Find out, according to Forbes.
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!
Top Ten Best Paid Authors?
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David Byrne – Don’t Fence Me In (Red Hot + Blue)
Ahhhh… David always provides me with a sense of relief, regardless of what’s going on in the world, and at the same time, a sense of total connect to what’s going on in the world.
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Jobs :: Various
University of Northern Colorado Assistant Professor of English: Creative Writing. Nov 1.
University of Northern Colorado Assistant Professor of English, Creative Writing. Nov 1.
University of Pittsburgh. Nonfiction Writing, tenure-track, to teach undergraduate & MFA students. David Bartholomae, Professor & Chair, Department of English. Nov 1.
Loyola University Chicago. The Department of English invites applications for a tenure-track position in English (Creative Writing-Poetry) at the rank of Assistant Professor, beginning fall 2009. Dr. Joyce Wexler, Chair, Department of English. Dec 1.
The Adirondack Review is currently offering three to four unpaid college internships in the form of editorial assistant positions for interested students. Applications accepting on a rolling basis.
Bowling Green State University English Department seeks strong applicants for the College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Visiting Writer for 2010. Screening of applicants will begin March 16, 2009 & continue until the position is filled. Kristine Blair, Chair, English Department.
Department of English at Harvard University invites applications for an appointment, to begin July 1, 2009, as Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on Fiction. James Engell, Chair, Department of English. Jan 5, 2009.
Ohio University Assistant Professor Creative Writing: Non-Fiction.
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30 Below Story Contest
“Narrative is calling on writers, visual artists, photographers, performers, and filmmakers, ages eighteen to thirty, to tell us a story. We are interested in narrative in the many forms it takes: the word and the image, the traditional and the innovative, the true and the imaginary.”
This is a no-fee contest, limited to two submissions, deadline Sept 20 – Oct 27.
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The Doctor is Back
Julie Miller Vick and Jennifer S. Furlong of the Chronicle of Higher Education are back again this year with The CV Doctor. Sample CVs for different disciplines are available on the site with notes linking their feedback to specific areas on each. Worth a look for those prepping to send out CVs – or those still trying to break through the first round.
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Conference :: Literary Translators Association
The 31st annual conference of ALTA, the American Literary Translators Association, will be held at the Radisson University Hotel on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus on October 15 – 18, 2008. The conference will feature panels, readings, a book exhibit, and other events concerned with the art and craft of literary translation.
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Wisconsin Poetry Award
Announcing the first Woodrow Hall Award, an offshoot of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program. This award will be given to a Wisconsin poet who has actively contributed to Wisconsin’s literary landscape, and will include five-hundred ($500.00) dollars to implement an idea for a new poetry program or project. The winner must execute their idea in 2009. No entry fee. Multiple entries from same poet welcome. Entry deadline: December 15th, 2008
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Conference :: Wellnes & Writing 10.10
2008 Wellness & Writing Connections Conference
October 10-11, 2008
Atlanta, GA
“Writing about stressful situations is one of the easiest ways for people to take control of their problems and release negative effects of stress from their bodies and their lives. This conference is a call for writers and other professionals to collaborate and to help people find ways to help themselves and their students, clients, and patients.” Dr. James Pennebaker
The 2008 Wellness & Writing Connections Conference attracts people who see therapeutic value in writing memoirs, fiction, creative non fiction, poetry and drama.
Research shows that the heart rate lowers and people are more equipped to fight off infections when they release their worries in writing. In addition to coping better with stressful situations, writing can have positive impact on self-esteem and result in works that can help others overcome their own obstacles.
This first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary conference series brings writers and professionals from different specialties together to explore the connection between overall health and expressive writing as a therapeutic practice.
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Atwood on Debt
Payback
Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
House of Anansi Press, November 2008
Publisher Description: Payback is not a book about practical debt management or high finance, although it does touch upon these subjects. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. By investigating how debt has informed our thinking from preliterate times to the present day through the stories we tell each other, through our concepts of “balance,” “revenge,” and “sin,” and in the way we form our social relationships, Atwood shows that the idea of what we owe one another – in other words, “debt” – is built into the human imagination and is one of its most dynamic metaphors.
