BluePrintReview book+lit blog

The Hide of my Tongue - Vivian Faith Prescott (Plain View)

2012-01-30T16:07:00.001+01:00

The Hide of My Tongue is a familial and historical account of the loss & revitalization of the Tlingit language. It's Vivian Faith Prescott explains first full-length poetry collection.

The collection explores the historical and contemporary effects of the loss of one of the world’s most complex languages: Tlingit. There are less than three hundred fluent Tlingit speakers left in the world. In Southeast Alaska, many are involved in the Tlingit language and cultural revitalization including Vivian Faith Prescott and her family.

"I spent the last twelve years creating The Hide of My Tongue, Ax L'óot' Doogú," says Vivian. "The collection is dedicated to my daughter, Vivian Mork, Yeilk', Cute-Little-Raven, and those who work at revitalzing the Tlingit language."

Vivian Faith Prescott is a fifth generation Alaska, born and raised in Wrangell, Alaska. She lives in Sitka, Alaska. She facilitates writers workshops for adults and teens. Vivian is Co-Director of Raven’s Blanket, a non-profit designed to enhance and perpetuate the cultural wellness and traditions of Indigenous peoples through education, media, and the arts; to promote artistic works by both Native and non-native Alaskans. She blogs at Planet Alaska.

About Plain View Press
Plain View Press is a 35-year-old issue-based literary publishing house that hase published 350 titles presenting the work of almost 500 national and international writers. Despite evidence that relentless violence has taken root worldwide, there is hope and there are artists to show the human face of it.

The Hide of My Tongue, Ax L'óot' Doogú
ISBN: 978-1-935514-87-9
114 pages, $14.95

related links: about a place, poetry

Sampsonia Way

2012-01-26T12:09:00.001+01:00

Sampsonia Way is an online magazine sponsored by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh celebrating literary free expression and supporting persecuted writers worldwide.

The magazine’s key staff includes exiled writers living on Sampsonia Way, a street in Pittsburgh that spans cultures and languages, which was conceived with their advice from within their own experience of exile and repression.

Sampsonia Way seeks to protect and advocate for writers who may be endangered, to educate the public about threats to writers and literary expression, and to create a community in which endangered writers thrive and literary culture is a valued part of everyday life.

The current Issue 9 — January 2012 includes the features "The Stage is My Gun: The Cultural Intifada of Juliano Mer-Khamis" by Olivia Stransky, "Reporting from Egypt: An Interview with Democracy Now's Sharif Abdel Kouddous" by Caitlyn Christensen and "Under Chávez: Media Harassed with Online Hacking, Phone Tapping and Censorship" by Gregorio Salazar.

Sampsonia Way is produced for City of Asylum/Pittsburgh by Silvia Duarte under a grant from the Queequeg Foundation. She is proud to produce a magazine of worldwide impact with a staff composed entirely of volunteers, part-time freelancers and consultants, and interns.

Sampsonia Way
international online magazine

The Language of Dragons - Yay Words

2012-01-23T12:08:00.004+01:00

The Language of Dragons is a collection of dragon haiku and art, edited by Aubrie Cox in anticipation of the year of the dragon, which starts with the Chinese New Year on the 23rd January 2012.
The collection is available as PDF at Yay Words: The Language of Dragons - PDF

Aubrie Cox explains: "Back in October on Yay Words!, I asked my poet friends to write poems about trolls and/or tea and posted the results of it on Halloween as "Tea with Trolls." After a poll on Facebook and Twitter—it was whether folks wanted to write about sasquatch or dragons—and discovering 2012 was the Year of the Water dragon, I decided to plan another post for January first as a way to commemorate the New Year. Poets and artists were invited to contribute short form poetry and art featuring dragons and/or water and/or fire; anyone would submitted was guaranteed one piece for inclusion."

Contributors come from all over the world and include both well established and newer haiku poets. Cover art by Kris Kondo. A contributor list with website and twitter links is included at the end of the collection.

Aubrie Cox graduated from Millikin University with a B.A. in English literature and creative writing with a philosophy minor. At Millikin, she served as the senior editor for the student owned and operated publishing company Bronze Man Books, and editor-in-chief for the literary and fine arts magazine Collage. As of Fall 2011, she is attending Ball State University in pursuit of an M.A. in English creative writing. She regularly blogs poetry on Yay Words!, where she also does collaborative e-collections.

The Language of Dragons - website
The Language of Dragons - PDF
44 pages

Edge: curve, arc, circle - Sandra Davies

2012-01-17T13:25:00.000+01:00

Edge: curve, arc, circle is a tale of learning, adaptation and celebration in neolithic Orkney written and illustrated by Sandra Davies. The book includes three episodes and seventeen original and apt illustrations in this coming-of-age tale set in Neolithic Orkney.

The first of the episodes, 'Curve of early learning' describes the hurts of childhood and early adolescence, the acquisition of understanding about one's environment and place in society. This episode is online as excerpt with paintings as part of the Language/Place edition #6 "at the edge": Curve of learning.

The second episode 'Arc of adaptation' tells of further changes, more deaths, but the discovery of humanity and, eventually love and respect. 'Circle of celebration' describes the journey by land and sea to the Ring of Brodgar for the celebration of the mid-winter solstic. An extensive preview of the book is online at blurb: Edge: curve, arc, circle.

Sandra explains: "This book was inspired firstly by Orkney and a visit to Isbister, known more popularly as 'Tomb of the Eagles'. It was brought into being because Michael D Brown asked for contributions for MuDJoB, the illustrations followed later, sparked by the celebration of MuDJoBs first anniversary."

Sandra Davies is an artist and printmaker and recently-emerged writer of fiction, with a long-established interest in family history. Born on the Essex coast, she now lives in Teesside in the north east of England, both places having the flat landscapes and sea-edged horizons considered essential for a sense of well-being. Her writing can be found at linesofcommunication. For some of her prints, visit: printuniverse/SandraDavies.

Sandra Davies: Edge: curve, arc, circle
15.95$ / 14.95 Euro

related links: about a place, art

Frankfurt Bookfair 2012: An Aotearoa Affair - A Blog Fest

2012-01-13T11:05:00.001+01:00

Frankfurt Bookfair 2012: An Aotearoa Affair - A Blog Fest is a literary web initiative in anticipation of the Frankfurt Bookfair in October, where New Zealand is the Guest of Honour. The idea: to cross boundaries through writing from various perspectives and languages, to stretch across landscapes and timezones, to share experiences both common and unique to these countries and the people from there and living there.

