Yes, we did it. NewPages bought a Kindle – or Kindle 2, as I am corrected by Kindle snobs. Yeah, “whatever” is what I would have thought, until Kindle 3 was just announced this week. With its nearly $500 price tag, it will certainly make us the Kindle users on the other side of the tracks.

Kindle this, Kindle that. I put off making the purchase of this yet-another-have-to-have piece of technology mainly because of the cost. I think it’s ridiculously overpriced. Holding one in my hands hasn’t changed my mind. It certainly is all it’s hyped up to be when it comes to a couple features. The first I noticed is ease on the eyes for reading. After several days of Kindle reading, I went back to a book (the word sounds so antiquated now…), and I could immediately feel a slight eye strain. Okay, so Kindle is good for aging/old people like me. And the other cool feature that holds true is being able to read the Kindle in bright sunlight. I hate to say it, but even better than a book in that I didn’t get the page glare.

Other than these two features, niceties include being able to get the New York Times (as we have always lived in a non-delivery area), Slate, and other mags delivered and portable for ease of reading access. I also appreciate being able to purchase a book and download it in seconds – literally. Again, living in an area with limited access to book sources (libraries and bookstores), when each time I go to the bookstore, I’m sure to hear, “We can order it for you,” it’s dandy to be able to find the book and begin reading it immediately. I also like being able to read a sample of the book before ordering it. A true “bookstore” style feature.

The documents download is also a great feature. I can send documents in myself, Amazon will convert them, then I can load them into the Kindle, all for free. I can also send documents and Amazon will convert them and wirelessly load them, but for that there is a fee, and a growing one. Still, worth it in a pinch. I’ve sent a couple PDFs through, and the formatting does come back a bit screwy, but it’s not terrible. Pictures are what mess it up, not so much just plain text.

My biggest Kindle mistake? Downloading a cookbook. Had it not been free through Amazon, I wouldn’t have loaded it, but for free, what the heck. The mistake? I’m not setting my Kindle on the cupboard next to a pan popping hot oil, not to mention the other open ingredients: flour, tomato sauce, wine (that’s for the cook, not the recipe). One look at my cookbooks will tell you favorite recipes by the spills and spatters on the pages. Adds character to the book. Would kill the Kindle. That said, reading in the bathtub is also out of the question.

Other irritations include thumb strain. No kidding. The ultraslim design is nice, but I find myself having to pinch it more closely than I would a book, so my thumbs hurt after reading on it for extended periods of time. It’s also odd in that I think I have pretty large hands, but the Kindle feels just a bit too wide for me to hold comfortably. So, I’m thinking it’s better designed for even larger “guy” hands. But, the keyboard is definitely more easily accessed by smaller thumbs. So, if we evolve to this technology, we’ll have larger hands and thinner thumbs. Kindle 3, however, with its newspaper reading screen – well, its beyond me how that could be comfortable.

Overall, the Kindle is cute but not a necessity. I can see how schools would be interested in using them for textbook delivery, though there need to be some modifications made in saving and organizing clippings/notes to make student use more effective. And, ultimately, I come back to the price. In keeping with the Matthew principle: those who already have will be able to afford it and continue to benefit. The have-nots will continue to be left in the dust. Not only at the cost of the device, but imagine no more cheaper, used textbooks. A level price field on books – which should all be cheaper with no paper, right? Certainly, no more borrowing textbooks from a roommate (since you can’t share Kindle files – and it’s unlikely roomies will loan you their $300+ reader with all their other books and notes on it).

A fun tech tool, but not worth the cover price. Had I not been able to consider it a tax write-off, I wouldn’t have considered it at all.

The Kite Runner finds itself adapted to stage by Actor Sorab Wadia, who performs selected scenes from The Kite Runner verbatim with very little set or music, produced by the American Place Theatre as part of its Literature to Life program.

May is Short Story Month. What are you doing to celebrate this fantastic form of literature?

Top ten Worst Mothers in Literature. I’ll be looking forward to worst fathers…

Producer Paul A. Toth, editor of Hit and Run Magazine and Sitting Pretty Magazine, is just getting started with Poesy Planet, a weekly mini-podcast that will feature one poet reading up to five poems, 15 minutes max. Currently featuring Gabriel Orgrease and Emilia A. Phillips, Poesy Planet is accepting submissions. See website for information on creating your own mp3. Poesy Planet can be found listed on NewPages Guide to Multimedia: Podcasts, Video, and Audio.

