News Around the Net

This is worth it just for the picture. For a second, I thought it was Hemingway before I decided the picture looked too new, then saw the hundred other Hemingways around him.

I feel like literary awards season just ended, but it's starting up again. Here's the long list for the 2010 Booker. I haven't read any of them, but I'm sure they're wonderful.

Who knew a Great Gatsby video game would suck? You know, other than everyone.

How old is the novel really? Could be much, much older than we think.

While we're on the subject of ignoring wills, a bunch more Kafka manuscripts will be released, even though he stated in his will to have his work destroyed.

Russian youth poetry club or Russian militant training ground? Or both. You decide.

Finally, here are some fake, literary missed connections posted on Craigslist, then reposted on a blog with actual, real responses. Fun for everyone.

Have a great weekend, all.

Save the Gulf Coast by Reading Gulf Coast

A few weeks ago, we featured Poets for Living Waters as our Website of the Week because of how excited we were about writers doing something to contribute to the relief effort in the gulf following the massive BP oil spill. Now Gulf Coast - the literary journal published out of the University of Houston - is doing their part to make a positive contribution. Starting now, Gulf Coast will be donating all subscription proceeds above production costs (they say it'll be about $6 of the $16 it costs to subscribe) to Gulf Restoration Network, an organization that is "committed to uniting and empowering people to protect and restore the natural resources of the Gulf Region for future generations."

And if good will isn't enough of an incentive for you, Gulf Coast has upped the ante and will include a free back issue for all new and renewing susbcribers. Head over to Gulf Coast's Subscription Page and enter in the donation code "GLF" into the coupon code box to get your free back issue. It's a triple win: YOU get a subscription to one of the best literary journals in the country + a copy of one of their previous issues + the feeling of knowing you are doing something to help out with the relief effort. Who could say no to that?

Book Review: Stepping Through Moons by Toni L. Wilkes

Stepping Through Moons by Toni L. Wilkes, Finishing Line Press, 2010. Review by Debrah Lechner.

Toni L. Wilkes is at her best when describing the briefest moment, the bright sliver of an unforgettable sensation that lingers in both body and mind and pulls toward it both the past and future. The balanced stanzas that characterize her poetry are easy to relax into, and invite contemplation. This is poetry that is a a great satisfaction to read aloud.

The signature poem that names the book demonstrates this quality:

Summers ago when we first began

stepping through moons by the sea,

a harbor bell would thump against itself,

complaining, god, that moon is bright tonight.

This is love poetry, not merely of an individual, but of the moment. The poem "Stepping Through Moons" concludes, in part, like this:

turtle, rhino, frog─talismans, proof

that we’ve known the moon, owned
her phases, lived on a bluff of summer

There are abundant quotable lines in Wilkes’s poetry that celebrate the pleasure of an ephermeral moment. Reading one of her poems can be such a moment.

The book Stepping through Moons has been nominated for the California Book Award and the PEN USA Literary Award. The poem "Once Again," which appears in this collection, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Prior to relocating to Northern California, Toni L. Wilkes was a freelance screenwriter and fulltime story editor for feature film director Peter Hyams in Los Angeles. She has conducted creative writing seminars for “Celebrate the Gift” on the campuses of Chapman University and Purdue University. Her work appears or is forthcoming in California Quarterly, Confrontation, Cream City Review, Folio, GW Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Healing Muse, In Posse Review, Iodine Poetry Journal, Pinyon, Poetry East, Roanoke Review, Rosebud, Southern Humanities Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Touch: The Journal of Healing, The Texas Review and other noted journals. She lives with her husband in Santa Rosa, California where they own a financial planning practice.

Read more about Toni L. Wilkes and connect with her through Facebook. You can also purchase a limited edition of Stepping Through Moons through the author by email.

News Around the Net

A 10 year old with cerebral palsy wins a poetry award. This is the coolest thing ever. I think you should probably read it.

Amazon gets the exclusive rights to sell Updike, Nabakov, Mailer and Roth ebooks. I really hope this isn't the beginning of a trend for this squabble between Amazon and Apple and everyone else. If there's one thing that will ruin ebooks, it's this hording of books for one device or another. Sigh.

On basically the opposite side of the spectrum from the ebook hording situation: NPR's pro-libraries argument. Sharing books! Imagine that!

I know what you're thinking. We haven't had a bad poetry link up here in such a long time. Well, here's a compendium of awful Twitter poetry. Apparently not everyone on Twitter is a literary genius. I believe Alanis said it best, you live, you learn. Yes. That just happened.

"Oh yeah, remember that time your poetry was accepted into The Paris Review? Yeah. That was cool, right? Pretty awesome all around, I'd say. Well, we changed our minds." New editor of The Paris Review, Lorin Stein, sent emails to at least three poets who had been accepted by previous editors to let them know they were no longer a part of the magazine. Cold.

Salman Rushdie is writing a memoir about the time he spent in hiding from the fatwa issued against him after Satanic Verses. Yes, I would read this.

Here's a list of 11 literary holidays that I knew nothing about. This week has been Hemingway week and I didn't even know it! Damn!