The website just launched with an invite to join: "In these pages we’re highlighting Kiwi and German writers in 2012 and creating a space for interested readers and bloggers to connect and share related posts. If you are a Kiwi or German living anywhere in the world, or if you are from somewhere else but have settled in New Zealand or Germany, we want to hear from you."

The blog fest will present writers in a weekly series, and in special features. Added to that, a monthly blog carnival will feature New Zealand and German perspectives in many forms: poetry, fiction, non-fiction, travel, photography, art, etc. - the first edition is planned for February, deadline is February 5, the theme will be "Crossings". Guidelines for interested authors and bloggers: How to Join.

About Frankfurt Book Fair
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the biggest book and media fair in the world – with around 7,400 exhibitors from over 100 countries. In 2012, the Frankfurt Book Fair will take place from 10 to 14 October. The guest of honour is New Zealand. Previous guests of honour include Iceland, Argentina, China, and many more.

About the Blog Fest
The editors of the Blog Fest are Michelle Elvy (New Zealand, founder of the flash initiative 52|250 A Year of Flash) and Dorothee Lang (Germany, editor BluePrintReview and founder of the language/place blog carnival). Michelle and Dorothee first met over their separate writing and editing projects in 2010 and soon discovered common ground -- both literally, as Michelle had lived many years in Germany and also through language and travel, poetry and photography.

Frankfurt Bookfair 2012: An Aotearoa Affair - A Blog Fest

Reading Challenges 2012: Ebooks, Global, Europe, Translations + suggestions & links

2012-01-10T20:07:00.004+01:00

With the start of the new year many reading challenges opened a new page in the web. The challenges invite readers to join and focus on a defined theme for some of their yearly reading, and to share the titles of the books you read and/or reviews with other participants. Signup for most of the challenges is still open. Here are some of the challenges:

The 2012 Ebook Challenge invites you to read at least 5 e-books in 2012. It offers a monthly roundup post where participants can add their reviews, and also giveaways.

To tour Europe in books - that's the idea of the European Reading Challenge. The books can be anything – novels, short stories, memoirs, travel guides, cookbooks, biography, poetry, or any other genre. The task: Read up to 5 books by different European authors or books set in different European countries.

The Global Reading Challenge challenges you to expand your reading boundaries, go where you haven't been before, move a little outside your comfort zone by reading at least one book from each continent.

The goal of the Books in Translation Reading Challenge is self-explanatory: to read translations of books. "The books don't have to be in English; whatever language(s) you're comfortable reading in is good."

More challenges and challenge overlaps
More challenges can be found at A Novel Challenge - a blog that gathers reading challenge links. A hint from the guidelines: most challenges allow and encourage an overlap of challenges for those who take part in more than one challenge.

Reading Suggestions from this book blog
If you are interested in joining a challenge, and look for fitting books to read: here some categories to browse from this blog:

Ebooks (Peppermint Bottle, Never Never Stories, Freight, Spiral Jetta, Life Cycle...)
About a Place (The Tiger's Path - Iraq, A Foal Poem - Mexico,Open City - New York, Habit of a Foreign Sky - Asia, Spiral Jetty - USA, Ayiti - Haitia...)
International (Foreign Flavours, Writers Abroad Anthology, Black Nature anthology, Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry...)

Blip Magazine + Mississippi Review Archives

2012-01-06T17:26:00.001+01:00

Blip Magazine's Winter Issue 2012 is online: "It’s funny stuff, confounding stuff–curious, affecting, off-putting, inarticulate, beautiful and true, variously."

With the winter issue, a larger archive of former issues that reaches back to 1995 went online. Here's the story of it: In early 1995, the literary magazines Mississippi Review launched an online edition: MROnline. It was one of the first literary magazine, and featured original content not connected to the print edition.

In May 2010, after a change of organization, the archives of MROnline went offline. Now they were brought back by the editors of the past issues, and can be found in the Magazine Archive of Blip. The archives include links to the content pages, and also 2 PDF-issues: The LitMag at 100 and The Movies Issue.

The First Online Literary Magazines
Following the theme of first online literary magazines, there's a list with links to some of the first online literary online magazines up at The First Online Literary Magazines, an link page that belongs to BluePrintReview re/visit issue. Some of the early magazines aren't online anymore, some still have archives up, and some could be retrieved with help of the wayback machine.

Leaf Press 2012 co-op poem

2012-01-02T17:47:00.004+01:00

Since 2009, the editors of Leaf Press organize a collaborate winter poem for the start of the year, collecting couplets from different poets, to publish as co-op poem on the first Monday of the new year.

The guidelines for 2012: "This year we ask for couplets again, not specifiying a theme, but asking you to write about what is on your mind this season, this place." Now the 2012 poem is online: Lines Drawn from Greening Winds

And here, for the joy of poetic cooperation, the previous poems:
2011 - The Change in Winter Light
2010 - Cold
2009 - Snow

About Leaf Press
Leaf Press is an independent press located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Ursula Vaira founded Leaf in 2001 as a poetry chapbook publisher. Since 2007 Leaf has been publishing trade poetry while continuing the chapbook tradition and the weekly on-line Monday's Poem.

related links: web projects, international, poetry

Prompted - An International Collection of Poems

2011-12-29T13:19:00.004+01:00

Prompted - An International Collection of Poems is a poetic charity project: all profits benefit LitWorld, a non-profit organization working towards global literacy.

The idea was conceived by an international group of poets that met at Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides, and with the permission granted from Writer's Digest, were able to choose previous prompts from the site to use in the book. Edited by Pearl Ketover Prilik and published by Really Love Your Book , the project was completed in six months. The anthology includes a forward by Robert Lee Brewer.

Among the "prompts" included: type of person, inverted pyramid, prayer, location, love/anti-love poem, all I want, message in a bottle, water, time of day, and after leaving here.

