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NewPages Blog

At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

Glimpse Interns, Guest Editors and Design Leads

Glimpse is an interdisciplinary journal that examines the functions, processes, and effects of vision and its implications for being, knowing, and constructing our world(s). Each theme-focused issue features articles, visual essays, interviews, and reviews spanning the physical sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities.

Glimpse is currently seeking conscientious, self-directed interns that can commit to meeting in person as a team for 2-4 hours on Saturday mornings in Boston (or via Skype, if necessary), and to working independently for 6-18 hours per week. Internships are available for 10, 15, and 20 hours per week. Glimpse can endorse work for college or graduate credit, or offer access to office and studio resources for your own projects. Their objective is to create opportunities that benefit their interns and the journal equally. Application deadline for Spring interns is December 20.

Glimpse also welcomes inquiries for Guest Editors and Guest Design Leads for upcoming themed issues.

Open Minds Honorable Mentions

The newest issue of Open Minds Quarterly includes poems from the honorable mentions from their seventh annual BrainStorm Poetry Contest: Tracy King, David O’Neal, Michale Conner, Diane Klammer, Benjamin Hawkes, and ky perraun. Open Minds Quaterly is a publication of The Writer’s Circle, a project of Northern Initiative for Social Action. NISA is “built on the premise that consumer/survivors of mental health services are intelligent, creative, and can make a valuable contribution to society if given the opportunity to do so.”

Ugly Duckling Presse 2010 Subscriptions

Another great holiday gift – UDP basic subscriptions (limited to 200) receive more than 20 books throughout the year, sent directly to your home, including new works of poetry, essays, and artist books by emerging and established writers and artists. The books are all uniquely designed, with frequent use of letterpress, hand-sewn binding, and more, demonstrating “a philosophical curiosity about what makes a book a book” (Michael Miller, Time Out New York).

Eudora Welty Review

In 2009, the Eudora Welty Newsletter from Georgia State University metamorphosed into the Eudora Welty Review, an annual journal, published each April. The innaugural issue contains essays chosen from past Eudora Welty Newsletters.

Beginning in 2010, the Eudora Welty Review will publish lengthier scholarly essays, inaugurate a book review section, and maintain regular features for news and notes, textual analyses, checklists, and new archival materials, still with appropriate illustrative materials. Additional scholars have been invited to assist EWR editors as peer reviewers and members of the Advisory Board.

EWR editors are currently accepting essay submissions for the 2010 issue.

Afghan Women’s Writing Project

The Afghan Women’s Writing Project began as an idea during novelist Masha Hamilton’s last trip to Afghanistan in November 2008. Her interest in Afghanistan was sparked in the late 1990s during the Taliban period, when she understood it was one of the worst places in the world to be a woman.

The project reaches out to talented and generous women author/teachers here in the United States and engages them, on a volunteer, rotating basis, to teach Afghan women online from Afghanistan…Portions of the work will be put on a blog on a regular basis…it is intended to instill a sense of pride for these women…it is also intended to educate us, the teachers and readers of the blog, about what the Afghan women’s childhoods and young adulthoods were like under the Taliban, and what they feel about current conditions in their country…[it] is also meant to be a record of the project itself…it is intended to provide a positive link between Afghans and Americans at a time when those relationships have to some degree soured.

Bonfire Broadsides

Run by Sasha Steensen and Gordon Hadfield, Bonfire Press is the Center for Literary Publishing’s letterpress imprint. Using a Vandercook SP15 letterpress, type, and photopolymer plates, Bonfire produces a series of poetry chapbooks and broadsides. Two new broadsides recently added by G.C. Waldrep and Martha Ronk. Great for holiday gifting.

Bigger Burnside

The newest Burnside Review breaks away from it’s trademark 6×6 format for a special “All-Oregon Issue.” According to its publishers, “With the prize money from last year’s Literary Arts publishing fellowship, we decided to give back to our state. The special edition is a truly Oregonian creation; cover art by the Mercury’s art director Justin Scrappers, design and printing and stiching by Pinball Publishing. The issue features 33 of Oregon’s finest writers, including, Willy Vlautin, Kevin Sampsell, Vern Rutsala, Mary Szybist, Michele Glazer and Floyd Skloot.”

Jobs

The MFA Program in Creative Writing at California State University, Fresno invites applications for the position of Assistant Professor, Fiction Writing, Tenure Track to teach creative writing and literature at undergraduate/graduate levels beginning Fall 2010. Corrinne Hales, Search Committee Chair. Materials received by December 21, 2009 will receive full consideration.

