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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!

Ruminate – Fall 2008

Ruminate’s layout is beautiful: almost trade magazine size but sturdier, writing centered on white or grey or black pages, Evan Mann’s creation sketches littered between poems and an essay and a short story. The journal’s writing is equally beautiful, pieces which demonstrate faith inside literature as well as faith in literature, a faith that literature can explain and inspire. Continue reading “Ruminate – Fall 2008”

St. Petersburg Review – 2008

Many Americans read little from emerging foreign writers. The St. Petersburg Review, an excellent anecdote to this situation, offers translations of Russian writers into English, or English writers into Russian. The latter pieces are of particular interest me, since Russian is almost never found in American literary magazines. Any student of Russian should pick up a copy and check out the Russian translations of Maxine Kumin’s poems scattered throughout the journal – poems which haven’t yet appeared in Russia. Continue reading “St. Petersburg Review – 2008”

Alexie Book Removed

Funny how in the span of a week, I can post a video of Alexie receiving a National Book Award and now this article about the removal of his book from a high school curriculum. I think a letter of concern would be a good holiday gift to send a few people involved:

Jeff Landaker is the board chair who, it is reported, despite the complainants not following proper procedure by first talking with the teacher and going instead directly to the board, supports the ban.
[email protected]

Jim Golden is the Principal of the school. Golden was reportedly opposed to banning the book.
[email protected]

Rich Shultz is the superintendent of the schools.
[email protected]

Crook County removes book from schools after parent complains
by Helen Jung
Thursday December 11, 2008
The Oregonian

Sherman Alexie’s book has raised some concerns in the Crook County school district. The Crook County School District has temporarily removed a book from classrooms after one parent complained to the school board that the National Book Award winner was “trashy” and “inappropriate.”

Written by Sherman Alexie, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” which is based on Alexie’s own experiences, follows a boy who leaves the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white school “where the only other Indian is the school mascot” according to the book jacket description…[read the rest here]

Jobs :: Various

One-year appointment for emerging writer lecturer at Gettysburg College beginning August 2009, 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. Jan 30.

Emory University Two-year Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry in lively undergraduate English/Creative Writing Program, beginning fall 2009. Feb 2.

MSU Mankato English/Creative Writing – Fiction, Assistant Professor. Jan 23.

American University Department of Literature in the College of Arts & Sciences invites applications for two tenure-track positions in Creative Writing/Fiction & Creative Non-fiction beginning fall 2009. Jonathan Loesberg, Chair, Department of Literature. Until filled. Interviews AWP

Wichita State University Distinguished Writer-in-Residence. Temporary one-month position for a writer of fiction to teach a tutorial course to approximately 15 graduate & advanced undergraduate fiction writing students. Margaret Dawe, Chair, Department of English. Feb 15.

California Institute of the Arts MFA Writing Program, based in the School of Critical Studies, invites applications for a regular faculty position (two courses per semester) in fiction and/or creative non-fiction. Jan 5.

Lyon College seeks a distinguished writer of fiction for its 4th biennial Visiting Fellowship in Creative Writing (fiction), a semester-long residency scheduled during the autumn 2009 semester. April 1.

Wichita State University Distinguished Poet-in-Residence. Temporary one-month position for a writer of poetry to teach a tutorial course to approximately 15 graduate & advanced undergraduate poetry writing students. Margaret Dawe, Chair, Department of English. Feb 15.

Grinnel College two-year leave replacement position in the English Department in Fiction Writing. Professor Ralph Savarese, Department of English. Jan 16.

New Lit on the Block :: experiment-o

experiment-o is published annually as a PDF magazine “with the aim of bringing attention to works that do what art is supposed to do and that is to risk.” Amanda Earl of AngelHousePress is behind this new project, and the first issue contains what appear to be several AHP regulars, though the publication is open for submissions.

experiment-o will consider interviews, reviews, visual art, visual poetry, concrete poetry, poetry, prose, manifestos, maps, rants, blog entries, translations and other digital miscellany. Only contributions that are possible in PDF form will be considered.

