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Edited by Elizabeth Bradfield, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Sean Hill, Alexandra Teague, and Mark Temelko, Broadsided has been putting literature in the streets since 2005. Each month, a new broadside is posted both on the website and around the nation.

Writing is chosen through submissions sent to Broadsided. Artists allied with Broadsided are emailed the selected writing. They then “dibs” on what resonates for them and respond visually – sometimes more than one artist will respond offering a selection of broadsides.

The resulting letter-sized pdf is designed to be downloaded and printed by anyone with a computer and printer. The goal is to create something both gorgeous and cheap, to put words and art on the streets.

The site contains a gallery of past broadsides, a map of cities/state/countries that have been broadsided (and where you can add yours), and links to other broadside sites.

Staple guns and duct tape to the ready – time to get your city on the map!

[Pictured: September 2012 Broadside: “Dhanaivi at 16 in the South Bronx,” writing by Dolan Morgan, art by Sarah Van Sanden]

There are many names out there to describe very short fiction—sudden, flash, nano, short-short, micro, minificción—but how is it classified? Are these very short stories still considered stories? Is this genre a “renaissance or a reinvention?” In “The Remarkable Reinvention of Very Short Fiction,” in World Literature Today‘s most recent issue, Robert Shapard takes a look at these questions.

“Very short fiction has many names,” he writes, “which vary by length of story and by country. In the United States, the most popular name, perhaps, is flash; in Latin America, the micro. On average, a very short fiction is ten times shorter than a traditional story, but numbers don’t tell us everything.” Later in the essay, Shapard says, “As Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler (a novelist who also writes flash fiction) has said, ‘Fiction is the art form of human yearning, no matter how long or short that work of fiction is.’ I agree with Butler. It’s a matter of focus.”

This essay introduces a special feature in WLT of “very short fiction.” “These works, by eleven authors from ten countries, take many forms and range in length from sudden (about two pages) to flash (about a page) to micro (less than half a page).”

This special section includes stories from Carmen Boullosa, Hisham Bustani, Alex Epstein, Vanessa Gebbie, Josefine Klougart, Sylvia Petter, Nora Nadjarian, Andrés Neuman, Lili Potpara, and Clemens Setz.

A special THANKS to Brendan McBreen with the Striped Water Poets for organizing this year’s August Poetry Postcard Festival! According to his post, 160 people signed up to participate this year, with 16 from outside the US (Canada, UK, India, Singapore, South Korea, Ireland, Germany, and Tasmania Australia).

I was eager to get the mail each day and pleased to have received some really beautiful poems as well as postcards from all over the US and two from Germany. In all, I received 23 postcards and a few more may still find their way here.

I honestly enjoyed every poem I read. We are asked to dash these off and not revise or rewrite them, and that has some wary about participating. Linda H. from Germany noted on her card, “I hate sending rough drafts, but I just have enough time to write one each day and not revise. Still, it gets me writing again and this postcard project is fun.” And the poem she sent me, “Words,” complete with a scribble or two, was brilliant. She’s right: it can be unnerving. At the same time, taking the risk gets us writing, not worrying about a poem being “good,” and sharing our writing with others with no fear of negative feedback.

I’d love to mention all the poems I received, but here are just a few:

Nonie Sharpe of Port Angeles, seeing where I lived, wrote a poem about Michigan, noting “Memories of our Ann Arbor days.”

From Phillip Brown: “Colors and verbs were selected from a list and paired at random to serve as a starting point (inspiration) for the poems in this project.” Great idea! The poem he wrote for me was inspired by “lavender” and “flinch.”

Catherine Giodano created a found poetry piece from newsprint and regularly blogs such work here.

Emma Bolden created her own intricately detailed pen/ink drawings for the postcards. Beautiful.

All of the cards were uplifting to receive and fun to read, re-read, share out loud with others, and use to inspire my own writing.

This is the fifth year I’ve participated to the end: I did complete all 32 poems (we were asked to take an extra participant). This August Poetry Postcard Festival really fires me up each year. It gets me actively engaged in thinking “poetry” throughout my day as I look for what I might pen to a card when I have a moment, or forces me to just sit and write to get it done and in the mail.

When the month is over, that last card sent, I feel a bit sad. I try to carry on the motivation to keep writing and reading poetry regularly, but as the year wears on, I find other activities taking precedence. I use this postcard festival as a way to ‘re-center’ the importance of poetry in my life and look forward to August each year to help me do this.

I hope Brendan (or someone) will generously take the time to organize this next year. And I hope at least 30 others feel the same way and sign on to participate. I certainly do appreciate it.

