Website of the Week - My Very Worst Picture

myveryworstpicture.com invites you to come as you were- at your very worst.

The site's author, Ryan Boudinot, is asking his readers to embrace themselves at their nerdiest by submitting their very worst pictures to be displayed on his website. His own worst picture is proudly displayed on the homepage, Fantasy Wargames and blue water balloon bag included, along with an entertaining personal essay in which he recalls the history of each item in the photo and pokes loving fun at his younger self.

By displaying himself so honestly, he embraces his past quirks and embarrassments and inspires others to do the same.

In fact, he inspired us enough to post our own here. Beth is featured in the top picture on the far left, and I am on the bottom right.

Show the world your worst here.

Devendra Banhart, Poetry Lover

My beau and I have been listening to Devendra Banhart's new song, "Carmensita" all week. It's pretty amazing. The video - featuring his new girlfriend Natalie Portman - is some kind of ode to Bollywood. It's puzzling, but mesmerizing. After watching it a few days ago, I actually Googled the lovebirds and - through a series of still photos - watched them walking their dogs in the park. I'm not usually into celebrity stalking. But something about these two is fascinating to me.

Then I find out this morning that Devendra is also a poetry-lover! This month, New Directions is issuing the "most eclectic and wildly eccentric" works of poet Kenneth Patchen in a single volume, called We Meet. The book features some of Patchen's drawings, and an introduction by Devendra.

The introduction so begins:

"I came across Kenneth Patchen the way one dreams of a tumbleweed rollin’ on by, leaving trails of luminosity from within its prismatic pit. The world is, of course, that damn tumbleweed with Patchen’s riddle wrapped around itself, now here, now gone, like the marriage between "Hi!" and "So Long.” We are left born before a new kind of page, the shit kicked out of us, and nothing is sweeter.... Blessed be this shitkicker."

Oh, Devendra. I still love you.

Contributor Spotlight: Christopher Watkins

I Want You -or- On Influence & Inspiration: The Ache To Write -or- How A Musicianer Came To Love And Need The Word

I wanted to write songs like Bob Dylan wrote songs. I wanted to keep one foot in tradition, and one foot in the void. I wanted to be raw, visceral, elemental, yet I wanted also to be cerebral, hallucinatory, and transcendent. I wanted to sing with my voice, my wild untutored, untamed voice, yet I wanted to be tuneful, tasteful, and classic. He was my first songwriting hero. Some days I love his early acoustic work, his blues, the brutally compelling folk of "The Ballad Of Hollis Brown":

You looked for work and money/And you walked a rugged mile/You looked for work and money/And you walked a rugged mile/Your children are so hungry/That they don't know how to smile

And other days I love his surrealism, his obfuscation, the almost mind-numbingly decadent lyricism of "Subterranean Homesick Blues":

Get born, keep warm/Short pants, romance, learn to dance/Get dressed, get blessed/Try to be a success/Please her, please him, buy gifts/Don't steal, don't lift/Twenty years of schoolin'/And they put you on the day shift/Look out kid/They keep it all hid/Better jump down a manhole/Light yourself a candle/Don't wear sandals/Try to avoid the scandals/Don't wanna be a bum/You better chew gum/The pump don't work /Cause the vandals took the handles

and still other days I love his utter simplicity:

I want you, I want you,/I want you so bad,/Honey, I want you.
—
I grew up in an academic household (my father is a Professor of Literary Criticism), and I was fortunate enough to be exposed to great writing from a very early age, with works of poetry often included in my reading. My father was friends with a number of noteworthy poets, writers as diverse as John Silkin, Diane Wakoski, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and W.S. Merwin, and I had regular access to their books. But despite these luminaries' presence in our lives, it was music that really captured me, and particularly songs that featured richly crafted lyrics. Many of my early songwriting influences (Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen), were not only widely considered to be "poetic" lyricists (some had even published books of poetry), but they were substantially and self-admittedly influenced by poetry as well. Through music, I discovered and/or re-discovered, and certainly found new appreciation for, poets like Dylan Thomas (the inspiration for one Robert Zimmerman to change his name to Bob Dylan), Allen Ginsberg (who performs on a song I love by the great English band The Clash called "Ghetto Defendant"), and Arthur Rimbaud (often cited by Jim Morrison of the band The Doors as a major influence).

Regarding Dylan Thomas, I had no idea back then what a villanelle was, but the hypnotically circling and repeating mantras of his "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" were certainly able to work their poem-magic on my music-minded mind with easy ease:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

While trying to alphabetize our record shelf, I found an LP of Thomas reading this poem (it was slotted just after Them's first album, and right before my Thompson Twins record!), and hearing that sonorous, booming baritone rippling from our antiquated speakers (not to mention the photo on the cover, which was of the rather younger Dylan Thomas; not the portly drunkard of latter years, but the raggedy-haired youth with the long lashes and depthless eyes who made wearing sweaters and smoking cigarettes seems both guttural and beautiful) was an experience more than enough compelling to convince me that Dylan the songwriter had been spot-on in being captivated by Dylan the poet.
—
On The Road was not my bible. That honor went to The Dharma Bums. Foolish as it may sound, the book changed my life. I began to camp, to hike, to study Buddhism, to drink wine instead of whiskey. Reading The Dharma Bums also led me to Gary Snyder (who is thinly disguised in Kerouac's novel as the character Japhy Ryder), which would prove to be an even more momentous discovery. The first book of Gary Snyder's that I read was Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, and between its pages I discovered one of the great poetic heroes of my life, Han-Shan. His "Cold Mountain Poems," a selection of which are translated in Snyder's book, are some of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have ever encountered in my life. It sounds so oddly flat to say that, but I have no better words to clarify just how strongly those poems moved me upon my discovery of their richness and power. Here is Gary Snyder's translation of one of Han-Shan's most stunning pieces:

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leap the world's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?

Reading this poem, my breath was quite simply knocked right out of me. Its stripped-down simplicity, its rawness, its no-fat-on-the-bone aesthetic, its sense of space, the revelation in its volta, these were the hallmarks of an art so elusive I could only hope that someday I might tap just a small thread of its genius with some creation of my own.
—
I wanted to write poems like Han-Shan wrote poems. In a cave high in the Himalayas, away from the constraints of the modern world, he wrote poems on his walls that still, hundreds of years later, deliver to his readers a sense of the great spaces in the world that remain untainted by our daily trivialities, our shallow vanities, our greeds and fundamental smallnesses. To read Han-Shan is to engage in an awareness ritual. He reminds us to go outside and breathe the air, observe the moon, lick some dew off of a blade of grass, and be thankful that nature remains both benevolent and aloof.