Issue 1 features: Gary Barwin, Camille Martin, rob mclennan, Pearl Pirie, Roland Prevost, Jenny Sampirisi, Emily A. Falvey, Steve Venright, and Spencer Gordon.

You Had Me at Cello

The newest issue of The Hudson Review (Autumn 2008), celebrating its 60th anniversary, includes a CD: “Poetry into Music with Dana Gioia.” The CD includes the intro track with Gergory Hesselink on cello and baritone, Leon Williams. Dana Gioia speaks on intermittent “Conversations” tracks between combined singers and musicians. A great holiday gift (if you’re STILL shopping).

Film :: Rwanda Film Festival

In East Africa, a new generation of storytellers is emerging. For the first time in history, Rwandans are using film and an inflatable screen to tell their own stories, in their own language. A film festival in which “the theater is coming to you…”

Film Festival: Rwanda is a feature-length documentary that follows Rwandan filmmakers producing their own films, and screening them in remote villages for hundreds to thousands of people. For many Rwandans, this is the first time they’ve seen a film, let alone one in their local language, “Kinyarwanda”.

Rather than re-examining the past, these young storytellers are using film to project a positive vision of their country’s future. Their motivation, energy and creativity, inspired us to start following them last year.

17 Years Ago Today

This short preface to the Winter 2009 issue of Glimmer Train was a nice look back. It’s not a birthday or anniversary, just years of living life and saying, Whew! it’s been a long road, a hard road, and a bad road, and a good road: “Seventeen years ago we published our first issue of Glimmer Train Stories. The Gulf War had just ended, the Soviet Union was collapsing, the first-ever documented South Atlantic tropical cyclone developed in the Southern Hemisphere, the Dow passed 3000 for the first time, Tim Berners-Lee released an article describing his idea for the World Wide Web, and the first President Bush was in the final year of his presidency. We’re sending this issue to press just weeks before the November 4 election, an old chapter closing and a new one pushing open. And for the two of us, as well: We have now both crossed into our second half-century, and life is a compelling as it’s ever been. It’s good being alive, being sisters, and doing this work.” Susan and Linda – keep it going girls!

Nobel Winner Exhibits Art

Museo Wurth La Rioja hosts After the Flood an Exhibition by Gao Xingjian
From Art Knowledge News

AGONCILLO-LA RIOJA, SPAIN – Museo Wurth La Rioja presents the exhibition After the Flood, which brings together the work by the prestigious Chinese artist Gao Xingjian (Ganzhou, China, 1940), 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature. A selection of 80 recently created artworks, including ink paintings on canvas and paper. Regarded as one of the most important Chinese writers at present, Gao Xingjian still is not well known as a painter in Spain, although he is recognized by the international art scene and his oeuvre was previously exhibited at the Reina Sofia Museum (Madrid, 2002). His work has been presented in several solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia and the United States, and is included in important art collections around the world. [Read the rest on Art Knowledge News]

Dr. Seuss Secrets…Shhhh…

10 Stories Behind Dr. Seuss Stories
by Stacy Conradt
Mental Floss
November 16, 200

Okay, I’ll give away number one, but fans of Horton and Cat, visit the site:

1. The Lorax. In case you haven’t read The Lorax, it’s widely recognized as Dr. Seuss’ take on environmentalism and how humans are destroying nature. The logging industry was so upset about the book that some groups within the industry sponsored The Truax, a similar book—but from the logging point of view. Another interesting fact: the book used to contain the line, “I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie,” but 14 years after the book was published, the Ohio Sea Grant Program wrote to Seuss and told him how much the conditions had improved and implored him to take the line out. Dr. Seuss agreed and said that it wouldn’t be in future editions. [Sorry Seuss, but we need the line back for those bastards…]

Red Hen Press Holiday Sale

Red Hen Press is offering some sweet deals for the holidays, including select titles at 40% off until December 31, and one-year gift subscriptions for the upcoming publishing year – you can get select poetry (12 titles) or prose (8 titles), as well as a catalog subscription (20 titles!).

