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NewPages Blog

At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

New Lit on the Block :: Sidebrow

Sidebrow is an online & print journal dedicated to innovation & collaboration. Sidebrow provides a forum for exploring the collective and the singular in literary arts. Submissions that re-imagine or explore interstices between posted pieces or respond to ongoing projects are encouraged.

The first issue of Sidebrow includes an impressive lineup: Jenny Allan, A.K. Arkadin, Jeff Bacon, Andrea Baker, Julia Bloch,Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite, Nick Bredie, Amina Cain, Kate Hill Gantrill, Nona Gaspers, Jimmy Chen, Kim Ghinquee. John Cleary, Steve Dalachinsky, Catherine Daly, Brett Evans, Brian Evenson, Raymond Farr, Sandy Florian, Paul Gacioch, Anne Germanacos, Scott Glassman, Noah Eli Gordon, Paul Hardacre, HL Hazuka, Anne Heide, Malia Jackson, Carrie-Sinclair Katz, Susanna Kittredge, Richard Kostelanetz, Kristine Leja Norman Lock, Doug MacPherson, Scott Malby, Bob Marcacci, Bill Marsh, rob mclennan, LJ Moore, Greg Mulcahy, Cathi Murphy, Eireene Nealand, Daniel Pendergrass, Kristin Prevallet, kathryn 1. pringle, Stephen Ratcliffe, Francis Raven, AE Reiff, Daniel C. Remein, Elizabeth Robinson, Zach Savich, Len Shneyder, Nina Shope, Kyle Simonsen, Ed Skoog, Jason Snyder, Anna Joy Springer, Chris Stroffolino, Cole Swensen, Joanne Tracy, Chris Tysh, Nico Vassilakis, James Wagner, Derek White, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, and Angela Woodward.

Thomas Lynch on Paper Cuts

One of my all-time favorite writers and human beings in general: Thomas Lynch – given the “Stray Questions” by Gregory Cowles on the NYT Paper Cuts blog.

How much time — if any — do you spend on the Web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?

“The Web is like having my favorite haunts — library and post office, theater and gallery, newsroom, museum and archives — all in the same stone’s throw. No less the mall, casino and bawdy house; but those are dissipations I’ve, for the most part, avoided. For pure pleasure, an hour’s mousing around dictionary.com is hard to better.”

Read the rest here.

New at West Branch

West Branch Editor Paula Closson Buck introduces a few new names to the publication starting with this latest issue – Fall/Winter 2008. New Advisory Editors include Shara McCallum, Chris Camuto, Deidre O’Connor, Robert Rosenberg, and G. C. Waldrep. Dinty Moore will become a contributing editor drumming up creative nonfiction submissions. And a new feature from Contributing Editor Garth Greenwell will be the annual column “To a Green Thought” – this issue includes the first installment: “Beauty’s Canker: On Jorie Grahma.” (Linked because it’s generously available full-text on the WB site.)

Calls from Home

Join the ninth annual CALLS FROM HOME radio broadcast for prisoners.

Thousand Kites is asking you to call their toll-free line 877-518-0606 and speak directly to those behind bars this holiday season. An answering machine will record your message. Read a poem, sing a song, or just speak directly from you heart. Speak to someone you know or to everyone – make it uplifting. Call anytime, now through December 9, and record your message.

The United States has 2.4 million people behind bars. Thousand Kites wants you to lend your voice to a powerful grassroots radio broadcast that reaches into our nation’s prison and lets those inside know they are not forgotten.

Each call will be posted to the website as it comes in.

CALLS FROM HOME will broadcast on over 200 radio stations across the country and be available for download from their website on December 13. This is a project of Thousand Kites/WMMT-FM/Appalshop and a national network of grassroots organizations working for criminal justice reform.

Jobs :: Various

The Department of English at the American University of Sharjah is seeking a full-time faculty member. Dec 28. Dean William H Heidcamp: cashr-at-aus.edu

Indiana State University tenure-track assistant professor. Dec 1 until filled.

Northwestern University Simon Blattner Visiting Assistant Professorship in fiction. Mary Kinzie, Director of Creative Writing, Department of English.

