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!
Catch Eva Brann on BookTV on C-SPAN2 Saturday, August 1 @ 10:30 A.M. EDT (Repeated @ 5:00 P.M. EDT). Eva Brann is a senior lecturer at St. John’s College in Annapolis Maryland. Her books include Homeric Moments, The Music of the Republic, and Feel Our Feelings.
The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a biennial award sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and World Literature Today. The Prize consists of $50,000, a replica of an eagle feather cast in silver, and a certificate. A generous endowment from the Neustadt family of Ardmore, Oklahoma, and Dallas, Texas, ensures the award in perpetuity.
This year’s winner will be selected in October from the following candidates and their representative texts:
Ha Jin, War Trash
Ricardo Piglia, Artificial Respiration
Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family / Divisadero
Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Duo Duo { poetry selections }
A. B. Yehoshua, A Woman in Jerusalem
Athol Fugard, My Children! My Africa! / The Island
Shahriar Mandanipour, Censoring an Iranian Love Story
For more information about the prize, visit World Literature Today.
Chronicle Books is offering 35% off with the coupon code FRIENDS at checkout through Aug 5 – along with free shipping with minimum purchase.
Absinthe: New European Writing is offering a summer sale now through August 31st. Purchase any back issue (except sold out issue #3) for only $5 (postage included; $10 outside the United States). This is a great opportunity to complete your Absinthe set. Additionally, until August 31st you can order a lifetime subscription to Absinthe for only $100(for international subscribers the lifetime rate is $200).
Absinthe is also looking for writers interested in contributing to their blog. If you’re interested, email the editor: dhayes_at_absinthenew.com
Soapstone is accepting applications until August 1, 2009 for residencies starting November 2009 to November 2010.
From the Soapstone website:
Soapstone provides women writers with a stretch of uninterrupted time for their work and the opportunity to live in semi-solitude close to the natural world.
In addition to that rare but essential commodity for a writer—a quiet space away from jobs, children, and other responsibilities—Soapstone provides something less tangible but also invaluable: the validation and encouragement necessary to embark upon or sustain a long or difficult writing project.
Located in Oregon’s Coast Range, nine miles from the ocean, the retreat stands on twenty-two acres of densely forested land along the banks of Soapstone Creek and is home to much wildlife. The writers in residence enjoy a unique opportunity to learn about the natural world and join us in conscious stewardship of the land.
Soapstone is set up for two writers at a time, each with her own writing studio. From an applicant pool of 400 to 500, approximately thirty-five writers each year are awarded residencies of one to four weeks.
Through Wednesday, July 29 every Dalkey Archive paperback edition is on sale, with free shipping within the United States (outside the U.S. email Melissa Kennedy directly at kennedy_at_dalkeyarchive.com for shipping costs). When you click on one of the offers, it will take you to a shopping cart page, then just list the titles you would like in the “comments” box that will appear prior to checkout. Shop before you drop!
And remember, if not for you – consider supporting your local public and school libraries by adding some great titles to their collections!
5 books for $35 w/free shipping
10 books for $65 w/free shipping
20 books $120 w/free shipping
This past week, PEN American Center has been in court challenging the U.S. government’s massive warrantless surveillance program. The hearing took place at 10:00 a.m.. in U.S. District Court in New York. It came amid new revelations that National Security Agency’s telephone and Internet surveillance program has been collecting the private communications of Americans in clear violation of longstanding legal limits on such domestic surveillance activity.
More information about their actions can be found on the PEN website, along with a sample letter interested readers/activists can send to their members of congress on the issue of warrantless surveillance.
Park & Read Program Offers Free Park Passes for Michigan Readers
Looking for ways to save some “green” while being “green”? Then visit your local library this summer! Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources has partnered with the Library of Michigan, Macy’s, and the Hammock Company to announce the “Park & Read” program.
Park & Read allows library-card holders the ability to “check-out” a one-day pass into any Michigan state park or recreation area in lieu of the resident daily motor vehicle permit. This is a $6 savings and free access to the more than 500 events taking place in local parks this summer.
Plus, many parks will have a hammock available for Park & Read participants to borrow while on-site for the day so they can fully enjoy a great book in Michigan’s great outdoors.
“We want everyone in Michigan to know what a fantastic resource their local park can be,” says Maia Stephens, Recreation Programmer for the DNR. “Because the program is free, everyone can now enjoy all the free activities available in Michigan State Parks and Recreation Areas. Besides, what’s more relaxing than a day at the beach with a good book?”
Passes are valid for seven days from check-out and can be used for one day at any one of Michigan’s state parks. Hammocks are subject to availability. This program runs through September 25.