Margaret Atwood’s old-fashioned approach to debt
Interveiw by Sinclair Stewart
GlobeInvestor.com
Friday, September 26, 2008
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Activist Poetry in Chicago
4000 WORDS 4000 DEAD
street performance by Jennifer Karmin
Friday, October 3rd
Chicago, IL
5pm beginning in front of the Vietnam War Memorial at Wabash and Wacker Avenues along the Chicago River
Jennifer Karmin has been collecting 4000 WORDS for the 4000 DEAD Americans in Iraq. All words are being used to create a public poem. During street performances, she gives away these words to passing pedestrians. Submissions are ongoing as the Iraq War continues and the number of dead grows. Send 1-10 words with subject 4000 WORDS to jkarmin-at-yahoo.com.
“I want to start with the milestone today of 4,000 dead in Iraq. Americans. And just what effect do you think it has on the country?”
— Martha Raddatz,
ABC News’ White House correspondent
to Vice President Dick Cheney
Participants include:
Harold Abramowitz, Amanda Ackerman, Manan Ahmed, Michael Basinski, Charles Bernstein, Anselm Berrigan, Laynie Browne, Teresa Carmody, Maxine Chernoff, Catherine Daly, Patrick Durgin, Arielle Greenberg, Kate Greenstreet, Carla Harryman, David Hernandez, Jen Hofer, Pierre Joris, Matthew Klane, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Joyelle McSweeney, Philip Metres, Vanessa Place, Susan Schultz, Juliana Spahr, Stacy Szymaszek, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Andrew Zawacki, and many more.
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Film :: Barney Rosset
Publisher Who Fought Puritanism, and Won
By Charles McGrath
New York Times
September 23, 2008
In its heyday during the 1960s, Grove Press was famous for publishing books nobody else would touch. The Grove list included writers like Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, Che Guevara and Malcolm X, and the books, with their distinctive black-and-white covers, were reliably ahead of their time and often fascinated by sex.
The same was, and is, true of Grove’s maverick publisher, Barney Rosset, who loved highbrow literature but also brought out a very profitable line of Victorian spanking porn.
On Nov. 19 Mr. Rosset will receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation in honor of his many contributions to American publishing, especially his groundbreaking legal battles to print uncensored versions of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” He is also the subject of “Obscene,” a documentary by Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor, which opens on Friday at Cinema Village. [read the rest here]
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Killing Trout Gets Two Fins Up
Special thanks to Tom Chandler over at the Trout Underground for his recent review of David Fraser’s first book of poetry, Killing Trout and Other Love Poems (NewPages Press, 2008). Among his comments, Chandler likens Fraser’s work to that of John Gierach:
“The result is a collection of sharp, all-literary-encumbrances-removed poems that reminded me of John Gierach’s little-seen, pre-Trout Bum Signs of Life poetry collection. Fraser doesn’t burden his poems with overripe metaphor or literary pretense. His is the art of carving away all that isn’t essential, and the result is a series of visceral glimpses into a life lived largely outdoors.”
He definitely “got it.”
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Salvation
Crane Cavanaugh is one of the most endearing, strange and exceptional protagonists I have encountered in recent memory. Take the strong opening of the prologue: Continue reading “Salvation”
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The End of the Straight and Narrow
Readers of David McGlynn’s debut collection The End of the Straight and Narrow should put aside any assumptions they may have about religious fiction and its sometimes evangelical qualities. The stories in this book break away from the generic conventions of Christian literature both in form and content. This is due to the often complicated, expansive nature of each story’s unraveling and the many struggles the characters face regarding faith and morality in a secular culture. Reading this book, one gets the sense that these are stories about pathetic people rather than some allegorical world vision. Unfortunately for McGlynn’s characters, there is no clear difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and this confusion often leads them through some of the darkest moments of their lives. Continue reading “The End of the Straight and Narrow”
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Based on a True Story
In Hesh Kestin’s Based on a True Story, three novellas set during the World War II era take readers on a journey from East Africa to the South Seas to Hollywood. A former foreign correspondent, Kestin peppers his tales with exotic plots and resilient characters.