In my first thirty years of life
I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.
Walked by rivers through deep green grass
Entered cities of boiling red dust.
Tried drugs, but couldn't make Immortal;
Read books and wrote poems on history.
Today I'm back at Cold Mountain:
I'll sleep by the creek and purify my ears.
(Han-Shan, translation Gary Snyder, from Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems)
—
I want to put everything I love into art, into music, into poetry. Into the word. I want to love creation, and I want it to love me. I want to honor every hero I've ever had, and I want to be every hero. I want to be Han-Shan and Son House both. I want to resurrect The Beats, resurrect the Harlem Renaissance. I want to go back eleven centuries to the Chinese Mountains, eighty years to the Mississippi Delta, fifty years to North Beach. Perhaps most of all, I want to transcend my own ever-growing misanthropy, to rediscover again the faith, belief, and love that led me to the arts in the first place, led me to those heroes, to their works, to their examples. Vainly perhaps, I want to be at the center of something I believe in. Year after year, I have felt more and more a man out of time, relic in a world with no use for what I once worked so hard to learn. I want a new creation that can recreate the world I used to love.
—
I want you. I want you so bad.

Christopher Watkins is a poet and songwriter. His debut collection of poems Short Houses With Wide Porches is available from Shady Lane Press. He is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Program at The University of Southern Maine. As a songwriter, he has released five albums under the name Preacher Boy. His most recent album is "Demanding To Be Next" (Coast Road Records). His poems are appearing or have appeared in The GW Review, Slipstream, Euphony, Talking River, and Red Rock Review, among others. He has received a Gold Record for his songwriting work with Grammy award-winning artist Eagle-Eye Cherry. Christopher's poem, "The University of Iowa Sunset Village Quonset Hut Haiku Blues," appears in issue #42.

The Long List for the Man Booker Prize

The so-called "Man Booker Dozen" was announced yesterday afternoon, even though this year's list contains thirteen. The finalists are:

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Atlantic)
Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold (Tindal Street)
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (Faber)
From A to X by John Berger (Verso)
The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser (Chatto)
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray)
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant (Virago)
A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif (Cape)
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher (Fourth Estate)
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill (Fourth Estate)
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (Cape)
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster)
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (Hamish Hamilton)

The short list will be announced on September 9th, and the winner awarded on October 14th. For more information about the prize and the judging, see the Man Booker Prize website.

More Interesting Submission Calls

Opium7: The Shya Scanlon 7-Line Contest
Opium's wacky contests have led to loads of sensational work, from the 500-Word Memoir contest judged by Daniel Handler (for Opium5) to the 250-Word Bookmark Contest judged by Aimee Bender that will debut along with Opium6. Now it's time to reignite Opium4's contest--The Shya Scanlon 7-Line Story Contest--this time judged by Brian Evenson.

The rules? Easy. Write a story that is seven lines or less within margins that are 8.5" or less. Fiction, non-fiction, prose poetry or any other excellence is allowed. The winning story, along with a handful of finalists, will appear in Opium7 which will debut on Oct. 6. For more info, go here. (Although it says deadline is July 23, it was extended to Aug 1 due to some misprints in advertising.)

"A collection of expressions from people with emotional wounds."
The Battered Suitcase is currently working with UK writer and artist Lucie Barat on a very special anthology in support of the charity 'MIND'. The project's working title is "An Expression of Depression" with all proceeds going to the charity. The aim is to de-stigmatise depression, being very careful not to glamorize it in any way. The book is to be a collection of photo's, drawings, poems, lyrics or short prose. Please send submissions to mind@vagabondagepress.com. Your work will be handled with discretion and respect.

Women's Body Image Anthology Seeks Submissions
Phat Girls in Search of a Pretty World: Hot Lil’ Fat Chicks Speakin’ Out! Phat Girls will explore plus size women’s private and public journeys with weight. In this original collection, we will express our diverse experiences and memories of how our weight and self/body image have shaped us as women—from childhood to adulthood. Phat Girls will illuminate the successes achieved and the challenges met by women negotiating a desire for self-love and acceptance of our selves/bodies within an often “thin obsessed” and “thin accessible” society.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: September 1, 2008. Please send by mail only. Late submissions will NOT be considered. MAIL TO: Phat Girls Anthology/c/o Jill Andrew/2620 Eglinton Ave East/PO Box 42503/Toronto, ON Canada M1K 2S0. Contributors 18 years and over are welcome. Submission maximums should be no more than 3,000 words (12 page max.), DOUBLE-SPACED, single-sided, 12 point font. Include a contributor’s bio of 100 words or less.

About the editor: Jill Andrew CYW, BA (Hons.), BEd, MA (Sept ’08) is an award-winning national columnist with the Metro Toronto Daily Newspaper and still enjoys livening things up as a teacher, women’s/youth advocate, performer, entrepreneur, events host and public speaker throughout the city. Jill is the founder and producer of Curvy Catwalk— Canada ’s first and only annual “plus size” fashion fundraiser increasing body image/eating problems awareness and funds for Sheena’s Place & NEDIC (National Eating Disorder Information Centre).

The Science Fiction Poetry Association is pleased to announce its third annual web poetry contest.
Entries are free and must be submitted between August 1st and August 31st. Poems may be of any form, no more than 20 lines, and must be on the theme of ENERGY. Poems must have a science fiction, fantasy, or horror element.

First prize is $100 cash, SFPA website publication, Waterman pen and journal, a signed hardcopy copy of The Journey to Kailash by Mike Allen, a copy of In the Yaddith Time by Ann K. Schwader, and a one year SFPA membership. Please check here for more information.

Special Issue: Color Wheel ~ Cultural Heritages in the Twenty-First Century
A Call for Submissions for CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW: seeking work for our Summer/Fall 2009 issue focusing on writing inspired or informed by the experiences, observations, and/or cultural and historical possibilities of the following topic: “Color Wheel ~ Cultural Heritages in the Twenty-First Century.” We are open to work that covers any of the multitude of ways our ideas of identity, tradition, family, and place are challenged by an ever-changing world.

All submissions should be original, unpublished poetry, fiction, or literary nonfiction in English or unpublished translations in English (we do run bilingual, facing-page translations whenever possible). Please query before submitting any interview. For our general submission guidelines, check our website.

The submission period for this issue is August 1, 2008 through October 31, 2008. We will be reading submissions throughout this period and hope to complete the editorial work on the issue by mid-February. Writers whose work is selected will receive $20 (US) per magazine page ($50 minimum for poetry; $100 minimum for prose), two copies of the issue, and a year’s subscription.

Ask the Archives: Plotting

I recently went to a writers conference, and during a workshop, the famous writer leading the workshop said something like: "You have to know the whole story of your novel before you begin. Doing it without knowing would be like writing a song without knowing any notes." I've heard such a thing said before. I've also heard other successful writers say "Know the ending before I start my novel? Then why would I bother writing it?" Etc.

There have been comparable little nuggets about all kinds of writing habits sprinkled over me during grad school. I think some were helpful. Others made me feel inadequate. I tend to think that writers crave these kinds of aphorisms to make themselves feel better (provided they agree with them), or as a beacon out of troubled times. As far as I'm concerned, as long as you're writing, you're doing something right. Still, when I heard the famous writer tell me I should know the whole story before writing my novel, it did something to me. Maybe because I'm writing a novel, and I'm still not sure what the story is exactly, even at the end of the first draft.

