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!
The Classic Reader website went live on March 29, 2000. It was originally a sub-section of Swishweb.com that grew large enough to merit a separate site. The Classic Reader website is published by Blackdog Media, a one-person company run by Stephane Theroux, in British Columbia, Canada, and include out-of-copyright books. All content can be read online, but downloads require free registration.
“Chris Fair has dined with soldiers in the Khyber Pass and with prostitutes in Delhi, rummaged for fish in Jaffna, and sipped Taliban tea in Peshawar. Cuisines of the Axis of Evil is a sophisticated, fun, and provocative cookbook with easy-to-follow recipes from both America’s traditional enemies in foreign policy—including Iran, Iraq, and North Korea—and friends of the U.S. who are nonetheless irritating by any measure. In addition, each country section includes all the smart, acerbic geopolitical nuggetry you need to talk the talk with the best of them. Recipes include Iranian chicken in a walnut pomegranate stew, Iraqi kibbe, and North Korean spicy cucumber, as well as special teas, mango salads, beverage suggestions, and much more.”
The 50 Things That Every Comics Collection Truly Needs
The Comics Reporter
September 28, 2008
Each of the fifty come with full descriptions, examples and links. Here’s the first three:
1. Something From The ACME Novelty Library
2. A Complete Run Of Arcade
3. Any Number Of Mini-Comics
Sweet: A Literary Confection is an online literary magazine that publishes poetry, creative nonfiction, and anything that blurs the lines of those two genres. The inagural issue includes poetry by Brian Baumgart, Carol Berg, KJ Grimmick, Luisa A. Igloria, Stephen Kuusisto and “Creative Nonfiction and Stuff” by Jon Chopan, Lee Martin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Donna Steiner. The next issue will appear in January 2009 and is open for submissions. And, be sure to heed the editor’s note: “Please remember to eat chocolate every day.”
Founded by John Buckman, BookMooch is an online community for exchanging used books. You give a book and earn points, then use your points to get books you want from someone else on BookMooch. There’s no cost to join; you are responsible for paying the postage when you mail your books to someone else, but that’s it. BookMooch might make some money from users who click over to Amazon to buy books, but other than that, it’s yet another labor of love. You can donate points to charities – and there’s a long list of them – lots of prison outreach programs, which is great to see. You can also request to have a charity listed with them. International exchanges are also welcome. There’s lots more to it, and lots more info on the site (including statistics, which indicate that there have been nearly a million books mooched in the past year!).
The Literary Bird Journal
Avian Life Literary Arts
From The LBJ website: The LBJ is a biannual publication dedicated to birds and creative writing. Its title is drawn from the acronym for “little brown job,” used by birders to describe those difficult-to-identify species, such as many sparrows.
While there are popular magazines (Audubon), scientific journals (The Auk), and other newsletters about birds, The LBJ is a uniquely literary venue, publishing creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, narrative scholarship, and literary journalism of the feathered variety. Additionally, the journal showcases visual art in a full-color insert.
Small, plaintive, and aspiring, The LBJ comes to you in 5.5″ x 8.5″ format that is just the right size to carry into the field alongside your binoculars.
Currently accepting submissions for the 2009 Urb Bird Contest as well as for future publications.
An entertaing look – perhaps last look? – at words on the chopping block:
How you can help to save some cherished words from oblivion
Jack Malvern
From The Times
September 22, 2008
“It may appear agrestic to ask, but The Times is calling on its readers to come to the rescue of words that risk fading into caliginosity.
“Dictionary compilers at Collins have decided that the word list for the forthcoming edition of its largest volume is embrangled with words so obscure that they are linguistic recrement. Such words, they say, must be exuviated abstergently to make room for modern additions that will act as a roborant for the book…” [read the rest here – including a short list of the words being considered]
Beltway Poetry Quarterly‘s first all-audio issue, co-edited by Kim Roberts and Katie Davis, is now available online. The issue includes collaborations between poets and musicians, recordings produced over layers of sound, and “naked” tracks of poets with distinctive voices that lend themselves particularly well to the audio format.
