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Back to the Future: TKR Adds Letterpress

The Kenyon Review Editor David H. Lynn’s editorial in the newest issue (spring 2010) comments on the “future of literary publishing.” TKR itself went part-digital a while back with KROnline to complement TKR in print, as well as adding a daily blog, online book discussions, and collaborating with JSTOR to complete an electronic archive.

Lynn comments, “It surely would have been easier simply to continue printing this journal four times a year and leave it at that. But I’m convinced that sooner or later, such isolated publications will come to seem anachronisms, curiosities, not vibrant players in the literary community.”

But far from being a full-fledged missive on going digital, Lynn recognizes the continuing place of ink and paper in our lives, its historical relevance, and its place in the lives of future readers and writers, which is why TKR will be launching a small letterpress operation. “Even as we develop literary media for the future, I believe it’s our responsibility to keep the old technologies, teaching our associates where all the current publishing structures originated. Letting them get their hands dirty.”

TKR is planning printing opportunities for their summer program, and looks to add chapbooks and broadsides in the future, “just for the fun of it.”

Flyway Redefining Enviromental Writing & Contest Winners

Flyway: A Journal of Writing and Environment Managing Editor Liz Clift writes: “Flyway begins its 16th year, we reflect on the meaning ‘environment’ takes on for different people. Traditionally, environmental writing refers to writing about nature, often as an advocate of the natural world. With this in mind, it’s easy to view the manmade world as less important and thus deny it a place within the environmental literature canon. However, environmental writing now includes urban and other manmade environments as legitimate components of modern human experience. This issue of Flyway explores both human and nonhuman environments, because we shape the environment that shapes us.”

This issue also features winners of their “Home Voices” writing contest: Kathryn Sukalich (1st place), Kimberly L. Rogers and Rachael Button (honorable mentions), and their “Notes from the Field” writing contest: Cassandra Kircher (1st place) and Gabriel Houck (finalist).

Nominate 40 Under 40: the Future of Feminism

From the Feminist Press:

The Feminist Press is 40 years old in 2010 – what better way to honor the past than by celebrating the future! We are searching for 40 fabulous feminist women and men* to honor as the “40 Under 40” to pay attention to in the future.

Help us choose the women and men of talent and commitment who best represent what feminism is all about: gender equality and social justice.

We are looking for people in all fields: the arts, community organizing, social justice, medicine, law, politics, business, philanthropy, etc. Please be sure to include contact information for your nominee(s).

All 40 honorees will be acknowledged at our 40th anniversary gala at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC on October 18, 2010. And when you send us your nominations, you’ll be entered in a raffle to win a ticket to the gala.

We’ve made history as the world’s oldest continuing feminist publisher. Send us your suggestions for “40 Under 40” and be part of the next 40 years and beyond.

Email your suggestions to Maryann Jacob Macias, Development Manager: mjacob-at-gc.cuny-dot-edu by Friday, May 14.

*Most of our honorees come from the northeast U.S. We wish we could fly people in from further away. Please donate if you can, to help us honor women and men from around the U.S. www.feministpress.org/support-us

Inkwell 2010 Contest Winners

Manhattanville College’s Inkwell Spring 2010 features a number of winners of their 2010 competition:

Poetry Winner: Starkey Flythe
Honorable Mention: Jim Knowles
Notable Finalists: Phillis Levin, Rachel Michaud, Dan Preniszni, Alinda Wasner (Fall 2010)

Fiction Winner: Aram Kim
Honorable Mention: E. B. Moore
Notable Finalists: Joan Corwin (Fall 2010), Starkey Flythe (Fall 2010), Daniel Austin Warren

Elizabeth McCormack Master of Arts in Writing Poetry Winner: Kristina Bicher
Elizabeth McCormack Master of Arts in Writing Fiction Winner: Terry Dugan

How Did You Meet?