Sitting at work yesterday, trying to will my novel's "plot" into existence (only on a subconscious level; consciously, I was doing my job), I took a glance over at the bookshelf next to my desk, which houses a copy of every HFR issue from the last 23 years. We've done tons of interviews, I thought. I could probably find words of wisdom to support any process-related writing theory every conceived. Thus, "Ask the Archives" was born. Below are what some really famous people have said about plotting (ugh, what a word) your novel. Agree with the ones that suit you. And by all means, ignore the rest. But rest assured, lots of successful writers disagree. About everything.

And please: send us your questions! Any writing related question - post it here or email to HFR@asu.edu, and we'll be happy to compile a few answers from our archived interviews. For you fiction writers: T.C. Boyle, Gloria Naylor, William H. Gass, and George Saunders, to name a few. And poets! John Ashbery, Ai, Galway Kinnell, C.D. Wright and lots more.

Joseph Heller, 1984: "I know when I'm done [my novels] because I usually have the last paragraph of the last chapter written before I start writing the second chapter. And to me it's like, okay, this is where I'm beginning; I want to get to this line, or to this paragraph. And I think about it in the same way I'd think about getting to San Francisco...In much of my work, the story takes place retrospectively. The person telling the book has to know how things are going to turn out in order to be a credible narrator."

John Updike, 1987: "The novel is a little like living. You don't know what's going to happen from day to day. You have the general direction and a sort of general hopefulness that something nice will happen each day, and you sit down to it in that spirit. Novels have a slightly unsettling arbitrariness. I mean they could have gone some other way, very possibly, and be just as good or even better, but they do harden into the shape they take."

T. Coraghessan Boyle, 1996: Start with a voice, from the idea, and then follow it--very slowly at first, especially until you begin to get a sense of what the problems are and how this puzzle might resolve itself, and you don't really know until you get to the end...I think that's part of the magic of doing fiction. If I knew how I felt about Proposition 187 and illegal immigration and could encapsulate that in a phrase in the way that so many reviewers seem to want me to do, then maybe I'd write an essay about it. But I don't think it's a problem that admits such an easy solution, and I'm simply trying to feel my own way out of the problem."

Bret Lott, 2003: "I progress with no concrete notion of where it's going to go, I have a ballpark idea that is always willing to be sacrificed, it's always willing to be changed for the sake of the story that's trying to be told."

Bill Murray Waxes Poetic

On June 9, New York-based Poet's House hosted the Thirteenth Annual Poetry Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge. Their website explains the event: "This unforgettable literary pilgrimage over the bridge that inspired Hart Crane, Walt Whitman, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marianne Moore and generations of poets begins in the park near One Centre Street and stops en route for poetry readings by Martín Espada, Thomas Lux and Marilyn Nelson under Roebling's famous arches. Upon arrival in Brooklyn, Pulitzer-prize winning poet Galway Kinnell recites Whitman's immortal "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" as the sun sets over the waterfront. This year's celebration will culminate in a festive dinner at Bubby's Brooklyn, where actor Bill Murray will treat Poets House supporters to a selection of his favorite verses."

This week, public radio's Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen features a story on the event (scroll down a little bit), along with a recording of frustrated poet and famous actor Bill Murray reading his favorite poems.

The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 2

The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 2 is being released today from W. W. Norton. It features the essay "Instead of the Rat Pack" by Gwendolyn Knapp, which was originally published in HFR's 20th Anniversary Issue.

Gwendolyn's essay is hilarious, moving and completely original. We're thrilled Lee Gutkind and company chose it for the anthology. See the complete table of contents for the new volume here.

Meta-Blog, Part II

There's lots of interesting things being written lately about the nature of reading online, whether it counts as "reading," whether all the technology is making us dumber, and whether kids - who increasingly choose to sit in front of their computers instead of picking up a book - will suffer the consequences of all the non-linear jumping around they do online.

The New York Times published today "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?," an article that explores the differences between reading a book and reading on the web, from both sides. In this month's issue of The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr responds to "the uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with [his] brain," by asking "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" And Sven Birkerts recently wrote "Lost in the blogosphere: why literary blogging won't save our literary culture" for the Boston Globe, where he argues that the blogosphere is "exciting" as a "supplement," but "is too fluid in its nature ever to focus our widely diverging cultural energies." Fascinating reading, all of it.

In an email interview I'm working on for another blog, I've been asked the question: "What prompted your decision to create an HFR blog?" The immediate answer, to echo Birkerts, is that we thought it would be a way to supplement the work of our printed issues, a place to talk to our contributors and learn more about their work. We wanted to both deepen our readers' experiences with what we publish, and broaden the reach of our contributors. And since our mission is to support emerging artists, the blog would give us a chance to do more of that: to talk about writing and visual art more. The implication is that the reach of the printed copies of HFR is limited. This is, of course, true. We are not only limited by our ability to find our readers out in the world, but also by the number of copies we can afford to print. The blog, ideally, helps us find more readers for our printed issues, and furthers the whole of our mission.

I was also recently asked, "What is the difference between print and online journals? Why do you keep printing when so much is changing?" It is a complicated question, to be sure. The primary answer (one that doesn't exactly address the question) is that is what we've always done. It is, still, the preferred format of most literary journals. In order to get the work to agents, to be considered by editors of anthologies and contests, we need a physical journal. That's a fact. Online journals struggle for the same legitimacy as print ones (see this post, this Utne article). Whether that is "right" is certainly debatable, and may be changing. But for now, we continue. Another answer is that we conceive of each issue as a work of art, a thing to be held in physical space, an object whose order is defined (in other words, linear), not a series of links. We are readers who prefer this method of reading. It is the same reason you pick up a book rather than a Kindle (Um, or do you pick up your Kindle?). For all of those reasons that the articles above describe, the printed story is approached differently than a block of text online. I can say, personally, that it is hard for me to read a story on the web. My attention wanders more easily, I lose concentration. A personal failing? Perhaps, but true.

Also, consider this complication: Print journals can't take anything back, even a mistake. Once the printed stuff is out in the world, it's gone forever. That can obviously be a bad thing. But online journals and blogs must deal with another problem. What if a writer changes his/her mind about what s/he said last year? What if s/he is applying for a new job, and wants a story or poem removed from a website's archives? What's more important - the writer's well-being, or the integrity and preservation of the literature created? And if we know we can - at least to a certain extent - take back or delete what we've put forth online, does it change the seriousness with which we submit it?

To blog or not to blog, that is the question.

Cover Lover - The Cover in the Rye

“It’s a goddamn embarrassment, publishing.” --J.D. Salinger
(from At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard)

Cover Lover is going to skip all that David Copperfield kind of crap regarding Jerome David Salinger and get right to the point: has there ever been another writer so utterly contemptuous of publishers as the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye?