Georgia College & State University Limited Term Temporary Creative Writer. Mary Kinzie, Director of Creative Writing, Department of English. Dec 15.

Columbia College Chicago visiting poet for the Elma Stuckey Liberal Arts and Sciences Emerging Poet-in-Residence. Feb 15 deadline.

Concordia College-Moorhead Fiction Writing Assistant Professor, tenure-track. Dec 10 until filled.

Visiting Poet at the University of Missouri-St. Louis MFA Program for the spring semester of 2010. Karen Bartoni, Department of English. Jan 9.

Western State College of Colorado invites applications for a Creative Writing tenure-track position in English starting August 2009. Jan 26.

Bowdoin College Department of English invites applications for a tenure-track/tenured position in creative writing (fiction & creative non-fiction). Elizabeth Muther, Chair, Department of English. Dec 15 until filled.

NewPages Updates :: December 07, 2008

Polyphony H.S. – fiction, nonfiction, poetry
Annalemma – prose, art
a s l o n g a s i t t a k e s – poetry
10×3 plus – poetry
Amoskeag – fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, art
HeartLodge – poetry
A Cappella Zoo – poetry, fiction, drama, art
Matrix – poetry, fiction
Black & White Journal for the Arts – fiction, non-fiction, poetry, art

In Memoriam ;: Forrest J Ackerman

Sci-fi’s grand old man, Forrest J Ackerman, dies
By John Rogers
SouthFlorida.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Forrest J Ackerman, the sometime actor, literary agent, magazine editor and full-time bon vivant who discovered author Ray Bradbury and was widely credited with coining the term “sci-fi,” has died. He was 92.

Ackerman died Thursday of heart failure at his Los Angeles home, said Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman’s estate.

Although only marginally known to readers of mainstream literature, Ackerman was legendary in science-fiction circles as the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was also the owner of a huge private collection of science-fiction movie and literary memorabilia that for years filled every nook and cranny of a hillside mansion overlooking Los Angeles.

“He became the Pied Piper, the spiritual leader, of everything science fiction, fantasy and horror,” Burns said Friday.

Read more here.

Visual Arts Submissions Sought

PRISM is extending the deadline for its Spring 2009, Visual Arts theme issue!

Deadline for Visual Arts Issue Extended
November 19, 2008 3:31PM
New deadline: December 15, 2008

Send your writing (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction) about art, art about writing, creative projects that involve both, and conversations between artists and writers.

PRISM is also seeking compelling illustrations for our inside pages.

All submissions should be sent to:

PRISM international
Creative Writing Program, UBC
Buch. E462 – 1866 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1
Canada

Please indicate Visual Arts Theme Issue in your cover letter. Regular submission guidelines apply.

Disability Nation Charge :: Where Were You on Prop 8?

Commentary: Why PWD Need To Care About Prop 8
Submitted by Erika Jahneke
Disability Nation
November 18, 2008

“I have often thought that people with disabilities and people who are gay should be natural allies, even before all of the No on Proposition 8 protests and the subsequent rallies after election day started across the nation. The protests bring back memories of ADAPT actions I’ve been involved with in the past…

“I’ve had many amazing gay attendants, who each contributed in their own way to expanding my worldview beyond my suburban upbringing, and I owe them a great debt, as well as to many of my online friends, whose only agenda for me is that I do what makes my life better, and I’m feeling like they all got maligned on Election Day. I’m not okay with that. And, of course, many disabled people are gay, bisexual, or transgendered, and we should make it abundantly clear that anyone who tries to take their rights away has a fight with all of us. Yes, it’s a pain, but just think of it as a gift-with-purchase for the time we spent together on Hitler’s shit list…”

Read the rest on Disability Nation.

Will Read for Food

The 14th anniversary of Will Read for Food, the annual program of readings by local authors to benefit Greensboro charities, was held Thursday, November 20th, at the Weatherspoon Auditorium as The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Featured writers were Michael Parker, Stuart Dischell, Craig Nova, Terry Kennedy, Jennifer Grotz, Mark Smith-Soto, Allison Seay, and Lee Zacharias. The event raised $1,100 for the Glen Haven Community Development Center, which serves immigrant and refugee populations.