Ploughshares, Spring 2010, edited by Elizabeth Strout, opens with her introduction, not just to this issue of the journal, but to Journals. She writes of her first awkward year away at college, where (like so many of us) she believed others to be so much more confident, comfortable, and learned. She slinks into the library and dashes to the first stacks, the periodical section, where she finds familiar magazines: “But I found a whole row of other things. Journals, some thick, others quite thin, lay on a tilting shelf with their faces toward me. Some had colorful covers, some had very simple and unassuming covers. Inside them–the type pressed into the paper, so that even touching them brought a certain thrill–I found story after story, poem after poem. Who knew? I had not known.”

Do you remember discovering literary magazines? It seems most of us do not know them until our college years, and often times by accident. I have made it my “mission” as a teacher to introduce my students to literary magazines, to make the introduction formal, purposeful, and as often as possible. To put a magazine into a young reader’s hands and say, “Read this, I’d like to know what you think of it.” And to be rewarded, time and again, as I was the time I put a copy of Agni into a student’s hands. She returned next class, looking at me wild-eyed, and said, “I never knew writing like this existed.”

And it is to the credit of editors as much as writers that this kind of writing “exists” and can be put into the hands of readers of all ages. New Red Cedar Review Managing Editors Ashley Luster and Emily Wollner comment: “As we embraced our roles as managing editors of Red Cedar Review, the journal that we had grown to love over the past few years, we made it a priority to define the nature of the material with which we were working. What does it mean exactly to be a literary journal? Associated commonly with dusty library tomes and complex pleonastic prose, the ‘L’ word is one that often frightens away people who lie outside of its writing communities and seemingly elite social circles. It seems, though, that the literary merit of a creative piece is not necessarily a consequence of its form or its language, but is something that lies within the way these factors work in tandem to present an idea. In this way, we strove to expand the definition of literary in this issue of RCR to include any spark of creativity that lends itself to ink and paper.”

Knockout LGBTQ Youth Suicide

Knockout is doing its part to fight suicide in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth population. Five percent of the proceeds from sales of the Spring 2010 (3.1) issue will go to The Trevor Project, which operates the only nationwide, around-the-clock crisis and suicide prevention helpline for LGBTQ youth. For more information, visit thetrevorproject.org.

Film :: Brontë Bonnet Dramas Forthcoming

From the TimesOnline: BBC Films, with the American company Focus Features, is first out of the traps. Jane Eyre is five weeks into a nine-week shoot in Derbyshire. Film4’s Wuthering Heights, made with Ecosse Films, the British company behind Nowhere Boy, is scheduled to start filming in Yorkshire next month…Alison Owen, the producer of Jane Eyre (and mother of the singer Lily Allen), said: “There is something about the current situation that the world finds itself in where the Brontës more suit the mood of the moment [than Austen]. Jane Austen is a lighter cut than the Brontës, who are much more brooding and bleak.”

Bellevue Literary Review Prize 2010 Winners

Bellevue Literary Review, Spring 2010, features the 2010 BLR Prize Winners in this, the fifth year of the literary competition. Selected from over 900 submissions by judges Phillip Lopate, Tony Hoagland, and Gail Godwin, the Marcia and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry was awarded to Amanda Auchter, the winner of the Carter V. Cooper Memorial Prize for Nonfiction was awarded to Joan Kip (Mark Holden, Honorable Mention), and the winner of the Goldenberg Prize for Fiction was awarded to Larry Hill.

Art :: Kara Walker

Visit The Georgia Review to view silhouette art by Kara Walker, featured both online and in the newest issue (Spring 2010). From the portfolio introduction:

Critics have assigned labels ranging from “provocative” to “exploitative” to Walker’s overall project. At the crux of this controversy is the silhouette itself, which reduces a subject to the least possible amount of information and forces the viewer to rely on stereotypical hints—clothing, hairstyle, exaggerated physical characteristics—leading toward two-dimensional “truths” that make explicit the work’s deep sense of ambiguity. Viewers must become (discomfortingly) reductionist themselves; Walker offers no choice but to understand and then implicitly to accept the stereotypes in order to identify her characters.