“Give me two hours in the dentist chair before I’ll spend another minute in a publisher’s office,” he told Joyce Maynard in the early 1970’s. “All those insufferable literary types, thoroughly pleased with themselves, who haven’t read a line of Tolstoy since college. All feverishly courting bestsellerdom.”

“They’ve got to offer up all these bright ideas. Unable to produce a single original line themselves, they’re bound and determined to put their stamp squarely on your work . . . Polite suggestions that I change this or that, put in more romance, take out more of that annoying ambiguity . . . slap some terribly clever illustration on the cover . . .”

Let’s be honest: people do judge books by their covers, especially terribly clever ones. It’s why publishers have marketing departments and graphic designers at their disposal. A good book cover serves the same purpose as a short little skating skirt: it catches your attention. One of the true joys of book collecting is marveling at how authors get reinvented decade by decade, each new cover a reflection of an era, a novel little time capsule. A book like The Catcher in the Rye, which has steadily sold some 250,000 copies per year since the early 1950’s, would normally have gone through a few dozen facelifts by now. Hippie Holden. Disco Holden. Yuppie Holden. It’s enough to make Cover Lover want to goddam puke or something.

Happily, Holden Caulfield remains forever frozen in time. Salinger, completely disenchanted with the way the phonies had packaged The Catcher in the Rye, made certain it would never happen again.












Little, Brown first published The Catcher in the Rye in July, 1951. The front cover—illustrated by Michael Mitchell—features a carousel horse; a photograph of Salinger by Lotte Jacobi takes up the entire back cover. The book was reprinted four times in the first month alone, but Salinger was so unhappy with his portrait that it was removed by the third printing (and from all subsequent editions).

The British version of Catcher (published by Hamish Hamilton) featured a moody Fritz Wegner drawing of Holden in his red hunting hat, watching Phoebe run toward the carousel. A fine first edition of the American version will set you back about $20,000; this British edition--which some Salinger fans prefer--costs about $2500.












This is where things get interesting. When New American Library acquired the paperback rights for The Catcher in the Rye, they handed the cover chores to artist James Avati. According to Avati, Salinger was very reluctant to have any art work on his cover, and would have preferred something more sentimental (another carousel horse, perhaps?). Ultimately, Avati convinced him to go along with the company’s marketing scheme, though Avati himself was unhappy with the way his finished painting turned out. Bowing to concerns regarding Salinger's frank use of language, the cover cautioned readers: “This unusual book may shock you, will make you laugh, and may break your heart—but you will never forget it.” Salinger certainly never forgot it. When New American Library’s paperback rights lapsed after ten years, Salinger sold the rights to Bantam Books, along with his own ideas for future covers.

This Modern Library edition—issued in September 1958—shows just how serious Salinger was about keeping his covers simple.

The combination of yellow letters against a maroon background—as designd by Salinger—first appeared in April, 1964. It was a ubiquitous presence on high school and college campuses for decades, and gained a certain level of infamy when Mark David Chapman was photographed reading his copy after shooting John Lennon in December, 1980.

Nine Stories was published by Little, Brown in April, 1953 and is a personal favorite of Cover Lover. Eight of the stories were originally published in The New Yorker; “Down at the Dinghy” originally appeared in Harper’s. Cover credit goes to Miriam Woods, who also worked on Salinger’s next two books.













Despite Salinger’s feelings for Signet, they issued the first paperback edition of Nine Stories in July, 1954. The figure on the left is a first printing; Cover Lover isn't sure if these variations existed with the first printing or were slowly introduced over time. Note the signature of W. D. Miller, which appears on the first printing but is absent from the other examples.

This Modern Library edition of Nine Stories was issued in 1959.

Nine Stories is known in other countries as For Esmé with Love and Squalor. The designer of this British paperback apparently never got Salinger’s memo.













This Bantam edition was first issued in October, 1964, and—like the maroon version of The Catcher in the Rye—was the only edition available for almost 30 years.

Franny and Zooey was published by Little, Brown in 1961 with one of the most boring jackets Cover Lover has ever seen. Or maybe it’s this one, for Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenter and Seymour: An Introduction. Salinger’s last book was published in 1963, and--like its predecessor--contained previously published material. Bantam subsequently issued both books in paperback, with covers identical to the originals.

This Penguin U.K. paperback from 1964 manages to marry Penguin orange with the American artwork, which somewhat amuses Cover Lover.

In the early 90’s, Little, Brown published all four of Salinger’s books with the same black and white covers. Cover Lover has no idea if that bright idea came from Salinger or not.

Art Intermission Vol. 2

For the last 30 or so years the New York-based artist Roni Horn has been making work in Iceland. It has become her second home, and she has produced several large-scale permanent installations there. One of those is the Library of Water in Stykkisholmur, a small fishing town just two hours north of Reykjavik. The Library of Water used to be Stykkisholmur's actual library, but when its contents were moved to a new building in town, the small, old library -- sitting atop a hill on the edge of town facing the ocean -- was left empty. So Horn proposed using the site for her portrait of Iceland.

The Library of Water has two art pieces within it. Water, Selected contains water samples taken from 24 glaciers around Iceland. The water is contained in glass columns that are spread irregularly around the library space. The light in the columns is quite beautiful, and while there doesn´t appear to be much difference between the waters, you can see bits of different kinds of sediment at the bottoms of the columns.

On the floor is a piece called You Are The Weather (Iceland). It consists of Icelandic and English words that can be used to describe the weather. The floor is made of some slightly sticky rubbery material, and the text is made of different colored pieces of the same material cut out and placed in the floor. So as not to mess the floor up or leave sock fuzzies all over it, you take your shoes off at the entrance and put on white, plastic-bottomed slippers.

Presidential Candidates Go Comic Book

Thanks to IDW Publishing, you'll soon be able to read about our two presidential candidates in comic book form. Presidential Material: Barack Obama and Presidential Material: John McCain, two graphic novel biographies, will be released on October 8. If you're not into real books, you can also download them to your phone.

“We’re tremendously proud of these books,” IDW president Ted Adams said in a press release. “Comics and graphic novels speak to millions of people encompassing all demographic, social, cultural and economic stripes. It’s a great way to get beyond the headlines on these two candidates.”

McCain's story is being written by Andy Helfer and drawn by Stephen Thompson. Obama's story is being written by Jeff Mariotte and drawn by Tom Morgan.

Comic-Con, the world's biggest comic book convention, is going on right now in San Diego. Has anyone seen John McCain in tights? Anyone?

Website of the Week - Fuzzmail

Two very creative guys at the MIT media lab have created Fuzzmail, an "emotionally expressive alternative to email." On the site, for free!, you can compose a message to anyone with an email address. The Fuzzmail software records your typing - its speed, its starts and stops, the errors, go-backs, erasures, embellishments - and sends your pal a link, so he can watch the email unfold all over again, exactly as you created it. Confused? See some examples here. Now go, you know, get fuzzy.