The poets: Daniel Ari, Michele Brenton, Salvatore Buttaci, Anders Bylund, Janet Rice Carnahan, Diana Terrill Clark, RJ Clarken, Barbara Ehrentreu, Hannah Gosselin, Michael Grove, Jacqueline Hallenbeck, Patricia A. Hawkenson, Michelle Hed, Linda Hofke, Cara Holman, Jane Penland Hoover, Khara House, S.E. Ingraham, De Jackson, Elizabeth Johnson, Iain Douglas kemp, Pearl Ketover Prilik, Kim King, Laurie Kolp, Andrew Kreider, Catherine Lee, Amy Barlow Liberatore, Shannon Bo Lockard, mike Maher., Nikki Markle, Buddah Moskowitz, Bruce Niedt, Connie L. Peters, Nancy Posey, Jane Shlensky, Jay Sizemore, a.m. Trumble, Sara Vinas, Paula Wanken, and Claudette J. Young

Links and charity info
Prompted: An International Collection of Poems is now available through Amazon and Barnes&Noble. There also is a Kindle edition. For more details about the collection, visit Laurie Kolp's blog, and for more about the charity, visit litworld.org. A synopsis and biographies of the collection are online in the blog of the editor Pearl Ketover Prilik: Prompted (keep scrolling).

Related links: charity projects, poetry

see haiku here: Snowman series

2011-12-27T07:16:00.003+01:00

Last week, haiga (haiku+artwork) artist Kuniharu Shimizu started a snowman series in his blog see haiku here.

The blog itself is home to more than 700 haiga. The first snowman of the series appeared on December 19, with an introduction to the theme, and an invitation to send snowman haiku: "The snowman is something of a special treat for me in the winter time ever since my child days. Here where I live, it does not snow much though the temperature goes down quite low. The snow falls occasionally but not enough to make a good clean snowman. Last year was different, we had days with heavy snow. Kids and adults (me included) were out in the field, eagerly making snowmen. We were all happy to have great winter friends, the snowmen. I will be posting snowman haiga for a while. I am looking for good snowman haiku. Anybody?" (Snowman haiku 1)

Since then, several Snowman haiku went online already. The image to the left is from Snowman haiku 7. There also is a haiku from BluePrintReview contributor Stella Pierides included, which is how I learned about the blog: Snowman haiku 5.

Note: Kuniharu Shimizu is currently looking for new snowman haiku to continue the series: "This is the last haiga of the snowman series. Yet, it is still in the middle of winter. If anyone come up with good snowman haiku during this season, please share it with me." (link )

For another selection of haiku with a winter mood (from winter nights to stillness to christmas trees), try this link from the archive: see haiku here - December 2010.

Kuniharu Shimizu
see haiku here is the blog of haiga (haiku+artwork) artist Kuniharu Shimizu: a priest of Tenrikyo, the advisor of World Haiku Association, and the judge of WHA Haiga Contest. Kuniharu Shimizu lives in Tenri, Japan, near a city called Nara.

related links: web projects, art, international, poetry

Solstice Reflections 2011 - an online gathering

2011-12-22T07:26:00.001+01:00

Solstice Reflections 2011 is an online gathering of reflections by seven women on the spirit of winter and the migration from darkness to light, collected by Stephanie in her blog Creative Living Experiment in the hope that these reflections may offer a momentary respite from a sometimes hectic season, allowing you to sit with your own reflections as you enter your personal winter.

The Solstice Reflections include photography, art, poetry, a solstice podcast, and other contributions by Pixie Campbell, Liz Coleman, Juliette Crane, Jo-Anne Guimond, Rebecca Klier, Jen Lee and Kelly Letky.

Stephanie writes: "I've always liked images of winter. They soothe me, calling me to slow down and take stock. It's why I've chosen to highlight the official arrival of winter in the past and why I choose to highlight it again here, now, with the help of other kindred spirits.

During the next three weeks leading up to December 22nd I will offer guest posts from seven lovely women to help welcome winter, its rituals and its transformations - each woman interpreting the subject through the medium of her choice.

I am warmed and humbled by the contributions I've seen, by the pieces of themselves these women have chosen to share with me and with you."

All posts to date: Solstice Reflections 2011

Inter/National Short Story Day 2011

2011-12-19T18:26:00.003+01:00

Thursday 22nd December is the shortest day of the year. It also is Short Story Day in the UK. To celebrate prose’s short-yet-perfectly-crafted form, there's a special event website: http://www.nationalshortstoryday.co.uk/

The page features videoclips of short story readings and interviews and story recommendations, quotes and links to short story organisations, as well as links to story sources, publishers, and other pages of interest, like this TedTalk: The danger of a single story.

The Short Story Day invites to "pick up a short story and let your reading take you to territories previously unexplored."

Int'l Short Story Day
There also is a related international twitter account: Int'l ShortStory Day with more links and notes, here just 2 of the links: a blog of daily short story reviews and a book giveaway.

If you are into story videoclips, check out the Short Story Day Facebook-page for additional short story clips and links.

website link:
Inter/National Short Story Day 2011

related links: short stories, writing events

Thrush - Inaugral Edition

2011-12-14T07:09:00.000+01:00

Thrush is a new online journal that focuses exclusively on the poetry and poets. The journal will appear six times a year, in the months of January, March, May, July, September and November. A special edition is now online: Thrush Inaugral Edition - December 2011.

The inaugral edition features 23 poems by 10 poets: Maureen Alsop, Hélène Cardona, Cindy Goff, Nathalie Handal, Anna Journey, Ada Limón, Rachel McKibbens, Sheila Nickerson, Amber Tamblyn and Ocean Vuong.

About Thrush
Thrush is edited by Helen Vitoria (Editor in Chief) and Walter Bjorkman (Associate Editor + Web Design). The first regular edition will appear in January of 2012, for complete submission guidelines, please visit the submissions page. "Why the name Thrush? Thrushes are a species of bird, the songs of some considered to be among the most beautiful in the world. We love that and that is how we feel about poems."

Thrush
online poetry journal

related links: first issues, poetry

YB issue 5: Animals

2011-12-02T13:01:00.001+01:00

How might we speak to the animals, yes, but also how might they speak to us, and what might they say?

The animals in YB Issue 5 are various and varied, mythical and fantastic, glorious and ordinary, urban and country. They come to us on four legs, on two, on eight, on none. They are terrestrial, arboreal, and aquatic. They have hopes and dreams and stories to tell…. The attempt to understand another animal is an imaginative leap as well as a moral undertaking, and the contributors to issue 5 have met the challenge, and wonderfully.

YB Issue 5 features poetry by Jason Badgley, Lisa Marie Basile, Carol Berg, Andrea Carlisle, Sherry Chandler, Mark deCarteret, Risa Denenberg, Kathleen Kirk, Karla Linn Merrifield, Neila Mezynski, George Moore, Dawn Pendergast, Vivian Prescott, Sarah J. Sloat, Linda Umans, and Leslee Rene Wright. The issue also includes a book review by Karla Linn Merrifield, and a gallery by Ron Kostar.