Contributors, Volume 9, Number 4 (Fall 2008):
Karren L. Alenier * Holly Bass * Regie Cabico * Kenneth Carroll * Joel Dias-Porter * Thomas Sayers Ellis * Brian Gilmore * Michael Gushue * Bernie Jankowski * Rod Jellema * Fred Joiner * Reb Livingston * Greg McBride * May Miller * Miles David Moore * Yvette Neisser Moreno * Gaston Neal * Richard Peabody * Mark Tarallo * Hilary Tham
Uncle Sam Has Bigger Problems
By Ulrich Baron
Spiegel Online International
October 2, 2008
Horace Engdahl of the Nobel Prize committee doesn’t think American authors are good enough for the world’s top literary honor. His comments are laughable, but they will certainly draw more attention to the awards this year.
Horace Engdahl, the secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy, thinks US authors are overrated.
For all the people who have incorrectly predicted for years that the next Noble Prize in literature would go to Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon or some other American, it’s now come time to face reality. That’s because Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Nobel Prize selection committee, has revealed why American authors have no chance in Stockholm. In his opinion, American writers are “too insular,” “too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture” and too ignorant to write good books. And Engdahl claims to know the reason behind their narrow-mindedness, too: “They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.” [read the rest here]
Exclusive interview with Margaret Atwood
Tom Gatti meets the author to discuss debt in her latest book Payback
Times Online
September 26, 2008
Borrowers and Lenders, winner of the CELJ Best New Journal Award in 2007, is a peer-reviewed, online, multimedia Shakespeare journal (http://www.borrowers.uga.edu). The journal is indexed in the MLA Bibliography, World Shakespeare Bibliography, and other databases. General Editors: Christy Desmet and Sujata Iyengar; Associate Editor: Robert Sawyer; Assistant Editor: David Schiller.
The inaugural issue of grain short/grain long is now available, featuring excellent work by Suzanne Grazyna, Virginia Reeves, Elizabeth Kate Switaj, & C. R. E. Wells in response to the theme “grain short/grain long.” Available online as well as pdf download. The next issue will center around the theme “Collaboration / Stimulus / Response.” Looking for works that collaborate with, are stimulated by, &/or respond to other writers & artists.
From Ren at Protest Poems Org:
“protestpoems.org is a quarterly journal devoted entirely to poetry that tackles human rights issues. It is a politically targeted extension of the online journal Babel Fruit: Writing Under the Influence. Retooled and relaunching in December 2008, the journal will strive to present the best poems of protest written to promote freedom of speech and human rights. Our aim is to raise awareness of general and specific issues, and hopefully inspire activism in the form of written protests.”
The site includes a list of countries and the realted stories where writers are currently under persecution, including:
Nigeria – Reporter receives death threats from church members, asks security service for protection
United States – State Department to issue visas to two Cuban correspondents
France – Two regional newspapers raided
Sri Lanka – Military spokesperson asks newspaper to change photo caption
Burma – Journalist and opposition member Ohn Kyaing arrested again
Volume 1 of Protest Poems will be dedicated to Russian website owner Magomed Yevloyev, who was shot in the head August 31, 2008 while in police custody. Yevloyev maintained an opposition website (ingushetiya.ru) that has been fiercely critical of the Ingushetian leadership.
From NPR: Poet, editor, essayist and novelist Hayden Carruth died this week at the age of 87. Carruth won the National Book Award in 1996 for his collection, “Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey.” He was no stranger to awards, but they don’t often pay the rent, and Carruth spent much of his career poor. He struggled with alcoholism and a nervous breakdown — experiences that were central to his poetry. [via Dawn Potter]
DC’s Olsson’s Books Closes
by Calvin Reid
Publishers Weekly
September 30, 2008
Olsson’s Books and Records has filed for liquidation under the chapter 7 bankruptcy laws and has closed its doors after 36 years selling books in the Washington D.C. area. All five of its current Washington D.C.-area stores have been closed. The firm applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July with plans to reorganize and cut costs by closing some of its stores. But a combination of low sales and rising rent was more than the DC metro-area indie chain could overcome…[read the rest here]
Sponsored by the English Department of Columbia College Chicago in conjunction with the Office of the Provost, The Beat Generation Symposium will include academic panel discussions, a lecture and performance titled “Deaf/Def Poets and the Beats,” and readings of poetry by Joanne Kyger (October 10, 7:00 p.m.) and Michael McClure (October 11, 7:00 p.m.).
The symposium is part of a two-month college-wide initiative at Columbia College, during which time the first draft of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road will be on display at the Center for Book and Paper Arts, 1104 South Wabash, on the second floor.
Kerouac typed the draft on a 120-foot-long scroll during a 20-day marathon session in the mid-’50s. The manuscript is a single, continuous scroll of semi-translucent paper that is nine inches wide. Kerouac created the scroll by pasting and taping separate 12-foot-long strips, then feeding them through his typewriter so he could write without interruption.