China Seeks Literary Idol

This morning, Publisher's Weekly announced that Penguin China is launching an American Idol-esque literary contest called “The Next – A Search for the New Face of Chinese Literature." Chinese authors will submit manuscripts to be judged by a panel of authors and critics, who will narrow submissions down to the top 36. Judging will then be opened to the Chinese public for voting, until a winner is chosen. That lucky writer will receive $146,000 and a publishing contract.

Penguin CEO John Makinson is reported as saying, "We very much look forward to reading 'the Next' sensation to come out of China’s burgeoning literary scene.”

Details about how the public judging will happen, what type of manuscript judges will be looking for and whether the contest will be televised were not mentioned in the PW article, and, mysteriously, no other information is available online, even though the contest is set to begin in September '08. (Of course, I don't read or type Chinese.) I wonder if Ryan Seacrest will be available for hosting duties. I think he's dreamy, in a literary sort of way.

Book Trailers? Um, Okay.

I'm a little late on this, but I've only this week heard of the "book trailer market," which is apparently the (sort of) new rage in book marketing. SHOMI, an imprint of Dorchester Publishing, announced on Monday that Stephen King will judge their book trailer contest. SHOMI describes itself as "a groundbreaking line of speculative fiction that combines the best elements of the fantasy, thriller, science fiction, cyberpunk, and romance genres" and, more succintly, as "the future of romance." Joining them to present the contest is Circle of Seven Productions, whose website announces that they coined the term "Book Trailer" in 2002. The contest asks participants to film a book trailer for any title in the SHOMI series of modern-day fantasy fiction. The winner not only will have the public approval of one Stephen King, but his/her film will be shown at a movie premiere in NYC and at a theater in his/her home market.

When I tried to do a little more research on book trailers, I found the internet teeming with them. Everywhere from BookTrailers.net to YouTube to HarperCollins. Are people actually watching these things? My god, where have I been? Maybe I was off actually reading something.

Zhang Huan

This is rather last minute, but this is my only mildly-public forum and I feel it's necessary to share, so here goes.

If you live anywhere near New York City and can find your way to Chelsea before Friday at 4pm, you need to go by Pace Wildenstein's two spaces located at 534 W. 25th St and 545 W. 22nd St. There is a show up by the Chinese artist Zhang Huan that is so amazing and unique that I have a feeling that in 1o years it will still be talked about in hallowed tones. Buying the book or looking at the work online cannot do the show justice. His work has an incredible presence in person that cannot be translated. One of the monumental pieces will be destroyed in a few days time when the show closes. If you able to make it, it is worth any inconvenience it might cause.

Unusual Calls for Submissions

These out-of-the-ordinary submission calls caught our eye...

Online Hookups Anthology Seeks First Person Essays

Connecting Online: Hookups, Reunions and Chance Encounters --Deadline: August 1, 2008. Writer and editor April Thompson is seeking first-person stories for an upcoming anthology of stories about connections made online. "Connecting Online: Hookups, Reunions and Chance Encounters" will feature essays of no morethan 2,500 words about interpersonal connections made through the Internet. Submissions can be comical or irreverent, tear-jerking or thought-provoking: the caliber of writing is more important than the mood of the piece. Please note that essays should center on a particular encounter or relationship cultivated online, rather than expounding on the topic in general. Stories accepted into the anthology will receive compensation upon publication of up to $150 depending on the length of the piece. Please send your piece in .doc format, include your contact information, and put "Connecting Online Submission" in the subject of your email, to be sent to anthology(at)aprilwrites.com (replace (at) with @). Previously published material considered as long as you own the reprint rights.

2008 London Book Festival Call for Entries
The 2008 London Book Festival has issued a call for entries to its annual program celebrating books that deserve greater recognition from the international publishing community. The 2008 London Book Festival will consider published, self-published and independent publisher non-fiction, fiction, children's books, poetry, art/photgraphy, teenage, how-to, audio/spoken word, comics/graphic novels, e-books, wild card (anything goes!), science fiction, romance and biography/autobiographical works.

Entries can be in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese or Italian. Our grand prize for the 2008 London Book Festival Author of the Year is $1500 and a flight from your city of entry to London OR Los Angeles - your choice!

Deadline submissions in each category must be postmarked by the close of business on November 25, 2008. Entry forms are available online at http://londonbookfestival.com or may be faxed/e-mailed to you by calling our office at 323-665-8080. Applications must be accompanied by a non-refundable entry fee via check, money order, credit card payment or PayPal online payment of $50 in U.S. dollars for each submission. Multiple submissions are permitted but each entry must be accompanied by a separate form and entry fee. Entry fee checks should be made payable to JM Northern Media LLC.

Travel Scam Anthology Seeks True Stories

World Swirl Press, a publishing venture of travel writer/blogger Erik R. Trinidad (TheGlobalTrip.com, the "Would You" video), is looking for contributors for an upcoming travel guide and anthology of stories about the scams you've encountered while traveling. We seek well-written, narrative stories — 1,500 words or less — each recounting the incident from beginning to end. We are also looking for "sidebar" content — lists or blurbs about the travel scams you've seen happen, heard about, or fallen for. All written contributions should detail the location of the scam, the circumstances, how it is executed and how it could be avoided. Narratives should also capture the emotion of the incident. For submission details, please visit www.WorldSwirl.com. We are accepting written contributions through the end of 2008, so submit your travel scam story today!

The Smoking Poet: Call for Submissions
A fine cigar and good literature: two of life's finer pleasures.

The Smoking Poet publishes flash fiction; fiction; nonfiction; poetry; feature author with novel excerpt; feature poet; book and cigar reviews. We publish work that ignites our imagination, inflames our passion, leaves us with a smoky aftertaste. The Smoking Poet also shares an extensive list of links and resources for writers and the cigar aficionado. For full submission guidelines and contact information, visit: http://thesmokingpoet.tripod.com/summer2008

Merton Poetry of the Sacred Poetry Contest
What is poetry of the sacred? Poetry that expresses, directly or indirectly, a sense of the holy or that, by its mode of expression, evokes the sacred. The tone may be religious, prophetic, or contemplative. Deadline for submissions: Postmarked by December 31, 2008. See full contest guidelines at https://www.mertoninstitute.org/merton_prize.php. Winning Poems will be published in The Merton Seasonal , a publication of scholarly articles about noted spiritual leader Thomas Merton and will be posted on the Merton Institute web site: www.mertoninstitute.org. Poems will be judged on literary excellence, spiritual tenor, and human authenticity.

The "Adventures in Hostelling" Writing Contest
Seeks very short (150-250 words) stories recounting a personal experience that either took place at a hostel or was made possible through a hostel stay. Organized in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Council of Hostelling International USA, the contest seeks real-life anecdotes that help to illustrate the range of broadening experiences made possible through hostelling. Travelers are invited to share tales of meeting memorable people, encountering new cultures or fresh perspectives, embarking on unforeseen adventures, making a life-altering decision, or any other hostel experience that had an impact on their lives. Enter online at http://www.norcalhostels.org/50years.

