NewPages Blog

Wordstock 2008
November 7-9, 2008
Oregon Convention Center
Portland, Oregon

Best known for the Book Fair, other events include a children’s festival, live wire radio show, literary feasts each night, and workshops. The 2007 roster included nearly 200 locally- and nationally-known authors.

Wordstock is expecting 15,000 attendees this year, and exhibit tables are still available.

Teachers! Wordstock for Teachers is for teachers of all grade levels. The one-day accredited writing workshop designed to provide teachers with hands-on strategies for the classroom as well as inspiration and tricks to improve their own writing. WFT will be held on Friday, November 7th.

Colorado Art Ranch and Art Works for the Heart of the Rockies will host five visual and literary artists near Salida Colorado. The residency Begins September 28, 2008 and ends October 30, 2008. Deadline for applications is August 1, 2008. Colorado Art Ranch and partners host 4+ visual and lieterary artists in different towns throughout Colorado. The residencies generally run four weeks. See their website for more information about ongoing opportunities.

Editor Kyle G. Dargan, formerly of Callaloo, brings Post No Ills to the online and print lit scene, featuring book reviews, book review interviews (cool concept: reviewing a text via a dialogue between you and another writer/artists who has read the same book), author interviews, live event & exhibit reviews, art & photography, and creative written works.

Already on the site is an interview with Abdel Shakur, editor emeritus of the Indiana Review, and a conversation between literary activist and D.C. icon E. Ethelbert Miller and literature scholar Keith D. Leonard. Uche Nduka’s work Eel on Reef is reviewed by Sarah Valentine, and Eve Dunbar reviews Other People’s Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America by Jason Tanz.

The site is set up using a social network platform, so participation and conversation is encouraged. Post No Ills accepts submissions of certain works on a regular basis for online posting and will produce an annual “best of” print anthology.

Photo by Comtesse DeSpair – which inspired Post No Ills to accept other images of stencil artwork and photography for their section called “The Wall.”

Saturday, July 26, 2008, in Charleston, South Carolina, Toni Morrison dedicated the the first Bench by the Road. The Bench by the Road Project is a community outreach initiative of the Toni Morrison Society. It originates in Morrison’s remarks about Beloved in a 1989 interview: “There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves . . . There is no suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath, or wall, or park, or skyscraper lobby. There’s no 300‐foot tower, there’s no small bench by the road. There is not even a tree scored, an initial that I can visit or you can visit in Charleston or Savannah or New York or Providence or better still on the banks of the Mississippi. And because such a place doesn’t exist . . . the book had to” (The World, 1989).

‘Bench by the Road’ Tribute to Slaves
By Dottie Ashley (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Sunday, July 27, 2008

Carrying opened yellow umbrellas, a large crowd filled the dock Saturday at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island, swaying to the rhythm of the Adande Drummers.

On this humid day, more than 300 years after the first boat carrying newly enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic Ocean and delivered its human cargo barely a mile away, the mood was upbeat but also bittersweet.

When strains of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” burst from the crowd, the melody set the stage for writer Toni Morrison, 77, the first black to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, to come forth and toss a wreath made of yellow daisies into the cove’s waters.

This was the Maafa ceremony in remembrance of those 60 million souls torn from their homeland and their loved ones, and brought into a life of pain and misery, and it was also for those who never made it.

As the wreath floated from sight, a black steel bench, a more tangible symbol of remembrance, was set in cement overlooking the cove in a ceremony called “The Bench by the Road.”

Placed and maintained by the National Park Service, the bench provides a place to sit and recall the travails of ancestors in a spot where 40 percent of all those who survived the Middle Passage set foot on the North American continent for the first time.

Both ceremonies were outreach programs of the Fifth Biennial Conference of the Toni Morrison Society, an international organization hosted by the College of Charleston for four days last week.

Read more and see video clips here.

Started in 2006 by “private donations,” No Record Press has already made splash in the lit world with its goal to be “an organization dedicated solely to publishing promising literary works by previously-unknown writers…new writers that, for various reasons, may find it difficult to interest mainstream publishers.”

There’s no question that Ben Segal would have found some difficulty getting his first book accepted in mainstream publishing: 78 STORIES: A CROSSWORD NOVELLA. This book is a giant fold-out with multiple puzzles and blocks of text (image from Diet Soap).