The event was recorded and photographed by Tina Firesheets and Jerry Wolford of the Greensboro News & Record.

Listen to each of the readings here.

Resource :: Jobs Fellowships Scholarships

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship
The fundamental objective of MMUF is to increase the number of minority students, and others with a demonstrated commitment to eradicating racial disparities, who will pursue PhDs in core fields in the arts and sciences. The Program aims to reduce over time the serious under-representation on the faculties of individuals from certain minority groups, as well as to address the attendant educational consequences of these disparities.

The MMUF website includes a bibliography of dissertations, books, and articles, and updated lists of jobs, fellowships, scholarships, programs, and grad and post-doc programs.

Conference & CFP :: Beat Studies

The Beat Studies Association invites proposals for papers on all aspects of Beat literature and Beat studies for the two panels the association anticipates sponsoring at this year’s American Literature Association Conference (May 21-24 in Boston). Proposals of one to two pages (250-500 words) should be sent electronically to Tim Hunt at tahunt-at-ilstu.edu by January 2, 2009.

The Beat Studies Association would especially welcome proposals that engage understudied figures central to or related to the Beats and proposals that consider the significance of current and emerging critical paradigms for study of the Beats.

Is Sci Fi Dying?

Sci-fi special: Is science fiction dying?
by Marcus Chown
New Scientist
12 November 2008

Chown takes a look at the current state of SciFi lit and includes a section from each of six leading science fiction authors who comment on where they think the genre is going: Margaret Atwood, Stephen Baxter, William Gibson, Ursula K Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Nick Sagan.

Fellowship :: Bolin Fellows at Williams College

The Bolin Fellowships are two-year residencies at Williams College, and three scholars or artists are appointed each year. Fellows devote the bulk of the first year to the completion of dissertation work—or in the case of MFA applicants, building their professional portfolios—while also teaching one course as a faculty member in one of the College’s academic departments or programs. The second year of residency (ideally with degree in hand) is spent on academic career development while again teaching just one course.

Gaius Charles Bolin was the first black graduate of Williams. The fellowship program was founded in 1985, on the centennial of his admission to the College.

Election 2008 :: It’s Not Over Yet

Worth checking out if you’re not a regular viewer of The Daily Show: Calvin Trillin banters with Jon Stuart and reads some of the poems from his “epic” Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme.

Some excerpts from Powell’s entry:

ON OBAMA:
Obama’s rhetoric, she said, was lofty
But unsubstantial air, like Mr. Softee.

ON MCCAIN:
His party was no longer torn asunder,
And all he’d had to do was knuckle under.

ON BIDEN:
Joe carries many thoughts inside his head,
And often leaves but few of them unsaid.

ON PALIN:
On Russia’s being not too far away
She sounded eerily like Tina Fey.

New Lit on the Block :: A Cappella Zoo

A Cappella Zoo is a new literary magazine of “experimental and magical realist works” published twice a year by Colin Meldrum (with readers Devori Kimbro, Syndie Allen, Michael Lee, Micah Unice, and Gail Spencer). A cappella Zoo invites submissions of “memorable prose, poetry, drama, and genre-bending works” and are “especially excited about magical realism, bilingualism, and experiments with technique, form, language, thought, truth, dichotomy, and variation.”

Issue 1 Fall 2008 includes:

Drama by Kathy Coudle King

Poetry by Margaret Bashaar, C. E. Chaffin, Yu-Han Chao, Nik De Dominic, Carol Dorf, Justin Hyde, Marc Jampole, Miah Jeffra, Jane Knechtel, J. R. Pearson, Rolli, Omar Singleton, Krysten Tom, Shellie Zacharia

Fiction by Melinda J. Combs, Brendan Connell, Matthew Falk, Heather Fowler, Liza Granville, Tania Hershman, Cicily Janus, Hank Kirton, Drew Lackovic, Allan M. McDonald, Corey Mesler, John Jasper Owens, Patricia Russo, Robert J. Santa, Ben Segal, Noel Sloboda, Lydia Williams

Art by Peter Schwartz

Dueling MFA Programs Head to Court

Poetry program heads to court
NEC sues over exit of director to N.J. school
By AnnMarie Timmns
Concord Monitor
November 23, 2008