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The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli
In Ginnetta Correli’s debut novel, The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli, the reader, cast as an audience member, is no less a part of the script than the other offbeat characters. The only stipulation is that our participation is limited solely to watching the scenes play out from Beatie Scareli’s unfortunate life. Written as a pseudo-screenplay, the “cast” includes Beatie’s father, a neglectful man with a strong potential for danger; Beatie’s mother Frata, a schizophrenic who believes she is Lucy Ricardo; Beatie at age 12; Beatie as an adult commenting on scenes from her troubled youth; and the reader, identified simply as “You.” Continue reading “The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli”
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The Waitress Was New
In Dominique Fabre’s The Waitress Was New, the narrator Pierre, affectionately known as Pierrounet, is a veteran bartender in the Parisian suburb of Asnières. He is fifty-six and has worked at Le Cercle bistro for 30 years. He spends his days watching people rush to and from the train station, serving his customers, empathizing with them and even, at times, emulating them – a young man in black broods over a beer and Primo Levi and Pierre attempts to read If This Is a Man at home just “to keep up on things.” Continue reading “The Waitress Was New”
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The Cosmopolitan
Thimbles, nosegays, daguerreotypes, Baudelaire – only the most precious and precocious of objects are presumed to hold value in the culturally saturated world of Donna Stonecipher’s The Cosmopolitan. Borne of an interest in the found-object shadow boxes of artist Joseph Cornell, and built around isolated quotations of renowned poets, writers, and scholars, this 2007 National Poetry Series Winner ponders the reduction of existence to a collection of novelties showcased behind glass. Continue reading “The Cosmopolitan”
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Signs of Life
Norman Waksler’s second short story collection Signs of Life reveals just that. Throughout these colorful vignettes, the reader detects signs of life, a glimpse of those small elements that illustrate humanity’s solidarity. The six stories tumble through our consciousness, some unearthing a longing for the past or the sweet innocence of first love, others revealing the inevitable regret that stems from apathy and the dull disappointment of the typical workday. Continue reading “Signs of Life”
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Of Kids and Parents
Translated from Czechoslovakian by the noted curator, producer and journalist Marek Tomin, Emil Hakl’s Of Kids and Parents received a Magnesia Litera Book of the Year award in 2003 and has been made into a feature film. With the English version debuting this year from the Prague-based publisher Twisted Spoon Press, this engrossing book is worth checking out. Continue reading “Of Kids and Parents”
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Waste
Eugene Marten's second novel Waste will entrance you from the very first page, drawing you in with its tight, evocative language and magnificent pacing. For the first third of the book, you'd be excused if you thought that all you were getting was a wonderfully written but generally quiet book about a creepy janitor working late nights in a high-rise office building. You'd be wrong, but your mistake would be understandable, and quickly rectified: What follows is one of the most disturbing stories I've read. Continue reading “Waste”
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Keep This Forever
From the beginning epigraphs to the last grasping on the final page, the sanity-bending, necessarily inadequate search for permanence is clearly foremost in Mark Halliday’s mind. With its nuanced, multi-faceted meditations on those things that matter most, Keep This Forever moves naturally through three sections from the question of mortality, brought on by turning over the death of his father in his mind; to the primary solace for most people, love and passion; until we are finally left with what the blessed few cling to in the end: their art. Continue reading “Keep This Forever”
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Mind Games
David Gianatasio’s Mind Games messes with your head, but in the best way possible. A follow-up to 2006’s Swift Kicks, this brief collection of stories grabs you by the jugular. A mutiny of fervent voices bursts from the page, and each story is clever, bold, and off-the-charts surreal. Continue reading “Mind Games”
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If the Name Doesn’t Fit, You Can’t Have It
Did you hear the one about the guy acquitted of rape who wanted to change his name to Edmond Dantes? The law trumps literary symbolism in this one – the judge ruled his “desire to distance himself” from the charges did not take precedence over the public’s right to identify him with the drug and misdemeanor charges that did stick. Oh, so, not quite as wrongfully charged as the Count of Monte Cristo…
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Alexie in the Classroom
Books address racism as it affects daily lives of Indians
By Jodi Rave of the Missoulian
BillingsGazette.com
In this article, English literature professors and teachers Heather Bruce, Anna Baldwin and Christabel Umphrey discuss Alexie’s paradox of “Indians hating Indians” and how they teach his work to students in the classroom.