As with any of these great publisher deals, if not for you or a loved one, don’t forget your local library, public school, care homes, prison reading programs, community centers, ETC! Share the love of READING!

Geof Huth on VisoPoetry

The November 2008 issue of Poetry features a nice, full-color photo section on visual poetry. You can read Geof Huth’s commentary on Poetry’s website, but for the full visual imagery, you’ve got to get your hands on a copy.

“Few visual poems these days function as poems do. Instead, they encompass a wide range of verbo-visual creations that focus on the textual materiality of language. The form includes poems written as mathematical equations, collage poems, xerographic pieces that include no words but concentrate on the meaning that has built up within the shapes of letters, and even asemic writings in invented scripts created to mean through shape rather than word. Visual poetry is written for the eye, but its methods and intentions, even in those works most limited in their verbal content, are always poetic, always compelling the reader forward into the transformative power of language, always entranced by—and entrancing through—the text that is before us.” (pictured: “jHegaf” by Geof Huth)

New Lit on the Block :: The Honey Land Review

The Honey Land Review is a contemporary web journal dedicated to the poetry and photography of both emerging and established artists.

The Honey Land Review has designed a spotlight feature to highlight the work of current graduate students. Their intention is to maintain a forum where graduate students can showcase their work as well as provide some insight into the many wonderful creative writing programs available to writers today.

HLR is open for submission Dec – Sept.

[photo by Christina Ebel, featured in HLR]

e-Poetry Festival :: Barcelona


E-Poetry Festival
5th Annual
Universitat Obertat de Catalunya (UOC)
Barcelona
May 24-27, 2009

E-Poetry is both a conference and a festival on digital poetry. The festival is the most significant digital literary gathering in the field. Authors and researchers worldwide meet and present their researches and works. This will permit researchers to present their latest research and artists to premier their newest works. A selection of the papers will be published after the conference following the peer review system and we will also like to publish proceedings of the conference.

Artistic events will take place at key Barcelona venues such as the Barcelona Center for Contemporary Culture (CCCB), providing authors the opportunity to present their works to a public curious about new poetry and artistic trends employing technology and communication during the Setmana de la Poesia, that is also sharing a part of our artistic program.

Katherine Hayles (Duke), Roberto Simanowski (Brown University) and Jean Clément (Université Paris 8) have already accepted to be key-note speakers.

The UOC’s research group Hermeneia with the collaboration of Electronic Poetry Center (University of Buffalo) and the Laboratoire Paragraph (Univ. Paris VIII) will organize the event.

Papers and works for the Conference & the Festival are currently being accepted. Deadline December 1, 2008.

New Lit on the Block :: Holly Rose Review

The Holly Rose Review is a unique online journal featuring poetry and tattoos – Honest! – on the theme of “Peace.” Not only will readers find text and images, but recordings of some of the authors reading their own works.

Issue 1 features: Lori Schreiner, Karen Neuberg, Jane Wohl, Cyril Wong, Maxime Lanouette, Arlene Ang, Lane Falcon, Beatrix Gates, Rhonda Palmer, Scott Corbin, Debbi Brody, Danny Bellinger, Santi Ruiz, Mani Rao, Jon Gerhard, Robin King, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Maria Williams-Russell, Tony Gibert, Donnell McGee, Peter Joseph Gloviczki, Simon Petkovich.

Submission are being accepting for Issue Two on the theme of “Passion” according to the following dates: December 1, 2008, to April 30, 2009, for tattoos, and February 1 to April 30, 2009 for poetry.

New Lit on the Block :: Sidebrow

Sidebrow is an online & print journal dedicated to innovation & collaboration. Sidebrow provides a forum for exploring the collective and the singular in literary arts. Submissions that re-imagine or explore interstices between posted pieces or respond to ongoing projects are encouraged.