New England College is about to lose its status as the one school in the country with a poetry-only master’s degree program. And administrators blame the program’s former director, who they say stole NEC’s faculty and students and re-created its program at Drew University in New Jersey… [read the rest here]

Biblio File Interviews James Meek

Nigel Beale is a writer/broadcaster who specializes in literary journalism. In his role as host of The Biblio File he has interviewed Nobel, Man Booker, IMPAC, and many other Award and Prize winning authors; plus publishers, booksellers, editors, book collectors, librarians, conservators, illustrators… He has recently interviewed James Meek’s on We are now Making our Decent; Nam Le, this year’s winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize; Rebecca Rosenblum, Nam Le, and Anne Enright on those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story; Rawi Hage 2008 IMPAC Award Winner; and many more.

Un-awarding Literature?

We’re Not Worthy
By David Kelly
NYT PaperCuts
November 24, 2008

I stole an idea from Rolling Stone a couple of months ago, so now I’ll swipe one from Entertainment Weekly. That magazine is conducting a survey called “Recall the Gold,” in which voters pick some of the most undeserving Academy Award winners. Kevin Costner, be prepared to cough up your Oscar. You, too, Roberto Benigni.

Which literary-award winners have been the most undeserving? Good luck ripping the Pulitzer away from Margaret Mitchell or Herman Wouk. When it comes to Nobel laureates, of course, the list is almost endless…[read the rest here]

How Does Your Reference Rate?

Literature E-Reference Ratings
The purpose of this tool is to provide an overview and evaluations of some of the most well-known and respected subscription-based electronic resources in 14 subject categories. Each database is rated based on the seven criteria librarians consider the most when making purchasing decisions. Covered in this category: American literature; British literature; world literature; literary biography; literary criticism; fiction; poetry; drama; readers’ advisory (RA) tools.

By Lauren Lampasone
Library Journal
November 15, 2008

New Lit on the Block :: Infinity’s Kitchen

Infinity’s Kitchen is a graphic literary journal featuring experimental writing and art. The publication is online and in print. “We’d like to cook up a tasty mishmash of words, sounds and images, using whichever ingredients seem best.” Infinity’s Kitchen is an independent publication of essays, fiction, poetry, art and whatever else that’s cooking. It is a place for creative people to work out their ideas. They’re an arts and letters publication with a focus on the experimental and the avant-garde. Some of their influences include DaDa magazines and manifestos, Futurist publications, UbuWeb, Ray Gun Magazine.

Poetry :: Indian Heritage Explored

The PBS News Hour The News Hour Poetry Series, funded by the Poetry Foundation, intends to engage a broader audience with poetry through a series of thoughtful, in-depth reports on contemporary poets and poetry.

The series includes the production of short-form profiles on living American poets and long-form segments on current debates in poetry that will air on the NewsHour starting in 2006. The pieces are also available on PoetryFoundation.org as audio and video.

The collaboration will allow the NewsHour to draw from the foundation’s extensive research on the state of poetry in American culture, as well as the foundation’s knowledge of various issues — from the plethora of MFA programs to the current neglect of some of the art form’s living masters.

Currently featured on the site: Spoken Word Club Explores Indian Identity, History. Through verse, members of the Spoken Word Club at the Santa Fe Indian School articulate identities both modern and traditional, and maintain links to the past through native language and culture. Video readings by members of the Spoken Word Club are included.

Bad Economy? HHM Halts Acquisitions

HMH Places “Temporary” Halt on Acquisitions
By Rachel Deahl
Publishers Weekly
November 24, 2008

It’s been clear for months that it will be a not-so-merry holiday season for publishers, but at least one house has gone so far as to halt acquisitions. PW has learned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books.

Josef Blumenfeld, v-p of communications for HMH, confirmed that the publisher has “temporarily stopped acquiring manuscripts” across its trade and reference divisions. The directive was given verbally to a handful of executives and, according to Blumenfeld, is “not a permanent change.” Blumenfeld, who hedged on when the ban might be lifted, said that the right project could still go to the editorial review board. He also maintained that the the decision is less about taking drastic measures than conducting good business… [read the rest here]

Indie Secret Santa

HTML GIANT is playing Secret Santa as a way to support independent literature. Sign up now, and you’re name will be exchanged with another participant. The gift-giving is anything indie lit – subscriptions to magazines, books from indie publishers, a print anthology from online publications, etc. Deadline for getting your name in the exchange is December 5.