Ruminate Short Story Prize Winners

The spring 2010 issue of Ruminate (issue 15) features winners of the 2010 Short Story Prize, as judged by David James Duncan. First prize winner Shann Ray’s story, “The Miracles of Vincent Van Gogh,” and honorable mention Nels Hanson’s story, “Now the River’s In You,” both appear in this issue. “Nothing to Fear,” by Susann Childress received second prize, and publication will be forthcoming.

2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winners Announced

2009 Book Prizes Winners:

•Biography: Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (W.W. Norton & Co.)

•Current Interest: Dave Eggers, Zeitoun (McSweeney’s Books)

•Fiction: Rafael Yglesias, A Happy Marriage (Scribner)

•Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: Philipp Meyer, American Rust (Spiegel & Grau)

•Graphic Novel: David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp (Pantheon)

•History: Kevin Starr, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950 – 1963 (Oxford University Press)

•Mystery/Thriller: Stuart Neville, The Ghosts of Belfast (SOHO Press)

•Poetry: Brenda Hillman, Practical Water (Wesleyan University Press)

•Science and Technology: Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (Basic Books/Perseus Book Group)

•Young Adult Literature: Elizabeth Partridge, Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary (Viking Children’s Books/Penguin Group)

•Robert Kirsch Award: Evan S. Connell

•Innovator’s Award: Dave Eggers

Passings :: Alan Sillitoe

The Loneliness Of The Long-Distance Runner carried me through many a mile in my life: “Novelist Alan Sillitoe has died at the age of 82, his family said. The Nottingham-born writer, whose novels marked him out as one of the Angry Young Men of British fiction who emerged in the 1950s, died at Charing Cross Hospital in London…”

Glimmer Train New Writers Award

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their Short Story Award for New Writers. This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation greater than 5000. The next Short Story Award competition will take place in May. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Selena Anderson [pictured], of New York, NY, wins $1200 for “Here Come the Brides.” Her story will be published in the Summer 2011 issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Second place: Chase Dearinger, of Edmund, OK, wins $500 for “The Numbskull Piece.”

Third place: Brenna Burns, of New Haven, CT, wins $300 for “River Sans Prière.”

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

Deadline soon approaching!

Family Matters: April 30

This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers for stories about family. Word count should not exceed 12,000. (All shorter lengths welcome.) No theme restrictions. Click here for complete guidelines.

Win a Copy of Annalemma

Annalemma‘s issue six is the magazine’s first themed issue, “Sacrifice,” and features images of a variety of art forms by a variety of artists coupled with each written work featured. Want to free copy? Annalemma will give one away to the winner of their Twitter contest. Followers just need to tweet: “I’d be willing to give up (insert noun here) for the new issue of #Annalemma” The best tweet wins. Deadline: Sunday (4/25) at midnight EST.

The Future of Book Publishing

In case you missed it: Bob Edwards Weekend, April 24-25, 2010, features two interviews of interest to writers and readers, and is part one of a three-part series, so stay tuned!

“Publishing industry visionary Richard Nash, will kick off our series on The Future of Book Publishing. Nash is the former publisher of the independent Soft Skull Press and founder of the new social publishing house Cursor.”

“Peter Brantley is the director of the Bookserver Project at the Internet Archive. As part of our series on the publishing industry, Bob talks with Brantley about the effects of technology on the future of reading, writing, and selling books.”

The program is available for download.

Sonneteering

Beard of Bees shares their celebration of the sonnet in this pdf book: ” These sonnets were presented on the evening of September 2d, 2009 at the RecRoom (Reconstruction Room, for long) the amazing Chicago reading series founded by Eric Cressley, Erin Teegarden, and Della Watson.”

Is Your Blog Lit-Worthy?

From Stephen Knezovich, Associate Editor / Mentoring Director, Creative Nonfiction:

Recently, the NY Times’ Paper Cuts blog ran an interesting piece about whether or not a blog could rise to the level of literature (http://tiny.cc/thr48). Their answer, ultimately, was no, but the editors at Creative Nonfiction are trying to remove this “less-than” tag many ascribe to the form. For the past three years we’ve been featuring blog posts in our publications, and we are currently seeking narrative blog posts to reprint in our next issue (#39: Summer Reading; forthcoming July 2010).

