NewPages Blog

Announcing $10,000 Award for First Amendment Defender

New York, NY, November 12, 2007—PEN American Center and the Katherine Anne Porter Foundation today unveiled a new $10,000 prize for ordinary people who take extraordinary stands to defend the First Amendment in the United States.

The PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award, which will honor a United States citizen or resident who has fought courageously to safeguard the First Amendment’s right to freedom of expression as it applies to the written word, will be conferred annually before an audience of America’s most distinguished writers at the PEN Gala in New York. The Katherine Anne Porter Foundation is sponsoring the award, a fitting tribute, PEN said today, to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s steadfast support for the freedom to write…[read the rest on PEN American]

Women’s Wonderlands
Good Lesbian Travel Writing

Gillian Kendall is currently soliciting submissions for a new anthology from University of Wisconsin Press, which will be a sister edition to Wonderlands: Good Gay Travel Writing, edited by Raphael Kadushin. Wonderlands has had terrific success, selling out of its first print run after the W hotel chain made copies of the book available to selected guests.

For this anthology of lesbian travel writing, she does not want travel writing per se please, no destination pieces, no hotel-beach-tour reviews, nothing that would be even remotely right for Conde Nast Traveler. Wonderlands pieces are emphatically not consumer travel pieces; they are impressionistic, literary travel pieces in the tradition of fine travel writing. There are no forbidden topics, but we don’t want anything dogmatic. What Kendall does want is an anthology of personal stories that have a strong travel element. In other words, the stories should be about people, but the place should matter too.

If you’re wondering what that means, read Wonderlands itself — you can order it from Amazon. In this collection by gay men, nearly every piece is beautifully written, moving, funny, or all three. Or read Gillian Kendall’s book, Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet, or Sailing to the Far Horizon by Pam Bitterman for a guide to the kind of travel narrative sought. After you do, please send your own stories of adventure, of falling in or out of love, of exploration or ex-patriation, or danger or senseless self-indulgence. . .send stories of personal growth, stories of lesbian heart and spirit and, oh yeah, travel.

Women’s Wonderlands will offer a small honorarium to individual contributors, probably $50 USD. Many of the contributors to the first Wonderlands chose to donate their honorarium to support the work of Living Out, a long-standing gay/lesbian list from the U of Wisconsin Press.

Please send your submissions to womenswonderlands(at)gmail.com. There is no minimum page length, but please no more than 30 double-spaced pages. You may send work that has been published previously, as long as you retain the rights for republication (we can’t pay permissions fees).

Kendall aims to have a draft collection put together by the end of 2007, so please send her your work no later than Nov. 30th 2007.

For information about these and many other quality alternative magazines, click the links or visit The NewPages Guide to Alternative Magazines.

Alternatives
Global, Local, Political
Volume 32 Number 3
July-September 2007
Quarterly

Buddhadharma
“Psychology and Buddhism”
Volume 6 Number 2
Winter 2007
Quarterly

Corporate Responsibility Officer
“CRO’s 10 Best Corporate Citizens by Industry: Part 1”
Volume 2 Number 5
Sept/Oct 2007
Bimonthly

fRoots
The Essential Worldwide Roots Music Guide
Number 294
December 2007
Monthly

In These Times
“Welcome to California”
Volume 31 Number 11
November 2007
Monthly

Our Times
Canada’s Independent Labour Magazine
Volume 26 Number 4
August/September 2007
Bimonthly

Sierra
“10 Coolest Schools”
Volume 92 Number 6
November/December 2007
Bimonthly

West Virginia State University English Department – Assistant Professor. Dr. Timothy C. Alderman, English Department. Friday, December 28, 2007.

Writing Division at Columbia University’s School of the Arts seeks to fill the position of Assistant Professor of the Arts. January 10, 2008.

William Paterson University – specialization in Creative Writing, especially fiction, creative non-fiction, and multi-genre writing courses. Linda Hamalian, Chairperson, Department of English.

Johns Hopkins University. The Writing Seminars is seeking an Assistant Professor of Fiction Writing, tenure track. Professor Jean McGarry, The Writing Seminars. December 15, 2007.

Tulane University. The Department of English at Tulane University seeks to hire a tenure-track assistant professor in creative writing, non-fiction. Gaurav DDesai, Chair, Department of English. November 26th, 2007.

Mesa State College invites applications for a full-time temporary position in English. December 1, 2007.

Truman State University Assistant Professor of English – creative writing/generalist – beginning August 18, 2008. Dr. Monica Barron, Search Committee Chair, Department of English and Linguistics. November 19, 2007.

