If this blog is not already on your radar – add it – NOW! I know there are a lot of teachers who read this blog, so please cue your students into this one – regularly!

Writer Beware Blogs!
“Writer Beware, a publishing industry watchdog group sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, shines a light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls.”

At the keyboard for this blog are Victoria Strauss, Richard White, and A. C. Crispin, though Victoria seems to be the main blogger.

The blog regularly posts alerts regarding scam and highly questionable contests, carefully reviewing fine print and bringing unethical and questionable behaviors to the surface. There are also many posts and continued conversations on the print-on-demand publishing phenom.

Writer Beware is on top of the issues, and if you have any questions or concerns about anything regarding writers being taken advantage of in contests, publishing, marketing, etc., this is the place and these are the people to contact. (Though review the blog archive first, as you may well find your answer there already!)

Priceless.

Jason Kottke notes on his blog that the NY Times has only used 96 pt. type for the headline on the front page of the paper five times:

MEN WALK ON MOON
NIXON RESIGNS
U.S. ATTACKED
1/1/00
OBAMA

Did I Miss Anything
by Tom Wayman

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren’t here

***

Please visit the original online so you can get the spacing blogger won’t allow:
U of Toronto Library – Canadian Poets: Tom Wayman
Originally from: The Astonishing Weight of the Dead
Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.

The Petree College of Arts and Sciences of Oklahoma City University is seeking an assistant professor of writing for a tenure-track position.

The MFA Writing Program, based in the School of Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts, invites applications for a regular faculty position (two courses per semester) in fiction and/or creative non-fiction. Jan. 5, 2009.

Two positions at Delta College in Michigan: English Instructor – Mainstream Composition, Developmental Reading, and Developmental Composition. One is tenure-track and one is a one-year renewable.

Portland State University Assistant or Associate Professor, Fiction Writing/20th Century Fiction, tenure-track, to begin September 15, 2009. Dec. 1 – interviews MLA & AWP.

Florida International University-Biscayne Bay Department of English seeks an Assistant Professor with a specialty in fiction for a tenure-track position within the Creative Writing MFA program. Dec. 1.

Hampshire College is accepting applications for an Assistant Professor of Poetry Writing. Nov. 30.

Florida Atlantic University Department of English invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Creative Nonfiction, beginning August 2009. Nov. 7.

Bucknell University Stadler Center for Poetry. The 2009-10 Stadler Fellowship offers professional training in arts administration & literary editing in a thriving, university-based poetry center, while also providing the Fellow time to pursue his or her own writing. Dec. 6.

Duke University English Department welcomes nominations & applications for a distinguished a poet with a national or international reputation to be the inaugural holder of the Reynolds Price Chair in Creative Writing. Nov. 15.

Louisiana State University Department of English invites applications from poets for an anticipated Assistant Professor position in the Creative Writing Program.

Middlebury College Robert Frost Fellowship in Poetry for a poet with an M.F.A. degree and at least one published book to reside in Robert Frost’s Homer Noble Farmhouse in Ripton, Vermont, to teach two courses and advise undergraduate poetry projects during the academic year, and to teach one course during the summer at either the Bread Loaf School of English or the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Three-year renewable, begin in September 2009. Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, and three letters of recommendation (at least two of which speak to teaching ability) to Professor Brett Millier, Department of English and American Literatures, Axinn Center, 15 Old Chapel Road, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont 05753. Review of applications will begin November 21, and will end when the position is filled.

Publishers seek new talent in Arab world
Alison Flood in Frankfurt and Ian Black
The Guardian
October 16 2008

Alexandria’s 21st century library Western publishers are launching a drive to tap the Arab world for new stars, hoping to bridge the language gap with more than 200 million native Arabic speakers – and make money from selling books.