The Undergraduate College of Rosemont College invites applications for an adjunct instructor to teach Creative Writing Poetry in the spring 2010 semester.

Fifth Wednesday Editor’s Prize

Every year, Fifth Wednesday Journal reviews the work of contributing artists to make selections for the Editor’s Prize in short fiction, poetry, and photography. The fall 2009 issue includes the editors comments on their selections. This year, Ann Leahy selected the work of Ray Gonzalez (“Canto” fall 2008), with a special note of recognition to Rebecca B. Rank and Mary Biddinger. Andrew Coburn’s fiction (“Hearty Women” spring 2009) was selected by Keith Gandal, and Barbara DeGenevieve selected the photography of Harry Wilson (“Classroom Turkey” fall 2008), with an honorable mention to Leigh Wells.

New Lit on the Block :: Sugar House Review

Sugar House Review is an independent, semiannual poetry journal based out of Salt Lake City, Utah edited by John Kippen, Nathaniel Taggart, Jerry VanIeperen, and Natalie Young.

The first issue is slim but packed with poems by Jeffrey C. Alfier, Rane Arroyo, Ruth Bavetta, Candace Black, Kenneth Brewer, Teresa Cader, Rob Carney, Star Coulbrooke, Tobi Cogswell, Brock Dethier, Cat Dixon, Gary Dop, William Doreski, Justin Evans, Howie Good, Dustin M. Hoffman, Natasha Kessler, Robin Linn, Grant Loveys, Matt Mason, Michael McLane, Paul Muldoon, J.R. Pearson, Nanette Rayman Rivera, Richard Robbins, Jerome Rothenberg, Sam Ruddick, Ki Russell, Natahsa Saj

Writers’ Room Fellowships

The Writers’ Room of Boston, Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides affordable, quiet, and secure workspace in downtown Boston for area writers, is now accepting applications for four fellowships for 2010. The fellowships award use of the Writers’ Room to Boston Area residents at no cost for one year. The submission deadline for applications is December 31, 2009. Residencies will begin in February 2010.

Lectureship

Emerging Writer Lectureship Department of English Gettysburg College

One-year appointment, beginning August 2010, for a creative writer who plans a career that involves college-level teaching, to teach three courses per semester, including Introduction to Creative Writing and an advanced course in the writer’s genre, as well as to assist with departmental writing activities. Mentorship for teaching and assistance in professional development provided. M.A., with a concentration in creative writing, M.F.A., or Ph.D. with creative dissertation, required. Teaching experience and literary magazine publications are essential. Competitive salary.

To apply, send letter of application, curriculum vitae, names of three references, and a 5-10 page writing sample to: Emerging Writer Lectureship, Department of English, Campus Box 397, Gettysburg College, 300 N. Washington St., Gettysburg, PA 17325, postmarked by January 29, 2010. Electronic applications will not be accepted. Do not send entire monographs, books, etc.

Gettysburg College is a highly selective liberal arts college located within 90 minutes of the Washington/Baltimore metropolitan area. Established in 1832, the College has a rich history and is situated on a 220-acre campus with an enrollment of over 2,600 students. Gettysburg College celebrates diversity and welcomes applications from members of any group that has been historically underrepresented in the American academy. The College assures equal employment opportunity and prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, and disability.
Application Information

Postal Address:
Emerging Writer Lectureship
Department of English
Gettysburg College
300 North Washington Street
Box 397
Gettysburg, PA 17325

Phone:
(717) 337-6750

Fax:
(717) 337-8551

TDD:
(717) 337-6833

CFS: Creative Works for Grad Conference

CFS for scholarly and creative submissions for a National Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference entitled “The End?” to be held at Indiana University in Bloomington from March 25th-27th, 2010.

Looking for graduate student writers to give readings of their work that engage with the conference theme either thematically or formally (or both). Readings that challenge notions of endings, structure, or traditional formal boundaries, are all welcome, along with work that engages with the conference theme within the piece itself, through narrative or language. This conference hopes to examine how endings and limits are depicted, along with how we surpass (or are constrained by) them as writers.

Other topics might include, but are not limited to:

Endings as beginnings / beginnings as endings
The end of genre, crossing genre
Translation
The apocalypse and apocalyptic literature
The end of the human
Violence, death, grief, trauma
Moments of crisis
War
The ends of the earth
Fringe, margins, outlines
The future of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, etc.