This event is co-sponsored by Columbia’s Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, Illinois State University English Department and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Beat Studies Association. Conference Director: Tony Trigilio, Columbia College Chicago
Narrative Magazine congratulates Alexi Zentner, winner for his story “Trapline” and Michael Dickman, winner for his poem “Returning to Church”. Both can be read online at Narrative Magazine.
The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates 1973–1982
by Joyce Carol Oates
Edited by Greg Johnson
HarperCollins, October 14, 2008
“The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, edited by Greg Johnson, offers a rare glimpse into the private thoughts of this extraordinary writer, focusing on excerpts written during one of the most productive decades of Oates’s long career. Far more than just a daily account of a writer’s writing life, these intimate, unrevised pages candidly explore her friendship with other writers, including John Updike, Donald Barthelme, Susan Sontag, Gail Godwin, and Philip Roth. It presents a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young woman, fully engaged with her world and her culture, on her way to becoming one of the most respected, honored, discussed, and controversial figures in American letters.”
Find out, according to Forbes.
Ahhhh… David always provides me with a sense of relief, regardless of what’s going on in the world, and at the same time, a sense of total connect to what’s going on in the world.
University of Northern Colorado Assistant Professor of English: Creative Writing. Nov 1.
University of Northern Colorado Assistant Professor of English, Creative Writing. Nov 1.
University of Pittsburgh. Nonfiction Writing, tenure-track, to teach undergraduate & MFA students. David Bartholomae, Professor & Chair, Department of English. Nov 1.
Loyola University Chicago. The Department of English invites applications for a tenure-track position in English (Creative Writing-Poetry) at the rank of Assistant Professor, beginning fall 2009. Dr. Joyce Wexler, Chair, Department of English. Dec 1.
The Adirondack Review is currently offering three to four unpaid college internships in the form of editorial assistant positions for interested students. Applications accepting on a rolling basis.
Bowling Green State University English Department seeks strong applicants for the College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Visiting Writer for 2010. Screening of applicants will begin March 16, 2009 & continue until the position is filled. Kristine Blair, Chair, English Department.
Department of English at Harvard University invites applications for an appointment, to begin July 1, 2009, as Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on Fiction. James Engell, Chair, Department of English. Jan 5, 2009.
Ohio University Assistant Professor Creative Writing: Non-Fiction.
“Narrative is calling on writers, visual artists, photographers, performers, and filmmakers, ages eighteen to thirty, to tell us a story. We are interested in narrative in the many forms it takes: the word and the image, the traditional and the innovative, the true and the imaginary.”
This is a no-fee contest, limited to two submissions, deadline Sept 20 – Oct 27.
Julie Miller Vick and Jennifer S. Furlong of the Chronicle of Higher Education are back again this year with The CV Doctor. Sample CVs for different disciplines are available on the site with notes linking their feedback to specific areas on each. Worth a look for those prepping to send out CVs – or those still trying to break through the first round.
The 31st annual conference of ALTA, the American Literary Translators Association, will be held at the Radisson University Hotel on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus on October 15 – 18, 2008. The conference will feature panels, readings, a book exhibit, and other events concerned with the art and craft of literary translation.
Announcing the first Woodrow Hall Award, an offshoot of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program. This award will be given to a Wisconsin poet who has actively contributed to Wisconsin’s literary landscape, and will include five-hundred ($500.00) dollars to implement an idea for a new poetry program or project. The winner must execute their idea in 2009. No entry fee. Multiple entries from same poet welcome. Entry deadline: December 15th, 2008
2008 Wellness & Writing Connections Conference
October 10-11, 2008
Atlanta, GA
“Writing about stressful situations is one of the easiest ways for people to take control of their problems and release negative effects of stress from their bodies and their lives. This conference is a call for writers and other professionals to collaborate and to help people find ways to help themselves and their students, clients, and patients.” Dr. James Pennebaker
The 2008 Wellness & Writing Connections Conference attracts people who see therapeutic value in writing memoirs, fiction, creative non fiction, poetry and drama.
Research shows that the heart rate lowers and people are more equipped to fight off infections when they release their worries in writing. In addition to coping better with stressful situations, writing can have positive impact on self-esteem and result in works that can help others overcome their own obstacles.
This first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary conference series brings writers and professionals from different specialties together to explore the connection between overall health and expressive writing as a therapeutic practice.