The book by Alexie referenced in the article:
Sherman Alexie in the Classroom
“This is not a silent movie. Our voices will save our lives.”
Authors: Heather E. Bruce, Anna E. Baldwin, Christabel Umphrey
Published by NCTE, 2008
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Montana Lit&Arts :: Germinate & Cultivate
Montana State Univeristy
The University of the Yellowstone’s Literature and Arts Conference 2008
November 14 – 16, 2008
Montana State University ~ Bozeman
READ THIS: Montana State University’s Literature and Arts Publication is now accepting papers for its inaugural undergraduate academic conference: critical essays, creative non-fiction, original poetry, fiction, drama/screenplays, or panel proposals. Theme: “Germinate and Cultivate,” a subject of origins and developments.
Tentative Outline of Conference Schedule
Friday 11/14/08 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. — Welcome Session on campus with live jazz, hors d’oeuvres, and introductions
Saturday 11/15/08 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. — Check-in continues
Panel presentations on the MSU Campus
12 p.m. to 2 p.m. — Lunch workshop, lunch provided
2 p.m. to 6 p.m. — Panels/workshops on the MSU Campus
6 p.m. to 9 p.m. — Evening banquet with open mic, music
Sunday 11/16/08 Closing Ceremonies
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The Screwing of Print Media and Book Reviews
Chronicle loses its books editors
By Will Harper
Published on September 24, 2008
If you’re one of the few people still reading newspapers, you’ve probably figured out this truism: Print media is screwed. You know this because you’ve read several stories in newspapers about newspapers suffering declining circulation, revenues, and relevance in the Internet age.
Will Harper on McMahon departs from the ChronicleAnother more subtle manifestation of the print-media-is-screwed trend is the scaling back of book reviews in newspapers. Until recently, our very own San Francisco Chronicle was one of only a handful of dailies in the country to maintain a stand-alone books section. That sorta changed in April, when the Chron made its Sunday books “section” an insert in the Insight section…
[Read the rest on the SFWeekly.com.]
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E-Lit – D.O.A.?
Hey, don’t shoot me, I’m just the blogger, but in his Guardian Unlimited article (8/24/08), “Is e-literature just one big anti-climax?” – Andrew Gallix takes on the rhetorical question with a resounding yes. But not for fault of F-style online reading, or further laments of lack of reading overall; rather, for e-lit’s own delivery: “Technology – the very stuff e-lit is made of – has also turned out to be its Achilles heel. The slow switch to broadband limits its potential audience, e-readers are only adapted to conventional texts – and when was the last time you curled up in bed with a hypertext?”
He doesn’t, however, throw out the computer with the bathwater. Instead, he poses what might be a kind of “skipped generation” of e-lit: “In spite of all this, Amerika may well be on to something when [Chris Meade, director of the thinktank if:book] claims that we are witnessing the emergence of a ‘digitally-processed intermedia art’ in which literature and all the other arts are being ‘remixed into yet other forms still not fully developed’. My feeling is that these ‘other forms’ will have less and less to do with literature. Perhaps e-lit is already dead?”
For full effect, read the rest on Guardian.uk.
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Arts in Chicago
The Third Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival (CCAF3) takes place October 1-12, 2008, featuring Chicago-based artists collaborating in performances and projects with artists living in other locations — both here in the U.S. and abroad. These collaborations will be prepared or improvised, and some performances will involve live feeds between Chicago and elsewhere.