Click on over to read the July lit mag reviews – a great selection of new, established, print, and online journals – NewPages Literary Magazine Reviews: A Cappella Zoo, Agriculture Reader, Bellingham Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Chtenia, Exquisite Corpse, Field, Glimmer Train, Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, H.O.W. Journal, The Literary Review, LITnIMAGE, Meridian, Mizna, Monkeybicycle, New Ohio Review, the new renaissance, New York Quarterly, Potomac Review, Rattle, Red Rock Review.
Pikes Peak Community College President Tony Kinkel comments on the prospect of losing state funding entirely: “I don’t know that we could keep the doors open,” he says. At a minimum, he adds, the college would have to increase tuition by 50 percent, close its Falcon campus and use only adjunct faculty. (Colorado Springs Independent, “Death to Higher Ed“)
Ouch.
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their May Short Story Award for New Writers competition. This competition is held quarterly and is open to any writer whose fiction hasn’t appeared in a print publication with a circulation greater than 5000. No theme restrictions. Word count range: 500-12,000. Their monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
First place: Noa Jones of New York, NY, wins $1200 for “Brother Ron”. Her story will be published in the Fall 2010 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, out in August 2010.
Second place: Farley Urmston of Sherborn, MA, wins $500 for “Pretending”.
Third place: Benjamin Janse of Jamaica Plain, MA, wins $300 for “The Great Storm”.
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline approaching!
Very Short Fiction Award: July 31
This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers for stories with a word count range not exceeding 3000. No theme restrictions. Click here for complete guidelines.
Things are not looking good for UC Berkley in this time of economic crisis. If there was ever a canary in a coal mine, this is one that – as an educator – makes my stomach turn.
*NOTE: Reposting with links to Conclave full-text. Thanks Valya.*
I ran across a couple of great editorials in the most recent issues of American Short Fiction and Conclave. Both speak the the nature of character in writing as well as, for Conclave, in photography. Below are some excerpted portions which create a kind of conversation between them.
From Editor Stacey Swann of American Short Fiction (44, Summer 2009):
Like most writers, I grew up reading books—loving the characters and their stories. But I also loved learning about the world. While I understood that Narnia was not a real place or Tom Sawyer a real person, I still invested a great deal of authority in authors: the way they viewed the world was correct on a fundamental level. This explains why studying John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” in high school remains a vivid memory for me. It was the first time I strongly disagreed with what an author was espousing. No matter what Keats thought, no matter what my English teacher echoed, I was certain that beauty was not truth and truth was not beauty. It wasn’t just that many fundamental truths about the world were ugly; beauty wasn’t important enough to equate with truth.
It turns out that I was not alone in my distrust of this ode. In one of his critical essays, T. S. Eliot wrote that those last two lines were “a serious blemish on a beautiful poem, and the reason must be either that I fail to understand it, or that it is a statement which is untrue.” Eliot continued: “And I suppose that Keats meant something by it, however remote his truth and his beauty may have been from these words in ordinary use.”
In high school, I equated beauty with nothing more than an excessive prettiness. Beauty was something to be applied to objects, not actions. I recently realized that I had readjusted my definition of beauty, and I might now understand Keats’s meaning a little better. As I get older I see beauty in so many unexpected things. And when I think about short stories, it seems to me that most depict moments of beauty. While novels generally are about characters and large portions of their lives, short stories must value something else due to their compactness. So often, they are illuminations of an action with inherent beauty. The beauty may be sad or painful or wasted, but it is nonetheless beautiful.
Conclave, a new lit on the block, focuses on “character-driven writing and photography.” Founding Editor Valya Dudycz Lupescu discusses the selection process for their inaugural issue:
As we reviewed and narrowed the pool, the editors discussed what made the pieces character-focused. There was no rubric or list of points. Beyond obvious assessment of craftsmanship, so much of this process is subjective. How can one quantify the literature that compels us to read it?
William Faulkner once said, “It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up Tong enough to put down what he says and does.”
In a good character-driven story, the reader should be swept up into the lives of the characters, willing to trot alongside them as they tell their stories. In an excellent character-driven story, the reader is compelled to follow the characters anywhere, outside his or her comfort zone, into alien territory, or into new emotional depths. We willingly suspend all disbelief to immerse ourselves in their reality. These unforgettable characters are timeless. They reveal something about human nature that is archetypical and personal at the same time. [Full text here.]