A Symposium on the Poetics of Healing
San Francisco State University
Saturday May 9, 2009

Supported by a two-year project grant from the Creative Work Fund, the Poetry Center will be hosting throughout 2009 a series of programs under the title The Poetics of Healing: creative investigations in art, medicine, and somatic practice. Curated by San Francisco poet and scholar Eleni Stecopoulos, the project will bring together innovative writers, artists, and medical practitioners doing parallel work within altogether different traditions and practices.

Guest participants will read, perform, and discuss their own work, talk with each other, and engage with audiences. Throughout the project, Eleni Stecopoulos will be writing an original book on the subject (incorporating material by other participants and as arising out of the public forum) to be published late 2010 by Factory School.

2009 Portland Anarchist Book Fair
June 6 & 7, 2009 (Sat & Sun)
Liberty Hall – 311 N Ivy | Portland, OR 97227
503-516-9220 | [email protected]

The Axiom Collective is hosting the first annual Portland Anarchist Book Fair. This two day event will feature over 20 collectives and organizations offering a a wide range of radical, feminist, and revolutionary literature, art, and ideas.

This event is FREE to attend. Childcare will be provided.

Info re: tables, workshop facilitators, housing, rides, etc. on MySpace link above.

Edited by Sandra Huber (a Canadian poet currently living, writing, teaching in Vienna, Austria), Dear Sir is a “nascent online journal created from the want to present innovative, unconventional or emerging voices in literature. It is based around the concept of quality over quantity, and will therefore only feature a clutch of writers in each issue whose work in some way, and somehow, surprises.

“Dear Sir, follows an intentionally minimalist layout, where the frame of the page defers to the writing within (where site is retina then writing = iris and page the sclera).

“The idea for Dear Sir, came about while reading Ulysses: if magazines like The Little Review and the Egoist never took a chance on serializing Joyce’s work in 1918, we may never have had it in 1922.”

The premier issue includes works by Benediktas Januševičius, Garry Thomas Morse, James Wilkes, Nathan Horowitz, Stephen Collis, Gloria Personne, and Alfred Noyes.

Dear Sir accepts short or long poems, narratives, fragments, notations of sound poems, marginalia, experiments and manifestos, traditional forms revamped, dialogues, monologues and monosyllables. Dear Sir, leans towards the poetic, the speculative and the cross-genre.

A note on language: work in English, German and French is currently being considered.

Publisher Confidential
Nicole found this one while out purusing the web: “It is a book compiled of over a hundred email responses from librarians, booksellers, and readers to the question ‘What do you wish publishers knew.’ It’s a joint project of Unshelved and BookExpo America.” It’s a quick read, with pictures no less, and I’d say I agree with most of the feedback!

I received a note from Dos Passos Review – apparently they’ve had some trouble getting their CFS ads out there, so to help them get word out a bit quicker, I’m posting this on the blog. Please let others know:

Dos Passos Review accepting fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry submissions February 1-July 31, 2009. Limit 3-5 poems, 3,000 words prose. Send to: Editor, The Dos Passos Review, Dept.of English, Longwood University, 201 High St., Farmville, VA 23909. sase for reply only. See Web site for specific guidelines.

Just as it says, for all you word-gamers out there: Fun With Words

From Rick Rofihe at Anderbo.com: “Not accepted for the NYU MFA writing program, Harvard Law grad Jessica Pishko will enter Columbia’s in the fall — read her award-winning short story ‘Izzi Accepts a Bagel From Her Mother’ on Anderbo.” How can you not go and check that out? Here’s a bit more incentive:

Izzi definitely had her doubts, and she had tried calling once to tell her mother about it.

“Matt—how’s Matt?” her mother asked.

“He’s OK, I guess, I’m just not sure sometimes.”

“What, what do you mean?”

“Well, I just feel like he doesn’t understand me very well…I can’t explain it any better, I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean?”

“He just doesn’t understand me, I can just tell, it’s terrible, I’m sorry. I feel really bad about it, he means well.”

“Honey, who would understand you?”

Izzi picked up a framed photograph of her and her mother at Christmas; in it they were both wearing blue and have the same eyes. She threw it across the room and it shattered.

“What’s that?” her mother asked.

“Nothing, Mom, I just dropped a glass.”

storySouth is up and running with a new look after a brief reshuffling hiatus, which is a relief to see considering how many magazines I’ve seen go on hiatus and never return: “Online fads can’t help but fade away; great writing endures. storySouth is all about the writing.”

storySouth is indeed back with new content for spring, and the Million Writers Award stories are now online. The top ten will be selected and available for public vote starting May 15, and thanks to some generous donors, it looks as though the prize pot is healthy.