About YB:
YB is a journal of poetry, published twice a year, in June and December. Each issue has a theme; the last was Windows, here at the BluePrintBlog. Each issue is also accompanied by an eBook, in the case of issue 5, available at Amazon. Issues 1-5 can also be reached from the YB main page, here.
The managing editor of YB is Rose Hunter, with assistant editor Sherry O'Keefe. Kindle edition by Sherry O'Keefe.

YB Issue 5 Animals, online.

eBook (Amazon).

a river of stones: January 2012

2011-11-24T17:03:00.003+01:00

The river of stones started in January 2011 with a blog and an invite: "Why would you want to join in? - Because choosing something to write about every day will help you to connect with yourselves, with others, and with the world. It will help you to love everything you see - the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the beautiful and the ugly. You don't have to be a 'writer' to get involved. The process of paying attention is what's important."

The result: more than 350 people across the world paying more attention to what was around them, and writing small stones. The birth of a new community of daily writers. A new movement - a river of stones. Which turned into a book in summer: pay attention: a river of stones - and induced an ongoing twitter stream: twitter/smallstone.

The River: January 2012
Now the next river is taking first shape with an announcement and an invite to join. 'The river' consists of everyone writing small stones during January, whether you keep them in your notebooks or publish them somewhere on the web. This January we will be cheering you all on by organising 25 guest posts by all kinds of marvellous writers. All infos are online at: The River: Jan 2012

About the river organizers
Fiona Robyn is a novelist, Buddhist and creativity coach and blogs about being a writer at Writing Our Way Home. Kaspalita is a Buddhist priest and blogger and is married to Fiona.

Foreign Flavours (Writers Abroad)

2011-11-22T18:31:00.001+01:00

The online writing group Writers Abroad released their second anthology of short stories and non-fiction articles: Foreign Flavours.

The anthology takes as its theme food, drink and recipes from around the world. It is a tantalizing collection of fiction and non-fiction, full of spice and flavour and sprinkled with mouth-watering recipes. Including 64 contributions and 33 delicious and appetising recipes, this wide-ranging, sometimes bittersweet, contributions show how adaptable an ex-pat has to be to leave familiar dishes behind and venture into the culinary unknown.

Contributors live in and have written about the following places: Albania, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Corsica, Cyprus, England, Fiji, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Malawi, Mallorca, Morocco, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, USA, Wales.

All proceeds of this anthology are going to The Book Bus, a registered charity whose mission it is to increase child literacy in Latin America and Africa

About Writers Abroad
Writers Abroad is an online writing group, founded in 2009. It provides a forum for ex-pat writers to exchange ideas, views and news on writing and to offer support and constructive feedback on each other’s work. Membership numbers are limited but ex-pat writers can apply to join if they are able to support the group’s initiatives and aims.

Foreign Flavours by Writers Abroad
250 pages
$14.93

Mixitini Matrix - Issue 1

2011-11-18T09:52:00.002+01:00

Mixitini Matrix is a multigenre, multidisciplinary journal of creative collaboration that features fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and visual art created by two or more people, or works offering perspectives on the process of creative collaboration.

Editor Leslie LaChance says: "I cannot be creative in a vacuum; I don't think anyone can. My creative life is fed by other artists and thinkers, near and far, present and past. That is certainly true for other artists as well, and is, indeed, a "given" in the creative process. I wanted to develop an online publication through which we far-flung artistic kindred spirits could acknowledge our connections to others, share our work and enjoy the fruits of our collaborative adventures."

The debut issue of Mixitini Matrix is available online at Mixitini Matrix - Current Issue. It includes work by Marilyn Kallet, Joe Kendrick, Rachel Joiner, Jack Rentfro, William Henderson, Laura Still, JeFF Stumpo, Leonardo Ramirez, Clint Alexander, Henri Michaux, Darren Jackson, Dorothee Lang, Steven Wing, Brian Griffin and Wayne White.

About Mixitini Matrix
Mixitini Matrix is a collaborate work itself by by Leslie LaChance (Editor&Publisher), Mattie Davenport (Managing Editor), Brittney Reed and Kate Hein (Assistant Editors) and Jeff Wilkerson (Design and Development). Mixitini Matrix aims to publish at least twice per year, fall/winter and spring/summer. They will begin to accept submissions for their spring 2012 issue on January 15. Invited formats and suggested collaborations can be found on their submission page.

related links: first issues, on writing

The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide

2011-11-14T07:38:00.000+01:00

The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide provides practical advice for authors and publishers on how to market their books. Although the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide was originally written for the benefit of authors who publish and distribute their ebooks at Smashwords, the suggestions included in it are universal.

The guide begins with a short summary of how the Smashwords platform assists an author’s marketing, and then continues on with over thirty book marketing tips any author can employ, and that cost nothing to implement other than the investment of time: "Some of the tips require only a couple minutes of your time, yet will reap dividends for years to come. Other tips require a greater ongoing investment of your time and attention. Do the easy things first."

Direct link to PDF: The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide

Mark Coker is founder of Smashwords, an ebook publishing and distribution platform for indie authors, publishers, literary agents and retailers. His is co-author of Boob Tube, a novel that explores the wild and wacky world of Hollywood celebrity. He also wrote the The 10-Minute PR Checklist.

The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide
by Mark Coker

The Peppermint Bottle - Sherry O'Keefe

2011-11-10T07:32:00.002+01:00

Sherry O'Keefe's The Peppermint Bottle crosses boundaries, borders and genres. Originally blog posts, the pieces in this collection are finely crafted vignettes and illustrated prose poems full of wry and touching observations, and are now gathered in a format that emphasizes how brilliantly these pieces stand alone but also interconnect.

"Lost and found objects and snippets of strangers' conversations point to both our isolation and connectedness. The thoroughly charming narratorial voice is equal part dreamer and quirky practical, but always astute, and interested in exploring the surreal disjunctions in everyday life that most people don't notice - or don't write about." - Rose Hunter

An excerpt is online at BluePrintReview: The Peppermint Bottle.