Conclave Managing Editor Scott Markwell adds these comments to the consideration of character:
As we observe character, we also see how it changes, how people grow, stay static, or regress. . . . Character reveals the brightest and darkest places of who we are. Characters come alive when they reveal a truth, when they hold a mirror up to each of us. . . . Character comes in other interesting forms. We personify. The inanimate become real, become human, express features we see in others. We find character in metaphor and in the literalness of life’s events. We see the wisdom and ravages of age. . . . Character will change, but we hope the truth of the human experience will not. [Full text here.]
Which echoes Swann’s closing line:
Finally, returning to Keats, if these stories are about moments of beauty, there is something inextricably true about them as well. It is their truth that makes them beautiful.
[Swann’s full editorial available here.]
Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania tenure-track assistant professor in Creative Writing, Fiction, full-time appointment beginning August 2010. Nov 2
The Department of English at Wheaton College invites applications for a tenure-track position in creative writing. Dr. Sharon Coolidge. Nov 13
Olivet College (MI) Humanities Department 2011 Sandburg-Auden-Stein Residency. Intensive Learning Term poet-in-residence program, late April to mid May 15, 2011. Submissions are due on September 10, 2009.
ISM: a community project and Hibbleton Gallery pay tribute to instant film and the discontinued Polaroid 600 Series with a gallery exhibition + limited edition book.
The opening reception of INSTANT GRATIFICATION: a polaroid party is scheduled for 7:00 PM on Friday August 7th, 2009 at the Hibbleton Gallery in Fullerton, California. This event is scheduled to coincide with the projected date of expiration for the Polaroid 600 Series.
Polaroid submissions for the Gallery Exhibition + Limited Edition Book are open to the public. Please send polaroid submissions to kevin<-at->ismcommunity.org.
WE NEED TO RECEIVE ALL ORIGINAL POLAROIDS BEFORE FRIDAY, JULY 24.
Sloppy Joe’s 29th Annual Papa Look-Alike Contest
Key West, FL
July 23-26, 2009
Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West will host its 29th Annual Hemingway Look-Alike contest July 23-26, 2009. The contest is one of many events in Key West to celebrate the birthday of Ernest Hemingway and honor his work as author and sportsman.
The AsoloArtFilmFestival (Italy) is inviting students between 18 and 26 year old to share their passion for cinema and art with other students from around the world. With it’s new “Student Hub,” AAFF wants to create an intercultural platform to exchange ideas, projects in a totally new creative setting inspired from the local tradition.
AsoloArtFilmFestival is offering free accomodations to a limited number of interested students. Visit the AsoloArtFilmFestival Student Hub for more information and an application. Deadline Aug 10
Charmaine Boucher, Graduate Programs Administrator, English Department of California State University, San Bernardino wrote to introduce the new M.F.A. in Creative Writing program, in addition to their M.A.in English Composition:
M.F.A.
The M.F.A. program welcomes writers with fresh voices, expansive visions, and evident commitment into a diverse but tightly knit community. Based on the belief that the best education for the artist includes training in literature as well as the honing of craft, this two-year, terminal studio arts degree is designed to nurture talent while simultaneously preparing students for the challenges and joys that mark the writer’s life. Through workshops, seminars, and hands-on experience in the community at large, the program also prepares students for career opportunities in editing at publishing firms, newspapers and magazines, professional writing, work at foundation and arts organizations, and teaching at the community college and university level for tenure-track positions.
M.A. English Composition
The Masters of Art in English Composition is designed for students interested in pursuing studies in the fields of composition, literature and linguistics. The concentration in English Composition focuses on writing–how written texts work rhetorically and stylistically; how historical and social conditions affect what we write and how we construct meaning as we read; and how to teach people to write effectively. The literature concentration allows students an option to focus on advanced studies in literature as well as composition. The concentration in TESL emphasizes students with a wide range of teaching approaches and methods.
Received from Lynn M. Geddie:
American Veteran, The Power of One Essay and Scholarship Project
RE: REQUEST FOR ESSAYS-
If I may, I want to share with you an idea I am working on with my teenage son, Reid. As an educator or writer’s newsletter publisher I hope you will become as excited as we are about this project. After much research into my own father’s military role in WWII he has written an essay about his grandfather for a class project at his Middle School in Newnan, GA. We both came away from the finished project with a greater appreciation and deeper understanding of the sacrifices made by all of our veterans. As well, Reid gained a wealth of knowledge about the grandfather he never met which gave him a real and lasting connection to him. Further, this project increased his ability to be familiar with, and learn to develop an accurate essay format.