This Week in Literary History: Don't Fear the Reaper

July 18 is the birthday of the man who single-handedly kept Wild Turkey whiskey in business from the 1960's onward, Dr. Gonzo himself, Hunter S. Thompson. The creator of "gonzo" journalism - a subjective journalistic style where the reporter is part of the story he/she is reporting on - HST was most famous for his first-hand account of the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang and his coverage of the Mint 400 race in the desert just outside Las Vegas, which became the setting for his best known work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Of course, the book is less about the race itself and more about the constant drug intake and reflections on American counterculture, but now we're just splitting hairs. Unfortunately, Dr. Gonzo killed himself back in 2006 in his home in Woody Creek, CO. Four days before he died he wrote a suicide note titled, "Football Season is Over," which, morbid as it sounds, is one of my favorite things he ever wrote: "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt."

Speaking of influential American writers who have killed themselves with a shotgun, July 21 is the birthday of the grandfather of "modern decadence," Ernest "Papa" Hemingway. In 1964, Hunter S. Thompson visited Ketchum, ID - where Hemingway shot himself - and wrote the essay, "What Lured Hemingway to Ketchum" about the months leading up to Hemingway's death. Thompson was a big fan of Hemingway (he used to type out Hemingway's novels on his typewriter, word for word, just because he "[liked] to get the feel of how it is to write those words"), and in his essay he makes a sort of odd premonition about his own future: "He was an old, sick, and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him—not even when his friends came up from Cuba and played bullfight with him in the Tram. So finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun."

On a lighter birthday note, June 21 is also the birthday of Tess Gallagher, poet, teacher and wife of the late Raymond Carver. Back in the Spring of 1989, HFR published two of Carver's previously unpublished poems and an introduction by Gallagher. Two years later, in issue 9, we published three of her poems (one of which is available online). Then, ten years later, we published 6 stories transcribed by Gallagher from an Irish painter named Josie Gray, who originally spoke the stories "with the same passion some men court beautiful women or bet on horses."

Just incase you haven't gotten enough "death" for your day, check out Conjunctions issue 51, titled "The Death Issue." It's definitely a good one. Featuring work from big names like Tom Robbins, Joyce Carol Oates and John Ashbery, I'm pretty sure you can get your fix plus some. Check out Conjunctions online, where you can read through the archives and subscribe to future issues.

The Quiet Hell

Susanna Daniel has looked into my writer's soul and written about it in her essay, "What Took You So Long? The Quiet Hell of 10 Years of Novel Writing" at Slate.com. It's no fun to go through a "quiet hell," but it's a little bit easier when someone else acknowledges it. Three years after my MFA degree, I'm still painstakingly making my way through the second draft of my "novel." I still need to, apparently, put quotes around the word. When will I feel like a real writer? When will I ever finish this thing? When will my teaching and editing jobs stop taking up so much of my time? When will I stop making excuses and just get the thing done already?

Susanna Daniel has given me hope. Not only did she finally finish her novel Stiltsville, not only did she get it published, but I read an excerpt of it in One Story, and it's good. Like, really good. And now she's written this little gem:

"Writing is hard—writers say this all the time, and I think probably only other writers believe it. But it's not nearly as hard, in my experience, as not writing."

I'm going to put this up on my wall. Tattoo it somewhere noticeable. Make t-shirts. Cross-stitch it onto a nice wall hanging. You know, propagate it through any number of projects that will keep me from working on my novel. (Just kidding, I think!) If you're at all frustrated with a writing project, check out her essay. And then get back to work.

Jobs!

Assistant Professor of English (Creative Writing) Requisition Number 06737
Tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of English (Creative Writing), entry-level (no more than four years of full-time post-doctoral teaching experience at the time of appointment), beginning August 2011. "Specializing in creative writing: fiction, with ability to teach fiction writing at beginning and advanced levels as well as introductory multi-genre courses. Ability to teach creative nonfiction, screenwriting, or playwriting is desirable." Duties and Responsibilities: Minimum Qualifications: MFA or Ph.D. and teaching experience required. Preferred Qualifications: Record of publication in fiction strongly preferred. Special Instructions to Applicants: Application deadline is October 15, 2010. Please submit letter of application, CV, and writing sample (Document 1). Please provide three references and their email addresses. Please visit the Bucknell English Department on the web at http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/english.

Visiting Faculty in English
The University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana announces an opening for an one-year, full-time, Visiting Professor in English, beginning August 16th, 2010. The candidate must be able to teach undergraduate Creative Writing and Composition courses. Additional course assignments may include general education literature courses. The course load for this position is 4/4. The candidate should be familiar with using technology in the composition classroom and conversant with the mission and values of the University of Saint Francis. Requirements: MFA or Ph.D. preferred, ABD will be considered, and evidence of successful teaching. Interested applicants should submit letter of application, curriculum vitae, transcripts, names, and contact information for at least three professional references by email to searchcommittee(at)sf.edu
(replace (at) with @) or by mail to the address below. Official transcripts will be required upon hire. Applications will be reviewed as received. Search Committee (Position Title) / University of Saint Francis / 2701 Spring Street / Fort Wayne, IN 46808.

The Sixth Annual Printers' Ball

Visiting Chicago has been on my "to-do" list since the first time I saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but never has it seemed more tempting than when I read about this year's Printers' Ball taking place on July 30 at Columbia College Chicago.

The Printers' Ball is a FREE evening of live readings, performances, music and various printing demonstrations. There are tons of free lit mags, books and broadsides for the taking, and the first 500 guests in the door get a limited edition Printers' Ball Busy Beavers button.