Accepting proposals for individual projects as well as panel proposals organized by topic/theme/form. Organizers are committed to involving as much creative work as possible in the conference and representing a wide variety of writers.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words describing your work and its relation to the conference theme, as well as five representative pages of creative work and as a short description of yourself, by January 15th, 2010: iugradconference-at-gmail-dot-com

Graduate Student Advisory Committee
Department of English
Indiana University

New Lit on the Block :: Eudaimonia Poetry Review

Eudaimonia Poetry Review is new on the web and well put-together by John Boyle, chapbook editor; Elaine Burnet, art editor; Kris Clements, reviews editor; Scott Forence, production design; Allison McEntire, poetry editor.

Publishing poetry and reviews of both new and classic works of poetry, the first issue includes works by Bob Mohrbacher, Liz Garcia, William Doreski, Derek Phillips, Kimberly Sherman, Clay Carpenter, M.V. Montgomery, Joel Solonche, Noah Lederman, Jay Snodgrass, Steven Joyce, Jill Caputo, Samuel Piccone, Caleb Puckett, Cesca Janece Waterfield, Angela S. Patane, Fredrick Zydek.

Eudaimonia is open for submission until November 30 for its next issue (ars poetica on the pursuit of happiness: Ars Joetica) , and is accepting submissions for its first chapbook contest until December 31.

Jobs

The English Department at Missouri State University in Springfield, MO anticipates an August 16, 2010 opening for a 9-month, non-tenure-track Creative Writing (Poetry) Instructor.

The University of Michigan-Flint invites applications for a tenure-track position in Creative Writing at the Assistant Professor level beginning in Fall 2010. Thomas C. Foster, English Department. Review begins Jan 4.

Assistant Professor of English – Creative Nonfiction Writing, Bemidji State University, Bemidji, MN. Susan Hauser, Chair Department of English.

The Department of English and Writing in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Tampa seeks a candidate for an Assistant Professor of English, tenure track, in creative writing (poetry) to begin August 2010.

Bennington College (VT) seeks two published writers of distinguished literary accomplishment to teach literature and writing to highly motivated undergraduates

Seven Stories Offers Free Books

From Ashley Brooke Roberts, Seven Stories Press:

In honor of the festival of brutal late-capitalist commerce that the day after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday, has become in America, Seven Stories Press wishes to offer — as our contribution to the alternative tradition of celebrating the day after Thanksgiving as Buy Nothing Day — free copies of some of our titles, drawn from the Seven Stories list of titles featuring voices of conscience and works of the imagination from authors including Howard Zinn, Ariel Dorfman, Kristin Dawkins, Kate Braverman, Barry Gifford, Nelson Algren, Rick DeMarinis, Hattie Gossett, Ralph Nader, and more.

The free titles will be available from noon to 4 PM EST on Friday, November 27, 2009. We’ll have a limited number of copies available of each title, which will be up on our website soon. Each customer can take a copy of one book, which will ship with a free catalog and a chapbook containing the opening chapters from our Fall 2009 lead fiction title, The Old Garden by Hwang Sok-yong. No payment of any kind is required — no book price, no shipping, nothing. The books are absolutely free. All that’s required is that you create an account with sevenstories.com, allowing you to buy books from us in the future at a 25% discount, if and when you choose.

This is a perfect chance to discover some of the authors from the Seven Stories Press list, and to intellectually arm yourself for the coming holiday season. Keep up to date by following our Twitter and Facebook feeds, and we’ll see you on Buy Nothing Day 2009.

Glimmer Train September Fiction Winners

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their September 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 December. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Carrie Brown [pictured] of Sweet Briar, VA, wins $2000 for “Bomb.” Her story will be published in the Fall 2010 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, out in August 2010.

Second place: Ken Barris of Cape Town, South Africa, wins $1000 for “Life Underwater.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Third place: Lydia Fitzpatrick of Brooklyn NY, wins $600 for “Ellijay.”

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.

Glimmer Train has also selected the 50 winning entries for their Best Start competition. Each wins $50 and makes Glimmer Train’s Best Start list.

Deadline soon approaching!

November Short Story Award for New Writers: November 30

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.