Clothing Anthology Seeks Poems
Ragged Sky Press is looking for poems about clothing for a one-time anthology: outergarments, undergarments, shoes, accessories—anything that conceals...or reveals. Well-woven poems will be selected by the editors. GUIDELINES: 1-3 poems (10 pages maximum), deadline: August 29, 2008. Send to: RaggedSkyAnthology@gmail.com.

Meta-Blog

I wonder: How many blogs contain blog posts about blogging? It's a definite adjustment, the blogging lifestyle. I haven't blogged at all before the creation of this HFR blog, and now here I am, a few weeks into it, and I'm in somewhat of a tizzy (flabloggergasted?) about how much of myself I want to put online. This isn't my personal blog, after all, but the blogs I enjoy reading the most are ones where the writers let their personalities in, where their struggles and ponderings come from a real place of concern or questioning. Ideally, a blog for a literary journal supplements the work in print - and I hope the content of this blog so far is doing that. But when you ask a bunch of writers to start blogging, questions are bound to be raised about the form and function of blogging.

When I posted my previous(/first, real) blog about the slush pile and my/HFR's relationship to it, I woke up the next morning feeling suddenly afraid. Had I spelled everything correctly? Had I said anything offensive? Had I said exactly what I meant to say? It all happened so quickly: I typed, and then there it was, for anyone to see. Someone, somewhere could be disagreeing with me wholeheartedly, and sharing that disapproval out loud. Or online! Paranoia set in, even though what I had written was hardly personal, and wasn't the kind of thing that would excite controversy. (Also, I might be paranoid by nature.)

Perhaps this is how memoirists have felt for years. I took a class in creative nonfiction once, and it felt like we spent ninety percent of class discussion time talking about how not to offend our loved ones. "Write the truth and be prepared to deal with the consequences, or don't write at all," was my teacher's response. And it seemed like good advice to me. Memoirists, of course, have the added benefit/torture of hindsight. They can take as long as they want to decide how a certain life-event should be revealed. Blogging, on the other hand, gains most of its power and authority from being immediate. We get the bloggers' feelings in the moment, before too much time and perspective have had a chance to interfere. I have a blogging friend who experienced a life-changing tragedy. Reading back over her blog (though part of me felt bad for having this kind of curiosity) was fascinating. There was a distinct "before" and "after" the event. You could see the difference in the writing. It was like reading someone's diary. Her emotions were there, day to day, unfolding.

For all of these reasons, blogging presents interesting options for the fiction writer. A student in my class last semester, wanting to experiment with form, wrote a story as one big post in an online chat room. During workshop, members of the class suggested breaking it up. "What if you wrote it as a blog?" someone said. The class perked up. The characters' emotions during each post would be more immediate, my students realized, instead of reported in an after-the-fact monotone. The story's events would also gain suspense. In first person past tense we know our narrator has lived to tell the tale, so suspense is always stunted to a certain extent. A blog-story affords the opportunity for reflection missing in present-tense, but lends an unpredictability not usually available in past tense; each post would occur after a major event but before the next one. And writing a story blog-style is a great exercise for the writer -- it asks him/her to live first person in the character's skin through various distinct moments in time. Our blog conversation was a lesson and exercise in point of view.

The world has already seen its first contribution to "Google-lit" (read this great entry from the Kenyon Review's blog); is blog-lit already out there, too?

Mea Culpa

Yesterday, The United States of America received a new Poet Laureate, with not even a passing mention on this blog. We're sorry. We love poets, poetry and poet laureates!

Kay Ryan, the nations's 16th Poet Laureate, has taken over the position from Charles Simic (who, for those of you near Phoenix, will be reading here in the fall). Ryan is the author of six poetry collections, all with enviable titles: The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005); Say Uncle (2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994); Strangely Marked Metal (1985); and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983).

Upon hearing that the Library of Congress had called, she thought to herself, "I can't have that many overdue books." If you don't love her a little bit after that, try this essay from Poetry magazine on for size, where she explores her "aversion to cooperative endeavors" during her first AWP conference. Even if you've never lost your sense of self at the AWP bookfair, it's a funny and wonderful read.

Art Intermission Vol. 1

Welcome to Volume 1 of HFR's Art Intermission.

Once again I find myself in the role of presenting art in a literary context. So I´ve decided to use this space to present literate art.

For my inaugural post I present Jim Henkel´s series entitled Stacks. I thought to myself, "What kind of art would writers love to see?" and the answer was obvious.

Enjoy.

The titles from the top are: Twist, Blue Book Cap, Plane, Volume 1-7, Volume B and Landscape Stack.

Adam Thorman was HFR's Art Editor for issues #41 and #42. He is a photographer.

Cover Lover - A Clockwork Orange

Welcome to our first post from Cover Lover -- our book-collecting expert on covers from the past.

Every now and then, a filmed adaptation of a popular novel gets everything right. It’s near impossible to read Harper Lee and not picture Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, and—regardless of whether you give a damn—Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh literally burn down the house in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. Dustin Hoffman looked nothing like the blond, good-looking grad student Charles Webb wrote about, but Hoffman will forever be Benjamin Braddock. And when Stanley Kubrick made up his rassoodock and cast Malcolm McDowell as Alex in his real horrorshow version of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, he crafted something malchicks and devotchkas are still keen on viddying almost 40 years later.

The hoodlums depicted on the first Ballantine paperback edition of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange look nothing like the cinematic incarnations of Alex and Pete and Georgie and Dim. There were four delinquents on the U.S. hardcover edition, but this paperback version is clearly one droog short—perhaps the publishers thought placing a female on the cover might sell the idea of the old “in-out-in-out” a bit better. The back of the book carries quotes from such admirers as William Burroughs and Roald Dahl, and positive reviews from Time and The New York Times. The cover promises a “terrifying shocker of a world dominated by teen-age gangs” but I bet more than one mid-1960’s reader tried to recoup his sixty cents after sitting down with Burgess’ book and—even with Stanley Edgar Hyman's helpful glossary—just scratched his greased head.

This psychedelic (cycle-delic?) artwork came along a few years later. Our Pop Art Alex—seen bursting out of the top of his own head—seems more interested in “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out” than “the old ultra-violence.” The cover still promises a “terrifying shocker of teen-age gangs” but there’s no question that this Alex—despite the relative innocence of his John Lennon glasses—is no stranger to the Korova Milkbar. Easy Rider has eclipsed any lingering images of The Wild One.

By 1971, director Stanley Kubrick had already sealed his popularity with the counter-culture by delivering the one-two punch of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). He was no stranger to literary adaptations either, having licked Lolita (oh, grow up!) in 1962. So great was Kubrick’s popularity that his name was mentioned above the book’s title, alerting potential readers that this novel was “soon to be Stanley Kubrick’s first motion picture since 2001: A Space Odyssey.” Notice how the artwork from the previous cover has been toned down, to make room for Kubrick.