The first issue of Sidebrow includes an impressive lineup: Jenny Allan, A.K. Arkadin, Jeff Bacon, Andrea Baker, Julia Bloch,Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite, Nick Bredie, Amina Cain, Kate Hill Gantrill, Nona Gaspers, Jimmy Chen, Kim Ghinquee. John Cleary, Steve Dalachinsky, Catherine Daly, Brett Evans, Brian Evenson, Raymond Farr, Sandy Florian, Paul Gacioch, Anne Germanacos, Scott Glassman, Noah Eli Gordon, Paul Hardacre, HL Hazuka, Anne Heide, Malia Jackson, Carrie-Sinclair Katz, Susanna Kittredge, Richard Kostelanetz, Kristine Leja Norman Lock, Doug MacPherson, Scott Malby, Bob Marcacci, Bill Marsh, rob mclennan, LJ Moore, Greg Mulcahy, Cathi Murphy, Eireene Nealand, Daniel Pendergrass, Kristin Prevallet, kathryn 1. pringle, Stephen Ratcliffe, Francis Raven, AE Reiff, Daniel C. Remein, Elizabeth Robinson, Zach Savich, Len Shneyder, Nina Shope, Kyle Simonsen, Ed Skoog, Jason Snyder, Anna Joy Springer, Chris Stroffolino, Cole Swensen, Joanne Tracy, Chris Tysh, Nico Vassilakis, James Wagner, Derek White, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, and Angela Woodward.

Thomas Lynch on Paper Cuts

One of my all-time favorite writers and human beings in general: Thomas Lynch – given the “Stray Questions” by Gregory Cowles on the NYT Paper Cuts blog.

How much time — if any — do you spend on the Web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?

“The Web is like having my favorite haunts — library and post office, theater and gallery, newsroom, museum and archives — all in the same stone’s throw. No less the mall, casino and bawdy house; but those are dissipations I’ve, for the most part, avoided. For pure pleasure, an hour’s mousing around dictionary.com is hard to better.”

Read the rest here.

New at West Branch

West Branch Editor Paula Closson Buck introduces a few new names to the publication starting with this latest issue – Fall/Winter 2008. New Advisory Editors include Shara McCallum, Chris Camuto, Deidre O’Connor, Robert Rosenberg, and G. C. Waldrep. Dinty Moore will become a contributing editor drumming up creative nonfiction submissions. And a new feature from Contributing Editor Garth Greenwell will be the annual column “To a Green Thought” – this issue includes the first installment: “Beauty’s Canker: On Jorie Grahma.” (Linked because it’s generously available full-text on the WB site.)

Calls from Home

Join the ninth annual CALLS FROM HOME radio broadcast for prisoners.

Thousand Kites is asking you to call their toll-free line 877-518-0606 and speak directly to those behind bars this holiday season. An answering machine will record your message. Read a poem, sing a song, or just speak directly from you heart. Speak to someone you know or to everyone – make it uplifting. Call anytime, now through December 9, and record your message.

The United States has 2.4 million people behind bars. Thousand Kites wants you to lend your voice to a powerful grassroots radio broadcast that reaches into our nation’s prison and lets those inside know they are not forgotten.

Each call will be posted to the website as it comes in.

CALLS FROM HOME will broadcast on over 200 radio stations across the country and be available for download from their website on December 13. This is a project of Thousand Kites/WMMT-FM/Appalshop and a national network of grassroots organizations working for criminal justice reform.

Jobs :: Various

The Department of English at the American University of Sharjah is seeking a full-time faculty member. Dec 28. Dean William H Heidcamp: cashr-at-aus.edu

Indiana State University tenure-track assistant professor. Dec 1 until filled.

Northwestern University Simon Blattner Visiting Assistant Professorship in fiction. Mary Kinzie, Director of Creative Writing, Department of English.

Georgia College & State University Limited Term Temporary Creative Writer. Mary Kinzie, Director of Creative Writing, Department of English. Dec 15.

Columbia College Chicago visiting poet for the Elma Stuckey Liberal Arts and Sciences Emerging Poet-in-Residence. Feb 15 deadline.

Concordia College-Moorhead Fiction Writing Assistant Professor, tenure-track. Dec 10 until filled.