Bloomsbury announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair yesterday that it is to launch a new Arabic-language publishing house, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, in partnership with the Gulf state. “The emphasis so far in Qatar has been on literacy, and our second challenge is how to move from literacy to literature to create a culture,” said Abdel-Rahman Azzam, a spokesman for Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, the emir’s consort and the chair of the Qatar Foundation. [read more here]

The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace
by David Lipsky
Rolling Stone Magazine
October 30, 2008

“He was the greatest writer of his generation – and also its most tormented. In the wake of his tragic suicide, his friends and family reveal the lifelong struggle of a beautiful mind.”

Stephen King’s God Trip
On the 30th anniversary of “The Stand,” the novelist confesses what haunts him about religion and today’s politics.
By John Marks
Salon.com

S: Questions of politics are never very far away in “The Stand.” Once the plague has come and gone, society has to be reformed. Do you think of it as a political novel, in any sense?

SK: I did see it that way. I’ve always been a political novelist, and those things have always interested me. “Firestarter” is a political novel. “The Dead Zone” is a political novel. There’s that scene in “The Dead Zone” where Johnny Smith sees Greg Stillson in the future starting a nuclear war. Around my house we kinda laugh when Sarah Palin comes on TV, and we say, “That’s Greg Stillson as a woman.”

On this tenth anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepherd, an interview of Jonas Slonacker by C.A. Conrad on PhillySound: new poetry really is a blunt and open discussion of many issues that surrounded the senseless murder of a young man and what has happened since.

HOMOPHOBIA and a Lexicon of Violence: a conversation with Jonas Slonacker 10 years after Matthew Shepard

In this excerpt, Slonacker responds to the power and misuse of language:

One of the things you and I know firsthand Jonas from growing up in an isolated rural culture is that people are HELL-BENT on judging and hating groups of people they don’t even know. There is so much FICTION created from unnecessary and unprovoked fears surrounding the distant Other. Building on Father Schmit’s call for learning what drives us, how marvelous would it be to have young elementary school children learning compassion by having classes which explore and explain homosexuality, as well as different racial and religious groups. Where we grew up and went to school THE MOST homophobic teacher taught sex-ed. He was so blatantly homophobic, and encouraged laughter when talking about how sick he thought a man would have to be to want something shoved up his ass. He empowered the ridicule and physical abuse my boyfriend and I endured in school, and made us feel like complete ZEROES! The sex-ed class literally taught hatred.

Language can easily set the mechanisms of fear or compassion of young minds in motion when coming from teachers and other authority figures. But wanting compassion taught to children ultimately flies in the face of our very nation’s governmental treatment of its citizens and military solutions in dealing with other nations. But we have to start somewhere.

In teaching compassion we would also need to teach the history of racism, homophobia, genocide. For instance, in battling the use of dehumanizing language of homophobia, let’s LOOK to the origin of “faggot.” Kids need to know and DESERVE to know that when they use that word they’re using a word whose origins are from the Inquisition. Homosexuals were burned alive, their flesh synonymous with and no better than the very sticks — or faggots, as faggots means sticks or kindling — that burned them to death. We’re so used to the word faggot meaning a homosexual, but have no idea of the countless tortuous deaths that created it. It’s important to define the origins of common hateful slang. Learning such things helps us in many ways to grow toward tolerance and compassion.

University of Minnesota Grants Manager. The IAS and Northrop/Concerts and Lectures are seeking an experienced grants manager. Review of applications will begin November 3. For full information and instructions on applying, search for position number 158644 on the University’s online employment system.

Indiana State University tenure-track assistant professor, beginning August 2009, to teach three courses each semester in poetry writing, introductory creative writing, and composition or general education literature, plus undergraduate advising.

The Department of English at Salisbury University is accepting applications for the tenure-track position of Assistant Professor in creative writing specializing in fiction. Secondary areas of expertise are welcome.

Montclair State University Assistant Professor in Creative Writing full-time, tenure-track position in creative writing with primary expertise in the writing of poetry. Nov 3 deadline.