Among the scheduled projects are: a Chicago-based musician/composer collaborating with a composer from the Philippines, Chicago-based poets connecting over the radio with poets from Hawaii, and a Chicago-based musician collaborating with a British visual artist. Venues for CCAF3 will include Elastic Sound & Vision Gallery, The Velvet Lounge, Black Rock Pub & Kitchen, Heaven Gallery, Little Black Pearl Art & Design Center, WNUR (Northwestern University), Peter Jones Gallery, 32nd&Urban Gallery, AV- aerie, Café Mestizo, and other locations.
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Readings :: The Grand Piano in Detroit
The Grand Piano
Saturday, October 4, 3:00 PM
The Wendell W. Anderson, Jr., Auditorium Walter B. Ford II Building College for Creative Studies
John R & Frederick Douglass Streets, Detroit
Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Kit Robinson, and Barrett Watten perform an ensemble reading from The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography San Francisco, 1975 – 1980
Followed by a publication party & Grand Piano book display.
The Grand Piano is an experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers identified with the rise of Language poetry in San Francisco. It takes its name from a coffeehouse at 1607 Haight Street in San Francisco where from 1976 to 1979 the authors participated in a reading and performance series.
Free and open to the public
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New Guide on NewPages :: Podcasts, Video, Audio
NewPages Literary Multimedia Guide – Podcasts, videos, and audio programs of interest from literary magazines, book publishers, alternative magazines, universities and bloggers. Includes poetry readings, lectures, author interviews, academic forums and news casts. This is a new page under development. If you know of sites that would be relevant for our readers, please e-mail info to: denisehill-at-newpages.com
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5 Under 35 Recognized
Five young fiction writers will be recognized by the National Book Foundation at the “5 Under 35” celebration at Tribeca Cinemas on Monday, November 17, announced Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the National Book Foundation. These five writers have each been selected by a previous National Book Award Finalist or Winner as someone whose work is particularly promising and exciting and is among the best of a new generation of writers.
The 2008 5 Under 35 are:
Matthew Eck
The Farther Shore
(Milkweed Editions, 2007)
Selected by Joshua Ferris, 2007 Fiction Finalist for Then We Came to the End
Keith Gessen
All the Sad Young Literary Men
(Viking Press, 2008)
Selected by Jonathan Franzen, 2001 Fiction Winner for The Corrections
Sana Krasikov
One More Year: Stories
(Spiegel & Grau, 2008)
Selected by Francine Prose, 2000 Fiction Finalist for Blue Angel
Nam Le
The Boat
(Knopf, 2008)
Selected by Mary Gaitskill, 2005 Fiction Finalist for Veronica
Fiona Maazel
Last Last Chance
(FSG, 2008)
Selected by Jim Shepard, 2007 Finalist for Like You’d Understand Anyway
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Jobs :: Various
University of North Texas tenure-track assistant professorship in fiction, beginning 9/2009. Prof. David Holdeman, Chair, Department of English. Postmark deadline for applications is October 15.
University of Colorado at Boulder Department of English announces a tenure-track assistant professor position in Creative Writing to begin August 2009. Seeking a poet; especially interested in candidates with a second genre specialty and/or experience in publishing. Review of applications will begin on October 24 & will continue until the position is filled.
The English Department at Washburn University is seeking a poet to join a vital undergraduate writing program with colleagues in fiction and creative nonfiction writing.
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U of Ill
Beware the Button Police
by Scott Jaschik
Inside Higher Education
Sept. 24
Sporting an Obama or McCain button? Driving a car with one of the campaigns’ bumper stickers? You might need to be careful on University of Illinois campuses.
The university system’s ethics office sent a notice to all employees, including faculty members, telling them that they could not wear political buttons on campus or feature bumper stickers on cars parked in campus lots unless the messages on those buttons and stickers were strictly nonpartisan. In addition, professors were told that they could not attend political rallies on campuses if those rallies express support for a candidate or political party.
Faculty leaders were stunned by the directives. Some wrote to the ethics office to ask if the message was intended to apply to professors; they were told that it was. At Illinois campuses, as elsewhere, many professors do demonstrate their political convictions on buttons, bumper stickers and the like.