Unbridled Books and NetGalley announce a contest inspired by author Emily St. John Mandel and our bookseller partners. We want to encourage booksellers to read e-galleys, and to make this possible, we are offering a SONY Reader to the three booksellers who craft the best handselling pitches for Mandel’s debut novel, Last Night in Montreal(pub. date June 2). The contest runs from May 1, 2009 through midnight on June 1, 2009.

Each month, TATE ETC. (“Europe’s largest art magazine”) publishes new poetry by leading poets such as John Burnside, Moniza Alvi, Adam Thorpe, Alice Oswald and David Harsent who respond to works from the Tate Collection. This April, Elaine Feinstein presents her poem, Isaac Babel Riding with Budyonny, based on R.B. Kitaj’s work of the same name. This work is not currently on display in Tate galleries, but Erasmus Variations by the same artist is on display in Tate Britain, and Isaac Babel Riding with Budyonny can be viewed on the Tate Collection online.

University of Louisiana at Lafayette accepting applications for Writer-in-Residence and Professor/Associate Professor of English. Tenure-track position, beginning Fall 2009. Creative Writing-Fiction.

Duties: teaching one Creative Writing workshop per academic year, directing dissertations and theses, working with graduate and undergraduate students in creative writing, presenting at least one public reading or lecture each year, and participating in the department and university community. Continued publishing in field and other duties associated with holding a university position.

Qualifications: International reputation as a creative writer as evidenced by awards and publications in prestigious international venues, extensive publications in creative genres (fiction, poetry, drama, creative non-fiction), professional experience in teaching advanced Creative Writing workshops.

Send application letter, current CV, and names and addresses of three references to Professor James McDonald, Department Head, Department of English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, P. O. Box 44691, Lafayette, LA 70504.

Just in time for some end-of-semester humor – check out Robert Lanham’s Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview for ENG 371WR: Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era on McSweeney’s.

How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write
“Author Steven Johnson outlines a future with more books, more distractions — and the end of reading alone”

A recent article in Rueters looks at unsuccessful efforts by the Chinese literary culture to have their works considered abroad. Lack of background knowledge to fully be able to understand/appreciate the works as well as lack of English translators are cited as a couple reasons for this continued struggle. What books do get recognized? Mostly those which are banned in China; not necessarily the strongest examples of Chinese literature, but they get the translations and readership because of the controversy. Though, if the US is still showing a decline in readership for its own literature, what hope do other countries have in finding recognition here?

And an interesting counter or alter-perspective to this article is “Author, Author: The World of ‘world’ Literature” in which Pankaj Mishra comments on “literary cosmopolitanism” – in relation to Karl Marx and Susan Sontag (of all pairings) – and the rise of India as a force in the book world: “Cultural palates in this flattened world can only be progressively homogenised. Whether attempting social or magical realism, literary writers also become increasingly subject to market realism.”

Along with weekly installations of poetry, stories, multimedia, and whatever else fancies their tickle, Failbetter has an interview with Sherman Alexie in their Spring issue.

“War Rug is a work of documentary poetics in the form of a book length poem. Multiple interwoven narratives explore life within zones of conflict as viewed through the lens of current warfare. The narratives range from passages inspired by journal entries, firsthand accounts, and news reports to poetic constructs collaged from military doctrine, Freedom of Information Act released government documents (like CIA interrogation manuals, and detainee autopsy reports), and numerous other sources.” (Poet, translator, and new media artist Francesco Levato is the executive director of The Poetry Center of Chicago.)

And Lee Gutkind has something to say about it on The Voice of Creative Nonfiction.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters will hold its annual induction and award ceremony on Wednesday, May 20, 2009. President of the Academy, McClatchy stated, “The Academy is proud to welcome to its ranks these distinguished new members. It’s an eclectic group of exceptional individuals—each a pioneer of the imagination and an artist of resplendent gifts and achievements.”

Nine members will be inducted into the 250-person organization: artist Judy Pfaff and architect Tod Williams; writers T. Coraghessan Boyle, Jorie Graham, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Richard Price; composers Stephen Hartke, Frederic Rzewski, and Augusta Read Thomas.

Academician Louise Glück will deliver the Blashfield Foundation Address, titled “American Originality.” An exhibition of art, architecture, books, and manuscripts by new members and recipients of awards will be on view at the Academy’s galleries from May 21 to June 14, 2009.

Laura Walker has some tips for educators getting started on and using Twitter for professional development and networking, as well as regular Twitter updates on her blog.

2009 Pulitzer Prizes

The American Society of Magazine Editors has announced the 2009 National Magazine Awards Finalists. Congratulations to literary magazines Antioch, The Virginia Quarterly, The American Scholar, and The Paris Review who made the list!