Three Percent Podcast is now expanding from their weekly(ish) episodes to include weekly Two Month Review mini-episodes. Each season of the new mini-episode series will highlight a different Open Letter book, reading it over the course of eight to nine episodes. Rotating guests will join host Chad W. Post, using the reading selection as a springboard for further discussion on literature, pop culture, reading approaches, and more.

Two Month Review gives the feeling of a book club—weekly readings and discussions—but with an accessibility that doesn’t require listeners to read along. For listeners that do want to read along, Open Letter has set up a Goodreads group and is currently offering 20% off two titles (with code 2MONTH at checkout) that will be discussed: The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán and Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson.

All episodes of Two Month Review will be available from the same iTunes playlist Three Percent uses, and listeners can also check out the introduction episode here.

Saturday is the day! April 29 is the 4th Annual Independent Bookstore Day. Indie bookstores across the United States are gearing up to celebrate with exclusive items, literary activities, readings, author signings, giveaways, and more this upcoming Saturday.

Find a great indie bookstore in your area on the NewPages Guide to Independent Bookstores and show your support.

Begun in 1989, Reach Out and Read is a program wherein medical professionals “prescribe” books and reading aloud to children “as a means of fostering the language-rich interactions between parents and their young children that stimulate early brain development.” Now, the Reach Out and Read model exists in all 50 states, with almost 1,500 sites distributing 1.6 million books per year. The program serves 4.7 million young children and their families each year, “including one in four children living in poverty in this country.” The organizers hope to grow each year, envisioning that support for books and reading will become a regular part of every child’s checkup. For more information about programs near you and information about how to get involved, visit Reach Out and Read online.

This month’s featured collaboration from Broadsided Press , “Final Descent into Phoenix” with poem by Julie Swarstad Johnson and art by Kara Page, has been months in the making. “We chose Julie Swarstad Johnson’s poem for publication from our open submissions over a year ago,” notes the Broadsided Editorial Team. “We sent it out to artists to see who would ‘dibs’ it in November, in January artist Kara Page sent us what she’d created, then our designer found a way to bring both together into a single letter-sized pdf, and finally we asked poet and artist what they thought of the results,” with the conversation between artist and poet published on the Broadsided website.

Broadsided posters are available for free download and postering all about town. Become a Broadsided Vector today!

In addition to the December 2016 Broadsided Collaboration: Burn Barrel, art by Sarah Van Sanden, poem by Todd Davis, Broadsided Press is offering the community “a powerful collaboration of defiance and hope in the face of difficulty”: NoDAPL Responses Feature.

“We want your writing and art in response to the Action at Standing Rock,” write the editors. “In the past, we’ve provided art for you to spring from. This time, we want to open our submissions to visual artists as well as writers. Guest editor Tiffany Midge will help select final pieces. We waive submission fees for those directly involved in the resistance. Please help share the word.”

Broadsided Press was founded in 2005 and publishes an original literary/artistic collaboration each month for download with the mission, quite simply, “to put literature and art on the streets.”

This has got to be the perfect gift for at least one person on your holiday list: a 2017 calendar featuring 12 vintage images typewriters and the women who wield them. The Writing Disorder online quarterly literary journal of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, art, interviews and reviews is offering this custom-made item, and right now at a 20% discount. Proceeds support the publication – a win-win all around!

Just like the foot race marathon, you don’t get bragging rights until you actually do it. And, appropriately, this year’s Poetry Marathon took place during the summer Olympics. So while I was toiling away at my poetry prompts and posting poems to the official marathon blog, runners from around the world were competing for gold, silver and bronze medals in Rio.

Unlike the Olympics, the Poetry Marathon is an annual event. I originally posted on it here, and the PM website offers a complete history and FAQ of the event. While I’ve known about the event for several years, this is the first year I  participated. Luckily for me (and many others), the organizers have created a half marathon, which is what I completed. Both marathons start at 9:00am ET on writing day (Aug 13 this year), then every hour for 12 or 24 hours, participants are expected to write a poem and post it to the PM website. Each participant gets their own login on a group WordPress site, then as each participant publishes a poem, which is housed on their own blog space, it is also posted to the whole group blog. If you look at the site now, what you see are the poems posted by the participants as they came in.

If this sounds like a big commitment of a day, it is – or it can be. The organizers are flexible in letting participants commit to (on their honor) writing one poem every hour and then posting them when they can get to a computer. Some participants commented on having to go to work, so while they were writing the poems, they wouldn’t be posting them until later. Even for me, with a day “off,” I couldn’t be at the computer every hour of the day.