This year's theme is "Print loves Digital," a theme hoping to "demonstrate how print and digital media can complement one another." There are tons of exhibits and events helping to promote the co-habitation of print and digital media, including Mark Jeffrey and Judd Morrissey's "The Procession" and Chris Hershey Van Horn's "Text Object".

All in all, it should be a fun night of awesome writing blended with incredible audio and video productions, along with a bunch of freebies and some beer and refreshments. I'm pretty jealous.

Find out all the info you need on the Poetry Foundation's website, here.

Book Review: The Butterfly Collector by Fred McGavran

Review of The Butterfly Collector stories, by Fred McGavran, Black Lawrence Press, 2009. By Debrah Lechner.

Fred McGavran is a hard writer to categorize.

Reviewers often focus upon his fiction that revolves around law and justice, or the lack of it. He has been compared to John Grisham, for good reason, because McGavran is also a lawyer, like Grisham, and is similarly adept at convincingly relaying the details of the legal world. He is arguably better at characterization than Grisham, however, and I would gladly follow the character of the lawyer Harris Scintilton into a novel, or several of them.

We meet Harris in two stories in this volume. In the first encounter, "A Gracious Voice," he is older, calm, soft-spoken, trusted, analytical, cynical, manipulative and selfish. He exploits the fears of a dying judge. In the second encounter, The Forgiveness of Edwin Watkins, he is a young, idealistic lawyer who unexpectedly succeeds in freeing his suffering client through the mercy of a dying judge who finds his heart─albeit in a hat box. It appears the character of Harris Scintilton has been ruined, but there is hope for redemption. The last line reads that Scintilton will remember “. . . the strange acts of grace that sometimes proceeded from the dying and from the mouth of God.”

Fred McGavran has a love of the grotesque, as already seen. His strews body parts through his fiction. He meditates on infirmity, dementia and death. He includes generally unwelcome supernatural intervention. This leads some critics to characterize him as a horror writer. Well, Fred McGavran’s horror exhibits an unusual but effective component of compassion, and his compassion is redolent with irony, wry wit, and not a little slapstick.

I see McGavran as a humorist. I will go so far as to compare him to David Sedaris, though they have nothing in common with the exception that they have both written very funny Christmas stories. David Sedaris’ Six to "Eight Black Men" is read aloud annually during my Christmas celebration, and now so will McGavran’s "The Annunciation of Charles Spears."

In that story, an angel in a raincoat who reeks of alcohol and tobacco, who has been hitting the sauce for unspecified millenia, stumbles into a Christmas pageant enacted by kindergartners. They’re lacking angels, so he reveals his dirty and matted wings and volunteers to help out.

The congregation is not amused, but I sure was. The grandmother of one child upbraids the hapless rector, then said to the angel:

“And that was the worst Magnificat I ever heard!”
“Guess you had to be there, lady,” the Angel replied.

There is a colorful palette of genres to choose from in this volume by McGavran. If you’re a fan of all of them, Christmas is coming early.

Fred McGavran graduated from Kenyon College and Harvard Law School. A practicing attorney, he is a candidate for ordination as a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio. The Ohio Arts Council awarded him a $10,000 Individual Achievement Award in 2009 for his story "The Reincarnation of Horlach Spenser," which the Harvard Review is publishing. He won the 2008 St. Lawrence Prize for The Butterfly Collector. McGavran won the 2007 Writers Digest Short Story Contest in the horror category, the 2004 John Reid/Tom Howard Contest, the 2003 Raymond Carver Award from Humboldt State University, and has placed in a number of other literary and screenwriting contests. His stories have appeared in Pearl Magazine, Rosebud, Gray's Sporting Journal, Dreams & Visions, Storyglossia.com, Short Story International, and other literary magazines and e-zines.

Read "Watching Time," another award-winning 2004 short story by Fred McGavran.
Purchase The Butterfly Collector for your personal library.

Tin House Books Accepting Unsolicited Manuscripts, with a Catch

Good news all you writers out there with finished manuscripts and no one willing to look at them: Tin House Books will be accepting unsolicited manuscripts for its fall reading period! Now is your chance to send in your masterpiece to a really awesome press and not have to worry about being rejected because you don't have an agent!

But there's a catch: they will only be accepting manuscripts that are "accompanied by a receipt for a hardcover or paperback from a real-life bookstore." The idea has stirred up quite a bit of controversy (check out the comments thread over on GalleyCat - people can be pretty harsh), but I for one think it's a pretty brilliant idea. With the future of print publishing currently in limbo, what better way to stimulate the literary economy than by reminding all of us that actually reading is a pretty huge part of being a writer? And that doesn't mean sitting in Barnes & Noble for three hours, sifting through lit journals and then walking out empty-handed; it's all about not biting the hand that feeds you. It's about being on the receiving end of good writing just as much as you are trying to contribute to it.

You can get all the details on submitting your work over at Tin House's website. And be sure to check out Tin House's quarterly review as well, which we mentioned last week on the blog.

News Around the Net

I Write Like... You might have already seen this in the last couple days, but here it is anyway. I know tons of people out there really want to know exactly which famous writer they write like using I'm sure some very scientific technology to ensure they pick the right author for you. For the record, I entered a couple things and I keep getting Kurt Vonnegut.