Payback
Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
House of Anansi Press, November 2008
Publisher Description: Payback is not a book about practical debt management or high finance, although it does touch upon these subjects. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. By investigating how debt has informed our thinking from preliterate times to the present day through the stories we tell each other, through our concepts of “balance,” “revenge,” and “sin,” and in the way we form our social relationships, Atwood shows that the idea of what we owe one another – in other words, “debt” – is built into the human imagination and is one of its most dynamic metaphors.
Margaret Atwood’s old-fashioned approach to debt
Interveiw by Sinclair Stewart
GlobeInvestor.com
Friday, September 26, 2008
4000 WORDS 4000 DEAD
street performance by Jennifer Karmin
Friday, October 3rd
Chicago, IL
5pm beginning in front of the Vietnam War Memorial at Wabash and Wacker Avenues along the Chicago River
Jennifer Karmin has been collecting 4000 WORDS for the 4000 DEAD Americans in Iraq. All words are being used to create a public poem. During street performances, she gives away these words to passing pedestrians. Submissions are ongoing as the Iraq War continues and the number of dead grows. Send 1-10 words with subject 4000 WORDS to jkarmin-at-yahoo.com.
“I want to start with the milestone today of 4,000 dead in Iraq. Americans. And just what effect do you think it has on the country?”
— Martha Raddatz,
ABC News’ White House correspondent
to Vice President Dick Cheney
Participants include:
Harold Abramowitz, Amanda Ackerman, Manan Ahmed, Michael Basinski, Charles Bernstein, Anselm Berrigan, Laynie Browne, Teresa Carmody, Maxine Chernoff, Catherine Daly, Patrick Durgin, Arielle Greenberg, Kate Greenstreet, Carla Harryman, David Hernandez, Jen Hofer, Pierre Joris, Matthew Klane, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Joyelle McSweeney, Philip Metres, Vanessa Place, Susan Schultz, Juliana Spahr, Stacy Szymaszek, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Andrew Zawacki, and many more.
Publisher Who Fought Puritanism, and Won
By Charles McGrath
New York Times
September 23, 2008
In its heyday during the 1960s, Grove Press was famous for publishing books nobody else would touch. The Grove list included writers like Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, Che Guevara and Malcolm X, and the books, with their distinctive black-and-white covers, were reliably ahead of their time and often fascinated by sex.
The same was, and is, true of Grove’s maverick publisher, Barney Rosset, who loved highbrow literature but also brought out a very profitable line of Victorian spanking porn.
On Nov. 19 Mr. Rosset will receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation in honor of his many contributions to American publishing, especially his groundbreaking legal battles to print uncensored versions of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” He is also the subject of “Obscene,” a documentary by Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor, which opens on Friday at Cinema Village. [read the rest here]
Special thanks to Tom Chandler over at the Trout Underground for his recent review of David Fraser’s first book of poetry, Killing Trout and Other Love Poems (NewPages Press, 2008). Among his comments, Chandler likens Fraser’s work to that of John Gierach:
“The result is a collection of sharp, all-literary-encumbrances-removed poems that reminded me of John Gierach’s little-seen, pre-Trout Bum Signs of Life poetry collection. Fraser doesn’t burden his poems with overripe metaphor or literary pretense. His is the art of carving away all that isn’t essential, and the result is a series of visceral glimpses into a life lived largely outdoors.”
He definitely “got it.”