For Banned Books Month September 2012, PEN American’s The Daily Pen American Blog features daily posts by writers, editors, literary illuminati, and PEN staff about the banned books that matter to them most. Contributors thus far: Amy King on Alice Walker’s The Color Purple; Melissa Broder on Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal; and Matthew Zapruder on Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.

PEN American Center is the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization. International PEN was founded in 1921 in direct response to the ethnic and national divisions that contributed to the First World War. PEN’s programs reach out to the world and into diverse communities within this country. They promote writing and literature at every level and are founded on the belief that free expression is an essential component of every healthy society.

American Life in Poetry: Column 389
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Perhaps by the time this column appears, our economy will have improved and people who want to work can find good work. Minnie Bruce Pratt, who lives in Syracuse, N.Y., has a new book, mentioned below, in which there are a number of poems about the difficulties of finding work and holding on to it. Here’s an example:

Temporary Job

Leaving again. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be
grieving. The particulars of place lodged in me,
like this room I lived in for eleven days,
how I learned the way the sun laid its palm
over the side window in the morning, heavy
light, how I’ll never be held in that hand again.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Minnie Bruce Pratt from her most recent book of poems, Inside the Money Machine, Carolina Wren Press, 2011. Reprinted by permission of Minnie Bruce Pratt and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

A new publication of Beowulf  translated by the poet Thomas Meyer has been recently released by Punctum Books. It is edited with a preface by David Hadbawnik, and includes an introduction by Daniel C. Remein, and an interview with Thomas Meyer.

Hadbawnik writes: “This is an open access publication, which means it’s available for free download; however, there is also an option to purchase a physical copy of the book, and I would urge anyone who’s interested in Tom’s work, Old English poetry, or supporting independent publishers to buy a copy. Tom’s translation was done 40 years ago during his studies at Bard, and it’s pretty groundbreaking, especially compared to what poets have usually done with this poem.”

A post on Canadian Magazines blog let us know that Other Voices magazine of Edmonton has ceased publication. Started in mid 1988s, the magazine had a long history of publishing outside of the mainstream. Managing Editor Bobbi Beatty cited changes in the publishing industry and economy as two contributing factors to the decision to cease publication. The magazine website is no longer functioning.

In the most recent issue of Iron Horse Literary Review, Editor Leslie Jill Patterson announces that Managing Editor Brent Newsom, who also writes the Horselaugh column at the back of every issue, will be leaving for a tenure-track job in Oklahoma. “Brent has been a God-send to us this year,” she writes, “a young man quick to laugh and also real sly about calming tempters and quashing trouble in the office. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard as he and I did one day when proofing one of our issues. People passing by in the hallway must have thought we were drunk, howling as we were. I’ll miss him tremendously but am so happy for he and his wife, Amanda, as they start their lives as ‘real’ people, not poor, struggling students any more. Of course, it was only appropriate that Brent, with his sense of humor, created and wrote the Horse Laugh column at the back of every issue.”

She announces that there will be one more column from him in an upcoming issue, but then Iron Horse will start up a new column featuring the new managing editor, Landon Houle.

The actual issue includes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from Harryette Mullen, John Hart, Mike Alexander, Alison Stine, Jennifer Bullis, Josh Booton, Ashley Seitz Kramer, Sean Bernard, Karen Regen-Tuero, and Amy Monticello.

The Summer 2012 issue of Western American Literature features Current Western TV. “The essays in this special issue,” says Guest Editor Michael K. Johnson, “suggest the range and diversity of western television. The issue seeks to expand the concept of the genre Western and to expand our understanding of the “place” of the Western. There series here combine or draw from multiple genres (police procedurals, biker tales, documentaries, reality TV, etc.) to create new versions of the Western, and they sometimes expand the setting of the Western to include places other than the traditionally defined American West.”

“While this issue celebrates the rebirth of the television Western in new twenty-first-century forms, the essays also suggest the necessity of critical engagement with a genre that continues to return to us a complicated, sometimes contradictory, alternately progressive and regressive reflection of our own cultural moment.”

Essays featured in this issue come from Jennifer Schell, Kerry Fine, Justin A. Joyce, Sara Humphreys, and book reviews are contributed by Cynthia J. Miller, Corey Dethier, Sue Matheson, Holly Jean Richard, D. B. Gough, Leonard Engel, Melinda Linscott, and John Hursh.

Tin House‘s current issue features a supplemental “mix-tape” and fold-out poster (featuring art from the cover). The editors say, “How could we put out a Portland/Brooklyn theme issue and not include a soundtrack?” This “mix-tape” soundtrack can be listened to and downloaded here.