Author of White Oleander, Janet Fitch, gives us ten of her rules for writing.

How Twitter and the internet are making us stupider and affecting our book reading. Um, sorry about the length.

Feel like you need a little inspiration to get yourself to your local library? The Old Spice guy is here to talk to into it. Yes, Old Spice guy, books are indeed filled with words.

What is this strange interest in the homes of great authors? I'm guessing they're a lot like all of ours, what with rooms and walls and (maybe) carpeting.

The Great Gatsby, now a video game! Look, I love The Great Gatsby, but this has to be the most boring video game of all time. You're going to (among other things) ride on a train, buy a stray dog, go to an apartment and watch some annoying girl get punched in the face. Maybe that part would be kinda cool.

Bill Clinton will the subject of an opera. Because why not.

This Week in Literary History: The Week of Harold Bloom

July 11 was the 80th birthday of Harold Bloom, famed 19th-century Romantic critic, Sterling Professor at Yale and all-around crazy genius. This guy digests books in the time it takes you and I to get out of bed in the morning. He is a self-proclaimed "monster of reading" and as his former Cornell advisor (and editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature) M.H. Abrams called him, "a prodigy, beyond anything I'd ever seen -- and there was never anyone since who came close." Here's a video of Bloom reading Wallace Stevens' poem, "Tea at the Palace of Hoon". Bloom regarded Stevens as possibly the greatest American poet after Whitman and Dickinson. And here's a cool interview Bloom did with super-duper hipster mag, Vice.

On July 13, 1793, the original Romantic poet and constant subject of Bloom's critique, William Wordsworth, took a stroll with his sister Dorothy to check out the ruins of the church, Tintern Abbey. Poetry ensued. Now, Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey is regarded as the defining poem of Romanticism, the poem that Bloom writes, has "the distinction of inaugurating the major Wordsworthian myth of memory as salvation." Or as Wordsworth himself put it, "moments recollected in tranquility."

Lord Byron, the playboy of Romanticism, returned to England on July 14, 1811 from his two-year hiatus that took him all around Europe and the Near East. Byron fled England after the publication of his second book, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which didn't hold back on its criticism of the English literary establishment and forced him to flee into exile. It was while traveling through Greece and Turkey that Byron composed the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a poem Bloom called "a descriptive medley, mixing travel and history" and under the "quest-theme of romance," something Byron picked up "under Wordsworth's influence."

Finally, it was on July 16, 1951 that J.D. Salinger introduced the world to Holden Caulfield, the angst-ridden teenager of Salinger's only novel, Catcher in the Rye. Yup, you guessed it, Bloom has written about this guy too.

Reading through the current issue of The Iowa Review this morning, I came across Matthew Rohrer's poem, aptly titled, "Poem". The poem would make Harold Bloom proud. It begins, "I know Shelley killed himself / or allowed himself to die / in that boat," a hefty accusation but one that might not be entirely implausible. After all, he did sort of forecast his own death in "Adonais." Check out The Iowa Review online, and then subscribe.

Fellowship & Award

Spring 2011 Emerging Writer Fellowships: Call For Submissions
The Writer's Center, metropolitan Washington, DC's community gathering place for writers and readers, is currently accepting submissions for several competitive Emerging Writer Fellowships for Spring 2011. We welcome submissions from writers of all genres, backgrounds, and experiences in the following genres: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Emerging Writer Fellows will be featured at The Writer's Center as part of Story/Stereo, our Emerging Writers Reading Series and live music fusion events. The readings, held on Friday evenings, bring together writers and some of the area's best local musicians. In its first year, 700 people attended Story/Stereo's events. The Writer's Center will sell titles by the Emerging Writers prior to and during their event. You can learn more about Story/Stereo by visiting www.storystereo.com. Selected Fellows may be invited to lead a special Saturday workshop at The Writer's Center, with compensation commensurate with standard Writer's Center provisions. For more information on leading workshops with us, please consult our Web site under "About Us," then "Teach for Us." Fellows receive an all-inclusive honorarium to help offset their travel costs, depending on their place of departure. Writers within a 250 mile radius of the Center will receive $250; all others will receive $500. Fellows for Spring 2009 included poets William Archila (The Art of Exile), Nicole Cooley (The Afflicted Girls), and Kathleen Flenniken (Famous); fiction writers Anthony Varallo (Out Loud), Marianne Villanueva (Mayor of the Roses), and Josh Weil (The New Valley); and nonfiction writers Steve Fellner (All Screwed Up) and Dawn Potter (Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton). The deadline to submit is September 30, 2010. Applicants are welcome to contact Charles Jensen, Director, with questions or for more information at 301-654-8664, or by email at charles.jensen(at)writer.org. More here.