New Lit on the Block:: Mythium

Mythium: The Journal of Contemporary Literature and Culture is the “brainchild of award-winning author and educator, Crystal E. Wilkinson and visual artist/graphic designer, upfromsumdirt (ronald davis).” The subtitle of the magazine goes into greater depth as to its mission: “Celebrating Writers of Color and the Cultural Voice.” According to Davis, “our goal is to provide an outlet for those ethnic writers not immediately focused upon through other journals.”

Published biannual, this first issue is overflowing with contributors, but maintains a slim 120 or so pages of content – which includes multiple submissions from some authors.

Featured in this first issues are Michael Harper, Torie Michelle Anderson, David Keali’i, Ernest Williamson III, Opal Palmer Adisa, Kyla Marshell, Reginald Harris, Remica Bingham, Rickey Laurentiis, Sean Labrador y Manzano, Joanne C. Hillhouse, Andre Howard, Truth Thomas, Sankar Roy, Alan King, Tolu Jegade, Michael Martin, Tara Betts, Derrick Weston Brown, K. Danielle Edwards, Rane Arroyo, Honoree Fannone Jeffers, Myronn Hardy, Peju Adeniran, Saudade, Shannon Gibney, Tuere T.S. Ganges, and Pamela Jackson.

Mythium is accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction for their next issue.

Free Lunch to Cease Publication :: November 17, 2009

Ron Offen, the editor of Free Lunch, is not longer able to continue his work on the publication, Free Lunch. The Autumn issue, Number 42, is being prepared for mailing, and will be the final issue. The staff have asked writers to not send any further submissions to the magazine. Those submissions that have been received with return postage will be returned as soon as possible.

River Styx “Games” and Winners

The theme for issue 80 of River Styx is “Games” – which broadly interpreted includes works about “soccer games, hoop games, board games, card games, kid games, bedroom games, carnival games, even wild game.” As Editor Richard Newman introduces the issue: “The best games, as well as the best writing about games, always enact something larger than the actual game.”

Also included in this issue are the works by winners of the 2009 River Styx International Poetry Contest, as selected by Stephen Dunn: Michael Derrick Hudson, Michale J. Grabell, and J. Stephen Rhodes.

New Lit on the Block :: Super Arrow

Independently run online and based in St. Louis, Missouri, Super Arrow is edited by Amanda Goldblatt, a writer, teacher, scrapper, and recent MFA grad. Her interest is in creating a new online writing-and-art space focused chiefly on creative experiment and community.

The first issue includes works from Jaffa Aharonov (nonfiction), Joe Collins (fiction), Jennifer Denrow (fiction/poetry), Andy Fogle (nonfiction), Roxane Gay (fiction), Maggie Ginestra (poetry), Joseph Goosey (poetry), Jay Thompson (poetry), Kit Kennedy (poetry), Ben Spivey (fiction), Kyle Winkler (fiction), and art from Scott Alden, Kelda Martensen, and Jason Vivona.

Marvin Bell Q&A

The newest issue of Third Coast includes an excerpt from a November 2007 Q&A session Marvin Bell gave to students and faculty of Western Michigan University as part of the Gwen Frostic reading series. The editors note that Bell began the session with: “Since this is being recorded I’d like to say my name is James Dickey!” He goes on to discuss his writing habits, the challenges of writing political poetry, the poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” and the influence of his being a musician in his poetry.

Asia Literary Review – 2009

Published in Hong Kong, Asia Literary Review may be difficult to find in US bookstores. I’d never seen it until NewPages’s amazing (heroic, really) team sent it to me. I am sad to think of what I may have missed in the past, delighted to have discovered this sensational magazine, and hopeful that other readers may be able to subscribe to and/or find it in US markets. The cover alone is worth many times the modest price of $11.99 (prices on the back cover are listed for Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, UK, India, Canada, and the US, which gives an idea of the journal’s markets). Continue reading “Asia Literary Review – 2009”

Grain – Summer 2009

“That tug toward the low-or-lower-tech,” in other words . . . Luddite. This issue’s theme. Not anti-technology, editor Sylvia Legris explains, but rather a celebration of “that desire to make art or writing using methods and materials that are slower, messier, less reliable.” Despite the fact that I find many high-tech tools (my cell phone and my PC to name just two) to be among the most unreliable of objects and resources and often far messier than non-technological things, I appreciate what Legris means – a deliberate distancing from “hypervelocity,” and I love the work she’s chosen. Categorized under the headings “machine,” “paper,” “fixture,” “mortar,” and “terminal,” Grain Luddite focuses on our relationship with the stuff of life (from our flesh and bones to the bones of our homes) with which we interact, without its being, in the technological sense, interactive. Continue reading “Grain – Summer 2009”