Holiday Shopping? An Easy Suggestion from NewPages

I am absolutely NOT a shopper, let alone a holiday shopper. Ugh! So, my suggestion to help save time and gas, avoid the crowds, and support independent publishing? The coolest, easiest, bestest gift you could possibly give this holiday season:

A MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION!

Visit the links on NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines and NewPages Guide to Alternative Magazines. Most mags are set up to take payments online, but there is also still time to print an order form and get it sent in. Some mags even offer a discount gift subscription if you get one for yourself as well. (Replies from mags offering this are welcome on this blog!)

Given the price of some of the mags, you could even mix and match a couple – maybe an annual with a quarterly, an alternative mag and a literary mag, one poetry and one fiction mag – the creative possibilities are endless!

Don’t think anyone on your list would “appreciate” this idea? (Well, first of all, get some new people on your list!) Then “gift” yourself a subscription or two, tell others it’s what you want if they insist on buying you something, send a subscription to your local high school creative writing teacher, library, senior center, shelter, teen center, prison, political official who could use (more) poetry, etc.

‘Tis always the season to support lit/alt mags!

The Tsar’s Dwarf

The Tsar’s Dwarf is Danish author Peter H. Fogtdal’s first novel to be translated into English. Sørine Bentsdatter, Fogtdal’s unusual heroine, is brilliantly rendered. A deformed female dwarf living in the early 18th century, Sørine is wittily acerbic, angry, and indifferent. She’s also shrewd, sensitive, and fiercely intelligent. At times she’s compassionate and almost kind; at others, her actions are questionable, even deplorable. Always, Sørine is human. Continue reading “The Tsar’s Dwarf”

On the Mason Dixon Line:

In BC Hall and CT Wood’s travelogue, Big Muddy: Down the Mississippi through America’s Heartland, they claim that the old dividing line between North and South, the Mason-Dixon, is arbitrary and outdated, a relic from a property dispute by two English astronomers in the 1760s. Continue reading “On the Mason Dixon Line:”

Dismantling the Hills

Don’t read the back cover; Dismantling the Hills is not a love song to forests alive with work crews. It is an elegy for the soul-crushing life in the logging countries of Oregon, highlighted and made ironic against the background of a majestic Nature that should not only have been benign, but inspirational. Continue reading “Dismantling the Hills”

Not a Speck of Light is Showing

“I pulled my mother’s head out of the cream of wheat and wiped off her face and neck with a well worn green and yellow sponge from the kitchen sink.” And so goes the first line of Barry Graham’s chapbook Not a Speck of Light is Showing, a violent, rough, oversexed collection of flash fiction that, despite its hard-edged nature, tends to welcome readers at the oddest moments with its surprising revelations of humor and tenderness. Take this quote from “Dishonorable,” for example: Continue reading “Not a Speck of Light is Showing”

Bear

Karen Chase’s second collection of poetry is not only about the significance of bears in terms of humanity’s barbaric need to destroy them through poaching, it is also a metaphorical and allegorical device that permits the author to impart tremendously beautiful narratives, often centered on the most painful and burdensome subjects in her own life. Her poems are emotional songs that dig their claws into your flesh until you simply respond or comprehend what is at stake. These poems of remembrance bridge the gap between the world of the beast, the bear, and the not-so-dissimilar world of human beings often overcome with the same primal tendencies. Continue reading “Bear”

The House of Your Dream

In his introduction to The House of Your Dream, Peter Johnson, founding editor of the influential and now defunct magazine The Prose Poem: An International Journal, writes, “About twenty years ago we prose poets lived in relative obscurity, lucky if we could get editors to read, much less publish, our work.” He goes on to recount briefly a history of the genre: its beginnings during the late 60’s and early 70’s in Michael Benedikt’s anthology of prose poems, the several international renaissances it has undergone over the decades, and the current generation of prose poets writing now. He offers the White Pine anthology as a sort of recent history of the prose poem, and with him Alexander and Maloney agree. They write in a short editors’ note in the frontspace of the book, “given the predilection we both feel for the magical form that is the prose poem, it didn’t take long for us to conceive of a prose poem anthology drawn from all the books that White Pine has published (or will soon publish) in its variegated career.” Continue reading “The House of Your Dream”