It’s interesting to note that after debuting as a mass-market paperback in September 1965, sales didn’t warrant a reprint until February of ’68. The third printing appeared the following September, followed by a fourth printing in June, 1970. Let’s see: that makes intervals of 29 months, 19 months, nine months, and 16 months. This particular printing of the Burgess book—the fifth—arrived in October, 1971. Within three months, more had to be printed—this time, carrying glowing reviews of the Kubrick film from both Time and The New York Times on the back cover.

This last cover illustration—from 1972—was designed by David Pelham for the Penguin UK paperback and remained in use for over a decade. Kubrick’s take on the novel had become so firmly engrained in our consciousness that the book’s title on the cover seems almost redundant.

Nobody thinks director Robert Mulligan “wrote” To Kill A Mockingbird and Victor Fleming could never take Tara from Margaret Mitchell. In the rare case of A Clockwork Orange, however, Stanley Kubrick didn’t simply do justice to his source material. He brought Burgess’ novel to life on the big screen and his powerful vision still lingers in our gullivers. He placed his grazhny rookers over every frame of his film, and in doing so, effectively rivals Burgess for co-authorship of the book.

Cover Lover is currently researching a book on the role of masculinity in the works of Mark Twain, tentatively titled In No Sense A Broad.

Website of the Week - 20x200

20x200 wants to make art available for everyone. Every week, the website introduces two new pieces of art: one photograph and one work on paper. Every piece is available in three sizes; the smallest size with a run of 200 costs only $20, and the largest size with a run of only 2 (for you big spenders) costs $2000. Even if you can't afford the $20 art (but c'mon, can't you?), the website is a great place to see what artists are up to right now, and with bios and links to individual artist websites, you can spend hours on a virtual gallery tour. If you do have money in the budget to support emerging artists, 20x200 is a fantastic place to start your collection.


James Rajotte, whose photograph "Dog Fight, 2002" (pictured here) appeared in our Grotesque issue, has this photo for sale on the 20x200 site.

The prints often sell out quickly, so be there on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 2 pm EST when the new pieces are revealed.

More Good News

Today, from literary agent Nat Sobel:

"This is an especially fine group of stories in your special, “Grotesque” issue. I think the editors should be commended."

Nat expressed special interest in four writers from the issue. To hear more about what Nat thinks of contemporary fiction, publishing, bookselling, and agents, read his remarkable interview in Poets & Writers here. Read more about Sobel Weber Associates, Inc. here.  

One Writer's Trip to the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference

I signed up for the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference a couple months ago to giving myself a deadline by when to finish the last of my novel revisions. The conference appeared to be well-rounded. It was my first writer’s conference, and I didn’t know what to expect. I would definitely call it an experience to remember. Here’s my take on the different offerings.

Agent pitches
Above the regular cost of registration, you can pay an additional fee to meet with an agent for ten minutes. Ideally, you will meet, and the agent will adore you and love you and represent you. Realistically, you will meet.

The agents all sat at individual tables in one room. In speed dating fashion, a whistle blew to indicate the start time, an eight minute warning announced time to wrap up, and another whistle indicated it was time to leave so a new person could begin. There were some instances of Big Mouth-itis, where a writer somehow lost the ability to get up and walk away. Hopefully, you weren’t the next writer in line, standing there, eyeing the agent, watching your precious first minutes dwindle away in someone else’s hot air. Bouncers would have helped. In fact, a bar in general would have helped. I sorely needed a drink because I managed to say one of the dumbest things any writer can say to an agent: “I wrote a fiction novel.” (Please, laugh heartily at my humiliation.) I liken this experience to that dream where you go to school naked, only unlike those exciting fantasies, I didn’t want this to happen. I recovered with a little technique I employ whenever I say something embarrassing: I blurted out the very next thing that came to mind while my cheeks turned red. “I can’t believe I just said that!” Ms. Agent laughed and said, “Don’t worry about it.” I actually relaxed after that, because once I’d made a fool of myself, I no longer feared doing it. And for the record, Ms. Agent wound up taking the opening pages of my manuscript with her. Not that I recommend you copy my approach.

Craft Workshops
Even with all my sneaking in and out of workshops, I didn’t attend every workshop available. Sunday through Thursday, the workshops met each morning and afternoon. The workshop leaders – representing playwriting, screenwriting, humor, memoir & creative nonfiction, poetry, mystery, fantasy, women’s fiction, children’s literature, marketing, and more – chose how to structure their daily sessions. The most common structure appeared to be opening the workshop with a brief discussion of craft, followed by volunteer readings from workshop participants, and response and critique from the group. My favorite was the pirate workshop, the late night workshop designed for night owls. Admittedly, I am predisposed to call it my favorite because I am enamored by pirates (all in favor, say “Aaaargh!”). I enjoyed the pirate workshops because while the daytime workshops were 2 ½ hours and only so many people could read, everyone got to read at the pirate workshops as long as they were capable of staying awake.

Marketing Information
The conference ran a morning workshop dedicated to marketing, they held daily panel discussions covering publishing venues, first time authors, agents, and more, and every night night, bona fide authors gave a presentation. Among our speakers were Ray Bradbury, Pulitzer finalist Luis Alberto Urrea, and mystery writer Sue Grafton. There were so many angles on how to present your writing. The agent panel discussed how to successfully pitch. The publishing panel introduced writers to options outside the major publishing house route. The marketing workshop explored ways to find an audience for your writing. The established authors talked of their journeys to becoming recognized authors. What I really appreciated was that none of the panels and presenters told us to change our writing or make it something that it is not, sometimes the exact opposite of what happens in a workshop. I heard some pretty outlandish things in the workshops, the most notorious being the critique where someone told the writer she should change her style, genre, and protagonist. I’m not dissing the workshop process (did I really just say diss? I’m kicking it old school baby!). It’s great to hear these different voices and feel like as writers we are part of something bigger than just us, but it’s also confusing to hear ten conflicting interpretations of the same work. The panelists and presenters reminded us that, above all else, the key to good writing is to write what drives you. Write with passion. Write what you love.

Meeting Other Writers
Easiest tick off the list. At a conference this large, all you need is a mouth. Business cards come in handy too.

Contests
The Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference ran a few contests during the week. There’s a Worst First Line contest and a themed writing contest (they announced the theme at the opening ceremony and writers could enter in fiction, nonfiction, or poetry). The conference started a new contest this year, which I participated in, The Ultimate Writeoff, a speed writing competition. Every day, I was given a writing assignment with 15-30 minutes to complete it. And much like Spaceballs, the assignments went straight to ludicrous speed. How would you like to write a poem about a garden gnome, or dialogue in the style of Nathaniel Hawthorne? We also had to read the resulting pieces aloud, no matter how embarrassing. And did I mention the entire contest was videotaped? Judges (including Fannie Flagg) awarded points and at the end of the week, a winner was declared. I won second place. Anyone who participated in the contest knows that I won second place because of Day Four. The writing assignment was to imagine turning a famous novel into a musical, and then write one song from it. My book? Harry Potter. My musical number? You can watch the video clip of it here. 