Visiting Poet at the University of Missouri-St. Louis MFA Program for the spring semester of 2010. Karen Bartoni, Department of English. Jan 9.

Western State College of Colorado invites applications for a Creative Writing tenure-track position in English starting August 2009. Jan 26.

Bowdoin College Department of English invites applications for a tenure-track/tenured position in creative writing (fiction & creative non-fiction). Elizabeth Muther, Chair, Department of English. Dec 15 until filled.

In Memoriam ;: Forrest J Ackerman

Sci-fi’s grand old man, Forrest J Ackerman, dies
By John Rogers
SouthFlorida.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Forrest J Ackerman, the sometime actor, literary agent, magazine editor and full-time bon vivant who discovered author Ray Bradbury and was widely credited with coining the term “sci-fi,” has died. He was 92.

Ackerman died Thursday of heart failure at his Los Angeles home, said Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman’s estate.

Although only marginally known to readers of mainstream literature, Ackerman was legendary in science-fiction circles as the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was also the owner of a huge private collection of science-fiction movie and literary memorabilia that for years filled every nook and cranny of a hillside mansion overlooking Los Angeles.

“He became the Pied Piper, the spiritual leader, of everything science fiction, fantasy and horror,” Burns said Friday.

Read more here.

Visual Arts Submissions Sought

PRISM is extending the deadline for its Spring 2009, Visual Arts theme issue!

Deadline for Visual Arts Issue Extended
November 19, 2008 3:31PM
New deadline: December 15, 2008

Send your writing (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction) about art, art about writing, creative projects that involve both, and conversations between artists and writers.

PRISM is also seeking compelling illustrations for our inside pages.

All submissions should be sent to:

PRISM international
Creative Writing Program, UBC
Buch. E462 – 1866 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1
Canada

Please indicate Visual Arts Theme Issue in your cover letter. Regular submission guidelines apply.

Disability Nation Charge :: Where Were You on Prop 8?

Commentary: Why PWD Need To Care About Prop 8
Submitted by Erika Jahneke
Disability Nation
November 18, 2008

“I have often thought that people with disabilities and people who are gay should be natural allies, even before all of the No on Proposition 8 protests and the subsequent rallies after election day started across the nation. The protests bring back memories of ADAPT actions I’ve been involved with in the past…

“I’ve had many amazing gay attendants, who each contributed in their own way to expanding my worldview beyond my suburban upbringing, and I owe them a great debt, as well as to many of my online friends, whose only agenda for me is that I do what makes my life better, and I’m feeling like they all got maligned on Election Day. I’m not okay with that. And, of course, many disabled people are gay, bisexual, or transgendered, and we should make it abundantly clear that anyone who tries to take their rights away has a fight with all of us. Yes, it’s a pain, but just think of it as a gift-with-purchase for the time we spent together on Hitler’s shit list…”

Read the rest on Disability Nation.

Will Read for Food

The 14th anniversary of Will Read for Food, the annual program of readings by local authors to benefit Greensboro charities, was held Thursday, November 20th, at the Weatherspoon Auditorium as The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Featured writers were Michael Parker, Stuart Dischell, Craig Nova, Terry Kennedy, Jennifer Grotz, Mark Smith-Soto, Allison Seay, and Lee Zacharias. The event raised $1,100 for the Glen Haven Community Development Center, which serves immigrant and refugee populations.

The event was recorded and photographed by Tina Firesheets and Jerry Wolford of the Greensboro News & Record.

Listen to each of the readings here.

Resource :: Jobs Fellowships Scholarships

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship
The fundamental objective of MMUF is to increase the number of minority students, and others with a demonstrated commitment to eradicating racial disparities, who will pursue PhDs in core fields in the arts and sciences. The Program aims to reduce over time the serious under-representation on the faculties of individuals from certain minority groups, as well as to address the attendant educational consequences of these disparities.

The MMUF website includes a bibliography of dissertations, books, and articles, and updated lists of jobs, fellowships, scholarships, programs, and grad and post-doc programs.