Sherry O'Keefe is a direct descendent of several Montana pioneers and was raised in a remote power camp along the Missouri River in Montana, learning early on there are no rowboats waiting in the dawn. Mother to two, sister to four, cousin to dozens, in many ways she is the least of the story-tellers in her Irish family. She attended MSU-Billings on a music scholarship where years of playing viola taught her to count to four repeatedly and how to appreciate the off-beat on and off the concert stage.

She is the author of Making Good Use of August (Finishing Line Press). Her most current poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Escape into Life, Camas, Switched-on Gutenberg, THEMA, Terrain. Org., PANK, Avatar Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Prick of the Spindle, Inkwell, Pirene’s Fountain, The High Desert Journal and Main Street Rag. Currently working on a full collection, Cracking Geodes Open, she is a poetry editor for both IthacaLit and YB Journal.

Sherry O'Keefe: The Peppermint Bottle
98 pages, full color
also available as kindle e-book

>language >place anniversary edition "Streets, Signs, Directions"

2011-11-08T07:16:00.001+01:00

> Language > Place is a joined blog cyber journey featuring international perspectives on language and place.

One year ago, the first edition of the language/place carnival went live. Since then, almost monthly, a new edition followed - each a journey in itself, hosted by different bloggers in places that reach from Hong Kong to Slovenia and New Zealand to the States. Now the anniversary edition launched. The theme of this edition is: Streets, Signs, Direction.

Following its own theme, this edition offers 3 ways to explore and visit the contributions: a found poem, based on single lines from each contribution, an itienary of contributions with notes and links and a geographic map which also includes the former editions.

Call: Edition #12 of > language > place will be hosted by poet & writer Linda Hofke. The feature theme for edition #12 is “Food" - but as always, a wide range of contributions is welcome. Submissions are now open, deadline 20th November, guidelines.

About the >Language >Place blog carnival
To create a collaborate cyber journey that features international perspectives on language and place, in different formats, and with different languages included - that's the concept of this collaborate project. The main language is english, the carnival consists of a central page that links to all participating blog. An overview of previous editions and more background information is available at the Language Place info page.

> language > place anniversary edition (#11)
a web project

related links: web projects, anthologies

Lost Children: A Charity Anthology

2011-11-02T11:52:00.002+01:00

A collection of 30 flash stories from around the world, The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology is now available for purchase! All proceeds go to two children's charities to support exploited, neglected and abused children PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children and Children 1st Scotland.

The anthology is now available for purchase on Amazon, Smashwords and Barnes & Noble.

Stories featured were sent by writers from the USA, Poland, Hong Kong, Portugal, India, Scotland, England, Canada, and one told by a Lost Boy of the Sudan to his teacher. Authors included: Susan Gibb, Sam Rasnake, Nicolette Wong, Susan Tepper and many more - the whole list is up at: The Lost Children blog.

About the book + the editors
The project began as a flash fiction challenge when Fiona Johnson and Thomas Pluck donated to the two charities, over at Ron Philips' Flash Fiction Friday and Fictionaut. 30 of the best stories were chosen to be included in this anthology, edited by Fiona, Thomas and Ron.

Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Only $2.99 (all proceeds go to charity)
The e-book is available at Amazon, Barnes&Noble and Smashwords in various formats.

PS: For Smashwords, you don't need to register and simply can pay via paypal and get access to multiple formats, including pdf. (the Ed just tried, works well).

NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month

2011-10-31T10:27:00.002+01:00

National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo) is an annual internet-based creative writing project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel between November 1 and November 30.

Writers wishing to participate first register on the project's website, where they can post profiles and information about their novels, including synopsis and excerpts. Word counts are validated on the site, with writers submitting a copy of their novel for automatic counting.

Pep talks give advice along the way, and the extended NaNoWriMo forums offer the chance to interact, motivate each other, and procrastinate.

About NaNoWriMo
This writing project was started by Chris Baty in July 1999 with 21 participants in the San Francisco Bay area. In 2000, it was moved to November "to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather" and launched an official website. With more writers joining each year, NaNoWriMo turned into a global event. In 2010, over 200,000 people took part - writing a total of over 2.8 billion words.

NaNoWriMo Website

related links: other web projects; on writing

Worship (qarrtsiluni)

2011-10-27T14:27:00.002+02:00

What is it at the centre of someone’s life? What is it that we are reaching for? What is it that we create rituals around?

Edited by Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita, qarrtsiluni's current theme issue "Worship" gathers satirical and humorous pieces as well as serious essays, stories, poems, images and vidoes: accounts that are in worship of something, sacred or profane, or that are accounts of worship, as well as pieces that are critical of worship.

The issue runs until January, with new pieces added on a daily basisaily basis at qarrtsiluni/Worship

More than a dozen pieces of worship are online already, and offer an inspiring and thought-provoking variety of angles and styles. Here some recommendations: the poem Ghost Money by Jenni B. Baker, the video While Sitting in Church by James Brush, the poem winter escapes by Daniela Elza, and the light painting silence by Paul Bilger (included in the feature image).

The editors: Fiona Robyn is a novelist, Buddhist and creativity coach and blogs about being a writer at Writing Our Way Home. Kaspalita is a Buddhist priest and blogger and is married to Fiona.

About qarrtsiluni
qarrtsiluni offers cutting-edge electronic delivery of original, thematically organized poetry, prose, and art, and its almost-daily posts are available online both as text and audio, read by the authors; the magazine can be accessed via browsers, email, feed readers, portable music listening devices, and through the print editions. The title comes from an Iñupiaq word that means “sitting together in the darkness, waiting for something to burst.” Qarrtsiluni's managing editors are Dave Bonta and Beth Adams; three of the four issues each year are guest-edited by teams of two invited editors and the magazine sponsors an annual chapbook contest.

qarrtsiluni: the Worship issue
theme issue

related links: anthologies, philosophical

Walking the Tiger's Path - Paul Kendel (Tendril)

2011-10-24T13:24:00.004+02:00

Paul Kendel's book Walking the Tiger's Path - A Soldier’s Spiritual Journey in Iraq addresses the horrors of war from an extraordinary human perspective.

In 2005, Paul Kendel deployed with his National Guard unit out of Georgia to Iraq, hoping to use his knowledge of that land to bridge the gap between American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. However, the realities of war crushed his idealism when his buddies began dying at the hands of the enemy. Eventually, his ongoing concern for the Iraqi people alienated some of his comrades, and he felt the sting of growing conflict within himself.