Eugene Marten's second novel Waste will entrance you from the very first page, drawing you in with its tight, evocative language and magnificent pacing. For the first third of the book, you'd be excused if you thought that all you were getting was a wonderfully written but generally quiet book about a creepy janitor working late nights in a high-rise office building. You'd be wrong, but your mistake would be understandable, and quickly rectified: What follows is one of the most disturbing stories I've read. Continue reading “Waste”
From the beginning epigraphs to the last grasping on the final page, the sanity-bending, necessarily inadequate search for permanence is clearly foremost in Mark Halliday’s mind. With its nuanced, multi-faceted meditations on those things that matter most, Keep This Forever moves naturally through three sections from the question of mortality, brought on by turning over the death of his father in his mind; to the primary solace for most people, love and passion; until we are finally left with what the blessed few cling to in the end: their art. Continue reading “Keep This Forever”
David Gianatasio’s Mind Games messes with your head, but in the best way possible. A follow-up to 2006’s Swift Kicks, this brief collection of stories grabs you by the jugular. A mutiny of fervent voices bursts from the page, and each story is clever, bold, and off-the-charts surreal. Continue reading “Mind Games”
Crane Cavanaugh is one of the most endearing, strange and exceptional protagonists I have encountered in recent memory. Take the strong opening of the prologue: Continue reading “Salvation”
Readers of David McGlynn’s debut collection The End of the Straight and Narrow should put aside any assumptions they may have about religious fiction and its sometimes evangelical qualities. The stories in this book break away from the generic conventions of Christian literature both in form and content. This is due to the often complicated, expansive nature of each story’s unraveling and the many struggles the characters face regarding faith and morality in a secular culture. Reading this book, one gets the sense that these are stories about pathetic people rather than some allegorical world vision. Unfortunately for McGlynn’s characters, there is no clear difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and this confusion often leads them through some of the darkest moments of their lives. Continue reading “The End of the Straight and Narrow”
In Hesh Kestin’s Based on a True Story, three novellas set during the World War II era take readers on a journey from East Africa to the South Seas to Hollywood. A former foreign correspondent, Kestin peppers his tales with exotic plots and resilient characters.
Continue reading “Based on a True Story”In Ginnetta Correli’s debut novel, The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli, the reader, cast as an audience member, is no less a part of the script than the other offbeat characters. The only stipulation is that our participation is limited solely to watching the scenes play out from Beatie Scareli’s unfortunate life. Written as a pseudo-screenplay, the “cast” includes Beatie’s father, a neglectful man with a strong potential for danger; Beatie’s mother Frata, a schizophrenic who believes she is Lucy Ricardo; Beatie at age 12; Beatie as an adult commenting on scenes from her troubled youth; and the reader, identified simply as “You.” Continue reading “The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli”
In Dominique Fabre’s The Waitress Was New, the narrator Pierre, affectionately known as Pierrounet, is a veteran bartender in the Parisian suburb of Asnières. He is fifty-six and has worked at Le Cercle bistro for 30 years. He spends his days watching people rush to and from the train station, serving his customers, empathizing with them and even, at times, emulating them – a young man in black broods over a beer and Primo Levi and Pierre attempts to read If This Is a Man at home just “to keep up on things.” Continue reading “The Waitress Was New”
Thimbles, nosegays, daguerreotypes, Baudelaire – only the most precious and precocious of objects are presumed to hold value in the culturally saturated world of Donna Stonecipher’s The Cosmopolitan. Borne of an interest in the found-object shadow boxes of artist Joseph Cornell, and built around isolated quotations of renowned poets, writers, and scholars, this 2007 National Poetry Series Winner ponders the reduction of existence to a collection of novelties showcased behind glass. Continue reading “The Cosmopolitan”
Norman Waksler’s second short story collection Signs of Life reveals just that. Throughout these colorful vignettes, the reader detects signs of life, a glimpse of those small elements that illustrate humanity’s solidarity. The six stories tumble through our consciousness, some unearthing a longing for the past or the sweet innocence of first love, others revealing the inevitable regret that stems from apathy and the dull disappointment of the typical workday. Continue reading “Signs of Life”
Translated from Czechoslovakian by the noted curator, producer and journalist Marek Tomin, Emil Hakl’s Of Kids and Parents received a Magnesia Litera Book of the Year award in 2003 and has been made into a feature film. With the English version debuting this year from the Prague-based publisher Twisted Spoon Press, this engrossing book is worth checking out. Continue reading “Of Kids and Parents”
Did you hear the one about the guy acquitted of rape who wanted to change his name to Edmond Dantes? The law trumps literary symbolism in this one – the judge ruled his “desire to distance himself” from the charges did not take precedence over the public’s right to identify him with the drug and misdemeanor charges that did stick. Oh, so, not quite as wrongfully charged as the Count of Monte Cristo…
Books address racism as it affects daily lives of Indians
By Jodi Rave of the Missoulian
BillingsGazette.com
In this article, English literature professors and teachers Heather Bruce, Anna Baldwin and Christabel Umphrey discuss Alexie’s paradox of “Indians hating Indians” and how they teach his work to students in the classroom.
The book by Alexie referenced in the article:
Sherman Alexie in the Classroom
“This is not a silent movie. Our voices will save our lives.”