Our request is a simple one really. Would you be interested in listing the project on your site or in your newsletters for teens that have relatives or role models who are veterans that might want to participate in submitting story for possible inclusion in a collection honoring our veterans? The teen can write about any veteran that served in WWII or any period all the way through to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are asked to have their parent or guardian sign a form to give us permission to publish the essays that will be chosen for inclusion in a book of the collection. This project is free and open to all teens between the ages of 13 and 17. The top essay winner will receive a (2010) summer camp experience, titled MISSION QUEST at Warner Robins Museum of Aviation and the 2nd place winner will receive a $50 cash prize. None of the entrant’s contact information will be shared with any entity or organization except the aviation museum which will be given the winner’s information so that arrangements for camp can be made. This project is sponsored privately by our family with the camp scholarship donated in memory of our father and grandfather a WWII pilot and American veteran. All teen authors who have an essay chosen will be given a certificate of merit. This will help Reid with his independent study putting together the collection; as a community project he plans to present it at his school’s Veteran’s Day program in November and give a copy to our local VFW.
In offering this project to our teens it is my hope that we can achieve several initiatives; as mentioned, the teen will make a real connection to those who have made individual sacrifices for the betterment of our country; learn to distinguish the difference between what great courage or strength of character is and that of fame or celebrity; and last, will foster an awareness that our veterans are the true mentors and role models for all Americans. I have found throughout my life that learning comes through active participation in a task and feel the younger generation is in need of understanding what is truly important for the continued success of America. Our goal is to receive hundreds of essays and publish the best essays in a book, therefore giving as many teens as possible exposure to this learning experience. Registration is free through our website; the deadline for essays is October 15, 2009.
If you are interested and can post our essay project please contact us at: info_at_americanvet.com, the above e-mail [info_at_americanvetpowerof1.com] or visit our website to learn more about us at: www.americanvetpowerof1.com. Our website features the guidelines and essay criteria and more about who we are and why we are sponsoring this project. Thank you in advance for your help and please contact me with any questions or comments.
Sincerely,
Lynn M. Geddie,
Newnan, Georgia
Daughter of Capt. Dave Matison, Jr. WWII CBI Hump Pilot
Contact information: info_at_americanvetpowerof1.com
The Bauhaus celebrates its 90th anniversary this year, and “The Bauhaus: 90 Years / 90 Days” is a new project which commemorates the Bauhaus. Every day during this 90-day project (from July 6 till October 3), a project happens which creatively plays around with and pays homage to an aspect of the Bauhaus. Examples of those projects might include a dance performance inspired by Oskar Schlemmer’s ballet, a musical performance that uses a Kandinsky painting as a graphic score, a fiber art project inspired by Anni Albers’ work, a poem inspired by Walter Gropius’ architecture, a short story inspired by Marianne Brandt’s work, an essay reflecting on an aspect of the Bauhaus movement, and so on.
These events will be presented at different locations around the world. This website is being used to track and document day-by-day records of this project’s happenings. Part of “The Bauhaus: 90 Years / 90 Days” will be part of The Fourth Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival (Oct. 1-11, 2009). “The Bauhaus: 90 Years / 90 Days” is being organized by the Borderbend Arts Collective and the Gropius in Chicago Coalition.
Christian Goering, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas and former high school English teacher, explains how he has students make connections with what they are reading in class to the music they listen to outside of class: musical intertextuality.
His site, Lit Tunes goes into much more detail and provides a number of classroom assignment examples.
Top poets denied entry to UK for festival: “I feel ashamed that the UK is effectively becoming a fortress.” -Ledbury Poetry Festival director Chloe Garner
[Link fixed. DH]
I can’t recommend this activity highly enough! I did it last year, and was amazed at being able to write 31 poems (maybe not all sent on time, but that was fine – I was getting postcards well into September and October!), as well as receive many, many wonderful poems. The Perennial Project will also keep you writing year-round and becoming the biggest postcard junkie!
Call For 2009 August Poetry Postcard Fest Participants
Get yourself at least 31 postcards. These can be found at book stores, thrift shops, online, drug stores, antique shops, museums, gift shops. (You’ll be amazed at how quickly you become a postcard addict.)
On or about July 27th, write an original poem right on a postcard and mail it to the person on the list below your name. (If you are at the very bottom, send a card to the name at the top.) And please WRITE LEGIBLY!
Starting on August 1st, ideally in response to a card YOU receive, keep writing a poem a day on a postcard and mailing it to successive folks on the list until you’ve sent out 31 postcards. Of course you can keep going and send as many as you like but we ask you to commit to at least 31 (a month’s worth).
What to write? Something that relates to your sense of “place” however you interpret that, something about how you relate to the postcard image, what you see out the window, what you’re reading, using a phrase/topic/or image from a card that you got, a dream you had that morning, or an image from it, etc. Like “real” postcards, get to something of the “here and now” when you write.
