Guernica Magazine of Arts and Politics has begun a new membership program – Guernica Commons for readers who want to support the online publication.

Check out these craft essays in the September issue of Brevity – online:

Exploring Intersections: An Exercise in Dismembering and Remembering Selves by Lockie Hunter
A writing exercise that has generated a great deal of excitement in my nonfiction classes is one I call the “self-adjectives” exercise. Its intent – to locate your interests and passions by listing self-descriptors – is similar to Sherry Simpson’s “tiny masters” exercise (Brevity craft essay, Issue 28) and rarely failed to spawn enthusiastic responses…until I began teaching at Warren Wilson College.

The Wonder of Geese by Bryan Furuness
One of the worst teachers I ever had was a man named Sam, who led my first writing workshop in graduate school. He used to stop class whenever geese flew past the window. “Geese!” he’d say, interrupting whoever was speaking, even if it was himself. The class would look dutifully at the geese, and some ass-kisser would say, “Wow,” or, “That’s really something, how they V up.” By the time we’d get back to the discussion, Sam would have forgotten what we’d been talking about, and everyone else would pretend to have forgotten, too. But not me.

Q&A: Using Tension and the Narrative Arc by Brendan O’Meara
An interview with Thomas French, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives, on the challenges of long-form journalism and how the writer uses tension in the story to create a dramatic narrative.

From Poet Educator Activist Cara Benson:

Looking for creative works/projects in community. Creating a line of study, here. Please send all suggestions my way (cbenson67[at]yahoo[dot]com). Examples include: Kaia Sand’s Portland poetry walks, Claudia Rankine’s Provenance of Beauty, Tree Museum in the Bronx. Also, artmaking/writing with community.

Interventions.
Re-inventions.
Decorations.
Instigations.
And just plain old creation, in situ. Of situ.

Thinking social justice and sustainability. Yes, art and politics. Praxis, please.
I’m very much interested in theory and essays. Even numbers (statistics) on things like poetry reducing recidivism. Creative projects fostering neighborhood ties. Fostering concern for care of community, ecology. Cultural influence on politics. Oh, the Humanities…

[Stay tuned for results – to be shared with NewPages.]

Revisualizing Composition: Mapping the Writing Lives of First-Year College Students

Sherman Alexie’s book remains banned in Stockton, Missouri.

The Thornton Writer Residency, a fourteen-week residency at Lynchburg College, including a stipend, is awarded annually to a fiction writer for the fall term & a poet or creative nonfiction writer for the spring term. The residency also includes housing, some meals, & round trip travel expenses. The writer-in-residence will teach a weekly creative writing workshop, visit classes, & give a public reading. Submit a copy of a previously published book, a curriculum vitae, a cover letter outlining evidence of successful teaching experience, & contact information for three references by October 15, 2010. There is no entry fee. If you would like your book(s) returned, please submit a SASE with sufficient postage. Visit the website for more information.

Oxfam’s list of most donated bestsellers. At least some of them also make the Oxfam Bestsellers list.

The Kentucky Arts Council is offering Teacher Initiated Program grants for short-term artist residencies scheduled to take place in the spring of 2011. These grants give professional artists an opportunity to demonstrate their art forms and provide students and teachers repeated hands-on experiences in the making of art. Artists also collaborate with teachers to design and implement innovative programs that provide the tools to continue utilizing art across the curriculum after the residency is completed. Application Deadline: October 15, 2010

Witness had announced that in 2011, the publication will be “returning to its roots”: in addition to their annual print issue, they will begin publishing two online-only issues each year in May and September. The print issue will be devoted to a single topic, the theme of which will be announced at the opening of their submission period, and the online issues will feature new work of any theme.

“Blurring Borders,” their thematic print issue, will be available in January, followed by an online issue in May and another in September. Then, in January 2012, Witness will publish their next print issue, focused on disaster. New calls for submissions for all of these editions can be found at their web site.

By publishing online-only issues, Witness editor Amber Withycombe say the publication “will be able to cost-effectively share more writing with you and simultaneously grant broader access to the work we publish. We will make no distinction between the quality of the work that appears in our print and online issues, and contributors to each medium will be paid equally. Additionally, all of our online content will be free to readers.”

Zombies are the subject of a new course at University of Baltimore – ENG333 (really? half of 666?). “It’s a back door into a lot of subjects,” Jonathan Shorr, chair of the university’s school of communications design, says. “They think they’re taking this wacko zombie course, and they are. But on the way, they learn how literature and mass media work, and how they come to reflect our times.”