About the work: “As the price of oil skyrockets to heaven, NASA flights plummet back to earth, contemporary philosophy runs on dualistic fumes and the National Football League all but forbids end zone dance fiestas, you decided that humanity was officially out of good ideas. But you were thinking in terms of ‘left’ and ‘right.’ 78 Stories, unlike the vast majority of the Western hemisphere’s chirographic offerings, conceived of the world in terms of ‘across’ and ‘down.’ Challenging our core assumptions of textual linearity while tickling our funny bones, Ben Segal’s astonishingly original debut pirouettes from the Mayan Long Count, ghost/human romances, seedy Native American hotels, pie-creamed art critic, bears transfixed be cellular phone ringers, and much more. As in an American crossword puzzle, the text is readable in two directions.”

For more information about the work, visit No Record Press. Diet Soap has a brief review of the work with photos, and What to Wear During an Orange Alert posted an interview with Ben Segal.

Travis Holland wins VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
PR via Tom Gresham
VCU Communications and Public Relations
7/23/2008

Travis Holland has won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award honoring the best debut novel published in 2007 for The Archivist’s Story, his tale of a prison archivist in the Soviet Union shortly before World War II.

Holland will receive the award at the First Novelist Festival at Virginia Commonwealth University this November. Holland, a Michigan resident whose short stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Five Points and Ploughshares, was one of three finalists for the prize, which is now in its seventh year. The other finalists were Jesse Ball for Samedi the Deafness and Joshua Harmon for Quinnehtukqut.

Read more on VCU’s website.

A fascinating and essential global resource of both past and present, reminding me that as the world gets smaller, it just keeps getting bigger. The following is from the Chimurenga Library site:

Curated by the editors and contributors of Chimurenga Magazine, the Chimurenga Library is an online archiving project that profiles independent pan African paper periodicals from around the world. It focuses on cultural and literary magazines, both living and extinct, which have been influential platforms for dissent and which have broadened the scope for print publishing on art, new writing and ideas in and about Africa.

The aim of the Chimurenga Library is not to produce a comprehensive bibliography of periodicals published in Africa; our approach is purely subjective. These are simply objects we read and admire, and which have in one form or another, influenced publishing and editorial choices at Chimurenga.

Some of these periodicals are deep in the postcolonial canon, others smaller and obscure, virtual even. All these projects built on the work of Drum, Presence Africaine, Transition, Black Orpheus and so on but are also alternatives to those monuments. It’s a sort of archipelago of counter-culture platforms that impacted on our concept of the paper-periodical, the publishable even.

The Chimurenga Library invites writers, readers and artists to share their personal experiences and perceptions of these and other periodicals through texts, films and multimedia works. Visitors to the Chimurenga Library can join the conversation but adding comments and updating information.

The Chimurenga Library is supported by Lettera27 and Pro-Helvetia and is part of the WikiAfrica Literature project.

A great idea for Fall 2008 classes, especially considering the upcoming elections. Not only does Humor Times offer a hefty discount for classroom use (50 copies a month for apprx. $60 per semester), but there are also resources on their site for teachers. From the Humor Times website:

Using the Humor Times and Editorial Cartoons in the Classroom

Here’s a not-so-well kept secret many teachers have discovered: Editorial cartoons make great teaching aides! They are naturally entertaining, and therefore can be used to pique students’ interest in many subjects, including current events, government, history, social studies, etc. And as every teacher knows, getting a student’s attention is the first prerequisite for instructing them in any subject matter.

But getting them interested is just the first advantage of using editorial cartoons. They are also quite educating in their own right. Studying political cartoons will enable students to better understand the importance of current events. The cartoons may be used to help develop both factual knowledge and interpretive skills. Editorial cartoons can stimulate discussion and provide interesting writing topics.

Analyzing editorial cartoons helps to strengthen analytical and other higher-order thinking skills. Cartoons are used to convey not just political, but also social issues. Editorial cartoons can be used in a variety of ways, and can be integrated into any lesson plan. And best of all, students respond quite well to cartoons.

Glimmer Train has just chosen the three winning stories of their May Short Story Award for New Writers competition! This competition is held twice a year and is open to all themes fiction (500-12,000 words) for anyone who hasn’t had their work appear in a print publication with a circulation over 5000.

First place: John Walker of Cordova, Tennessee, wins $1200 for “Among the Least of These.” His story will be published in the Spring 2009 issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Second place: Matthew Mercier of New York City, wins $500 for “Valentine Ave.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize to $700.

Third place: Lisa Abramowicz, also of New York City, wins $300 for “Comings and Goings.”

Glimmer Train‘s Very Short Fiction competition will begin on August 1 for stories not exceeding 3000 words. Submissions online at www.glimmertrain.org.