Tin House editors said, “We invited Brooklyn-based feminist noise-rockers Amy Klein and Catherine Tung of Hilly Eye and, from the City of Roses, the ambient electro-acoustic musician Liz Harris, of Grouper, to curate an epic mix that captures the sonic landscape of our hometowns. ‘The music coming out of Brooklyn is receiving a lot of attention right now,’ notes Klein and Tun. ‘Perhaps because it is being produced by a particularly young, particularly entrepreneurial set. Competition is stiff, which breeds technical and artistic savvy.’ To wit: Fiasco, TEEN, and ‘Magnetic Island, which melds math-rock rhythms with mind-expanding flights of guitar.'”

The Bands

Brooklyn
Shellshag
Magnetic Island
Queening
Fiasco
Hilly Eye
Devious
Teen
Dan Friel

Portland
Pulse Emitter
Ilyas Ahmed
Golden Retriever
Operative
Indignant Senility
Mirroring
Privacy
Cloaks

Writing featured in the issue includes work from Hannah Tinti, Jon Raymond, Adam Wilson, Evan Hughes, Vanessa Veselka, Ben Lerner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Karbo, Salma Abdelnour, and more.

The editor’s note in the most recent issue of Fence comes from Fiction Editor Lynne Tillman in honor of it being her last issue. “This is my fifteenth issue, and my last,” she says. “I figured it was time, which is a conveniently abstract way of saying a lot and not much. As editor, I satisfied a desire to get first-timers published. I loved bringing well-published writers into Fence, and having them share the Table of Contents with newer ones. I looked for and published many stories in translation. As editor, I could select pieces by different kinds of writers, who had varied approaches to prose and narrative. All of this made me very happy.”

“It was an honor being the fiction editor of Fence, and I thank Rebecca Wolff for the chance. What will come can only be terrific—and different. Vive la.”

This issue itself contains work from Denis Johnson, Paul Lisicky, Marin Buschel, Judith Goldman, Geoffrey Nutter, Cathy Eisenhower, Rosmarie Waldrop, Keith Waldrop, Daniel Tiffany, and more.

Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature was awarded to Molly Beth Griffin for her novel Silhouette of a Sparrow. Molly Beth Griffin is the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Grant, a graduate of Hamline University’s MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and a writing teacher at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.

“Silhouette of a Sparrow is a coming-of-age story about the search for wildness in a confining time—a tale of a young woman discovering both the art of rebellion and the power of unexpected love. Sent to spend the summer with distant relatives at a resort hotel in Excelsior, Minnesota, sixteen-year-old Garnet Richardson—budding ornithologist; reluctant troublemaker; adventurous spirit—quickly compiles a list of all the things she wants to do: sneak into the new amusement park, wander the countryside looking for new birds, and somehow convince her mother to let her attend college. It’s 1926 and Garnet is well aware of the world’s expectations for her: after this summer with her relatives, she is to marry, settle down, and become a housewife. But what no one expects—least of all Garnet—is that she’ll fall in love with the beautiful and daring Isabella, a flapper at the local dance hall. It is she who will give Garnet the courage to take control of her own life and pursue her dreams.”

The title will be released next month by Milkweed Editions.

With the print of their newest issue, CALYX announces and presents a new section to the magazine: an interview section. This issue features an interview by one of the CALYX editors Bethany Haug with Rebecca Lindenberg, author of Love, An Index (McSweeney’s, 2012). The interview discusses Lindenberg’s new book, her inspiration for poetry, and how her experience of gender has shaped her identity as a writer.

Lindenberg says, “Well, in the sense that [gender] has centrally shaped my identity as a human, I’d say it shapes my identity as a writer quite a lot. And like it or not, I think the truth is that in writings as in all things, women and their work still encounter a degree of mostly unconscious skepticism from people—male and female—who are in positions to select or publish (or praise) our work, or give us jobs, or claim us as influences.” She goes on to say, “I aspire to be the same kind of poet as I am a woman/human—educated, inventive, generous, curious, ethical, attracted to quick wit and drawn to big, ambitious ideas, and maybe a little sassy, when the price is right.”

Senior Editor Rebecca Olson says, “You can continue to look forward to this interview section in future issues where we’ll feature discussions with the best and brightest women writers and artists today.”

The rest of the issue features poetry, prose, and art from Lisa Bellamy, Susan Nisenbaum Becker, Jung Hae Chae, Sandra Cisneros, Vanessa Hua, Julie Lein, Stephanie Glazier, Judy Halebsky, Jody Joldersma, Theresa Anderson, Katie Cercone, and more.