Assistant/Associate Professor of Writing and Literature, emphasis in Fiction Writing Chester College of New England. February 1, 2008.

The Graduate School of Liberal Studies at Hamline University (GLS) invites applications for a visiting assistant professor in creative writing (Fiction) to begin in August 2008. Mary Rockcastle, Dean, Graduate School of Liberal Studies,

Bethany College seeks an excellent teacher/scholar/artist to fill a tenure-track position in American Literature and Fiction Writing. Dr. Larry Grimes Dean of Arts and Sciences. December 1, 2007.

English /Creative Writing – Assistant Professor. Queens University of Charlotte seeks applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor of English specializing in creative writing.

A Fine Excess: A Three-Day Celebration of Poetry at Emory University
April 2,3, and 4, 2008 with Richard Wilbur, W.D. Snodgrass, Mark Strand, J.D. McClatchy, and Mary Jo Salter and other Waywiser Press Poets. Additional readins by Morri Creech, Erica Dawson, Jeffrey Harrison, Joseph Harrision, Erick McHenry, Deborah Warren, Clive Watkins, and Greg Williamson. Dana Goia, Chairman of the NEA will open the celebration. For more information, email: libdeb (at) emory.edu

Call for Submissions: Creative Writing in the Twenty-First Century

A special issue of NCTE’s College English, seeks essays, symposia, reviews, and other documents which interrogate and add new insight into the academic position, scholarly and artistic status, and disciplinary future of creative writing in the twenty-first century. Deadline: March 15, 2008.

Some possible topics: creative writing theory, pedagogy, or professional practice (including teacher training and graduate student job placement), the history of this field; its relation to other fields; the role of technology; critical studies of programs, especially those in development or transition; reviews of current creative writing textbooks, guides, or critical collections; archival records. We welcome work from new as well as established scholars, especially graduate students currently enrolled in creative writing programs.

Essays and other contributions should be no longer than 25 double-spaced manuscript pages. Please also review the general guidelines for College English before submitting your work. Email manuscripts and queries to the issue’s guest editors, Kelly Ritter from Southern Connecticut State University (ritterk1-at-southernct.edu) and Stephanie Vanderslice from the University of Central Arkansas (stephv-at-mail.uca.edu).

Calling for proposals, poetry, and volunteers for Split This Rock Festival, Washington, D.C., March 20 to 23, 2008, celebrating the Poetry of Provocation and Witness. Featured poets include Lucille Clifton, Martin Espada, Carolyn Forche, Galway Kinnell, Naomi Shahib Nye, Sharon Olds, Alicia Ostriker, and Patricia Smith. Proposals are invited for panel discussions and workshops (all 90 minutes in length). The deadline is December 1, 2007.

Media is biased. Whoop-dee-doo. Tell me something I don’t know. Yet, here’s just another case study. In remembrance of the man whose job it was to actually drop the bomb on Hiroshima. Surprisingly (?) the most “fair” representation comes from the first source – Earth Times. Really? Huh, how ’bout that.

Paul Tibbets, pilot of A-bomb plane, dies
Author: General news editor
Earth Times

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 1 Paul Tibbets Jr., who flew the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, died Thursday in his Columbus, Ohio, home at age 92.

Tibbets suffered several small stokes and heart failure in recent years, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

Tibbets fell in love with flight as a child and when he was 12, volunteered to ride in the backseat of a biplane, dropping leaflets for a candy company during fairs and carnivals in the Miami area, the newspaper said…

Pilot of Plane That Dropped A-Bomb Dies
Associated Press
By Julie Carr Smyth

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. He was 92 and insisted almost to his dying day that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night…

Paul Tibbets, take a bow
By Alan Howe
News.com.au

A toast to the man who dropped the A-bomb
The Arizona Republic

Carlson: Tibbets was happy to keep low profile
By John Carlson
DesMoines Register

Tibbets dropped the bomb, but he shouldn’t be the target
Victor Vargas, Online Coordinator
The Gateway, Alberta, CA

The pilot of the Enola Gay might not have apologized for his actions, but that doesn’t mean he should be the scapegoat for Hiroshima. After all, it takes more than one man to assemble and deliver an atomic bomb…

BLR is now accepting submissions for upcoming special issue, “Abilities and Disabilities: The Range of Human Function.” Deadline February 1, 2008. Guidelines.