Turning to the books on Buddhist teachings he had brought with him, he found solace in the written words. On a whim, he emailed Shambhala International and requested assistance. An unexpected response and ongoing support from Buddhist teacher and meditation instructor Margot Neuman helped him to retain a sane and humble humanity in a situation that often plummeted into lethal insanity.

An excerpt of the book is online at Issuu: Walking the Tiger's Path.

Paul M. Kendel’s (SSG Ret.) first experience with the current “War on Terror” began with a deployment to Saudi Arabia with the California National Guard following 9/11. In 2005, the military deployed him to Iraq. Kendel holds an M.A. in both History and Anthropology, and is currently teaching world history and special education in Jacksonville, Florida.

About Tendril Press
Tendril Press is a selective independent Press publishing thought provoking, educational, inspirational and humanitarian books for adults and children.

Paul Kendel: Walking the Tiger's Path
A Soldier’s Spiritual Journey in Iraq
320 pages

related links: the human condition, east/west, nonfiction

Magpie Days - Julia Davies

2011-10-17T13:16:00.003+02:00

In July and August, the 100 Days Project gathered story writers, poets, painters, photographers, filmmakers, musicians, and programmers together for 100 days of creative effort; unique yet built on the work of others in the collective; ranging between the participants for theme, motif, or other inspirational method.

In "Magpie Days", 100-Day-participant Julia Davies collected her works - each of them inspired or derived by another participant's day, which is included, too. A diary of creativity and of own / outer voice, this collection leads through flowers, volcanoes, lines, curves and asemic writing.

Julia notes: "Me, I have a magpie mind, pouncing on bright and beautiful things, I guess I would like to see if I have an artistic voice, or am a collector/reflector... What can I say about the 100 days project? It was a spur, a net full of sparkles and patterns, full of things that slipped through my fingers and some that did not. I rifled through the pretty things, the skin tingling true things; paused, not long enough, at the things that made me think, and rushed at the things that made me feel. - I wanted to find my voice as a writer, or maybe as an artist, but I was so distracted by all that was on offer for me, daily! I find a voice, or two, but whether they were mine I am not sure. I look beyond now and occasionally spin stuff out of the mind threads that connected us. I want next years project to come already."

Julia Davies is a practised reader and a practising writer, and lives in Germany. She blogs at practice makes perfect.

Magpie Days 2011
The collection is online at Issuu as e-book in 4 parts, and also available as printed book.
- Magpie Days 001-025
- Magpie Days 026-050
- Magpie Days 051-075
- Magpie Days 076-100

I’m Here Right? - Josh Rank (Deckfight)

2011-10-14T16:03:00.001+02:00

Josh Rank moved to Atlanta from Wisconsin after college. He didn’t have a job, he didn’t know much about the South. What he found is included in this chapbook of first-person essays: I'm Here Right? Stuff on selling meat from the back of a truck, witnessing a takedown at the jail, getting hit by a car and more. All in Josh’s deadpan, but forthright style.

The chapbook is available in various free pdf and e-book formats.

Josh Rank blogs at These Things I Know and occasionally writes music reviews for the indie music webpage Deckfight. An interview with him is up at LCB: Interview with writer Josh Rank.

Deckfight Press
Deckfight Press is part of Deckfight and is into chapbooks of the pdf and epub kind. Recent chapbooks include: "A Patchwork of Rooms Furnished by Mistakes" by J. Bradley, "Firehouse Neckbrace" by Josh Spiler and others - here's a Deckfight book list.

Josh Rank: I’m Here Right?
chapbook, 37 pages

A quick guide to Book Publishing Services (Lulu, Smashwords, Createspace, Issuu...)

2011-10-12T17:53:00.010+02:00

This isn't news: the digital revolution changed the way books are produced, and also the way they are read.

Print on Demand (POD) makes it possible to create single copies of books, which allows to publish books for smaller and special audiences. Parallel, e-readers make it possible to read e-books in a new, leisure way.

Together, this leads to a growing range of publishing formats, and publishing services, which are especially interesting for small presses and for authors.

Below is a list of service providers, with examples of printed books and e-books that are featured in the blueprint book blog.

Lulu
Lulu is a company offering publishing, printing in various sizes, and distribution (including e-books).
Since their founding in 2002, Lulu has published over 1.1 million titles by creators in over 200 countries and territories and adds 20,000 new titles to their catalogue a month.
links: Lulu webpage, wiki-page
examples: "lulu"-books in this blog (print books + e-books)

CreateSpace
A publishing/printing/distribution service that provides free tools to help self-publish and distribute books, DVDs, CDs etc. on-demand at CreateSpace and via Amazon.com. (CreateSpace belongs to Amazon, thus the listing, which only works for Amazon.com, no other countries)
link: CreateSpace
examples: CreateSpace-books in this blog

Smashwords
An ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers, agents and readers that offers multi-format ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device.
link: Smashwords
examples: Smashword-books in this blog
how-to-guide: Smashword Style Guide + Marketing Guide

Issuu
Issuu is a digital publishing platform that delivers full-color reading experiences of magazines, catalogs, and newspapers.
link: Issuu
examples: Issuu-books in this blog

Related links: Red Lemonade, exPress tutorial, Wiki-Pages

Red Lemonade: new experimental service: full texts online + print books (example)
exPress: print to e-book workflow tutorial advice from Folded Word
General information: Wiki: Print on demand / Wiki: E-book

---
Other blueprint How-to posts:

- How to create an own google map

- How to create an automatic paper.li newspaper

Never Never Stories - Jason Sanford (Spotlight)

2011-10-10T14:17:00.003+02:00

Ranging from science fiction to fantasy, the 10 stories contained in Never Never Stories by Jason Sanford could also be named: "Best Of" - they have won the Interzone Readers’ Poll, been nominated for the BSFA Award, longlisted for the British Fantasy Award, and printed in numerous magazines and book anthologies including Year's Best SF.

The collection also contains an original essay on archeology and fantasy and a cover by award-winning artist Vincent Chong.

"Sanford expertly blends world building and storytelling. In fact, he makes it look easy."
- SF Signal

There also is an ebook edition of Never Never Stories - it contains all of the content from the print edition along with four additional stories (one of which has never been published) plus a different introduction. One of the storíes is online as excerpt: The Ships Like Clouds.

Jason Sanford's stories have received a number of awards and honors, including being a finalist for the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novella, winning both the 2008 and 2009 Interzone Readers' Polls, receiving a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, being nominated for the BSFA Award, and being longlisted for the British Fantasy Award. He also co-founded the literary journal storySouth, through which he runs the annual Million Writers Award.