Though it would be great if you passed word along to New Pages’ readers, what we’d really love are nominations from folks, like yourself and the other NP contributors, who are truly plugged into the online literary community, and we hope that you will send us your suggestions.

What we’re looking for: Vibrant new voices with interesting, true stories to tell. Posts must be able to stand alone, 2000 words or fewer, and posted between November 1, 2009 and March 31, 2010. Deadline for nominations is 12 pm EST, Monday, April 26, 2010.

To nominate a blog post or for more info, go here: http://www.creativenonfiction.org/blog/blog_nomination.html

[Pass it on Bloggers.}

Women Writing on Today’s American Family

Submissions are being sought for an anthology about writing and publishing by women with family publication experience. Possible subjects: markets; using life experience; networking; unique issues women must overcome; formal education; queries and proposals; conference participation; self-publishing; teaching tips. Family in creative nonfiction, poetry, short stories, novels.

Practical, concise, how-to articles with bullets/headings have proven the most helpful to readers. Please avoid writing too much about “me” and concentrate on what will help the reader. No previously published, co-written, or simultaneously submitted material.

Foreword by Supriya Bhatnagar, Director of Publications, Editor of The Writer’s Chronicle, Association of Writers & Writing Programs, George Mason University.

Afterword by Dr. Amy Hudock, co-founder of Literary Mama, an on-line literary magazine chosen by Writers Digest as one of the 101 Best Web Sites for Writers.

Co-Editor Colleen S. Harris is a 2010 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her book of poetry, God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark Press, 2009), was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Book Award; These Terrible Sacraments, is forthcoming in 2011. Colleen has a MFA degree in writing and has appeared in The Louisville Review, Wisconsin Review, River Styx, and Adirondack Review, among others. She’s included in Library Journal; and Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages.

Co-Editor Carol Smallwood is a 2009 National Federation of State Poetry Societies award winner included in Who’s Who of American Women who has appeared in Michigan Feminist Studies, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Detroit News. She’s included in Best New Writing in Prose 2009. Her 23rd book is Writing and Publishing: The Librarian’s Handbook (American Library Association, 2010). A chapter of newly published Lily’s Odyssey was short listed for the Eric Hoffer Prose Award.

Please send 3-4 possible topics you would like to contribute each described in a few sentences and a 65-75 word bio using the format like the bio’s above. Please send by May 24, 2010 using FAMILY/your last name on the subject line to [email protected]. You’ll receive a Go-Ahead and guidelines if your topics haven’t been taken. Contributors will be asked to contribute a total of 1900-2100 words. You may contribute one article 1900-2100 words or contribute two articles that combined equal 1900-2100 words. Those included in the anthology will receive a complimentary copy as compensation.

Job :: Waldorf College

Waldorf College seeks a full-time Assistant Professor of English to teach writing and direct first-year composition. A Ph.D. in composition / rhetoric is preferred, though a terminal degree in a closely-related field will be considered with extensive teaching experience and an evidenced passion for teaching first-year students. Responsibilities include directing the first-year composition sequence and (possibly) the campus writing center, as well as teaching developmental writing and composition. A secondary interest in introduction to literature, global literature, advanced composition, writing center tutor training, English secondary education, or online teaching is preferred. The position carries a 4/4 load, with release time depending on duties. Evidence of superior teaching is essential. Position begins August 2010. Review of applications continues until position is filled.

More information about Waldorf College can be obtained at www.waldorf.edu.

Application by persons in under-represented groups is particularly encouraged.

Send letter of application addressing the qualifications above, a current vita, teaching philosophy, teaching evaluation summaries (if available), three letters of recommendation, and copies of graduate transcripts to Dr. Robert Alsop, VPAA, Waldorf College, 106 S. Sixth Street, Forest City, IA 50436 or via e-mail to [email protected].