Cary Nelson, a professor at the Urbana-Champaign campus and national president of the American Association of University Professors, said that he believes he is now violating campus policy when he drives to work because he has a bumper sticker that proclaims: “MY SAMOYED IS A DEMOCRAT.”
[Read the rest – along with LOTS of reader comments – on Higher Ed Online.]
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Joyce Carol Oates on Narrative
Narrative‘s Story of the Week feature this week:
Gargoyle
By Joyce Carol Oates
What to make of loneliness. Can you imagine? Three-fifteen a.m. and you lie spread-eagled in bed in your cocoon of a bed in your ripe swollen cocoon of a body while I drive through the snowy drizzle querying myself about life.
Driving along a deserted boulevard. Yellow street lights high atop slender poles. Rain, snow. Mist. Wind. What to make of loneliness. Not anger, not rage, not the wish to die or even the wish to murder. I’m too exhausted for all that. Just loneliness. What to make of it. Aloneness. Can you hear me? Can you guess? Never. You are eight months pregnant now and lie sleepless beside my lover, your spine aching, your stomach bloated, you are a beached bewildered mammalian creature gasping in the air…
[Read the rest on Narrative]
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Symposium on Literary Translation
University of Georgia
Thursday 10/2 and Friday 10/3
Featuring: Peter Cole Forrest Gander, Michale Henry Heim, David Hinton, Pierre Joris, Susanna Nied, Richard Sieburth, and Cole Swensen.
Thursday, October 2 (UGA Chapel, North Campus):
Opening session, 2:30-4:00 p.m.
Public reading, 4:30-6:30 p.m.
Friday, October 3 (Fanning Institute, 1240 S. Lumpkin Street):
Panel: “Translating Poetry, Translating Prose.” 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Panel: “Working with an Author, Translating the Past,” 11:15 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Workshops, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
The event is made possible by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the Helen S. Lanier Chair, and the English Department. For questions, please contact Jed Rasula (rasulaj-at-uga.edu) and Andrew Zawacki (zawacki-at-uga.edu).
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NewPages Update :: New Lit Mag Reviews
Visit NewPages Literary Magazine Reviews to read thoughtful commentaries on the following print publications – Anti- :: The Aurorean :: Crazyhorse :: decomP :: Keyhole :: The Laurel Review :: Michigan Quarterly Review :: The Midwest Quarterly :: New York Tyrant :: Salamander :: Spinning Jenny :: Superstition Review :: Versal :: Whitefish Review.
For information on having your publication considered for review, please visit the NewPages FAQ page.
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The Poetry Project
The Poetry Project burns like red hot coal in New York’s snow.– Allen Ginsberg
Since its founding in 1966, the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery has been a forum for public literary events and a resource for writers. Over the past 40 years, hundreds of poets, writers and performers, including Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, John Cage, Sam Shepard, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), Terri McMillan, Robert Creeley, Alice Notley, Bernadette Mayer, Kenneth Koch, Patti Smith, Yoko Ono, Sherman Alexie, and Michael Ondaatje, have shared their work at the Poetry Project.
With three different reading and performance series a week, plus lectures and special events, the Poetry Project is a vital and hospitable hub for the writing community in New York City. The Poetry Project was the scene of the only joint reading by Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg and has been the site of historic memorials to poets Paul Blackburn, Robert Duncan, Charles Reznikoff, Frank O’Hara, Ted Berrigan, Edwin Denby and many others. Staffed completely by poets, the Poetry Project consistently achieves an integrity of programming that challenges, informs and inspires working writers, while remaining accessible to the general public.
Now in its 41st season, the Poetry Project continues to furnish encouragement and resources to poets, writers, artists and performers whose work is experimental, innovative and pertinent to writing that proposes fresh aesthetic, cultural, philosophical and political approaches to contemporary society.
The Poetry Project offers:
A Wednesday night reading series, a Monday night reading/performance series, and a Friday late-evening events series
Four weekly writing workshops
The Recluse, an annual literary magazine
A quarterly Newsletter
Membership in the Poetry Project
A biannual four-day Symposium
Tape and document archives
Special events, such as the Annual New Year’s Day Marathon Reading
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Wallace Syllabus
A syllabus from a a class taught by David Foster Wallace has been posted by a former student on her blog. Interesting to see in combination with all the responses it has received.