Identity Theory – Fall 2009

This literary magazine overwhelms the senses with information. Their home page is chock full of fiction, nonfiction, interviews, poetry, book, music, and film reviews, art, and a social justice blog. They have a sizable list of staff members and they are looking for more. One gets the impression that there is much to read and learn here, and maintaining this website must be a formidable task. Continue reading “Identity Theory – Fall 2009”

Image – Summer 2009

In an unusual and enlightening “conversation,” visual artist Bruce Herman and his patron (patron!) Walter Hansen discuss a three-year project that “involved producing a cycle of images on the life of the Virgin Mary in two large altarpieces that have been exhibited in the United States and are now installed semi-permanently in Monastery San Pedro, a thirteenth-century Benedictine convent in Orvieto, Italy.” They discuss the commissioning, making, and exhibiting of contemporary religious art in the context of the patron’s active participation. If this is a highly unusual situation, and a highly unusual “find” in a magazine, Herman’s approach to his art is, instead, what we might expect – and even hope for – when it comes to art making: “the losing and the finding is the whole point – both in the making process, and in the symbolism – which is why I’m always feeling that the meaning of the work is a fluid thing, not something I control or micromanage.” Continue reading “Image – Summer 2009”

Irish Pages – 2009

“You . . . realise that many poems are well-enough written to be publishable – and yet they don’t excite. They do not cause the hair on the back of the neck to stand up. The editorial heart doesn’t stop, nor breath shorten. The language is inert, the subjects are boring. Poets can often seem to be working a narrow little seam of private experience.” I wish this weren’t the case on this side of the Atlantic, as well, but what Peter Sirr laments here of the state of poetry in Ireland is all too often true in the US, as well. But, thank goodness for this excerpt “This is Not an Editorial,” from Sirr’s essay in the bi-monthly newsletter, Poetry Ireland, and for the other marvelous excerpts of speeches and exquisite essays and poems in Irish Pages. The work here does excite, does take away one’s breath and renew one’s confidence in the state of the written word in English (and in Irish). This issue’s theme is “The Sea,” though the journal is not dogged in its approach to the theme. Continue reading “Irish Pages – 2009”

Parnassus – 2009

Always as a big as a doorstop, and often heart-stopping-ly good, Parnassus is a monumental-sized read. This year, I find especially worthwhile an essay with photos, “Seven Rhymes,” by Peter McCary; a grouping of essays and poems all dealing with music (work by Daniel Albright, John Foy, Dian Blakely, and Mathew Gurrewitsch); a memoir by Joy Ladin (who has published work previously in Parnassus as Jay Ladin; the transition from one to the other is the subject of her essay); an essay on Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay by Devin Johnston; and a translation of the poem “Dunia” from the original Spanish by its author Otto-Raul González. Continue reading “Parnassus – 2009”

Prairie Schooner – Fall 2009

Guest Editor Grace Bauer was given the reins of this issue of Prairie Schooner. Influenced by the number of recent baby boomer milestones, including news reports about their first retirements and the golden anniversary of Barbie, Bauer decided to dedicate the volume to the generation. Not only have boomers produced a wide range of work, she notes, but they are, perhaps, the most-written-about generation of Americans. The choice is an apt one; baby boomers witnessed vast societal change. They are capable of writing about the times of both typewriters and computers. They bridge the gap between 45s and the ubiquitous iPod. Continue reading “Prairie Schooner – Fall 2009”

Seneca Review – Spring 2009

This issue begins with Catie Rosemurgy’s poem “Things That Didn’t Work.” Delicate. Restrained. Precise: “Picture frames. Targets. The psychological / boundaries described in books. / Any shape or line whatsoever.” And, fortunately, not a predictor of what lies ahead in Seneca Review. There are certainly pieces here that might not have worked in less capable hands. But the risks have paid off and the work is strong. In particular, I appreciated what Laura Brown-Lavoie accomplishes in “Bricklaying,” an essay that merges biblical language, fragments of fairy tales, poetry, political commentary, and the poet’s lyrical diction in prose-poem like paragraphs separated by sets of empty brackets. The piece is about (if it is fair to say that it is about anything) how we create, and while I’m not always sure I follow its logic, I want to see it through to the end. Continue reading “Seneca Review – Spring 2009”