Conference & CFP :: Beat Studies

The Beat Studies Association invites proposals for papers on all aspects of Beat literature and Beat studies for the two panels the association anticipates sponsoring at this year’s American Literature Association Conference (May 21-24 in Boston). Proposals of one to two pages (250-500 words) should be sent electronically to Tim Hunt at tahunt-at-ilstu.edu by January 2, 2009.

The Beat Studies Association would especially welcome proposals that engage understudied figures central to or related to the Beats and proposals that consider the significance of current and emerging critical paradigms for study of the Beats.

Is Sci Fi Dying?

Sci-fi special: Is science fiction dying?
by Marcus Chown
New Scientist
12 November 2008

Chown takes a look at the current state of SciFi lit and includes a section from each of six leading science fiction authors who comment on where they think the genre is going: Margaret Atwood, Stephen Baxter, William Gibson, Ursula K Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Nick Sagan.

Fellowship :: Bolin Fellows at Williams College

The Bolin Fellowships are two-year residencies at Williams College, and three scholars or artists are appointed each year. Fellows devote the bulk of the first year to the completion of dissertation work—or in the case of MFA applicants, building their professional portfolios—while also teaching one course as a faculty member in one of the College’s academic departments or programs. The second year of residency (ideally with degree in hand) is spent on academic career development while again teaching just one course.

Gaius Charles Bolin was the first black graduate of Williams. The fellowship program was founded in 1985, on the centennial of his admission to the College.

Election 2008 :: It’s Not Over Yet

Worth checking out if you’re not a regular viewer of The Daily Show: Calvin Trillin banters with Jon Stuart and reads some of the poems from his “epic” Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme.

Some excerpts from Powell’s entry:

ON OBAMA:
Obama’s rhetoric, she said, was lofty
But unsubstantial air, like Mr. Softee.

ON MCCAIN:
His party was no longer torn asunder,
And all he’d had to do was knuckle under.

ON BIDEN:
Joe carries many thoughts inside his head,
And often leaves but few of them unsaid.

ON PALIN:
On Russia’s being not too far away
She sounded eerily like Tina Fey.

New Lit on the Block :: A Cappella Zoo

A Cappella Zoo is a new literary magazine of “experimental and magical realist works” published twice a year by Colin Meldrum (with readers Devori Kimbro, Syndie Allen, Michael Lee, Micah Unice, and Gail Spencer). A cappella Zoo invites submissions of “memorable prose, poetry, drama, and genre-bending works” and are “especially excited about magical realism, bilingualism, and experiments with technique, form, language, thought, truth, dichotomy, and variation.”

Issue 1 Fall 2008 includes:

Drama by Kathy Coudle King

Poetry by Margaret Bashaar, C. E. Chaffin, Yu-Han Chao, Nik De Dominic, Carol Dorf, Justin Hyde, Marc Jampole, Miah Jeffra, Jane Knechtel, J. R. Pearson, Rolli, Omar Singleton, Krysten Tom, Shellie Zacharia

Fiction by Melinda J. Combs, Brendan Connell, Matthew Falk, Heather Fowler, Liza Granville, Tania Hershman, Cicily Janus, Hank Kirton, Drew Lackovic, Allan M. McDonald, Corey Mesler, John Jasper Owens, Patricia Russo, Robert J. Santa, Ben Segal, Noel Sloboda, Lydia Williams

Art by Peter Schwartz

Dueling MFA Programs Head to Court

Poetry program heads to court
NEC sues over exit of director to N.J. school
By AnnMarie Timmns
Concord Monitor
November 23, 2008

New England College is about to lose its status as the one school in the country with a poetry-only master’s degree program. And administrators blame the program’s former director, who they say stole NEC’s faculty and students and re-created its program at Drew University in New Jersey… [read the rest here]

Biblio File Interviews James Meek

Nigel Beale is a writer/broadcaster who specializes in literary journalism. In his role as host of The Biblio File he has interviewed Nobel, Man Booker, IMPAC, and many other Award and Prize winning authors; plus publishers, booksellers, editors, book collectors, librarians, conservators, illustrators… He has recently interviewed James Meek’s on We are now Making our Decent; Nam Le, this year’s winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize; Rebecca Rosenblum, Nam Le, and Anne Enright on those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story; Rawi Hage 2008 IMPAC Award Winner; and many more.