The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South. Call for poetry for Volume 45:4 of the Southern Quarterly (Summer 2008) a special issue on the legacy of Emmett Till, Guest Editor, Philip C. Kolin. Philip C. Kolin solicits original poetry on Emmett Till that captures the impact of his tragic lynching and his continuing importance as an icon for the civil rights movement in the United States and worldwide. Deadline for submissions in February 2008.

Body. Your body. Your lived and living body. In what ways is your body marked? Do you have scars? Plastic surgery? Tattoos or piercings? Crazy haircuts? Have you ever injured yourself on purpose, or had the desire to do so? Do you have special jewelry or clothing that carries meaning for you?

Torn Skin and Soul Clothes: Accepting non-fiction (creative and theoretical), poetry, and photographs. Submission deadline: December 31, 2007. As yet no publisher, but the editor says she is making contacts – needs more submissions to present before publishers will give further consideration.

Roger Williams University Department of Creative Writing invites applications for a tenure-track appointment in poetry beginning Fall 2008. January 15, 2008.

Chatham University invites applications for an assistant or associate level fiction writer with demonstrated commitment to environmental writing or writing with a strong sense of place for our innovative MFA program that focuses on nature, environmental and travel writing. November 15, 2007.

Washington State University Department of English seeks a tenure track assistant professor in creative writing with primary focus in poetry beginning Fall 2008. November 15, 2007.

Goucher College seeks a tenure-track, assistant professor in fiction writing or fiction-writing/poetry. December 15, 2007.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee English Department seeks a tenure-track assistant professor with a specialization in fiction writing. November 19, 2007.

The English Department of Eastern Michigan University invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position in Creative Writing. November 15, 2007.

Northern Michigan University, Assistant Professor, tenure track, in creative writing: fiction; Ph.D. or MFA required, along with successful teaching experience at a college or university. November 26, 2007.

Colorado State University – Pueblo, Lecturer in English.

Nominees for the 19th Annual Utne Independent Press Awards 2007

“We began by upending the orderly shelves of our library, corralling some 1,300 magazines, newsletters, journals, alt weeklies, and zines into wobbly stacks. Then we dug in to read articles that we might have missed during the year and to reread our favorites—everything from gritty newsprint publications to polished perfect-bound journals. After much deliberation, debate, and a bit of teeth-gnashing, we whittled it all down to 111 standouts.

“Even after 19 years, the Utne Independent Press Awards still manage to surprise and delight our editorial staff—and we trust our readers will be similarly sated. Not only did we consider a vast catalog of longtime heavyweights, we unearthed a host of new darlings and pulled more than a few dark horses into the final stretch.”

See the full list at Utne online.

Founded in 1967, Mosaic is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to publishing the very best critical work in literature and theory. Submissions: Essays must represent innovative thought (either in the form of extending or challenging current critical positions). Focus can be on literary works or issues related to any historical period, national culture, ethnic group, genre, or media. Any interdisciplinary critical approach or methodology may be employed. Essays may be mainly theory-oriented or may conjoin theorizing with practical application or examination of specific texts. Essays must be thoroughly researched and make concrete reference to recent scholarship in the given area.

The Vancouver Memory Festival is a free-floating series of public events focused on public and private memory, and the questions that surround acts of memory and forgetting: How are memories made and re-made, lost, and found again? How is memory preserved? What are memories? Is there such a thing as public memory? When does Memory enter into History, and whose memory is it then? The Memory Festival is improvised and open-ended. It will unfold in different venues around the city throughout 2008—the year of the already nearly forgotten sesquecentennial of British Columbia. You are invited to participate. The Memory Festival consists of things people want to do with and about Memory.

The Kenyon Review First Annual Literary Festival
Gambier, Ohio
November 9-10
This festival complements the sixth annual Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, which will take place on November 8 in New York City. The award recipient this year is Margaret Atwood. A full schedule of events is available on The Kenyon Review website.

Shilling for Starbucks
How I Made Peace with Coffee and the Green Machine
By Hal Brill

“I brewed myself a cup of coffee today. No big deal, except that until a few weeks ago I had never done that. Coffee occupied a blurry place in my psyche – I liked it but also feared the bean. A couple of jittery, heart-racing experiences had taught me to minimize consumption. I avoided learning barista skills to keep temptation off the table.

“The blend I had this afternoon was of fresh Starbucks beans that arrived unexpectedly, a gift from the company after our recent tour. It achieved exactly what they hoped, sealing my fate. I’ve become not only a coffee drinker, but also a converted Starbucks fan. YIKES! How can this be? Is there something in their brew that has crushed my will to resist both stimulants and corporate allegiance?”

[read the rest on GreenMoney Journal]