Do write original poems for the project. Taking old poems and using them is not what we have in mind. These cards are going to an eager audience of one, so there’s no need to agonize. That’s what’s unique about this experience. Rather than submitting poems for possible rejection, you are sending your words to a ready-made and excited audience awaiting your poems in their mailboxes. Everyone loves getting postcards. And postcards with poems, all the better.
Once you start receiving postcard poems in the mail, you’ll be able to respond to the poems and imagery with postcard poems or your own. That will keep your poems fresh and flowing. Be sure to check postage for cards going abroad. The Postcard Graveyard is a very sad place.
That’s all there it to it. It’s that fun and that easy.
To check out what’s been done before, visit the blog [where you’ll also see the Perennial Poetry Postcard List of folks who try to write a postcard poem at least once a week regardless of receiving in order to keep connections flowing], Paul Nelson’s website or their Facebook group.
To get started, click here.
Well, not exactly, but she did make the Subway “Fit to Boom” feature.
Reposted from CA Conrad at PhillySound:
GIOVANNI’S ROOM BOOKSTORE in Philadelphia is the world’s largest Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Feminist bookstore. The catalog of titles it holds for us is staggering, and no where in any brick and mortar store, independent or corporate, can we find all these titles together to browse whenever we want, to purchase whenever we want. I worked at the store for nearly 7 years, and its importance for LGBT and feminist readers around the world was something I felt, and took seriously when it was felt.
While independent bookstores have been disappearing, none have been disappearing as quickly as queer/feminist bookstores. Corporate bookstores WILL NOT carry ALL these titles for you to discover. I remember a woman coming into the store who was 78 years old, and had been married, had children, and was now wanting to come out of the closet. The Coming Out section of books is unlike any other in the world, and I also showed her the video NITRATE KISSES. I forget what she purchased, but I remember feeling, truly feeling the importance of Giovanni’s Room Bookstore at helping create a place for this woman who was older than my grandmothers.
The store has survived MANY tough times, including bricks being thrown through the windows. The bricks from these hate crimes now line the owner’s garden. Edwin Hermance, Skip, and all their amazing staff and volunteers are facing an enormous crisis. Major reconstruction is about to take place on the store’s one wall, and it will cost A LOT of money. Edwin and Skip and all the staff want you to PLEASE shop at the store to help them in this time of need. IF THERE ARE BOOKS YOU WANT but cannot find, they WILL order them for you. Below is a note from Edwin Hermance with many more details. Please shop at Giovanni’s Room, for all our sake! CAConrad
————-
from Edwin Hermance, owner of Giovanni’s Room Bookstore
Giovanni’s Room, the oldest independent LGBT bookstore in the United States today, needs your help and support to survive. Our 12th St. wall, which is structurally unsound, must be taken down and rebuilt from the ground up; construction will begin by sometime in August. The cost of this renovation, roughly $50,000, will not be easily paid; independent bookstores, lgbt bookstores included, have never been that profitable. Our store’s success is measured by the people Giovanni’s Room has helped in an almost limitless number of ways and by the exposure we have given to authors and publishers, filmmakers and musicians.
This will be a delicate time in the store’s history. We need your support more than ever, and the store will remain open during the construction. Here is what we are asking you to do:
*Continue to shop at Giovanni’s Room despite the challenges.
*Order in person, online, by email, and by phone.
*Show your support!
We have often faced adversity. In the beginning, in 1973, we had hardly any books to sell and the store was staffed 100% by volunteers. When homophobic landlords evicted us from the Spruce Street location and no one, on a major street, would rent to Giovanni’s Room, we were able to raise the down payment for the current location by borrowing from you, our customers. Over 100 volunteers helped renovate the building to make the beautiful space we have occupied since 1979.
Now, at this defining juncture, we have formed a Committee that will be addressing fundraising, volunteers, special community and author events, and other activities to help meet the cost of this repair.
Keep gay heritage alive. Volunteer your time – make a financial pledge! Your support to Giovanni’s Room will help us survive our 36th year.
Edwin Hermance
***
Giovanni’s Room
345 South 12th St. (corner of 12th & Pine Sts.)
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215/923-2960
[email protected]
http://www.queerbooks.com/
Paul Revere’s Horse has made a rather quiet entrance into the literary scene – with no great promotional fanfare or even editorial introduction to the premier issue. Edited by Bard College graduate Christopher Lura, the inaugural issues, Spring 2009, includes the works of Minnie Singh, Micaela Morrissette, Russell J. Duvernoy, John Murray, Christine Choi, Sam Truitt, Miranda Mellis, Graham Emory Guest, John K. Duvernoy.