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Florida Review :: Bits and Pieces
Flipping through the Spring 2008 issue of Florida Review, I came across a few items of note. I see Billy Collins has two poems in this issue. He’d previously sent his work to FR and been published, and it raised a question about how lit mags deal with “really famous writers” sending in their work. Do they get picked because they’re famous and will help to promote/sell the magazine? Or do they get picked on the merit of their work? In which case, they’d be as likely to not get picked, right? I’ve had a lot of conversations with a lot of editors about this situation, and even though I hear them say it’s about the merit of the work, there’s always a footnote of commentary about how it helps the magazine. That is the business end of the literature, though. There is also a different level of scrutiny on the authors – to be well known and published raises this question, sort of like doping in sports – to achieve is to be suspect. Even famous poets get rejected. Sounds like a good title for something. I’m not saying anything about the quality of Collins’ work in this publication, just commenting on the situation.
I’m also pleased to see FR include a couple comics, one by Jeffery Brown and one by Rachel and Beverly Luria. It’s a lot to dedicate as many pages to a comic as they need to tell their story, but a trend I hope to see more of in other lit mags.
And lastly, just a nod to Lisa K. Buchanan, a once-upon-a-time reviewer for NewPages. She’s got a nonfiction piece in here, “Tips for the Busy Conversationalist.” It’s an intense exploration that plays well with the self-help style. Nod.
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Happy National Punctuation Day.
Why is punctuation important Jeff Rubin the Punctuation Man and founder of National Punctuation Day explains that without punctuation you would not be able to express your feelings in writing not to mention know when to pause or stop or ask a question or yell at someone and without punctuation you would not be able to separate independent clauses and show an example of how a business lost millions because of an errant comma so dont forget the most important punctuation mark $$$$$$ OK so a dollar signs isnt a punctuation mark but its important dont you agree
(Editor’s note: Without punctuation, you also can’t show that you have quoted material directly from another source.)
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Essays on Craft on Brevity Online
A cool feature on Breavity Magazine – great for teachers – “Essays on the Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction.” Newest additions include “Tiny Masters: An Artful Trick to Writing the Personal Essay” by Sherry Simpson, and “On Bridging the Distance Between Therapist and Theorist” by Barrie Jean Borich. Three years of articles are archived and availbe on the site (about a dozen), as well as a link to the blog You Gotta Teach This Essay: A blog for those who teach the essay form.
Want to contribute to this feature? Brevity is accepting submissions of craft essays, author Q&A or podcast interview for upcoming issue of Brevity. See the site for more details.
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Audiobooks :: Mistakes to Avoid
Read Me a Story, Brad Pitt
When audiobook casting goes terribly wrong.
By Nate DiMeo
Slate Magazine
Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008
“…Audiobooks can be spectacular. But too many fine books are still being turned into bad audiobooks; worse still, their producers are making the same mistakes over and over. What follows are the three most common pitfalls—and how to avoid them.”
An insightful article for those interested in making this still-lasting medium for readers/listeners (esp. with easy access to downloads). I know I still enjoy listening to books when I walk, most recently working my way through A Long Way Gone read by author Ishmael Beah. It doesn’t always work to have authors read their own books, just like not every poet is great at public readings, but when you can find the right combination of reader (whether author or not) and text, audiobooks are their own literary magic.
Read the article here.
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Questions to Ask an MFA Program
Posted on Spalding Universities MFA website – of course with their answers – but a helpful list of questions for those new to the pursuit of MFA programs. Not only are the questions important to ask, but so is being able to compare answers and make the right choice for yourself – for this major investment of both time and money. You might very well be able to find the answers on program websites, but if not, making a contact with the program director or faculty in the program with your questions will help them to know what’s important to prospective students. Check out NewPages to Creative Writing Programs in the US to start – or add to – your research. If you don’t see a program listed there, let us know!