Drake University Emerging Writer Award
The Drake University Writers & Critics Series is accepting submissions for its second annual Drake University Emerging Writer Award. The faculty and students of Drake University’s English Department select one outstanding first book from among the entries, and the author receives an honorarium of $1000 plus travel and lodging expenses to read at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Each year, the award rotates among genres (short fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry). We are currently accepting submissions of first books of literary nonfiction for consideration for the Drake University Emerging Writer Reading, which will be held during the first week of April 2011. Entries may be submitted by the author or the publisher, and must include a copy of the book; a cover letter that includes a brief biography, contact information for the author, and a statement affirming that this is his/her first book-length publication; a self-addressed stamped envelope; and a $15.00 entry fee payable to "Drake University." Entries must be postmarked by August 31, 2010. Materials postmarked after August 31 will not be considered. Entries will not be returned and will become the property of the Drake University English Department. The winner will be notified by December 1, 2010. All entrants will be notified of the results by December 31, 2010. This year, the award is open to single-author first books of literary nonfiction only. Authors must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents and must agree to attend and participate in the reading at Drake University in April 2011 to receive the award. The following are ineligible for the awards: 1) authors who have published more than one book of literary nonfiction through independent, university, or commercial publishers; 2) entries from vanity presses and self-published books; 3) current students and employees of Drake University. Send all materials to: Drake University Emerging Writer Award / c/o Jennifer Perrine, Writers and Critics Series / English Department, Howard Hall / Drake University / 2507 University Ave / Des Moines, IA 50311. For questions about the award or the series, please e-mail jennifer.perrine(at)drake.edu (replace (at) with @).

Website of the Week: Sampsonia Way

Before the summer of 2004, Sampsonia Way was little more than a beat down alley just across from downtown Pittsburgh on the north side of the Allegheny River. Then along came Huang Xiang, a Chinese poet and City of Asylum/Pittsburgh's very first "writer-in-exile", a residency set-up by the organization to "provide sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of death, imprisonment or persecution in their native countries." Xiang both literally and figuratively changed the landscape of Sampsonia Way by creating his "House Poem," a transcription of his poetry on the front of his small, single-family residency house on Sampsonia Way.

Xiang's "House Poem" was an immediate success and influenced City of Asylum/Pittsburgh to open more writer-residencies, turning Sampsonia Way from a beat down alley outside downtown Pittsburgh to a self-described "long, narrow, hodge-podge of an alley" that has become the "sanctuary" City of Asylum/Pittsburgh had envisioned, as well as a popular and inspirational attraction for writers and artists around the world.

Sampsonia Way soon developed into a full-fledged web magazine, looking to accomplish the same things as the "hodge-podge of an alley" that shares its name: "defend[ing] free speech by protecting the people who actually do the writing and speaking." "The homes provide shelter for writers," the website notes, "the magazine provides shelter for their work."

Check out their May issue, currently available at sampsoniaway.org, and then check out this video of how they prepared themselves for Google Street View. I was a fan of the giant chicken in the front yard.

Baseball Literature in Memory of George Steinbrenner

Today is a sad day for baseball. Even as a hardcore Sox fan, it wasn't pleasant news to read that this morning, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner died of a heart attack in Tampa, FL at the age of 80.

Steinbrenner is easily one of the most recognizable team owners in sports history, partially due to his 11 pennants and 7 World Series championships he helped the Yankees earn in the 37 years he owned the team, and (I'd like to think) partially due to his eccentric role as George Costanza's boss on Seinfeld (voiced by Larry David).

In honor of "The Boss" (not Springsteen, Steinbrenner) I went on a hunt this morning for some great baseball/Yankees literature and found that the best of the best come from Elysian Fields Quarterly, an all-baseball literary review. Back in 2006, Ralph Nader contributed to the review with an open letter to Steinbrenner, criticizing his decision to tear down the original Yankee Stadium (built in 1923) and move the team to the new, slightly smaller stadium across the street. Of course it all ended up working out anyway: the Yanks won the World Series in the first season at the new ballpark. Check out Elysian Fields Review online here, where you can find subscription information and read through some of the back issues.

Book Review: Tongue by Rachel Contreni Flynn

Tongue by Rachel Contreni Flynn, Red Hen Press, 2010, by Debrah Lechner, Poetry.

Tongue is about family, shared history, home, and the separation from these things that everyone must endure during the course of a lifetime. Flynn writes movingly about her life with her sister in rural America, and her loss of both through time, her sister’s illness, and her pursuit of her own continuing life in a small coastal community. Anyone who has lived in a small town will find the comparison between land-locked farm life and life on an island compelling. Her depiction of landscape is rich and lyrical. What gives this writing the greatest power though, is first her

unflinching examination of her beloved sister:

A scarecrow came to breakfast, sat in my sister’s seat and refused
to eat. It combed its straw hair with shredded hands, fluffed its
limbs and made chit-chat, happy faces, horrid little predictions.

Equally as meaningful is her depiction of herself as “the girl” who must reinvent herself in relationship to the world in order to survive her loss. In the process, she must also reinvent her family: "Then I pulled my father’s face / over my own and walked into the world."

If you have a sister, a father, a grandmother, or have ever suffered the loss of love, you will want to read and share this poetry.

Flynn’s Tongue won the Benjamin Saltman award. Her first book, Ice, Mouth, Song won the Dorset Prize. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2007. She was born in Paris in 1969 and raised in a small farming town in Indiana. She got her BA from Indiana University in Bloomington where she majored in journalism and history. She received her MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College in 2001. Her first book, Ice, Mouth, Song, was selected by Stephen Dunn as the 2003 winner of the Dorset Prize. She has recorded her work for the Bloomington/Normal Public Radio station, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was featured as The Spoon River Review's Illinois Poet in 2005. She also received an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship. Flynn works at Fortune Brands, Inc., a Fortune 500 consumer products company. She teaches poetry courses and workshops occasionally, and lives in Mundelein, Illinois with her husband, Patrick, and their children, Grace and Noah.