About Spotlight Publishing
Spotlight Publishing is an independent press based in North Carolina, a press that is focused on producing collections of short stories (single-author collections and anthologies), as well as books by established authors that are either out of print with the original publisher, or different from the type of book the author is best known for.

Jason Sanford: Never Never Stories
story collection
240 pages

New Collected Poems - Tomas Tranströmer (Bloodaxe)

2011-10-07T17:36:00.001+02:00

Tomas Tranströmer is Sweden’s most important poet, and was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Academy honoured him "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality". (Nobel Prize page)

Tranströmer's publisher in Britain, Bloodaxe, has a features with notes on a new edition of his work "New Collected Poems", 3 poems in translation with the original included, and a biography online at: Tomas Tranströmer at 80.

New Collected Poems includes all the poems Tranströmer has written during the past forty years, including those from the Bloodaxe Collected Poems of 1987, as well as three later collections, For Living and Dead (1989), The Sad Gondola (1996) and The Great Enigma (2004), and a prose memoir.

For more of Tranströmer's poetry, visit Prelude at Words without Borders, and After a Death + Outskirts at Poetry.org (there's also an essay on his work up at Poetry: Too Much of the Air).

Tomas Tranströmer was born in Stockholm in 1931, graduated as a psychologist in 1956 with additional studies history, religion, and literature, and worked as a psychologist for juvenile offenders for many years. He suffered a stroke in 1990 that left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak; however, he would continue to write and publish poetry though the early 2000s. He is regularly shortlisted for the Nobel Prize, and has received several public recognitions and prizes for his poetry. (wiki-page)

About Bloodaxe
Bloodaxe Books is an independent literary publishing house, founded in Newcastle in 1978 by Neil Astley joined in 1982 by chairman Simon Thirsk. In time, it turned into Britain's premier poetry publisher, with an international reputation for quality in literature and excellence in design.

Tomas Tranströmer: New Collected Poems (Bloodaxe)
poetry collection
256 pages

House of Worship - Marcus Speh

2011-10-04T15:24:00.003+02:00

In "House of Worship", Marcus Speh gathers 15 of his flash fiction stories in an experimental approach: the stories are a first selection of a planned larger collection. House of Worship is available at Red Lemonade, a platform that takes a different approach to publishing, and offers the full texts of its print books as online reads.

Marcus explains: "I'd like to publish my 100+ best flash fiction pieces (with a handful of short stories) written 2009—2011. Unburdened by offers from publishers, I decided to try something else: with little effort, I've put up 15 of these stories, all previously published, at Red Lemonade, a new literary community plus publishing press, based on the Cursor platform of Richard Eoin Nash, award-winning former publisher of Berkeley-based Soft Skull Press.

Nash has created Cursor for "folks who run indie presses, or want to start one, or run a web community but would like that community to be able to publish books." [R Nash] Red Lemonade, a community of DRM-free original writing, is still in "beta" mode, but welcomes new members and has just opened its bookshop. Meanwhile, my collection titled "House of Worship", is still looking for a publisher who worships "Absurd, Germanic and Existentialist" flash fiction."

Marcus Speh is a writer, ex-particle physicist, professor, executive coach, project lead, web head, father, fictionaut, former fencer and paratrooper, current maitre d' of kaffe in katmandu, curator of the 1000 shipwrecked penguins project and participant of 100 Days 2011, who lives in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg.

Marcus Speh: House of Worship
a flash collection

A Foal Poem - Rose Hunter

2011-09-29T11:01:00.004+02:00

A Foal Poem is a new full-length poetry book from Rose Hunter. Written in Mexico during the course of 2010, the poems form an outer journey that starts in Puerto Vallarta, moves to Acapulco and San Miguel de Allende, Sayulita, and back to Puerto Vallarta. Overall, the book takes the reader on an inner journey through the themes of addiction and recovery, relationships, and changing/emerging identities.

For a taste of A Foal Poem, try Aposematic / Grey at BluePrintReview, and The Lion / rebar at Connotation Press.

For the full mileage, in advance of the release of the eBook, Rose is offering free PDFs to anyone who wants to review the book, or simply read it. Just mail her at roseh400@yahoo.com.

"A Foal Poem drew me in and didn't let go.... I wanted to stay within this world - the cube lady explaining with her hands; the Mexican palms and the cranes; bubbles in the rock and black sand beaches. Life during the wave’s lifetime... Revealing and concealing, A Foal Poem curls inward, outward, and within." -Sherry O'Keefe

Rose Hunter is the author of to the river (Artistically Declined Press), and the editor of the poetry journal, YB. Poems from this book have appeared in A cappella Zoo, decomP, elimae, Escape Into Life, kill author, The Nervous Breakdown, PANK, Referential, The Toronto Quarterly, Willow Wept Review, the BluePrintReview, and others. There also is an author talk with Rose Hunter in this blog.

Rose Hunter: A Foal Poem
poetry collection
108 pages
$6.50

IthacaLit Issue One: Autumn

2011-09-27T16:29:00.001+02:00

IthacaLit is a new online journal that features poetry and art. Their inaugral issue is now online: IthacaLit Issue One: Autumn. In addition to the Poets page, there is a gallery page + an interview with artist Lin Price, and an essay on Audre Lorde's poetry: "Crafting Her Life".

About IthacaLit
Michele Lesko founded IthacaLit, thinking her new hometown would be well represented by both the actual & mythical journey to Ithaca. Ithaca is a dynamic town with both the Ivy League Cornell University and Ithaca College, historically well known for its music & arts programs. Ithaca is Gorges is more than a clever slogan; Ithaca has the kind of stunning natural beauty that many travel far to see. Set at the edge of Cayuga Lake, with a thriving, artsy downtown commons, Ithaca is a very supportive place for artists & writers to explore.

From the equally stunning state of Montana, Sherry O'Keefe joined Michele in the pursuit of the best voices in contemporary poetry. Montana is a vast, wide-open, sparsely populated state best experienced by traveling through and taking time to stop as many times as possible. Here you will find the middle of nowhere and after a bit of time you'll come to realize the middle of nowhere becomes the center of everything. It's a great place to locate your inner poetry.