University of North Carolina-Greensboro Assistant Professor, Fiction, tenure-track appointment in creative writing (fiction) effective August 1, 2009. Nov 15 deadline.

Department of English at Harvard University invites applications for an appointment, to begin July 1, 2009, as Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on Fiction. The appointee to this five-year untenured position will have responsibility for teaching two undergraduate writing workshops per term. At least one book (or the equivalent) plus significant teaching experience is expected. Send a letter of application, resume, & writing sample, plus two letters of recommendation regarding teaching, postmarked no later than January 5, 2009, to: “Creative Writing Search” c/o James Engell, Chair, Department of English, Harvard University, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

The English department of the University of Nebraska – Kearney seeks a specialist in American Literature with an emphasis in the post-WWII and contemporary periods.

Western Illinois University Assistant Professor English, Creative Writing. Dec 8 deadline. Interviews at MLA and AWP.

DePaul University Department of English Assistant rank, beginning September 2009, in creative nonfiction, with a secondary interest in fiction or poetry.

Narrative Magazine
First-Person Winners

First Place: “On Principle” by Gina Ochsner
Second Place: “Celilo Falls” by Heather Brittain Bergstrom
Third Place: “Night Glow” by Holly Wilson

2008 Fall Fiction Contest, First Prize $3,000, Second Prize $1,500, Third Prize $750, and ten finalists receiving $100 each, is open to entries of fiction and nonfiction. Entry deadline: November 30.

Glimmer Train announces the three winning stories of the August Very Short Fiction Award competition.

First place: Michael Schiavone of Gloucester, MA wins $1,200 for “No One Comes Up Here By Accident”. His story will be published in the Winter 2010 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, out in November 2009.

Second place: Jackie Thomas-Kennedy of Charlottesville, VA wins $500 for “The Bridge is Moving”. Her story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing her prize to $700.

Third place: Debbie Weingarten of Tucson, AZ wins $300 for “Precarious Things”.

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found on GT’s website. This quarterly competition is open to all writers for stories on any theme with a word count range of 500-3,000. Submissions may be sent for the November Short Story Award for New Writers using the Glimmer Train online submissions system at www.glimmertrain.org.

Also: Family Matters contest (deadline soon approaching! October 31 )

We host this contest four times a year, and first place is $1,200 plus publication in the journal. It’s open to all writers for stories about family, with a word count range of 500-12,000. Click here for complete guidelines.

Obambulate, verb intr.: To walk about.

Palinode, noun: A poem in which the author retracts something said in an earlier poem.

To barrack, verb tr., intr.: 1. To shout in support: to cheer. 2. To shout against: to jeer. noun: A building used to house soldiers.

Bidentate, adjective: Having two teeth or toothlike parts.

Meeken, verb tr., intr.: To make or become meek or submissive.

Via A.Word.A.Day

I got the following in an e-mail from a student of literature at University in Czech Republic: “I am writing a diploma thesis about Jewish trilogy Tanga: Girl from Hamburg, Colette; Girl from Antwerp; and Waiting for Leah, written by Czech novelist Arnost Lustig. I know these books were published also in English and I’m looking for some reviews and critiques about them (if there are some). I would be very grateful if you can help me or write me where can I find it.”

If you can help, please contact Stepanka Batikova: batikova.stepanka-at-hotmail.com

textsound is an online audio publication”…interested in the fields and intersections of poetry, sound poetry/ art, and performance, [textsound] asks its artists to consider the following: the breaking down of language into its parts; how language accumulates to create meaning, sense, and non-sense; the pleasure and pain of repetition (a la Edwin Torres or Gertrude Stein); beats in words and music (Viki or Laurie Anderson); recycling of materials (like radio collages from People Like Us or Kenny Goldsmith); and stories in which part of the event is sonic (radio plays by Samuel Beckett or Rodrigo Toscano)…”

Issue 2 has just been posted, and submissions for Issue 3 will open in November.