Click here to learn more about Rachel Contreni Flynn, and then get your copy of Tongue for your personal library.

Unusual Call for Submissions

Poetry Northwest introduces the quarterly poetry competition The Pitch.
Poetry Northwest introduces the quarterly poetry competition The Pitch. Each round features a writing prompt drawn up by a notable writer and work submitted must adhere to the specifications outlined in the prompt. Pitch #1, Find Direction Out, features a prompt by Seattle poet Rebecca Hoogs. Submissions due by September 15th, and rules can be found here.

One Forty Fiction calls for online submissions.
Think you're good at writing short stories? One Forty Fiction is looking to post writers who can submit stories using only 140 words or less. Stories must be complete, featuring a beginning, middle and end and submitted through One Forty Fiction's website. There's no deadline or time frame here, simply check out their submission page for all the info!

Immortality: A Southern Methodist University Press Project.
Seeking new essays from a variety of perspectives on recent scientific developments and the likelihood, merits and ramifications of biological immortality. We're looking for essays by writers, physicians, scientists, philosophers, clergy--anyone with an imagination, a vision of the future, and a dream (or fear) of living forever. Submit an unpublished essay using 5,000 words or less, cover letter and author's information to Creative Nonfiction before September 17th. Visit their online submission page here.

Women in Judaism’s First Annual Fiction and Non-fiction Competition
Now accepting submissions for its 2010 annual writing competition. The e-journal is looking for unpublished submissions of short fiction, poetry, and essays on Jewish themes that touch the lives and experiences of Jewish women. First prize is $250 and ranges from short fiction, poetry and essay. Winning manuscripts will be published in the two yearly issues of the journal. $10 dollar entry fee required for short story and fiction, $5 for poetry. All entries are to be submitted before September 1st. Visit their contest page for everything you need to know!

Milwaukee Irish Fest Poetry Contest 2010
Milwaukee Irish Fest will award two poets this year at it's 30th Annual event. Authors are able to submit and qualify for two awards throughout the event: the Donn Goodwin prize, which is intended for any poet who exemplifies an understanding of Irish and Irish American styles of poetry, and The Joseph Gahagan Prize, which is open to any resident of Wisconsin. The awards will be given to the entries best reflecting Irish or Irish-American poetry traditions. While the poems do not necessarily need to have direct Irish or Irish-American themes, the winning entries should have a cultural/literary relation to either Ireland or Irish-America. Entries are due no later than August 1st. All other stipulations and guidelines can be found at MIF's Poetry Contest Page.

Main Street Rag Fiction Anthology releases it's current themes for submissions
Authors are able to choose from three subjects: Altered States, Sports and The Book of Villains and submit as many as two stories at a time per theme, and no more than 10,000 words each. If you fancy yourself a sci-fi/ fantasy fan, a sports nut or someone who just likes the bad guy then this is definitely the place to submit your work. Visit Main Street Rag's homepage for all the extended details and submission processes.

News Around the Net

If you're looking for something to look forward to, here's a massive book preview of the major titles that should be coming out in the next year.

Dr. Seuss Chuck Taylors.  Because everyone knew this needed to happen.

Apparently, people read hard copy books faster than ebooks on the Kindle or iPad.  You can probably chalk this up to one of a number of things not having to do with ebooks at all.  But either way, seems a bit arbitrary to me, there it is though.

A challenge.  Can you outblurb Nicole Krauss's praise of David Grossman's new novel?  Apparently, Grossman 'can look inside a person and discover the unique essence of her humanity'.  What a pervert.

The Diary of Anne Frank has been published as a graphic novel in the Netherlands.  It was done to make the book more accessible to a younger audience, also because they thought this would make it even more depressing.

Salt Publishing is looking for writers.  They want to know who you think they should publish.  Perhaps they'd be interested in a little known young writer named Yours Truly.  Yes, that's right.  That is my pen name.

Dr. Alphabet plans to write 10,000 pages of poetry in 100 days.  Also plans to write 10 pages of good poetry in 100 days.  One of those is made up.  You decide which.

This Week in Literary History: America is Born!

As a Scorpio growing up in the frigid New England winter, America always had the birthday I wished I could have had: barbeques, pool parties, drunk friends tying fireworks to my leg. Our founding fathers knew what they were doing when they gave birth to this love child called the USA; they knew that July 4 was prime party time nationwide, and so this week in history they wrote what is arguably the most famous piece of American literature - the Declaration of Independence - and set-up America to be sure it always has the best birthday parties ever. I wish my parents had thought of that.

On America's 69th birthday, Henry David Thoreau walked into the woods behind his buddy Ralph Waldo Emerson's house and built a small cabin where he would live for the next two years, two months and two days before deciding he'd had enough and that he had "several more lives to lead", which to me translates as "living in the woods is cool for a while, but trust me, it gets really boring." He of course wrote his memoir/spiritual journey titled Walden about his stay in the cabin and it has since become the Bible for hippies and vagabonds worldwide as well as a runner-up to the Declaration of Independence for "Most Famous Piece of American Literature Ever".