Some calls for submissions just simply won’t fit on our CFS page and deserve their own blog post:

The Atlanta Poets Group is seeking proposals for work for the third issue of its magazine Spaltung. This issue will be packaged in the form of a box. They are looking for poem-objects. Pieces that address/embody the concept or experience of multiplicity/heterogeneity are encouraged.

*Please do not send work at this time.*

Instead, please send a proposal for the piece you propose to include to: spaltung@comcast.net. Deadline for proposal submissions is September 31. Some parameters to consider in preparing your proposal:

–100 units of the magazine issue will be produced.
–We have not yet decided on the size of the box; in cubic inches it will likely be larger than a breadbox and significantly smaller than a moving crate.
–If your piece(s) require anything beyond mindless, cheap reporduction/assembly, we will likely look to you to provide us with 100 units, fully assembled.
–We are mostly looking for work that is beyond what can be accomplished on 8.5 x 11 inch paper and beyond what can be included on a CD-ROM.
–Proposals should include exact dimensions of the object(s) to be submitted.

You can familiarize yourself with past issues of Spaltung via the blog at www.spaltungmag.blogspot.com.

“Opium has a wildly ambitious idea that we want (need?) you to be a part of. We’re inviting every living writer to contribute. All we need from you: a quote told to you by another writer (in person, in email, overheard, while reading) that’s inspired or educated your work in some way. The goal is to create a sort of What I’ve Learned network. Details are here. Fire one over, pretty please, we have big ideas for this tiny project.”

Thursday, July 17, the Library of Congress appointed Kay Ryan as the Library’s 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2008-2009.

Notable Quote: “If there is a [literary] game of sorts, you can win by staying home and doing the writing,” Ryan says. “Good work can make its way in this culture.”

Ryan’s poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, Paris Review, The American Scholar, The Threepenny Review, Parnassus, and more.

Read more about Ryan and the appointment here.

LILITH Magazine
Independent, Jewish & Frankly Feminist

Lilith offers summer and semester-long internships to college students and recent graduates. Summer interns are expected to commit to at least two days per week in Lilith’s New York office. School-year internships may vary in their weekly commitment.

Some school credit may be available for a Lilith internship, which includes supervision by senior staff, participation in all editorial meetings, and routine office work relating to the assignment and editing of articles, preparing copy for the designer and printer, covering news of Jewish and feminist interest, ordering books for review, tracking manuscripts, and more. (Plus excellent snacks and good company.)

This special comic of Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel appeared in the 100th issue of Entertainment Weekly, where her memoir Fun Home was listed as number 68 of “new classic” books from the past 25 years. The strip begins:

Authors, bless me for I have sinned.

For my penance I swear I’ll finally read something by Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike…

For fans who weren’t able to find a copy of the magazine, Bechdel received permission to reprint the strip on her site. Read it in full here. No doubt some of you will identify with the situation – I know I did!

Long-time supporter of and intermittent review writer for NewPages (when he’s not doing a hundred other things!), Rob Duffer has embarked on a new endeavor: “I’m the Chicago Literary Scene Examiner.”

Rob explains:

Examiner is a community news source with ‘examiners’ giving the low-down on a specific scene. Examiner has expanded into 60 cities with over 6 million users. Dave Clapper, founder and editor of SmokeLong Quarterly, is the Seattle Lit Examiner. Its Chicago market is only two months old. It’s new, I’m newer, and I’m trying to get people involved.

My intention is to make the site a comprehensive resource of everything literary going on in and around Chicago. Promoting events; featuring authors, editors, agents, lit journals, presses, reading series; interviewing literary folk; reporting lit news; suggesting writing prompts or playing local lit trivia—pretty much anything to do with the written word in Chicago.

So what can you get out of it? Exposure. Promotion. Tapping into a growing network of sometimes disparate literary groups. One place to get reliable literary news in Chicago and nationwide.

The first author to be featured on Examiner will be Stephanie Kuehnert.

Send me your news, put me on your newsletter, add me to your RSS feed, forward this message to anyone who wants another venue to promote their writing. Check out the site. Email me at duffer@robertduffer.com

Every year, the PEN Prison Writing Program recognizes the work of writers imprisoned throughout the country. Exiled from our schools and society, inmates submit manuscripts in every form to one of the only forums of public expression for incarcerated writers. Presented on the PEN American website are uncensored writings (poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, drama) from this year’s Prison Writing Contest winners, as well as one-on-one interviews with some of the most hidden voices in America.