Find an audio download of this 1938 Orson Wells classic at The Mercury Theatre on the Air as well as on the Internet Archives.

I just came across this site – Care2.com – “the largest online community for healthy and green living, human rights and animal welfare” – and I’m not sure what I think about it. I can’t find a lot on the site about whose behind it, tracking, etc. Anybody know?

It seems you can create your own petitions to have people come and sign, and you can certainly find a lot of them to sign yourself if you’d like. I’d venture to say you could spend an entire day here signing petitions. But I’m not clear on what every happens to these. Do they work? Or, are they like joining an activist group on Facebook, where everyone can see you signed up, but so what?

There’s plenty of other cool stuff on this site, like the “dail action” which makes readers aware of something they can actually do that will make a difference (esp. if enough people do it) – for example, today it was making your own coffee/tea at home rather than buying it out in a disposable cup. Okay, not terribly original, but it helps that the site includes statistics on how much waste is created and how much money an individual could save. If nothing else, it seems educational.

Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, the liberal arts undergraduate college of The New School, invites applications from accomplished fiction writers with a strong academic or belle-lettristic orientation for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor position.

North Georgia College & State University is currently accepting applications for a tenure-track, entry-level assistant professor of English, specializing in Creative Writing, pending approved funding.

Ohio Northern University Assistant Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) and Modern American Literature. Tenure-track or visiting, dependent upon interest and qualifications; start September 2009.

Nebraska Wesleyan University invites applications for a tenure-track position in Creative Writing, specifically Fiction or Creative Non-Fiction.

Reed College Visiting One-Year Appointment in Creative Writing (with a concentration in poetry) beginning fall (August) 2009 to teach five undergraduate writing workshops/courses per year at a highly selective liberal arts college with an emphasis on excellence in teaching.

University of Baltimore half-time, non-tenure-track lecturer, Creative Writing, School of Communications Design.

The College of Idaho announces a tenure-track position in environmental literature and creative writing (non-fiction prose) at the Assistant Professor level to begin fall 2009.

E-Poetry Festival
May 24-27, 2009
Universitat Obertat de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona
E-Poetry is both a conference and a festival. The festival is the most significant digital literary gathering in the field. Authors and researchers worldwide meet and present their researches and works. This will permit researchers to present their latest research and artists to premier their newest works. A selection of the papers will be published after the conference following the peer review system. Artistic events will take place at key Barcelona venues such as the Barcelona Center for Contemporary Culture, providing authors the opportunity to present their works to a public curious about new literary and artistic trends employing technology and communication during the Setmana de la Poesia.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Paper topics:
– Close readings of specific works of e-poetry.
– Discussing the terminology: ontologies and definitions of e-poetry and e-lit forms: a historic approach to e-poetry.
– Relations between e-poetry and other literary and artistic forms and movements.
– Translating e-poetry
– Recording, presenting, archiving and preserving e-poetry. Devices, modalities and writing tools.
– Teaching e-poetry: experiences, results and goals.

I came across this link via the African American Review:

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
“Founded in 1989 by Michael Rosenfeld and currently located in the New York Gallery Building on West 57th Street, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC specializes in twentieth-century American art. In 1992, halley k harrisburg joined the gallery, and since then, both have worked together to advance and expand the canon of American art.”

This is a great gallery site because they have a list of exhibits going all the way back to 1989, many of them include images from the show. I was especially interested in African American Art: 200 Years (2008) and Body Beware: 18 American Artists (2007).

With over 200 exhibits to their history, it’s easy – and highly educational – to lose track of time on this site.

Words into hype
By Chris Offutt
Harper’s, October 2008

By Chris Offutt, from “Excerpt from The Offutt Guide to Literary Terms,” published last fall in Seneca Review. Offutt is the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction.

nonfiction: Prose that is factual, except for newspapers.

creative nonfiction: Prose that is true, except in the case of memoir.

memoir: From the Latin memoria, meaning “memory,” a popular form in which the writer remembers entire passages of dialogue from the past, with the ultimate goal of blaming the writer’s parents for his current psychological challenges.