Bottom line: Was it fun? Was it engaging? Was it worthwhile? Yes, yes, and yes. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Until you do it, you don’t quite “get it.” Write a poem an hour? Anyone can do that on their own. But it was motivating (even a bit demanding) being in the community, committed to having to publish poems up to the website, having to be responsible every hour of the day. In fact, even while I was just sitting working at the computer, I almost missed one of the hours because I was so caught up in my work. I realized it with only five minutes left in the hour and scrambled to catch up! The pressure! It was wonderful. As were the prompts, which the organizers provide at the top of every hour. I admire those writers who had their own ideas for poems, but I relied heavily on the prompts to give me something to write about and get the writing done. There were many who did the same, and it was engaging to see the various interpretations of the prompts – a lot of really creative writers.

When it was done – 12 hours and 12 poems later – I felt a deep sense of pride and accomplishment. Not that I believe I wrote 12 astonishing poems that will shake the world. But because I wrote 12 poems in 12 hours as part of a community of people who were just as eager and committed as me. Surrounded for a whole day by an entire community of poets – reading, writing, commenting, and then doing it all over again, and again, and again. I think immersion is the right word.

I also learned that not everyone will be able to appreciate the experience if you try to share your joy at the accomplishment. “I just finished a poetry half marathon!” I exclaimed to my husband as I walked away from the computer at 9:00pm after just having posted my final poem. “Okay,” he said, not turning away from his laptop.

What you get out of it is definitely personal. Unlike the foot race, and unlike the Olympics, there aren’t throngs of people cheering your completion, no competitors there to hug you for a good race won. Though the organizers and participants do post encouraging comments for one another and have chat groups running to motivate one another, in the end, the sense of whatever it has meant to you will be completely up to you to generate and to own.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, I was challenged, I accomplished my goal, and I hope to be back to do it again next year.

Thank you Poetry Marathon! Congratulations to everyone who completed the half 12 hours of writing and the full 24 hours of writing. I get it: You are amazing!

[Applause]

The Poetry Marathon is an annual event that challenges participants to write 24 poems in 24 hour, posting the writing online via a shared WordPress site. This year’s marathon begins at 9 AM EDT on Saturday, August 13, 2016 and ends at 9 AM on Sunday. There is also a half marathon from 9 AM until 9 PM Saturday.

The Poetry Marathon is run (no pun intended) by Caitlin Jans (Thomson) and Jacob Jans, two writers and web publishers living in the Pacific Northwest. There is no charge to participate in the marathon, and in 2015, over 300 writers participated from nearly every continent but one (c’mon Antarctica!).

The Poetry Marathon website has an FAQ that answers the burning questions, like: How do I prepare for the Marathon? What if I can’t be at a computer all day? What happens to the poems once I post them? and more. The site also features blog posts from previous participants who offer commentary on their marathon experience.

This year, the organizers plan to publish a Poetry Marathon Anthology of poems written during the marathon.

The tenth annual August Poetry Postcard Festival opens for registration on July 4, 2016!

For you newbies, the August PoPo Fest goes like this: You sign up. You get a list of 31 names/addresses of other people who signed up. Starting late July, you write a poem a day on a postcard and mail it off to the next person on the list, so by the end of the month, you will have (hopefully) written and sent 31 poems and (hopefully) received 31 poems.

The poems are not supposed to be pre-written or something you’ve been working on for months. This is an exercise is the spontaneous, the demanding, the gut-driven, the postcard inspired – whatever it is that gets you to write once a day, each day, and send it off into the world.

New this year: poems from this year’s fest can be submitted for the 1st Poetry Postcard Fest Anthology, a project led by three volunteers.

I’ve done this event since it began! I don’t always keep to a poem a day; sometimes I get ahead one day, or catch up another, with several poems in one day. But I try my best. The event does get me thinking of poetry in my every day, when I rarely have time for it, and writing it down – something I have time for even more rarely.

I’ve received poems from across the state, the country and around the globe. I’ve gotten postcards made from cereal boxes, some with gorgeous original artwork, and lots of the lovely tacky tourist cards from travel destinations. I have cards from “famous” poets, and some who have since become more famous, and some never signed, so I’ll never know, and it hardly matters. I’ve gotten poetry. Sent to me directly. From strangers. Lovely, strange, absurd, and funny. Poetry.

It’s an amazing event, and I hope you will take the challenge and join in this year. For the first time EVER, the organizers have decided to charge a nominal fee for the event ($10). I can only imagine the amount of work it is to run this (with up to 300 people participating), and keeping up virtual space to promote it. I’m not dissuaded by the fee, knowing the extraordinary event that it is, and knowing I’ve spent 100 times that on conferences from which I’ve gotten a great deal less inspiration…

So, please writers, wanna-bes and needs-a-kick-in-the-arsers, poetry lovers, postcard lovers – this event is for you. Join us!

