Call For Submissions

“Borderlands”

Hayden’s Ferry Review, Issue 57

Borderlands are venues for encounter, exchange, and conflict. They encompass not only physical or legislative borders, but also abstract spaces—psychological, cultural, social, and natural.  What happens in the limbic, the transitional, and the in between? What is gained and what is lost in the act of defining boundaries? What questions does the space raise of race, class, gender, citizenship, and identity?  Hayden’s Ferry Review invites writers and artists to interpret the theme as they like.  We’d prefer interpretations of a personal nature, rather than general, but mostly we just want strong, passionate pieces that excite and challenge.

Hayden’s Ferry Review will be accepting themed submissions until June 1st. To submit, please visit our Submittable page.

This Week in Writing

• On March 28^th, Barry Harbaugh wrote “Yes, Book Editors Edit,” his response to the buzzing essay collection “MFA vs NYC.” The collection, published by n+1, features work from writers, professors, publicists, agents—but no book editors.
• Linton Weeks at NPR has written an essay titled “Vladimir Putin is Right Out Of A Russian Novel.” In the piece, Weeks posits that Putin, in his reign, “has chosen [to follow] the Dostoevskian tradition.”
• A printed edition of Wikipedia is in the works—and it would span more than one million pages in total. Seems like a worthless idea to me. Listen to NPR's talking points (3/30) here.
• On April 1^st, Gmail celebrated its 10 year anniversary. Here, Time's Harry McCracken rehashes the service's revolutionary history.
• In The Believer's March/April issue, Anisse Gross interviews filmmaker/screenwriter Mary Harron about the role of women in film. Gross discusses her writing process and her views of modern feminism. Gross wrote and directed several films, including I Shot Andy Warhol, and American Psycho.
• The Boston Review posted “Cloud of Mexico Pork” this week (4/1), a poem from Robert Pinksy. The piece is made up of a list of “trigger words” which government surveillance teams use to monitor citizens' web searches.
• The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum explores the ethics behind TV writing in her piece “The Great Divide” (4/3). The article focuses on the polarizing humor of “All in the Family,” recalling: “One side felt that the show satirized bigotry; the other argued that it was bigotry, and that all those vaudevillian yuks and awws were merely camouflage for Archie’s ugly words.” Nussbaum's piece also questions the show's impact on modern sitcom writing.   

~Sophie Opich

This Week in Writing

Photo courtesy Reuters via BBC.

• In a progressive move, the Vatican Library announced (3/22) its plans to digitize its collection of ancient handwritten manuscripts. The long-term goal of the project is to make 40 million pages of documents available online. Some of these texts contain important historical works in math, science, law and medicine.
• On the 22^nd, President Jimmy Carter sat down with Diane Rehm of NPR to discuss his new book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power. In the interview, Carter discusses ongoing abuse of American women and our country's fight for human rights. Carter is 89 years old.
• Alice Munro was the first Canadian woman to win a Nobel prize in literature. On the 24^th, the author was honored with a special coin inscribed with a passage from her short story Messenger.
• Strand magazine announced Tuesday (3/25) that it will feature a previously unpublished/ long lost short story written by Tennessee Williams titled “Crazy Night.” Read CNN's piece on the discovery here. Williams died in 1983.
• Editors at The American Scholar put together a list of what they claim may be the Ten Best Sentences (3/27). It's a good read – and it reminds me of this piece from last summer posted by The Atlantic, wherein some of today's most acclaimed writers list their favorite opening sentences. Jonathan Franzen lists Kafka, and other surprises.

~Sophie Opich

This Week in Writing

• The New Yorker published “How To Be a Good Bad American Girl” on the 6th. In it, Anna Holmes recalls the complexities and subversive behavior of two timeless literary super-heroines, Scout Finch and Harriet Welsch.
• The #TwitterFiction Festival began March 12: “Twitter is where the world tells its stories all day, every day.” Learn more here.
• On the 13th, the National Book Critics Circle announced their award winners for 2013, including works from Frank Bidart and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Read the full list here.
• On March 14, Nick Richardson at the London Review of Books posted a translation and analysis of the classic “Lorem Ipsum” placeholder text which, translated to English, reads “like extreme Mallarmé, or a Burroughsian cut-up, or a paragraph of Finnegans Wake.”
• Walter Dean Myers published an opinion article for the New York Times in on Sunday (3/15) asking: “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?” Myers is the former Library of Congress Ambassador for Young People's Literature and the author of the YA bestseller “Monster.”
• Let Books Be Books is an online campaign that opposes books designated “for boys” or “for girls.” The Independent (3/16) says a good read is just that. 

~Sophie Opich