Authors: Heather E. Bruce, Anna E. Baldwin, Christabel Umphrey
Published by NCTE, 2008
Montana State Univeristy
The University of the Yellowstone’s Literature and Arts Conference 2008
November 14 – 16, 2008
Montana State University ~ Bozeman
READ THIS: Montana State University’s Literature and Arts Publication is now accepting papers for its inaugural undergraduate academic conference: critical essays, creative non-fiction, original poetry, fiction, drama/screenplays, or panel proposals. Theme: “Germinate and Cultivate,” a subject of origins and developments.
Tentative Outline of Conference Schedule
Friday 11/14/08 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. — Welcome Session on campus with live jazz, hors d’oeuvres, and introductions
Saturday 11/15/08 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. — Check-in continues
Panel presentations on the MSU Campus
12 p.m. to 2 p.m. — Lunch workshop, lunch provided
2 p.m. to 6 p.m. — Panels/workshops on the MSU Campus
6 p.m. to 9 p.m. — Evening banquet with open mic, music
Sunday 11/16/08 Closing Ceremonies
Chronicle loses its books editors
By Will Harper
Published on September 24, 2008
If you’re one of the few people still reading newspapers, you’ve probably figured out this truism: Print media is screwed. You know this because you’ve read several stories in newspapers about newspapers suffering declining circulation, revenues, and relevance in the Internet age.
Will Harper on McMahon departs from the ChronicleAnother more subtle manifestation of the print-media-is-screwed trend is the scaling back of book reviews in newspapers. Until recently, our very own San Francisco Chronicle was one of only a handful of dailies in the country to maintain a stand-alone books section. That sorta changed in April, when the Chron made its Sunday books “section” an insert in the Insight section…
[Read the rest on the SFWeekly.com.]
Hey, don’t shoot me, I’m just the blogger, but in his Guardian Unlimited article (8/24/08), “Is e-literature just one big anti-climax?” – Andrew Gallix takes on the rhetorical question with a resounding yes. But not for fault of F-style online reading, or further laments of lack of reading overall; rather, for e-lit’s own delivery: “Technology – the very stuff e-lit is made of – has also turned out to be its Achilles heel. The slow switch to broadband limits its potential audience, e-readers are only adapted to conventional texts – and when was the last time you curled up in bed with a hypertext?”
He doesn’t, however, throw out the computer with the bathwater. Instead, he poses what might be a kind of “skipped generation” of e-lit: “In spite of all this, Amerika may well be on to something when [Chris Meade, director of the thinktank if:book] claims that we are witnessing the emergence of a ‘digitally-processed intermedia art’ in which literature and all the other arts are being ‘remixed into yet other forms still not fully developed’. My feeling is that these ‘other forms’ will have less and less to do with literature. Perhaps e-lit is already dead?”
For full effect, read the rest on Guardian.uk.
The Third Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival (CCAF3) takes place October 1-12, 2008, featuring Chicago-based artists collaborating in performances and projects with artists living in other locations — both here in the U.S. and abroad. These collaborations will be prepared or improvised, and some performances will involve live feeds between Chicago and elsewhere.
Among the scheduled projects are: a Chicago-based musician/composer collaborating with a composer from the Philippines, Chicago-based poets connecting over the radio with poets from Hawaii, and a Chicago-based musician collaborating with a British visual artist. Venues for CCAF3 will include Elastic Sound & Vision Gallery, The Velvet Lounge, Black Rock Pub & Kitchen, Heaven Gallery, Little Black Pearl Art & Design Center, WNUR (Northwestern University), Peter Jones Gallery, 32nd&Urban Gallery, AV- aerie, Café Mestizo, and other locations.
The Grand Piano
Saturday, October 4, 3:00 PM
The Wendell W. Anderson, Jr., Auditorium Walter B. Ford II Building College for Creative Studies
John R & Frederick Douglass Streets, Detroit
Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Kit Robinson, and Barrett Watten perform an ensemble reading from The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography San Francisco, 1975 – 1980
Followed by a publication party & Grand Piano book display.
The Grand Piano is an experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers identified with the rise of Language poetry in San Francisco. It takes its name from a coffeehouse at 1607 Haight Street in San Francisco where from 1976 to 1979 the authors participated in a reading and performance series.
Free and open to the public
NewPages Literary Multimedia Guide – Podcasts, videos, and audio programs of interest from literary magazines, book publishers, alternative magazines, universities and bloggers. Includes poetry readings, lectures, author interviews, academic forums and news casts. This is a new page under development. If you know of sites that would be relevant for our readers, please e-mail info to: denisehill-at-newpages.com