Words Without Borders promotes cultural understanding through the translation, publication, and promotion of the contemporary international literature. Words Without Borders Campus brings that literature to high school and college students, teachers, and professors. On their website, you’ll find fiction, poetry, and essays from around the world, along with resources for understanding it, ideas for teaching it, and suggestions for further exploration.

Most of the literature presented comes from the online magazine, Words without Borders. Words Without Borders Campus is asking for your help to reach more students and add new countries and literature to their site. With their collections of literature from Mexico, China, Egypt, and Japan, WWB Campus has already reached more than 1,500 high school and college students in the United States and throughout the world, with access to their site remaining completely free.

To take their program to the next level, WWB Campus is asking its supporters — readers, educators, and even students – for help with a new crowd-funding campaign and to spread awareness of WWB Campus. WWB Campus would like to double the number of students reached, adding new features to the website, and introducing literature from more countries (Russia, Iran, and West Africa are in the plans). For more information about how you can help, visit the WWB Campus website. You don’t have to donate money – using the site and spreading the word about it helps too – #InspireGlobalReaders!

The Writer’s Hotel, a hybrid writers conference that meets each June at a floating campus between three hotels in Midtown, Manhattan, is not just another writers conference. With an environment much like that of a Creative Writing MFA community, they work with each writer on a target manuscript from the moment of acceptance, for months before the conference, and offer the rare opportunity to polish manuscripts with professional editors before meeting with instructors, writers, agents, industry professionals and editors on site. There is no other writers conference quite like The Writer’s Hotel.

Writers tend to arrive at the conference feeling an artistic momentum, and come ready to bring their work to market at the heart of the publishing industry in New York City. Writers will have reading opportunities at a well-known NYC venue, will attend daily events held in inspiring locations around the city, and will participate in several intensive writing workshops, attend lectures, pitch meetings and literary events, and go on historic literary walking tours.

This year’s conference takes place from June 1-7 and faculty includes Meghan Daum, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Scott Wolven, Shanna McNair, Marie Howe, Tim Seibles, Roger Bonair-Agard, Elyssa East, Wesley McNair, Bill Roorbach, Kevin Larimer, Carey Salerno, Elaine Trevorrow and Bethany Ball. Conference space is limited and the deadline for application is April 22, 2016. Free to apply, writers may upload 20 -25 pages of writing with a brief letter of interest at TWH’s Submittable.

Inspired by the same-named memoir, A Place to Stand is the story of Jimmy Santiago Baca’s transformation from a functionally illiterate convict to an award-winning poet, novelist and screenwriter. Told through extensive interviews with Jimmy, his family, friends and peers, A Place to Stand follows Jimmy’s path from Estancia, New Mexico – where he lived with his indigenous grandparents – through childhood abandonment, adolescent drug dealing and a subsequent 5-year narcotics sentence at Arizona State Prison in Florence, one of the most violent prisons in the country. Jimmy’s extraordinary life is both inspiring and haunting, simultaneously an indictment of our current criminal justice system and a model of the potential for human transformation.

The filmmakers are looking to extend the reach of the movie through an Indiegogo educational campaign to do the following:

• Hold over 50 public screenings across the US (see the website for information on how you can host a screening).
• Release the film digitally and on DVD for consumers.
• Partner with an educational distributor to maximize our reach to schools.
• Secure broadcast distribution (TV presentation) for the film.
• Provide the film, curriculum, and workbook materials to over 100 schools, prisons, and organizations.
• Partner with prison reform organizations to use the film as an activism and awareness-raising tool.

A number of the perks include educational materials to go along with the film as well as copies of the film, works by Baca, and more.

In her Glimmer Train Bulletin essay “Why Write Characters of Color?” UofM MFA candidate Lillian Li writes, “The question . . . is not rhetorical; it is not one a moderator asks to kick off a stale panel discussion. It is a real and urgent question, one of craft, of race, of character.”

Li discusses both the arbitrary and reasoned decisions writers make, from character names to plot points. She explains using a fire as a “placeholder” event for a story she’s writing. An arbitrary choice that, as her writing progressed, became more central to the story. But, to ignore the question of Why a fire? – “the event would have stood out, like a lump of flour unincorporated into the narrative gravy.” Li writes, “When American writers arbitrarily decide the race of their characters, and then ignore the question of race, they are courting the same conundrum, even if they phrase it a different way.”

Read the rest online in Glimmer Train Bulletin #110, which also includes essays by David Minzer and Christine Grace.