See the rest on Harper’s.

[Thanks to Tim Brown for this link!]

Torturing Democracy
Via National Security Archive at George Washington University

Produced and written by eight-time Emmy winner and National Security Archive fellow Sherry Jones, the documentary has drawn major online buzz as well as New York Times coverage of PBS’s failure to find a national scheduling spot for the film before President Bush leaves office in January 2009.

Reviewers have described the film as a “compelling example of video story-telling” that “delivers impressively on a promise to connect the dots in an investigation of interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody.”

Slate.com selected a key revelation in the film as the Slate “Hot Document” – a previously unpublished December 2002 draft of “standard operating procedure” at Guantanamo which shows that interrogators there adopted their techniques directly from the survival training (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape or SERE) given to American troops so they could resist the worst of Communist gulag treatment.

The companion Web site for the film features key documents, a detailed timeline, the full annotated transcript of the show, and lengthy transcripts of major interviews carried out for the film. Hosted by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the Web site will ultimately include a complete “Torture Archive” of primary sources.

Watch the entire film at torturingdemocracy.org.

Marsh Hawk Review is an online poetry journal sponsored by the Marsh Hawk Press collective. Marsh Hawk Review will appear twice a year, under the revolving editorship of collective members. Each issue will offer a selection of poems solicited by the editor, in addition to new work posted by poets in the collective.

First Issue Contributors Include: Jane Augustine, Claudia Carlson, Joseph Donahue, Thomas Fink and Maya Diablo Mason, Norman Finkelstein, Edward Foster, Michael Heller, Burt Kimmelman, Nathaniel Mackey, Robert Murphy, Amanda Nadelberg, Peter O’Leary, Kristin Prevallet, Donald Revell, Mark Scroggins, Jakob Stein, Nathan Swartzendruber, Henry Weinfield, and Tyrone Williams.

Seacoastonline.com: From Oct. 10 to Oct. 11, 17 volunteers participated in a 24-hour Read-A-Thon at SecondRun Bookstore in Portsmouth to benefit a local nonprofit. Volunteers read, answered literary trivia questions, played Scrabble, and heard a local author read from his work, all while raising money to support programs for children and youth with autism at The Birchtree Center.

The event, officially known as Great Expectations: A Reading Marathon (GERM), was founded by RiverRun and SecondRun Bookstores in early 2008. The Read-A-Thon is meant to bring attention to reading and independent bookstores, while raising money for local nonprofits. GERM has gained national attention, and this year, during the month of October, nine independent bookstores around the country are hosting their own events…[read more here]

In this faithless age, we must be guided by great literature
Richard Harries
Friday, 10 October 2008
Independent.co.uk

Poetry and novels take us into a world of their own. But the point is, and this is a key feature of both literature and, say, the Bible, is that they illuminate the actual world in which we live. There are forms of writing which do not do this, which are, we might say, purely escapist. Fantasy, popular romance, science fiction are always in danger of doing this. Clearly that is not always the case, and perhaps the test must always be that of Dr. Johnson when he said that, “The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.”

However, I have to express a personal preference for writing that seems closer to the world in which we live, and clearly does illuminate it…[read the rest]

Wordwatchers is a site created to “explore how we can learn about the candidates’ personalities, motives, emotions, and inner selves through their everyday words.” The last debate analysis has been posted, with previous posts looking at other debates and interviews. Some brief analysis is provided on the table itself – looking at such aspects of language as usage of past, present, and future tense, and what that might reveal about a candidate – but the greater analysis comes in the comments posted to the entries. Well worth a look. [via Gerry Canavan]

Matthiessen, Robinson among book award finalists
By Hillel Italie
AP/Modesto Bee

Talk about second chances: Peter Matthiessen, 81, received a National Book Award nomination Wednesday for “Shadow Country,” an 890-page revision of a trilogy of novels he released in the 1990s.