Un-awarding Literature?

We’re Not Worthy
By David Kelly
NYT PaperCuts
November 24, 2008

I stole an idea from Rolling Stone a couple of months ago, so now I’ll swipe one from Entertainment Weekly. That magazine is conducting a survey called “Recall the Gold,” in which voters pick some of the most undeserving Academy Award winners. Kevin Costner, be prepared to cough up your Oscar. You, too, Roberto Benigni.

Which literary-award winners have been the most undeserving? Good luck ripping the Pulitzer away from Margaret Mitchell or Herman Wouk. When it comes to Nobel laureates, of course, the list is almost endless…[read the rest here]

How Does Your Reference Rate?

Literature E-Reference Ratings
The purpose of this tool is to provide an overview and evaluations of some of the most well-known and respected subscription-based electronic resources in 14 subject categories. Each database is rated based on the seven criteria librarians consider the most when making purchasing decisions. Covered in this category: American literature; British literature; world literature; literary biography; literary criticism; fiction; poetry; drama; readers’ advisory (RA) tools.

By Lauren Lampasone
Library Journal
November 15, 2008

New Lit on the Block :: Infinity’s Kitchen

Infinity’s Kitchen is a graphic literary journal featuring experimental writing and art. The publication is online and in print. “We’d like to cook up a tasty mishmash of words, sounds and images, using whichever ingredients seem best.” Infinity’s Kitchen is an independent publication of essays, fiction, poetry, art and whatever else that’s cooking. It is a place for creative people to work out their ideas. They’re an arts and letters publication with a focus on the experimental and the avant-garde. Some of their influences include DaDa magazines and manifestos, Futurist publications, UbuWeb, Ray Gun Magazine.

Poetry :: Indian Heritage Explored

The PBS News Hour The News Hour Poetry Series, funded by the Poetry Foundation, intends to engage a broader audience with poetry through a series of thoughtful, in-depth reports on contemporary poets and poetry.

The series includes the production of short-form profiles on living American poets and long-form segments on current debates in poetry that will air on the NewsHour starting in 2006. The pieces are also available on PoetryFoundation.org as audio and video.

The collaboration will allow the NewsHour to draw from the foundation’s extensive research on the state of poetry in American culture, as well as the foundation’s knowledge of various issues — from the plethora of MFA programs to the current neglect of some of the art form’s living masters.

Currently featured on the site: Spoken Word Club Explores Indian Identity, History. Through verse, members of the Spoken Word Club at the Santa Fe Indian School articulate identities both modern and traditional, and maintain links to the past through native language and culture. Video readings by members of the Spoken Word Club are included.

Bad Economy? HHM Halts Acquisitions

HMH Places “Temporary” Halt on Acquisitions
By Rachel Deahl
Publishers Weekly
November 24, 2008

It’s been clear for months that it will be a not-so-merry holiday season for publishers, but at least one house has gone so far as to halt acquisitions. PW has learned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books.

Josef Blumenfeld, v-p of communications for HMH, confirmed that the publisher has “temporarily stopped acquiring manuscripts” across its trade and reference divisions. The directive was given verbally to a handful of executives and, according to Blumenfeld, is “not a permanent change.” Blumenfeld, who hedged on when the ban might be lifted, said that the right project could still go to the editorial review board. He also maintained that the the decision is less about taking drastic measures than conducting good business… [read the rest here]

Indie Secret Santa

HTML GIANT is playing Secret Santa as a way to support independent literature. Sign up now, and you’re name will be exchanged with another participant. The gift-giving is anything indie lit – subscriptions to magazines, books from indie publishers, a print anthology from online publications, etc. Deadline for getting your name in the exchange is December 5.