Crazy Love

Leslie What, an author whose publication credits include numerous short stories in journals and anthologies as well as a novel and short story collection, is a Nebula Award Winner whose creativity and imagination are boundless. Crazy Love is a collection of 17 short stories that stop at nothing to convey the limitless possibilities of love and its tremendous potential for both honesty and hilarity. Continue reading “Crazy Love”

The Zen of Chainsaws and Enormous Clippers

Inside the back cover of Drew Kalbach’s chapbook of prose poems is a section of text from the author, in which he writes one seemingly random sentence after another about the collection: “several children read the manuscript, but they started crying” and “it is a tribute to the ninja turtles disguised as a marilyn manson song disguised as real poetry” are two of the tamest examples. But among the chaos of this self-deprecating afterword, Kalbach has this thought about the chapbook: “it is so deep and layered that you can’t read it, you must climb through it.” Despite his immediately negating that idea by writing “there is no depth,” I could not help but grasp at the metaphor; it seemed to describe my own experience with the poems. These prose poems do have depth, and I didn’t so much read them as climb through them, over words and images, across sentences and line breaks. Continue reading “The Zen of Chainsaws and Enormous Clippers”

Being in the Writing Moment

The November 2008 issue of Shambhala Sun has an article written by Anne Donovan called “Through the Looking Glass,” which explores the practice of “finding clarity through story.” Donovan discusses the ability to be “intensely in the moment” that we tend to lose as adults, but can rediscover through not only reading fiction, but writing it. It was refreshing to read her take on the act of what I so often hear referred to as ‘losing oneself’ in writing. If anything, what may appear on the outside as my being lost in writing, on the inside feels like the exact opposite – I feel more that I ‘find myself’ in writing.

I felt a strong connection with Donovan’s reflection on the practice of being in the moment: “As a writer I regularly experience the strange paradox of being in the moment, fully aware, utterly engaged, yet dealing with people and situations that are not real. In fact there are few occasions in my life when I am more mindful than when I am writing. I find it hard to reconcile this with most of the teachings I have read or heard about mindfulness but I venture to propose that what makes it work is the consciousness of stepping into that other world, of accepting it in the way that one can mindfully accept stepping out into rain or sun without judgment. When I look up from my computer and see the trees outside my window, I know I am in two worlds, the ne outside nd the one inside. I step between them as I step between my own life and that of my character. I am not daydreaming in order to escape reality but to experience a different form of reality.”

In Memoriam :: Tom Gish

Tom Gish, Legendary Kentucky Publisher, Dies
Editor & Publisher
November 24, 2008

Tom Gish, who shined the spotlight on corruption and environmental degradation in his corner of southeastern Kentucky as an award-winning publisher of The Mountain Eagle of Whitesburg for a half-century, died Friday [Nov. 21]. He was 82.

His son, Ben Gish, said he died at Pikeville Medical Center.

Tom Gish and his wife, Pat, overcame floods, threats, arson and attempted suppression to deliver news in the weekly publication with the slogan: “It Screams!”

“He was the inspiration for several generations of journalists, mainly because of his moral authority about how he ran his paper,” said longtime journalist Bill Bishop, who worked at the newspaper from 1975 to 1977.

The Gishes took on previously untouched issues, from strip mining to police corruption.

They endured advertising boycotts, faced violent threats and had their newspaper offices firebombed in 1974. Showing their grit, the Gishes churned out another issue a week after the incident, with the masthead stating “It Still Screams!”

Dee Davis, head of the Whitesburg-based advocacy group Center for Rural Strategies, said Gish “took the side of the little guy” and “wasn’t afraid to take on the well-heeled.”

“I think his life was a testament to what journalism in a small town could do,” Davis said. “It was an advocate’s voice for improving education and health care, and it was a vigilant eye against corruption and malfeasance.”

