74 episodes of PoemTalk (+ extra links)

PoemTalk is a collaboration of the Kelly Writers House, PennSound, and the Poetry Foundation.
PoemTalk's producer and host is Al Filreis, the series is also available on iTunes.
So far 74 episodes of PoemTalk are online, each with an own notes page which also includes the link to the audio, here's a choice of direct links:

PT#1: William Carlos Williams between walls PT#4: Allen Ginsberg sings Blake
PT#9: John Ashbery at a crossroads
PT#15: Lyn Hejinian’s change
PT#21: Charles Bernstein’s restlessness 
PT#26: wild Vachel Lindsay 
PT#32: Susan Howe’s Emily Dickinson
PT#41: Ezra Pound in Venice
PT#48: Edgar Allan Poe’s “Dream-Land”
PT#54: Ron Silliman’s “You”
PT#57: Djanikian & the alphabet of genocide

*

& an extra link: Poetry Foundation:

The Poetry Foundation is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture, and publisher of Poetry magazine. On their website, they feature a large section of audio features: Poetry Audio & Podcasts 
.

2012 Goodreads Choice Awards - Final Round

Goodreads is organizing their annual book award again: Readers can pick their favorites in 20 categories, including Fiction, Poetry, Memoir, Nonfiction and Goodreads Authors.


The Awards is now entering the final round:

• Opening Round: 30 Oct – 10 Nov 
• Semifinal Round: 12 Nov – 17 Nov 
• Final Round: 19 Nov – 27 Nov 

Here's the vote page: 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards

Background Information on the Award & Some Interesting Comments:
The book nominations are based on Goodread site statistics, and as statistics turned out: "our new crop of nominees boasts a larger percentage of indie authors than ever before."

An additional blog post from Goodreads with some background information and comments, both on the nomination process and last year's awards finalists, and expectations for this year (here's the link to the blog entry: The 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards—Now Open for Voting!")

About the nomination process & the categories

• "We analyzed statistics from the 170 million books added, rated, and reviewed on the site in 2012 and nominated books based on the number of ratings and average rating." - Jessica from Goodreads
• "No short story/ anthology category? I love short stories, this category is clearly missing in these awards. That aside, voting is always fun!" - Sonatajessica
• "I wish GoodReads had a category just for indie books, Like "Best Indie Book of Year or something like that. I hope no one finds my idea offensive because that was not what I meant it to be. I just feel like great indie books don't get the publicity they deserve!" - Lily

Note on last year's finalists and expectations for this year:

• "Who will be the major break-out nominee of 2012? Last year's juggernaut Fifty Shades of Grey picked up speed when it reached the 2011 finals for Best Romance before becoming a viral hit." - Jessica from Goodreads
• "Oh, great. Let's see what other awful Twilight fan fiction we can "launch" upon unsuspecting society. ETA: Oop, except there actually is another Twific in the voting. *slow clap* SMDH." - Alicia
• "This was always going to be a popularity contest, so sit back, relax and await the predictability" - Marie

4 lessons in creativity - Julie Burstein

A Ted Talk from this month: Radio host Julie Burstein talks with creative people for a living -- and shares four lessons about how to create in the face of challenge, self-doubt and loss. Hear insights from filmmaker Mira Nair, writer Richard Ford, sculptor Richard Serra and photographer Joel Meyerowitz.

 (From the Ted Talks series)

It's Short Story Week! Links, lists, videos, reviews

It's Short Story Week upcoming! To join the big short celebration online, here some links, lists, videos, initiatives: 

#storysunday
A twitter initiative: on sundays, link to someone else's short story published somewhere online which will delight and astound readers this week. Make sure to add the hashtag #storysunday.

The storySouth Million Writers Award
The largest short story award in the web: the storySouth Million Writers Award highlights short stories published in online journals and magazines. Here's the link to the current Top10 list

A brief survey of the short story - a Guardian series 
In an online literary series that started in 2007, Chris Power portrays authors of short stories, and the development of the short story as format over time in the Guardian.

The danger of a single story
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. - a TedTalk video.

The Short Review
Online reviews of new, not-quite-so-new and classic collections and anthologies

About Short Story Week
National Short Story Week is an annual awareness event. Its aim is to focus the attentions of the public and the media on the short story and short story writers, publishers and events. The central website is nationalshortstoryweek

2 facebook tips / tricks for all who follow lit magazines, authors, artists etc on facebook

This might be interesting for all who follow literary magazines, indie publishers, authors, books etc. on facebook: in the last weeks, facebook changed their algorithms (again..), to the effect that posts from pages you "liked" now are listed less often on your personal facebook pages.

One option to increase / get back the messages from those pages is to visit each page again in facebook, and then click on the blue control field next to "Liked", and select "Add to Interest List"... and repeat that with all pages..

Or, you could click to a new page that facebook added to their system: it lists all content from the pages you subscribed to is listed, sorted by date and time:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/feed

-  and creates a page that looks like this:




2 links with more background info: 

• "Is Facebook “broken on purpose” to sell promoted posts? - Traffic from fan pages drops as new option to pay for reach appears."
• Facebook Adds Interest Lists: Here's How to Create and Use Them

..

First Mindful Writing Day

The first ever Mindful Writing Day happened November 1st!

The idea: to start November by dedicating some minutes to mindful writing and sharing this moment with others. Over 1000 joined already in the Mindful Writing Day Facebook Group.

Mindful Writing Notes
On November the 1st people all over the world took some minutes to pay proper attention to one thing and wrote it down, and then shared this moment ("small stone").

The notes are now online:

• in Twitter at #smallstone
• collected in a PDF: Mindful Writing Day

This day is organized by Fiona & Kaspa from Writing Our Way Home. Here's their introduction to Small Stones and the Mindful Writing Day:

Small Stones
"Writing small stones will stitch you to the world, one word at a time. They will point you towards the deep pink frilly roses in next door's front garden, and the swooshing sound of trains in the distance....

You don't have to have any experience of writing to write small stones. You just have to find three minutes, open your ears, eyes, nose, mouth, fingers and mind, and then write down what you notice. You can read examples of small stones at our blogzine, a handful of stones."

People all over the world will be joining us on the 1st of Novermber and posting their small stones on their blogs or Facebook or Twitter.