Paul Revere’s Horse is published biannually by Sawkill Press in San Francisco and accepts submissions of all types of literature and related texts.
[Reposted with correction. DH]
CNF is cleaning house and offering up to 80% discounts on their stuff. The sale runs until midnight EST July 31 with limited stock on some items.
Sale includes:
Subscriptions
* 8-issue U.S. Subscription
* 4-issue U.S. Subscription
* 4-issue U.S. Subscription plus Best CNF Volumes 1 & 2
Books
* Almost Human: Making Robots Think
* Connecting: 20 Prominent Authors Write About The Relationships That Shape Our Lives
* Forever Fat: Essays By The Godfather
* Healing
* In Fact: The Best Of Creative Nonfiction
* On Nature: Great Writers on the Great Outdoors
* Our Roots Are Deep With Passion
* Pittsburgh In Words
Back Issues
* Issue 10: Style and Substance
* Issue 19: Diversity Dialogues
* Issue 22: Creative Nonfiction in the Crosshairs
* Issue 23: Mexican Voices: Cronica de Cronicas
* Issue 26: The Poets & Writers Issue
* Issue 30: Our Roots are Deep with Passion
* Issue 31: Imagining the Future
* Issue 33: Silence Kills
* Issue 34: Anatomy of Baseball
CNF Merch
* CNF Mug
* CNF Shirt
* Silence Kills Audiobook
To celebrate the 60th year of the National Book Awards, the National Book Foundation will present a book-a-day blog on the Fiction winners from 1950 to 2008.
The blog will run from July 7th to September 21st, starting with Nelson Algren’s The Man With the Golden Arm, ending with Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country, and including works by Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Alice McDermott. Discover lesser known but equally talented National Book Award Fiction Winners such as Conrad Richter, Wright Morris, and Robb Forman Dew.
On September 21st, readers will have a chance to select The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction and win two tickets to the 2009 National Book Awards, the first time in its history the Awards will open to a public vote.
Who knew the Slush Pile is somewhere you would actually want to end up?
Editor M.R. Branwen knew it, and gathered up a team to beat all slush piles: Matthew Hotham, Poetry Editor; Sara Petras, Art Editor; Caroline Tanski, Copy Editor; David Thorpe, Music Reviewer – with room for what appears to be a couple more to join in the area of Movie Reviews and Advice.
This first “installment” into the pile, which follows a publication format similar to Anderbo, includes that journal’s number one, Rick Rofihe, as well as the following fiction contributors: Casey Lefante, Roland Goity, and Ben Miller.
Poetry kicks in with works by Cynthia Chin, Peter Conners, Mary Fuchs, Kythe Heller Hilary White, Emily Vogel, and Billy Collins – who, Mister Brawnen explains as “true story,” “contributed a poem to this issue in exchange for information about my tattoos.” – read the rest on the editorial.
David Thorpe reviews The Needy Visions, Laura Bradford, Craig MacNeil, The Last Front, and Thick Shakes.
Sara Petras Curates introduces a selection of paintings by Marian Brunn Smith.
Egan Budd contributes an essay to the “Slush” section: “Noise! Understanding the Mysterious Cacophony.” This section also already houses two archived works: “Vegetarian Touring Exploits: Japan” by Russell Lissack and “How to Write a Book in Ten Easy…Years” by Christina Thompson.
Slush Pile is currently accepting submissions in all areas.
Frank McCourt has died today after a long bout with cancer.
Kevin Cullen of the Boston.com has a wonderful, comprehensive look at McCourt’s life and work from his long-standing professional relationship with the teacher/writer: Frank McCourt, the teacher. (via Ross Dallas)
Don’t let the location fool you: “founded in a condo in Austin, Texas” – not all great literary ventures are begun in bars. The powerhouse editorial/web design team behind Line4, Karyna McGlynn and Adam Theriault, have created a four-line approach to the epigram – accepting submissions of 3-15 4-line poems on a theme, preferably non-rhyming poems and with no individual titles.
The first issue of Line4 includes contributions from Emily Kendal Frey, Emily Mahan, Amanda Chiado, Nate Slawson, Andrew Lundwall, Josh Burge, Dan Nowak, and Jeffery Evans.
With submission criteria that includes a penchant for “funny, the juvenile, and the exclamatory! New Sincerity = A+. Also anything where high-brow and low-brow make sweet, sweet nudity. Political, pop-cultural & poetic commentary appreciated. Landscape page orientation is pretty nifty too.” – I don’t know how Line4 won’t soon be overrun with submissions – and appreciative readers!
Against a new policy in Britain that requires children’s book authors to register with a national database and undergo a criminal background check to prove they’re not sex offenders before they will be allowed to do readings in the schools.