Ten years later, on America's 79th birthday, a virtually unknown poet by the name of Walt Whitman self-published 795 copies of a little book of 12 poems he titled Leaves of Grass. Ya heard of it? Another famous vagabond, another super important piece of American lit. America shares its birthday with the beginning of Thoreau's Walden and Whitman's Leaves of Grass, I share my birthday with Whoopi Goldberg.

July 6 may rival the 4th as the most patriotic day of the year though, mainly because it is the birthday of two of America's greatest leaders: Nancy Reagan and George "Dubya" Bush. And they are both writers. Move over Leaves of Grass, take a seat Walden, Decision Points - a.k.a How To Run a Country into the Ground in Ten Easy Steps - comes out November 9th.

If your 4th of July weekend has inspired you to get all political, Volume 10 Number 1 of Tin House might be a good read. Titled "The Political Future", the issue takes a look at the direction politics is moving both nationally and globally. There is plenty of criticism of King George within, including a great poem by Mary Syzbist about the relationship between G.W.B and Senator Robert Byrd (who died last month), as well as a funny set of comic strips by David Rees called Get Your War On. Check out Rees's comic strip here, and pick up the new Summer Reading issue of Tin House here.

Website of the Week: The Afghan Women's Writing Project

The Afghan Women's Writing Project is an online magazine established by novelist Masha Hamilton in the winter of 2008. Their sole focus is to publish the poetry, short stories and personal essays of Afghan women writers whose voices are stifled by the male-dominant Afghan culture. Afghan women work directly with American women writers to express themselves through their writing and develop their craft.

It's a project that requires extreme security - as the website notes, nearly all the women participating are doing so "partially or entirely in secret from friends and family" - but the results are worth it: as one of the American mentors writes, "in their words... I spy courage and determination; hope and sadness; wisdom and fear; and perhaps most important, a wily insistence on maintaining—against huge odds—a relevant voice in their society."

One poet writes, "The Taliban have gone, but the true beast is / still alive," ending with a message that summarizes the entire motive behind The Afghan Women's Writing Project: "The beast is near. The beast is real. / Ahh, the beast can be / an Afghan man who is still alive."

AWWP has also established a grant in honor of Ashton Goodman, a 21 year-old Air Force Senior Airman who was killed by a roadside bomb in May of 2009. Ashton was dedicated to making a difference with Afghan women by using "words not weapons," a message that has now become part of the mission of AWWP. If you're inclined, donations for the grant are greatly appreciated. Only $50 dollars will educate an Afghan girl for one year, and every bit adds up.

Book Review: The Rest is Jungle By Mario Benedetti

The Rest Is Jungle and Other Stories by Mario Benedetti, Host Publications, 2010, Harry Morales, translator. Review by Debrah Lechner.

The unique voice of Uruguayan author Mario Benedetti (1920 - 2009) was and is a profound influence throughout Latin America, as well as internationally.

As a poet, fiction writer, journalist, playwright and critic, he published more than ninety books. He won at least thirteen literary prizes. Eighteen of his literary works were translated into film. The adaptation of his novel The Truce was nominated for an Academy Award. His work has been published in twenty-six languages. He composed music. He acted.

Benedetti was also a founder of the organization Frente Amplio, which opposed military dictatorship. For this he was exiled until 1985, when a democratic government was re-established. After his death, thousands of mourners followed his casket through the streets of Montevideo.

Regrettably, opportunity to hear the voice of this artist in English has been rare. The publication of The Rest is Jungle and Other Stories will help redress that injustice. It’s past due.

Benedetti writes compellingly about political repression, torture, and how the simple tedium of submission to such a regime is sometimes is enough to turn an ordinary, typical human being into a monster─an ordinary, typical monster. From Listening to Mozart:

Where will your sense of discipline lead you, little Captain Morales?
To begin suppressing your capacity to love? Turn your hatred into a routine?
Or allow your routine to assault, wound, pierce, fracture, rape, amputate, asphyxiate, sacrifice?

In contrast to that (but not as sharp a contrast as might be imagined) are stories of interpersonal relationships. In "The Sweethearts" a marriage proposal is the vehicle for passive-aggressive vengeance. The bridegroom has insight into his motivations and the consequences to follow, but is unapologetic: “Freedom has it’s advantages, but just now (now that she was sure of my withdrawal, disconcerted by my rejection) revenge was better than freedom.”

In writing on subjects as diverse (and similar, and overlapping) as political torture and family life, Benedetti has a keen sense of humor and gift for suspense.

Writers will be intrigued by the techniques employed in these stories. The harrowing "The Rain and the Fungi," published by Hayden’s Ferry Review in issue #43, is entirely a first-person monologue on the danger of sincerity, delivered to a lover trapped by an innocent question. "For Objects Only" is a dispassionate third-person rendition of objects in a room. Each object illuminates the meaning of another, and the impact is just as strong as the increasingly threatening tone of "The Rain and the Fungi."

The Rest is Jungle and Other Stories is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. You really should get in the queue. Listen and learn from this unique voice.