Jobs

Rowan University Instructor/Assistant Professor, Creative Writing, Full-Time Temporary. May 1

The English Department of Bowling Green State University seeks strong applicants for the College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Visiting Writer. June 14

Teacher & Program Coordinator in Writing for UW-Madison Continuing Studies. Work in a team environment teaching and creating online and in-person workshops. May 7

The Liberal Arts Department at D’Youville College is seeking an Assistant Professor of English beginning August 2010. Linda Moretti, Office of Human Resources. May 1

McNeese State University‘s Department of English and Foreign Languages and the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing seek an Assistant/Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing, Fiction. Amy Fleury, Department of English and Foreign Languages. April 21

The University of Wisconsin-Marathon County and the University of Wisconsin Colleges English Department invite applications for a position as full-time lecturer. Charlene Schmidt. May 16

New Lit on the Block :: Assisi

St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York has published their first issue of Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters. The biannual, online magazine “will offer an eclectic mix of essays (both academic and personal), short fiction and poetry. . .photographs, drawings and other art works.”

Included in the first pdf issue are works by Sharmon Goff, Linda Simone, Julie L. Moore, Virginia Franklin, Marissa C. Pelot, Carol Berg, Christopher Woods, Amber Jensen, Carol Carpenter, Arthur Powers, Joseph Somoza, Virginia Franklin, Mitch Levenberg, Kate Bernadette Benedict, Srinjay Chakravarti, Jonterri Gadson, Elizabeth Oakes, Diana Woodcock, Kristina Roth, Helen Ruggieri, Virginia Franklin, LB Sedlacek, Lyn Lifshin, Barbara H. Edington, Mary MacGowan, Andrea O’Brien, Francis Raven, Cherri Randall, Tatiana Forero Puerta, Obododimma Oha, Louis E. Bourgeois, Kevin Brown, and Anna Catone.

Assisi is currently accepting submissions for their second issue.

Step Up Ohioans!

Call for Submissions: Ohio Childhood Poems
Extended Deadline – August 1

Poems of place and on characters might be especially welcomed for this collection. Name the people, places, brands, businesses, landmarks, institutions, locations that impacted your life as a child and your life as a poet. The collection will be edited by Robert Miltner of Kent State University and published by Pudding House Publications in Columbus, Ohio.

New Lit on the Block :: Mandala

Mandala Journal, a publication of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Georgia, defines itself as “an online student-run multicultural journal for poets, writers, artists, and thinkers.”

The first online issue launched April 14 and includes a conversation with Kwame Anthony Appiah, poems by Cave Canem poet Raina Leon, a short story by Philippine playwright and fiction writer, Peter Mayshle, an essay by academic/artist Shanti Pillai about living each year in Havana, NYC, and Chennai, a photo essay by Toronto-based photographer Jose Romelo Lagman exploring “Rooted Cosmopolitanism”, art and writing from Athens Clark Co. elementary school students PLUS work by writers and artists across the US and Canada whose works were selected via open submissions.

Reader’s & Educator’s Guides

Reader’s guides are one of my favorite features to encourage teachers to use lit mags in the classroom. The Healing Muse, SUNY Upstate Medical University’s journal of literary and visual arts, has begun developing Reader’s and Educator’s Guides for their publication. On the site now are guides for volumes 7 and 8. Here are a couple of the questions for volume 8:

In the third paragraph of Bromberg’s “Poetry and the Creative Healing Process” (p.31), the author discusses the relationship between community and healing. In what ways can writing about illness be therapeutic? What difference does it make to write for an audience?

The speakers of “Puzzled” (p. 81) and “After a Mastectomy” (p. 32) both express yearnings to be made “whole.” How do physical changes in the body affect self-perception and identity? In what ways do the speakers seek help from others to work through these feelings?

SCR “Virtual” Themed Issues Library

From the SCR website: Occasionally The South Carolina Review will publish an issue devoted in large part to a particular theme. Examples in the past have included Virginia Woolf International (vol. 29.1), Ireland in the Arts and Humanities (vol. 32.1), and James Dickey Revisited (vol. 37.2).

Such themes, however, often transcend the boundaries of any particular issue of The South Carolina Review: the idea for a themed issue may grow out of past submissions, and the themed issue itself can elicit writings in response years down the line. In addition, the publication of a themed issue often generates other projects for the Press. (The Virginia Woolf International issue, for example, led to a series of Woolf conference proceedings volumes, among other publications.)