61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list by Carolyn Kellogg, NYT – with nifty graphic annotations that highlight “the author is a character, fiction and reality are blurred, the text includes fictional artifacts, such as letters, lyrics, even whole other books, and so on.”
World Literature Today offers a selection of essays from their publication on this page. The essays are available full-text online, or as PDF downloads and may be copied and distributed for educational use. Here’s just a sample of some of the essays from this ten-year archive:
The Writer as Inocente
Rudolfo Anaya
Comix Poetics
Andrew D. Arnold
Among the Gypsies
Garth Cartwright
Beyond The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Other Works for Children
Janet Brennan Croft
Tough Guys with Long Legs: The Global Popularity of the Hard-Boiled Style
J. Madison Davis
On Translation and Being Translated
Kerstin Ekman
Fifteen High Points of Twentieth-Century Peruvian Poetry
Ricardo Gonzalez Vigil
On Writing Short Books
Kristjana Gunnars
Writing and Place
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Spotlight: Dylan and Guthrie
Another Side of Bob Dylan
Tim Riley
The International Children’s Literature Movement
Carl M. Tomlinson
Issue #3 of the Agriculture Reader has a nice feel to it, literally. For one thing there’s something particularly satisfying about the paper it is printed on; it somehow feels thin without seeming fragile; somehow gives the entire issue a nice flexibility, somehow lends itself to a comfortable back pocket curl. Coming in at 103 pages, if you count the three final lined pages tagged on for taking “notes,” this issue is the perfect size for summer reading, for savoring, for holding up in a sun shielding position while swinging to and fro on a hammock. Continue reading “Agriculture Reader – 2009”
If you love Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska’s work as I do, you’ll love this issue which features the poet’s work, along with ten brief essays that “consider” her writing and influence from Lawrence Raab, Carl Dennis, Sally Ball, Kathy Fagan, Jennifer Clarvoe, William Olsen, Michelle Boisseau, Rachel Wetzsteon, Marianne Boruch, and Tony Hoagland. Olsen describes Szymborska’s poems as “a little off to the side,” ironic not as “cosmic betrayals,” but as “human fictions.” Continue reading “New Ohio Review – Spring 2009”
Aimee Nezhukumatahil, 49th Parallel Poetry Award judge, is not exaggerating when she calls the prize-winning poem “gorgeous” and “breathtaking.” Kaveh Bassiri’s “Invention of God” is divine. From Bassiri’s clever, lyrical tercets to Mardi Link’s experience of Tractor Supply as “a spiritual moment” in the essay “Chicken Trilogy,” this issue of Bellingham Review is about pure pleasure: that particular and spectacular pleasure of purely good reading. Continue reading “The Bellingham Review – Spring 2009”
“An international magazine of ideas and opinions, emphasizing literature and the arts” – that is how the editors describe tnr. The front cover exhibits delicate pink petals, aside thistles, against a brick cross – beauty, troubles and truth. Art this journal has in abundance – photographs, reproductions of paintings, watercolors, drawings – all very stylish and in color. Continue reading “the new renaissance – Spring 2009”
Toby Wiliguru Pambardu’s poem “First Truck,” “splutters,” and spins, and gushes, and presses forward, with the wild, persistent, percussive energy of the strange and magical beast of a “first truck” on the plain. Written in Yindjibarndi, the indigenous language of the people by the same name of the Pibara region of Australia, the poem creates a rumbling across the page that “clatters,” “rattles,” and “whirls” like the vehicle itself. The poem is translated by Shon Arieh-Lerer whose translation is not, in fact, the first of this poem. This one “attempts to capture Pambardu’s daring innovation, excitement, and poetic style.” Even without the ability to read the original, I can see that Arieh-Lerer has succeeded, and the poem (which takes up four pages in an issue of a mere 35) – and the translation – are thrilling, a highlight of the issue. Continue reading “Beloit Poetry Journal – Summer 2009”
To start at the ending, I loved Melanie Lynn Moro-Huber’s straightforward essay “Checking the Pulse of Poetry Today,” in which Moro-Huber attempts to assess the value of poetry in contemporary culture. Beginning with a brief conversation with her husband, who sees little to no value in poetry, and continuing on with anyone who will listen, Moro-Huber receives a variety of responses from the owner of a music store, a fellow shopper at the local Walmart, MFA students, and academics. I loved the casual tone of Moro-Huber’s essay and the quirkiness of her approach, such as when she reiterates her husband’s response that “Poetry hits you in the nuts or it doesn’t.” Continue reading “New York Quarterly – 2009”