The George Washington University 2011–2012 Jenny McKean Moore Writer-In-Washington (Fiction). An appointment beginning in the fall of 2011 for a writer of fiction to teach two semesters at The George Washington University as the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington.

The successful candidate will teach a small fiction workshop each semester for members of the metropolitan Washington community. No tuition is charged for these workshops, which are not open to University students. The successful candidate will also teach two classes, one each semester, for students at The George Washington University.

This position is funded by an endowment from the Jenny McKean Moore Fund for Writers. The late Jenny McKean Moore, who had been a playwriting student at The George Washington University, left in trust a fund to encourage creative writing, & the trustees of the Fund helped design the program. The position is intended to serve as a fellowship for the visiting writer, since it involves only a moderate teaching load, & the program’s location at a university in the center of Washington should offer additional attractions for the writer.

The writer must have significant publications (fiction published by a well regarded press) & a demonstrated commitment to teaching. Like students in the community workshops, the writer need not have conventional academic credentials. He or she should reside in the Washington area while the University is in session, 1 September through early May. The historic Lenthall House, a 4-story Federal-era townhouse on campus, is normally available to the visiting writer through a subsidized rental agreement. The salary for 2011–2012 is expected to be $58,000 plus an attractive benefits package.

To be considered, applications for the 2011–2012 Writer-in-Washington position must be made by letter, indicating publications & other projects, extent of teaching experience, & other qualifications. The application must also include a resume & a selection of published fiction. Applicants are encouraged to send a book as their sample. Books will be returned if accompanied by an appropriate SASE. Only complete applications will be considered.

Review of all applications will begin on November 1, 2010 & will continue until the position is filled.

Applications should be sent to: Professor Gayle Wald, Chair, Department of English, 801 22nd St., NW (Suite 760), The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052.

Psychologist studying “emerging adulthood” of 18-to-20-something characterize by five features, according to Clark University psychologist Jeffery Arnett: identity exploration, instability, feeling in-between, a sense of possibilities and self-focus. Sarah Barmak explores this new area of study looking at characters in literature, authors, and supporting cultural influences: Why 30 is the New 20.

“Nancy Spero’s Torture of Women is an epic work. Two years in the making, it’s composed of fourteen panels and totals 125 feet. Juxtaposing image and text, Spero collaged imagery drawn from ancient mythology with hand-printed and typewritten words. She collected first person testimony culled from Amnesty International reports, news items on women missing or dead, definitions of torture from the twentieth and thirteenth centuries, as well as the retelling of violent Sumerian and Babylonian creation myths, such as Tiamat being disemboweled by Marduk to create the heavens. Completed in 1976, and published this spring by Siglio Press, Torture of Women bears witness to what is often officially denied or left unspoken. It reveals the presence of the silent consensus, which allows the violence to be state-sanctioned and eternally mythologized.” Guernica Magazine

“A federal judge has declared unconstitutional a Virginia prison policy that denies inmates access to classic literature with sexually explicit passages but allows them to peruse Playboy magazine…Prison officials argued that sexually explicit materials ‘are considered valuable currency and used in bartering’ by inmates, and that the possession of such items can lead to theft and fights.” [Larry O’Dell, AP]

Intensive Learning Term poet-in-residence program, from 30 April to 18 May 2012: 2012 Sandburg-Auden-Stein Residency.

During the 2012 Intensive Learning Term, the Olivet College Humanities Department will offer its sixth poet-in-residence position. The Sandburg-Auden-Stein poet will live on or near campus and teach ENG 247: Poetry Writing. The Sandburg-Auden-Stein poet will also host two public events: a public reading of his or her work and a stand-alone talk/discussion on a subject of his or her choice (publishing poetry, beat poets, def poetry, etc.).

An award of $3,100 (plus room and board) will be given to the 2012 poet. The Humanities Department faculty will evaluate the submissions and choose the winner. Poets who have published at least one book of poetry are eligible.

Submissions are due on Sept. 10, 2010, and should include the following: five poems from your most recent book, a single page personal statement regarding your poetics and teaching, a current résumé and two references. There is no entry fee. Please contact Kirk Hendershott-Kraetzer, Ph.D., Humanities Department chair, with your questions at (269) 749-7621 or khendershottkraetzer(at)olivetcollege(dot)edu

Electronic applications are strongly encouraged: .rtf, .doc, .docx formats accepted, .pdf preferred. Send to khendershottkraetzer(at)olivetcollege(dot)edu with “Residency application” indicated in the subject line.