The virtual “Themed Issues” in the South Carolina Review On-Line Library therefore expand considerably upon their original, paper-and-ink counterparts. Not only do they include articles and other writings from past issues of The South Carolina Review, but they also incorporate other relevant CUDP publications as well as links to related online resources. Be sure to check back periodically, as new content is added as it becomes available.

The following virtual themed issues are currently available:

* Virginia Woolf International
* Ireland in the Arts and Humanities
* James Dickey Revisited

BECA Accepting Guest Curator Proposals

BECA: Bridge for Emerging Contemporary Art is now accepting exhibition proposal summaries from both professionally affiliated and independent curators. Proposal summaries are being reviewed for consideration with regards to the exhibition planning for the months May – December 2010. Exhibitions will be held at the temporary home of BECA ICAD located at 527 St. Joseph Street, New Orleans, LA across from the Contemporary Arts Center.

AWP 2010

NewPages has just returned from AWP 2010 in Denver – WOW! Always such anticipation building up to it, getting ready for it, getting there, and then – whoosh – those three days go by so fast!

Our dearest gratitude to all of you who took the time to stop by the table to say hello and offer your support for our work. Your comments truly help to fuel our energy and keep our passions burning here. So often, day after day, behind the screen and keyboard, it does get a bit lonely and our minds sometimes trail into existential wanderings. But, AWP is our once-a-year reminder of how many of you there are who use the site and appreciate our tappings-away.

Thanks to all the exhibitors – lit mags, publishers, creative writing programs, and authors – who actually smiled in recognition when they saw us coming down the aisles with our NewPages t-shirts announcing our presence. And thanks to all our newly made friends in these endeavors – AWP is great for meeting new people in the “scenes”.

Thanks to reviewers – including Jennifer Sinor’s students – who stopped by. So nice to see the people behind all those thoughtful words.

Thanks to all the blog readers who mentioned how helpful this is. It is indeed a great deal of work, but work I love all the more when I know it is appreciated by others. “Heroic” was one word I will keep with me. Good to have a bit of an ego boost for when the beer fund runs low.

And speaking of beer fund…CODE ORANGE!

Denver was a blast, and Denver Pale Ale – or DPA – is certainly a brew I can recommend to visitors.

I will no doubt have more AWP comments intertwined in the blog in the days and months upcoming, but for now – time to get back into the NewPages groove (after a full night’s sleep!).

[Pictured: Part of the NewPages table exhibit. / The blue bear butt at the conference center as seen from the hotel. / The steady flow of the nearly 10,000 attendees. / The golden dome of the capitol building.]

Still Teaching Huck Finn

In Mr. Secino’s class, students said the book was valuable as a way of understanding history. “It reminds you that this (slavery) actually happened,” said Mariana Z. Peltier.

“It’s hard to believe that the Land of the Free was treating human beings like that,” said Conor E. Shea.

Idaresit O. Uko said the fact that Tom and Huck were, it turns out, trying to hide a slave who was already freed, is a metaphor for how the country was trying to keep blacks enslaved even after the Civil War.

Jonathan H. Sokolowski said the book reminds readers that, “You need to keep knowledge of the past so that you can move forward.”

Read the full story on Worcester’s telegram.com.

Alimentum Wants YOU on Video!

To celebrate April as National Poetry Month, Alimentum: The Literature of Food creates Menupoems. This year, they are inviting all of us to enjoy the full menu, and to share our feast of reading with others. Here’s how:

1. Print out our menupoem menu
2. Read a menupoem at your favorite restaurant
3. VIDEO your reading
4. Send it to Alimentum and you’ll appear on their website & Alimentum’s YouTube channel

Visit their screening room to see already completed videos

Here are our menupoets for 2010:

Walter Ancarrow
Lara Candland
Kim Goldberg
Catherine Harnett
Jen Karetnick
Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis
Mark Kurlansky
Paul S. Piper
Shweta Rao
Linda Simone
Emily Stokes
Alexis Weber
and menupoems editor Esther Cohen