The front cover of this superb publication shows a sleek black cat, tail high, eyes narrowed to luminous slits, strutting along an embankment in a photograph by Alexander Petrosyan. Like Russia, the cat is proud, a survivor. Gogol saw Russia as a brooding, dark country. These readings convey other writers’ takes on Gogol. Some of the fiction is absurdist fiction written in the early part of the twentieth century, when there was much experimentation in art and literature, like Dadaism. A Soviet writer could get himself shot for writing absurdist fiction under the Stalin regime. Continue reading “Chtenia – Spring 2009”
Potomac Review is a publication of the Paul Peck Humanities Institute at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. It’s not suburban Washington D.C., where the college is located, however, that graces this issue’s cover, but an exquisite black and white photograph of “Scotland’s Royal Mile,” by Roger Fritts. The street scene is viewed through a window behind a desk. The window’s divided light imposes its grid on a table of objects (drawing and scientific tools), the geometry of the buildings in the distance reflected in the instruments on the table. Continue reading “Potomac Review – Spring 2009”
Founded in 1983, Exquisite Corpse went through many lives before finally transforming into an online-only journal in 1996. Now offering an annual print anthology of material from the web journal, the work in Exquisite Corpse is as richly layered as it is stunningly diverse. Continue reading “The Exquisite Corpse – 2008”
Poetry as storytelling. Poetry as intimate conversation. Poetry as painting. If you know serious readers who say they don’t like poetry, give them an issue of Rattle. Especially this one, which features amazing “conversations” with Toi Derricotte and Terrance Hayes, conducted by editor Alan Fox, a “Tribute to African American Poets,” and contributors’ notes that contain brief personal (and personable) remarks rather than dull lists of credentials. “The hope is that a poem might walk the tightrope from which sloganeering topples,” writes David O’Connell in his note. Many of these notes are, happily, as satisfying in their own way as the poems. Continue reading “Rattle – Summer 2009”
There are stars aplenty in this issue devoted entirely to poetry and poetics: D. Nurske, Kevin Prufer, David Wagoner, Elton Glaser, Thomas Lux, G.C. Waldrep, Bruce Weigl, David St. John, Carl Phillips, Laura Kasischke, Franz Wright, Eric Pankey, David Hernandez, Jean Valentine, Alice Friman, Timothy Liu, Charles Wright, among others. And their work is, well, stellar. But there are equally bright and lesser-known voices on the horizon, too (many also quite accomplished and widely published), and I’d like to spotlight their contributions to this fine issue, beginning with moonlight and Melissa Kwasny’s prose poem “The City of Many Lovers.” “Moon that strikes on the downbeat,” she writes, and its Kwasny’s rhythms that are, indeed, most striking: “Lunedi. Martedi. Mercoldi. It’s moon-day.” And so she begins a poetic narrative that manages to tell a large story that unfolds in a small moment in one short lyric paragraph; it’s a perfect little model of prose poetry. Continue reading “Field – Spring 2009”
At first glance, the Fall 2008 issue of Red Rock Review may seem to be fairly provincial in tone, but a deeper look shows the work to be as wide in locale and subject matter as it is rich in expression. From Hari Bhajan Khalsa’s poem about the swaying rhythms of summertime in Los Angeles to Mark Sanders’s deceptively simple poems about the inner lives of horses, Red Rock Review charts the forgotten ghosts and breathing minority of the American Southwest. Continue reading “Red Rock Review – Fall 2008”
The editors of Glimmer Train Stories have successfully put together another issue of pieces that focus strongly on character interiority. Through the course of the issue, the reader is acquainted with several different people, including an American teacher watching over his students in Germany, ill-fated lovers dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and people on the run from Nazis. Continue reading “Glimmer Train Stories – Spring 2009”
I almost missed my stop on the subway, I couldn’t stop reading. What captivated me most in these poems, prose poems, and short stories – and what they have in common, for the most part – is the power to surprise without working too vigorously or obviously to accomplish this. They don’t go where you expect or move the way you think they will, but they don’t announce their intentions to thwart expectations with bold gestures or wildly inventive strokes. Continue reading “The Greensboro Review – Spring 2009”
“I must be frank about this – the American Present baffles me.” Not longer after making this pronouncement in his interview here with Irene Keliher, David Leavitt reminds us what Grace Paley said about finding a subject or coming to terms with what one is compelled to say: “For me there is a long time between knowing and telling.” Turning what baffles us into something we can know and tell about, in ways simultaneously original and unique, yet recognizable or, at least, meaningful, is what good writing is about (although I may end up no less baffled). Gulf Coast satisfies this goal admirably. Continue reading “Gulf Coast – Summer/Fall 2009”