Application materials also may be sent by regular mail to:
Sandburg-Auden-Stein Residency
Office of the Dean
Olivet College
320 S. Main St.
Olivet, MI 49076

Editors Paul Ruffin and William Wright now seek submissions for the fifth volume in the series THE SOUTHERN POETRY ANTHOLOGY, featuring Georgia poets. The anthology will be published by Texas Review Press in 2012.

If you are a Georgia native, or if you have lived in Georgia for more than one year at any time, please feel free to send up to five poems for consideration. This anthology is not limited to those who have published before; first-time submitters are invited as well as those who have had full-length poetry books published by national presses. The only rules: Poems must be original and of high quality.

The editors will consider formal poems and free verse, as well as hybrid forms like prose poems. Poems about Georgia are not necessarily championed over other motifs and themes, as the editors wish for the “sense of place” to manifest in different ways, with different voices.

Please note that the success of this anthology depends a great deal on word of mouth. Notify your poetry students, poetry-writing friends, and gifted nemeses of this opportunity.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

Please submit your poems to the Series Editor and Volume Editor, William Wright, at vercimber-at-hotmail-dot-com. Please type “Georgia Poetry Submission” in your subject heading, then include your first and last names in parentheses. For example: Georgia Poetry Submission (William Wright). Unfortunately, snail-mail submissions are not possible given the nature of our editing process.

Please include a short cover letter within the text of the e-mail, as well as names of the poems submitted. Submit a maximum of five poems, and ensure that the poems are sent in .rtf (Rich Text Format), .doc (World 97-03), or .docx (Word 2007) format. Please include all submitted poems in only one attachment (this is important).

All submissions should include a brief bio (up to 150 words) after the poems and on a separate page. Please italicize names of publications.

The editors welcome both new and previously published work. However, if poems have been previously published, submitters must hold rights to them and provide full publication data (journal and/or book publisher, title of book/journal if applicable, date of publication). Finally, please make sure that each submission includes a preferred e-mail address and street mailing address within the text of the e-mail and on at least one page of the attached submission.

Submission Deadline: NOVEMBER 30 (Early submissions encouraged!)

Back in the old days of Internet, used to be that you would write to someone whose site you admire and ask them to consider linking to your site. You would have already posted a link to that other site on yours because you were showing them that you admired and respected their work; you would like to think the feeling could be mutual. If it was, great, if not – eh, no big deal.

So why is it I get so many requests from people asking us to list them on NewPages, and when I visit their site – no link to NewPages? I do see links to other sites, but none to ours. Has there been a shift in polite protocol for link requests? Are links now held for ransom, or more a tit for tat procedure – IF you link to me, THEN I’ll link to you – ?

I know that’s not how we do it at NewPages. If we discover a site that we like and don’t have listed – well, by golly, we list it, then we let the person know we’ve listed it. We don’t hold the link for “exchange ransom.” If we’re linked back – that’s great – but we must still be of the totally old school that just likes to link and let folks know we appreciate what they do. Not only that, but we continue to check our links on a regular basis, since often times sites change or disappear or discontinue without letting their link pals know. So we manage and maintain all of these links ourselves. We do it because we know our readers depend on us for this. Decent links to decent sites.

So, how ’bout it – can we bring back this decency somehow in link requests?

From the folks at Oxford Fajar via Oxford University Press: Save the Words, where you can “adopt” unused, unloved, and unwanted words such words as veprecose, obarmate, and buccellation – along with hundreds more. You can also sign up for a word-a-day and find helpful suggestions on how to help spread the word. All for free.

Newly released: The 35th episode of the PoemTalk series. This is a 25-minute audio podcast program, a discussion of Bruce Andrews’s “Center” from Moebius. The PoemTalkers this time are Tan Lin, Sarah Dowling, and Chris Funkhouser.

PoemTalk is a co-production of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, the Kelly Writers House, and the Poetry Foundation.

Next time PoemTalk will be on the road, in Chicago, talking with three Chicagoans about Jennifer Scappettone’s rewriting of H.D.

Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware Blog takes on Pay-Per-Review resources, with a clear focus on PW’s new ‘feature’: PW Select: Opportunity of Exploitation?

From Jezebel online: Ten Lesbian & Bisexual Poets To Fall in Love With – complete with sidebar links to each and some great additional materials posted in the comments section.

Hear the one about the six-year-old who landed a million-dollar book deal? Well, Victoria Strauss over at Writer Beware Blog heard about it and thought it sounded a bit fishy, thus her follow-up: How the Media Gets It Wrong.