Others in the fiction category included Marilynne Robinson for “Home,” a companion novel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning “Gilead”; Aleksandar Hemon for “The Lazarus Project”; and debut authors Salvatore Scibona (“The End”) and Rachel Kushner (“Telex From Cuba”).

Among the nonfiction finalists were Jane Mayer for “The Dark Side,” an investigation into the war against terrorism, and Annette Gordon-Reed’s “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.” Richard Howard and Mark Doty were nominees for poetry, while Laurie Halse Anderson was cited for young people’s literature.

Winners, each of whom receive $10,000, will be announced Nov. 19 at a ceremony hosted by author-performance artist Eric Bogosian. Honorary prizes will be given to author Maxine Hong Kingston and publisher Barney Rosset. [Read more here.]

Monterey Peninsula College full-time, tenure track English/Creative Writing Instructor. Kali F. Viker, M.S., Human Resources Department. January 12, 2009.

Bentley College Department of English Position in Creative Writing and Creativity. Dr. Maureen Goldman, Chair, Department of English. December 1, 2008.

Emerson College Department of Writing, Literature & Publishing seeks a full-time faculty member to teach Fiction Writing. Review of applications will begin October 15 & continue until the position is filled.

Montclair State University seeks Assistant Professor in Creative Writing. Full-time, tenure-track position in creative writing with primary expertise in the writing of poetry. November 3, 2008.

College of Staten Island Department of English seeks candidates for an anticipated open rank (assistant, associate, or full professor), tenure track position as Professor of English in Creative Writing / Poetry. Professor Timothy Gray, Chair, Creative Writing Search Committee. November 15, 2008.

University of Rochester Assistant Professor of Creative Writing: Poetry. Professor John Michael, Chair, English Department. November 7, 2008.

The English Department of Eastern Michigan University invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position in Creative Writing. Dr. Christine Hume, Department of English. November 15, 2008.

Lewis-Clark State College Humanities seeks a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts. November 7, 2008.

Portland State University Assistant or Associate Professor, Fiction Writing/20th Century Fiction, tenure-track. November 7, 2008.

University of Alaska – Fairbanks – Assistant Professor of English, Creative Writing, Nonfiction. Dr. Burns Cooper, Chair, English Department. November 3, 2008.

Granary Books is pleased to offer for sale a selection of more than 1,300 books, pamphlets, manuscripts, correspondence, and related materials from the library of preeminent American poet Robert Creeley (1926-2005). This selection is offered as a group, rather than as individual items, because of the preponderance of archival material accumulated within the books. Robert Creeley made a practice of inserting relevant letters, manuscripts, clippings, photographs, and ephemera into his books, many of which also bear significant inscriptions, thus making his library an important documentary archive occupying a rich site for research parallel to the primary repository of his papers at Stanford University. Contact Granary for specifics of this collection.

“In May of 2008, members of ADAPT celebrated 25 years of advocacy and civil disobedience that has brought awareness to the fact that thousands of people with disabilities are trapped in nursing homes, unable to secure services that would allow them to live independently in the community. As part of that celebration, a special exhibit, I Was There… was published that features photos and narratives, both in written and audio format, providing accounts of the 50 actions that have been held over the organization’s 25-year history.” (via Disability Nation)

“The Baldwin Project seeks to make available online a comprehensive collection of resources for parents and teachers of children. Our focus, initially, is on literature for children that is in the public domain in the United States. This includes all works first published before 1923. The period from 1880 or so until 1922 offers a wealth of material in all categories, including: Nursery Rhymes, Fables, Folk Tales, Myths, Legends and Hero Stories, Literary Fairy Tales, Bible Stories, Nature Stories, Biography, History, Fiction, Poetry, Storytelling, Games, and Craft Activities.”