addition, as many as 66 applicants will be offered scholarships to one week writing workshops in Provincetown during May, June, August and September, 2010.
Applications must be received by March 13, 2009.
Academy Award nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated) delivers a searing indictment of the hypocrisy of closeted politicians who actively campaign against the LGBT community they covertly belong to. Outrage boldly reveals the hidden lives of some of our nation’s most powerful policymakers, details the harm they’ve inflicted on millions of Americans, and examines the media’s complicity in keeping their secrets.
The 2010 American Indian Youth Services Literature Awards, presented by the American Library Association, have selected the following recipients:
Best Picture Book – A Coyote Solstice Tale, written by Thomas King and illustrated by Gary Clement, published by Groundwood Books, 2009.
Best Middle School Book – Meet Christopher: An Osage Indian Boy from Oklahoma by Genevieve Simermeyer, with photographs by Katherine Fogden, published by the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution in association with Council Oak Books, 2008.
Best Young Adult Book – Between the Deep Blue Sea and Me: A Novel by Lurline Wailana McGregor and published by Kamehameha Publishing, 2008.
Kamchatka: Wilderness at the Edge: “Astoundingly beautiful book on one of the most special wilderness and cultural areas on the planet – Kamchatka. This peninsula hangs into the Bering Sea and Pacific Ocean off the very eastern end of Russia. It is home to the world’s highest diversity of salmon with huge runs up wild rivers; large populations of brown bear; traditional reindeer-herding cultures; Krontosky Nature Reserve and its Valley of Geysers (a World Heritage Area); and much more.” Available exclusively from Wild Foundation; proceeds from the book to benefit the foundation.
By Igor Shpilenok and Patricio Robles Gil
Edited by nature writer Laura Williams
Full color, 121 pages, 7.5″ square, hard cover, in hard-case gift box.
ISBN 978-1-56373-187-0
The storySouth Million Writers Award is now open. Readers and editors can nominate their favorite online story, with the deadline for nominations being February 28, 2010. Donations for prize money are also being accepted, with final winners selected by reader votes, making this a true community of readers award.
Check out the NewPages February Book Reviews (Ed. Gina Myers):
Easter Rabbit, Fiction by Joseph Young
Review by John Madera
Shot, Poetry by Christine Hume
Review by Marthe Reed
The River Flows North, Novel by Graciela Limon
Review by Christina Hall
Tsim Tsum, Poetry by Sabrina Orah Mark
Review by Roy Wang
Catch Light, Poetry by Sarah O’Brien
Review by Gina Myers
The Bigness of the World, Fiction by Lori Ostlund
Review by Laura Pryor
Dangerous Places, Fiction by Perry Glasser
Review by Alex Myers
Death at Solstice: A Gloria Damasco Mystery, Novel by Lucha Corpi
Review by Elizabeth Townsend
The Open Book in Greenville, SC, will be closing its doors next month after 40 years in business. The economy and changes in the book business – big box stores and digital readers – are what owner Duff Bruce cites in his reasons. “I’ve loved books, loved putting books in people’s hands over the years,” Bruce said.