Mario Benedetti Farrugia was born in 1920 into an Italian immigrant family in the cattle town of Paso de los Toros, in central Uruguay. But he came of age in Montevideo, going to work at 14 in an auto-parts shop before making his mark in Latin American literary circles in his mid-20s, first for poems and then for short stories. Mr. Benedetti’s best-known work, however, is probably his 1960 novel The Truce, a film version of which, made in Argentina, was nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign film in 1975. “The Truce,” which has been translated into 19 languages, is written in the form of a diary and tells the story of a romance in Montevideo between a middle-aged widower and a woman half his age. Several of Mr. Benedetti’s poems, which dealt mainly with love and politics, were set to music and recorded; a few even became pop hits. The most notable example is “The South Also Exists,” a collection of 10 songs, all with lyrics by Mr. Benedetti, which the popular Catalan singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat released in 1985.

Read the New York Times obituary for Mario Benedetti and then view photos of the massive national funeral procession.

Get your copy of The Rest is Jungle and Other Stories for your personal library.

Celebrate Independence with Independent Presses!

A (never too) late reading list in celebration of July 4th! Get to it.

News Around the Net

Harper Lee comes out of seclusion to thank a reporter for a box of chocolates and talk about ducks. Literary world deems it newsworthy.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize award winner and full-time Hawaii resident (what a jerk) William S. Merwin has been named the new U.S. poet laureate. My application was, evidently, not sufficient. The poet laureate people are apparently not fans of the graphic, but clever Nantucket limerick style.

Attention poetry readers: You are no longer being left out by the Rumpus. They've created a new poetry book club.

The 2010 Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest for the worst sentence has announced this year's hilarious winners!

Saving translated literature. Who's publishing it and what's the only thing we care about in regards to German literature (Nazis, of course!).

The Guardian reminds us that not every good writer you should keep an eye on is under 40. Some writers you might have heard of have stayed culturally relevant well into their fourth decade. I know, I know. It's crazy.

Fellow HFR blogger Zack's and my former tiny state of Rhode Island was this close to having its very own state poem. But hey, at least it was rejected in the form of another poem. Could have been more boring.

Ending on a somber note, Christopher Hitchens was forced to cut his book tour for his acclaimed memoir, Hitch-22, short. He has been diagnosed with cancer.

Norman Dubie vs. Ashlee Simpson Wentz

In an unexpected turn of events, recent HFR contributor and beloved ASU faculty member Norman Dubie has been pitted against Ashlee Simpson Wentz in a "Who Wore it Best?" fashion challenge on the charmingly snarky blog We Who Are About to Die. Vote for your favorite here!

This Week in Literary History: The Theatre!

June 29 was the 397th anniversary of The Globe Theatre burning down. Quick math: that means it was 1613. The Globe is where Shakespeare premiered a bunch of his most popular plays including Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth. Do we have anything close to a modern equivalent to The Globe? Something that would be just as devastating and culturally relevant as "the house that Shakespeare built" burning to the ground? Maybe the Chinese Theatre in LA where "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 3D" made its premiere? Or the Apollo Theater in Harlem where The Jackson 5 were launched into stardom? They sure don't make 'em like they used to.

Fast forward 323 years, 1 day: it is now June 30, 1936 and Margaret Mitchell has just published her one and only novel, Gone with the Wind. It sold 1 million copies in its first six months on the shelves and is still to date one of the best selling novels of all time, selling almost 30 million copies since 1936 and having been made into an Oscar-winning film. The film debuted in 1939 in Atlanta at Loew's Grand Theatre, which ironically ended up suffering the same fate as Shakespeare's Globe: it burned down in 1978.

And finally, a happy birthday to Tyrone Guthrie, who would have been 110 on July 2 if he hadn't died nearly 40 years ago. Guthrie was a big fan of all things Shakespeare and wanted to bring the traditional Shakespearean theater here to the States. Thus he created the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, which opened in 1963 with a production of Hamlet and is still putting on Shakespeare's plays today. Maybe we do have a modern day Globe after all.

If you aren't worn out on Shakespeare yet (or even if you are), there are two poems in the Spring 2008 volume of Hotel Amerika by Bill Rector that are certainly worth a gander. Rector titles the poems after two of Shakespeare's greatest hits: Hamlet and Henry V. But while the titles may reference The Bard and his work, that's seemingly where the connection stops. The poems are largely metaphorical interpretations of the works, and it takes a couple read-throughs to understand the connection. When you do, it makes the poems that much better. Take a look at Hotel Amerika online, and then head over to Bill Rector's site to read through some selections from his book, Bill.

New Titles from the Stanford Graphic Novel Project

The Stanford Graphic Novel Project's 2009/ 2010 line-up features two non-fiction graphic novels: Virunga and Pika-Don. Developed as student facilitated graphic novels and released by the university's creative writing program, the novels are the product of student and faculty labor.

The program is led by Senior Jones Lecturer and accomplished writer Adam Johnson, who coordinates with students, affiliated artists, writers and editors during a twenty-week course at Stanford to produce the stories. It’s a project that Johnson says "is designed to teach non-fiction research and storytelling skills to undergraduates through the collaborative creation of a graphic novel."

The result is a vivid and compelling take on storytelling, giving an organic and individualized perspective to events we’ve only heard of or witnessed on TV. As Adam explains, the goal of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project is to tell real-world stories and give voice to those who might otherwise go unheard in the hopes of doing good, seeking justice and bringing about change.

Browse around at SGNP's site, where you can read an excerpt from Pika-Don. And look for an interview and novel excerpt from Adam Johnson in the upcoming issue of HFR!