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Narrative Story of the Week
From Narrative Magazine: “We love finding and promoting well-written stories from talented writers. Each week a notable story is selected and featured prominently in the Story of the Week column on our Home Page. An announcement of each new Story of the Week goes out to our readers, and the story is eligible for selection as one of the annual Top Five Stories of the Week. The story is also permanently available in our Archive. We accept fiction and nonfiction manuscripts up to 10,000 words in length, from both published and unpublished writers. We would love to see your stories.”
Currently in the story archives are works by Elizabeth Bloom Albert, Tom Grimes, Yuvi Zalkow, and Heather Brittain Bergstrom.
There will also be a “Poem of the Week” feature open for submissions soon!
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Darwin and the Church of England
Charles Darwin to receive apology from the Church of England for rejecting evolution
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones
Telegraph.co.uk
September 14, 2008
The Church of England is to apologise to Charles Darwin for its initial rejection of his theories, nearly 150 years after he published his most famous work.
The Church of England will concede in a statement that it was over-defensive and over-emotional in dismissing Darwin’s ideas. It will call “anti-evolutionary fervour” an “indictment” on the Church”.
The bold move is certain to dismay sections of the Church that believe in creationism and regard Darwin’s views as directly opposed to traditional Christian teaching.
The apology, which has been written by the Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, the Church’s director of mission and public affairs, says that Christians, in their response to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, repeated the mistakes they made in doubting Galileo’s astronomy in the 17th century.
“The statement will read: Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends.”
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Additionally, The Church of England has developed a new section of its website at to mark the approaching bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859.
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Village Voice Fellowship
The Village Voice is taking applications for the fall 2008 Mary Wright Minority Fellowship. The Mary Wright fellowship is a fulltime, three-month writing job with the Voice that provides an opportunity to work alongside veteran Voice journalists. For recent college graduates with impressive clip files who can demonstrate that they have unique story ideas, excellent writing skills and a desire to do non-intuitive, deeply reported stories about New York City.
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Art Exhibit :: WOMAN
WOMAN
a group exhibit
Tuesday, 2 September – Tuesday, 7 October, 2008
FusionArts Museum
57 Stanton Street
Lower East Side of NYC.
Today’s popular culture has created a climate where there is scant recognition or respect for female modesty or achievement that isn’t coupled with sex appeal. Being “sexy” is the ultimate accolade, trumping intelligence, character and all other accomplishments by a woman during the various stages of her life.
Popular culture has created a climate in which women are valued more for their appearance than for their contributions to society, forcing women of all ages to become willing, active and conscious participants in a tawdry, tarty, and very cartoon-like version of female sexuality.
“WOMAN” FusionArts Museum’s first group exhibit by female artists examines this new female imperative with the assistance of the Roman poet Ovid who said: “What one beholds of a woman is the least part of her,” reminding us that women are more than their Manolo Blahnik pumps.
Gallery hours are: Sundays, Tuesdays – Fridays from 12 Noon to 6 PM.
Opening reception for the artists: Sunday, 7 September, 2008 / 7 pm – 9 pm
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More About Less Reading
Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind
Slow reading counterbalances Web skimming
By Mark Bauerlein
The Chronicle of Higher Educaiton
September 19, 2008
“…Those and other trials by Nielsen amount to an important research project that helps explain one of the great disappointments of education in our time. I mean the huge investment schools have made in technology, and the meager returns such funds have earned. Ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, money has poured into public-school classrooms. At the same time, colleges have raced to out-technologize one another. But while enthusiasm swells, e-bills are passed, smart classrooms multiply, and students cheer — the results keep coming back negative.”
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2008 Neustadt Prize Winner Announced
New Zealand author Patricia Grace has been awarded the 2008 Neustadt International Prize for Literature at the University of Oklahoma. Grace is the fourth woman to win the prestigious prize, which is given every two years by OU and its magazine World Literature Today.
She has written six novels, five short-story collections and a number of children’s books since the mid-1970s. Her works often describe the everyday life and traditions of Maoris, the indigenous people of New Zealand. Grace received $50,000, a silver eagle feather and a certificate at a ceremony yesterday on campus.