All in all, the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference went beyond my expectations (because, really, who expects to write a song about Harry Potter?). It introduced me to new ways to view my writing, new thoughts on reaching agents, and readers, and new writers to include in my network.

In short, it gave me hope. And us writers? We live off that.

When she's not writing, Jessica DeVoe is running around after her two children. Her fiction has appeared in Thema and she blogs with reckless abandon here.

Contributor Spotlight: Elizabeth Searle

'Grotesque' is not grotesque, not to me-- the word, I mean. With its jaunty French 'que', it has a festive, defiant flair. I was surprised but satisfied too when I found my short story about a young woman losing her virginity on camera was going to be featured in this particular issue. It felt right to me; it made me realize that this strange tale was a sort of horror story. The HFR cover image, too, struck the right note to me: the detached human trunk was horrifying, yes, but it was also seated slyly on a stool-- as if ponied up to a bar, ready to regale the invisible bartender with its headless woes. Throughout the 'Grotesque' issue, I found variations on this same darkly comic touch, as in the photographs of birds stuffed 'inside out,' or the opening line of Stuart Friebert's translation of Sylva Fischerova: "Yellow star shines like a cancer and pestilence..."

I love the innocence of 'Yellow star' so quickly twisting into the bloody shine of cancerous pestilence. "Puss-face" is a favorite 'shocking' phrase, laughingly repeated, from my nine year old son and his friends: third grade boys cheerfully obsessed with blood and gore. When fellow Moms express alarm, I weigh in with my own obvious theory: that the boys are just now learning about death, realizing it's real, and they are staring it down, laughing in its face. All healthier responses, to me, than ignoring or trying to ignore it. Recently when writing my own opera librettos, I read the libretto of the Magic Flute, and was struck by one climactic line, translated as: "We walk, with the power of music, in joy through death's dark night." I myself love art that attempts to stare down and in some way transform the ever-present horrors of flesh-and-blood life...to take what might be merely gross in life and add the bold extra twists of vision that elevate it to the grander-sounding word: Grotesque.

Elizabeth Searle's TONYA & NANCY: THE ROCK OPERA premiered in February, 2008, with Triangle Productions and media coverage from Good Morning America, CNN, Fox and CBS. Future productions of the show are in the works for 2009. Elizabeth's story, "When You Watch Me" appears in issue #42.

The World of Slush

In response to some recent emails from writers and this article on Luna Park's website, it seemed apropos to put my two cents into the whole Slush Pile Discussion. Here are a few things I'd like HFR's submitters to know...

WE LOVE THE SLUSH PILE. HONEST.
The attitude of literary journals editors (though I suppose I can only speak for HFR) toward the slush pile is remarkably different than those of book publishers and agents, from what I've read and heard. The slush pile, for HFR, is its bread and butter. We do not hate the slush pile, use it for kindling or toilet paper, look at it with disdain, purposely throw its contents into dark and dirty places. We do not mock it. We are grateful for it. We don't expect the worst; we hope for the best. Nothing gives us more editorial pleasure than to read something wonderful from the slush, particularly if the author has never been published before. Our mission is to find emerging writers and to help them find an audience. We are cheering for you. I mean it.

IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT LIKING YOUR WORK.
There's more that goes into editing than simply "liking" something. Editors are mindful of creating a unified issue, and also of creating an ongoing archive that shows diverse work. That, of course, means we want to feature writers with varied backgrounds. But it also means that we want to publish work that spans the spectrum of form and subject matter. If we've already accepted a first person story about a boy with a bug collection for the upcoming issue, your first person story about a boy with a stamp collection might not get accepted. Even if it's better than the first one. A sestina about birds? You must have missed our last issue, with a special section on bird sestinas. Our editors also usually team up, which sometimes means that they don't agree. One editor may love a story the other one detests. Collaboration means comprising. Editing is full of difficult choices.

WE DO NOT SEND FORM REJECTIONS TO MAKE YOU FEEL BAD.
There are plenty of places online (here's one) where writers can vent about their rejections. The paper stock, the type, the font we used, the sentence structure: all fodder for the fire. Rejection notes, from our end, are an economical way to get you a response to your submission. They save us time, and the smaller they are, the more money and trees they save, too. Do I wish I could send a personalized note to everyone who submits? Yes. Is such a thing humanly possible? No. And anyway, do I think that a personalized note would make you all better writers? Not necessarily. We all know editing is subjective. Telling you the things that didn't work for me would tell you only that. Everyone who's ever been in a workshop situation knows you'll hear all sorts of conflicting opinions and recommendations for one piece of work. You can't - and shouldn't - listen to them all. The last story I got published was rejected twenty times and accepted once. If those twenty people all gave me personalized rejections and I'd changed my story according to any or all of them, I might never have gotten the story published at all. Find writers you trust to give you feedback. And always submit again to the journals who encourage your work.

WE WANT TO RESPOND TO YOU IN A TIMELY FASHION.
Oh yes, I'm aware that HFR is on Duotrope Digest's Most Slothful List. (Though, as of today, we're 25th - and almost off of it!) Getting quick responses out and giving each submission the attention it deserves can be a difficult balancing act. I prefer the latter to the former. Please know that our lengthy response time hurts us as much as it hurts you. Because we allow simultaneous submissions, we run the risk of losing great work before we get a chance to read it. This knowledge haunts me. I do my best to create a (volunteer!) editorial staff that is dedicated, diligent and aesthically in sync. Readers of this caliber do not exactly run rampant. Most of our editors and readers here are MFA students, which means they teach, write, and submit their own work in addition to finding time to read the slush. That's not an excuse, but a fact of how we're run. If we could afford a dedicated staff that reads full time, we would hire one. Immediately.

I AM HAPPY TO GIVE YOU STATUS UPDATES.
Provided that you've waited at least 4 months (we report our response time as 4-6 months), I am more than happy to email you an update about your submission (contact me at HFR@asu.edu). Usually I'll respond to your email in just a few days. An important thing to note is that if we're taking longer than 6 months, it's probably a sign that your submission is making its way through our editorial process - and that's a good thing. That means you haven't been rejected. And I'm much more comfortable confirming that than to have you assume I've flushed your story down the toilet.

MISTAKES HAPPEN. AND WE FEEL BAD ABOUT THEM!
We lose things sometimes, but we don't mean to. Our readers check your work out, read it, and then - ideally - bring it back. Once, one of our editors got his briefcase stolen, with your poems inside of it. When my luggage got lost and so did your story, the thing I wanted you to focus on was this: I really wanted to read the slush, even on my California vacation. Not all blunders are to be blamed on acts of god or mischief, though. We misplace things sometimes. With thousands of submissions for every issue, it's bound to happen. It's nothing personal. And I'll try to make it up to you when I can.

WE ARE WRITERS, TOO!
There's often an "us vs. them" attitude between editors and writers, but keep this in mind: every HFR reader is a writer, too. We've all been rejected. Lots. And we don't like it, either.

For more perspective on the slush, read Slushkiller by editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden. It's fantastic.