TriQuarterly – 2009

This issue is guest edited by Leigh Buchanan Bienen, a senior lecturer at Northwestern University School of Law, and author of the collection of short stories The Left Handed Marriage. The issue is devoted entirely to theater-related essays and analysis, beginning with the editor’s essay, “Art, and the Art of Teaching,” which traces her own journey from literature to law to theater and back to fiction again and finally to a consideration of the teaching of art (in the largest definition of the word) in the context of the world’s dramatic – and unacceptably traumatic – realities: “If art is going to survive, people do have to stop killing one another, on the small and large scale, and beating up on one another, on the small and large scale, and learn to look at each other.” Finally, she equates the classroom and the theater, and by extension the space in which we perform our daily lives, too: “The real questions cannot be asked or answered alone, and they are asked most powerfully, when we listen knowing that others are listening with us at the same time, in a darkened space.” Continue reading “TriQuarterly – 2009”

Chick-fil-A Cow Calendar Goes Literary

I’ve never had a Chick-fil-A anything, and I’m not even sure we have them in this area, but apparently their calendar is a hit with their customers. This year, the cow characters are shown in scenes which represents famous works of literature. Funny how some of these most famous works can be so well-known and recognized, but have probably gone unread. I guess that’s the power of literary reference. Or movies. Or Spark Notes. Or, now, a chicken sandwich.

NYT Picks 10 Best Children’s Books

Only a Witch Can Fly, by Alison McGhee, illustrated by Taeeun Yoo (Feiwel & Friends)
Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11, written and illustrated by Brian Floca (Richard Jackson/Atheneum)
The Odd Egg, written and illustrated by Emily Gravett (Simon & Schuster)
A Penguin Story, written and illustrated by Antoinette Portis (HarperCollins)
The Lion & the Mouse, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney (Little, Brown)
The Snow Day, written and illustrated by Komako Sakai (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic)
Tales from Outer Suburbia, written and illustrated by Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic)
Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales, written and illustrated by Lucy Cousins (Candlewick)
White Noise, by David A. Carter (Little Simon/Simon & Schuster)
All the World, by Liz Garton Scanlon, illus trated by Marla Frazee (Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster)

Charter for Compassion Released Nov 12

The result of Karen Armstrong’s 2008 TED Prize wish, the Charter for Compassion is a document about the core shared value of every world religion and moral code, the Golden Rule. In November 2008 the world was invited to contribute their words to the Charter. Thousands of contributions from over 100 countries were received. This document will be released to the world on November 12, the result of months of collaborative work by diverse religious leaders and great thinkers.

South Asian Diaspora Fiction

Guernica guest fiction editors Amitava Kumar and V.V. Ganeshananthan present South Asian diaspora literature. In their introductory chat, “I Don’t Want To Fight,” they discuss their selections, along with war and conflict, and its effect on literature.

Their selections include:

“Red Ink” by Romesh Gunesekera
“The Other Gandhi” by Tania James
“Murder the Queen” by Hasanthika Sirisena
“A Rightful Share” by Preeta Samarasan

Visit Guernica Fiction to read all of these stories full text.

Cool New Lit: Underwater New York

From Nicki Pombier Berger, Editor-in-Chief:

Underwater New York is an online collection of stories inspired by objects found underwater in and around New York City. The objects range from the whimsical (a fleet of ice cream trucks) to the historical (the Dreamland bell), and we’re interested in the stories that these underwater objects evoke, in whatever form they might take (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc). We accept submissions in any genre and on a rolling basis, and we are actively recruiting new stories.

[Pictured: Flying Fish Washed Ashore by Adrian Kinloch]

iTunes of Poetry

PoetrySpeaks.com was created by Sourcebooks, Inc., the publishers of three New York Times bestsellers, Poetry Speaks, Poetry Speaks to Children, and Hip Hop Speaks to Children. This beta version of the site has just launched after five years of development work and an estimated $250,000 of investment from Sourcebooks.

As you can guess, with that kind of investment, there has to be revenue from users, thus the site is modeled as an “iTunes for poetry.” With some free samples to entice users, audio and text poems will go for 99 cents, and video versions $1.99. Future plans include partnering with retailers to sell books, CDs, ebooks, DVDs, as well as promotion and sales for tickets to poetry slams, readings, and online performances.