Read more about Tom Gish on Editor & Publisher.

[via Dawn Potter]

Awards :: Bad Sex in Literature

The fourteenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Awards took place last week. The awards were set up by Auberon Waugh with the aim of gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels. Previous winners include Tom Wolfe, AA Gill, Sebastian Faulks, and Melvyn Bragg. Read the winner as well as shortlisted passages here.

Film :: Revolutionary Road

Paramount Vantage will be releasing Revolutionary Road, adapted from the novel by Richard Yates. It opens in theaters December 26, 2008.

“Revolutionary Road is an incisive portrait of an American marriage seen through the eyes of Frank (three-time Academy Award nominee Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (five-time Academy Award nominee Kate Winslet) Wheeler. Yates’ story of 1950’s America poses a question that has been reverberating through modern relationships ever since: can two people break away from the ordinary without breaking apart?”

New Lit on the Block :: aslongasittakes

a s l o n g a s i t t a k e s, is a sound poetry magazine published by the Atlanta Poets Group. They publish sound poetry, scores for sound poetry and essays on sound poetry.

“What is ‘sound poetry’? It’s one of those know it when you see (hear) it kind of things. It’s probably not music (thanks Dick Higgins). It might be noise. If you think about a spectrum of possible noise made by the human body (or simulations thereof or substitutions therefor), and at one end of the spectrum is a person reading her poem and at the other end is abstract noise…”

a s l o n g a s i t t a k e s prefers works that fall towards the latter end.

Just posted, issue two includes work by Adachi Tomomi, the Atlanta Poets Group (performing a piece by Michael Basinski and some Love Songs by Bruce Andrews), Gary Barwin (alone and with Gregory Betts), Michael Basinski, David Braden, Craig Dongoski, Brian Howe, Maja Jantar (alone and with Vincent Tholome), e k rzepka, Larissa Shmailo, and Mathew Timmons (performing a Hugo Ball poem).

Iowa City Named “City of Literature”

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated Iowa City, Iowa, the world’s third City of Literature, making the community part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

“This is at once a celebration of the literary riches and resources of Iowa City and a spur to action,” said University of Iowa International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill, who led the UI Writing University committee that submitted the city’s proposal. “We look forward to working with our new partners in the Creative Cities network — to forging dynamic relationships with writers, artists and others committed to the life of discovery. This is a great day for Iowa City.”

Iowa City joins Edinburgh, Scotland, and Melbourne, Australia, as UNESCO Cities of Literature. Other cities in the Creative Cities Network – honoring and connecting cultural centers for cinema, music, crafts and folk arts, design, media arts and gastronomy, as well as literature – include Aswan, Egypt; Santa Fe, N.M.; Berlin, Germany; Montreal, Canada; Popayan, Colombia; Bologna, Italy; Shenzhen, China; and Seville, Spain.

Read more here.

Postal Poetry

Dana Guthrie Martin and Dave Bonta are behind the ambitious Postal Poetry, “a fantabulous showcase for collaboratively and individually created poetry postcards.” Check out the gallery (aka archive) on the site and find full submission guidelines, including their hope to have traveling shows of postcards in their area. Pictured: “tricky” by Carolee Sherwood.

Postal Poetry is also running a no-fee contest with the best rules I’ve yet to see, which include putting on a feather boa, getting drunk, looking at pictures and writing. Hmmm, now that’s a new one! (Deadline: Dec 15)

Out of Town Closing Down

Out of Town News, the newsstand that has offered a cornucopia of newspapers and magazines as a Harvard Square landmark for more than 50 years, could close.

The owners have informed Cambridge officials that they have no plans to renew their lease after it expires Jan. 31. City officials say they are hoping to find another newsstand to take its place, but acknowledge that the business climate is grim as more customers get their news online rather than in print.

“It could be that we’re chasing moonbeams, and we’ll have to look at our re-use options,” said Robert W. Healey, the city manager.

The newsstand occupies the center of Harvard Square and is on the National Register of Historic Places. No matter what happens to the business, city officials say they will keep the building, which is used as much as a meeting place as a place to buy news.

By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff
The Boston Globe