"We look for writing that honors the beggar & the hero. We hope the work published in IthacLit will take you home: your home, our home, the real & the imagined, quite simply the home that connects your spirit with the world surrounding you as well as the mythical home we journey toward throughout our lives."

Contributors to IthacaLit's first issue are: Madeleine Beckman, Kelly N. Cockerham, Risa Denenberg, Alex Grant, Mike Harrell, Rose Hunter, Susan Johnson, Kathleen Kirk, Diane Lockward, Katharyn Howd Machan, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, Uche Ogbuji and painter Lin Price.

Call for the IthacaLit Winter Issue
IthacaLit is now open to submissions for the Winter issue, guidelines.

IthacaLit
Issue One: Autumn

Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad with Commerce - Peter Clothier (Parami)

2011-09-24T17:44:00.002+02:00

Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad with Commerce is a collection of essays spanning thirty years of engagement with the culture of our times. Peter Clothier is a long-time student of the dharma and a meditation practitioner. In this context he examines the qualities of compassion, perseverance, and discernment in his reflections on the artist’s predicament in a world that judges success in terms of celebrity and material reward. Persist explores ways today's artists in any medium can find fulfillment, a sense of purpose, and joy in alternative and more lasting values.

Peter Clothier has served as an educator and an art school dean variously at the University of Southern California, Otis Art Institute and Loyola Marymount University. Clothier left academia many years ago to devote himself full time to his writing. He still describes himself as a “recovering academic.” A student of the dharma who follows a daily meditation practice, he is the author of the online weblog, The Buddha Diaries; his political passions find their outlet in his regular contributions to The Huffington Post.

About Parami Press
Parami Press is an independent book publisher situated in Vancouver, Canada, and focuses on books from a Buddhist point of view. Their book program includes: "One Monk, Many Masters - The Wanderings of a a Simple Buddhist Traveler" by Paul Breiter; "The Ten Perfections - a Study Guide" by Thanissaro Bhikku and "Mapping the Dharma" by Paul Gerhards.

Peter Clothier: Persist
collected essays
132 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9779774-1-3

note: this book feature was inspired by Jean Morris' blog post "Persist"

Stone Highway Review #1

2011-09-21T15:36:00.001+02:00

Stone Highway is a new literary journal of short prose and poetry, dedicated to language - to work that haunts, electrifies, tingles: "We like creativity. We believe the imagination contains as much truth as "truth."

The issue is available as print copy + free PDF dowload. The website also includes an extra page with colored versions of the included photography and artwork, and a blog.

Contributors included in the first issue are: Michelle Reale, Paul David Adkins, James W. Hritz, Ariana D. Den Bleyker, Kim King, Peter Schireson, Jenny Catlin, Maggie Koger, Caitlin Elizabeth Thomson, Christina Dubach, Len Kuntz, Christopher Woods, William Doreski, Devon Miller-Duggan, Dr. Ernest Williamson III, Tom Holmes, Christina Murphy, Alex Yuschik, Ruth Holzer and Jenny Ortiz.

About Stone Highway
The magazine is edited by Mary Stone Dockery who is interested in "new stuff, the writers who dare to breaks some rules, who write about what we “shouldn’t” write about, in surreal and magical ways…" and by Amanda Hash, who loves "writing that really pays attention to language and the beauty of finding the right words". For some more notes on the magazine, try the Everyday Other Things feature.
Stone Highway will publish twice yearly, in both print and electronic format. Submissions are now open for the next issue. Guidelines

Stone Highway Review
literary journal

Festival of the Trees #63: Slugyard University

2011-09-07T11:16:00.005+02:00

The Festival of the Trees is a monthly blog carnival for all things arboreal, hosted at a different blog each month.

The theme of edition 63 is: How animals and other wildlife interact with trees: "Keep your eyes and ears open, and take a look at what the wildlife are up to–up in the trees. Send the link to your blog post, video, podcast, slideshow, or other e-tree-creation."

The collected contributions are now online at Slugyard University

Edition Announcement"Go back to school with the Festival of the Trees! Edition #63 finds us at Slugyard University, where the learning never stops because, as everyone knows, beer is fatal to slugs. Many of the links this time fit the announced theme of trees and wildlife. The contributors (now promoted to professor status) found marbled murrelets, grey herons, tufted titmice, collared doves, varied carpet beetles, termites, fire ants… even, improbably, a pair of turtle shells in the trees. Classes at Slug U aren’t restricted to science, however, but include offerings in art, literature, religion, and conservation, too. Don’t be late to class!"

Upcoming Festival + Previous EditionsAn info page with current calls and an archive of previous editions can be found at Festival of the Trees. The next festival of the Trees will be hosted at European Trees, the theme is open - all tree topics are welcome. Deadline is Sept. 30.

Festival of Trees #63
a blog carnival

related links: nature, web projects

ECSTATIC/.of facts - Raymon Farr (Otoliths)

2011-09-05T09:58:00.000+02:00

In ECSTATIC/.of facts, his latest book of poetry, Raymond Farr investigates the relationship between language, meaning and culture, and explores how language can shape new worlds out of the American suburban culture of generic mega stores, chain restaurants and popular music - "With an astute sense of phrasing and rhythm, Farr reveals that under the “Onslaught of language,” we find the “amber light of meaning stares back” from something as “fundamental as chaos.” - John C. Goodman

Some samples of the collection are online at Ditch: Paraboles of Paul Eluard & other poems

Raymond Farr lives in Ocala, FL. He has published widely in recent years. His work appears in Otoliths, Cricket On Line Review, BlazeVox2kX, Letterbox, Ditch, The Argotist On Line, Cannot Exist, EOAGH, Moria, Out of Nothing, Clutching at Straws, Kill Author, Text Base, Xstream, & Apocryphal Text. His chap book, Two Hats Appear When Applauded, is available free at Dusie. All four of his poetry books may be previewed and purchased at the Blue & Yellow Dog Book Shop. He is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog - which just has a new issue out that includes a special APG poetry feature, check it out here: B&YDog #6.

About Otoliths
Otoliths is a magazine of many e-things, published by Mark Young, Australia. The online issue of Otoliths appears quarterly, the current issue is: southern winter, 2011. The publishing arm of Otoliths began as print editions of the e-zine Otoliths, but has since expanded to include books & chapbooks by authors associated with the journal.

Raymon Farr: ECSTATIC/.of facts
poetry collection
112 pages, $13.45
ISBN 978-0-9808785-3-0

Fat Girl - Jessie Carty (Sibling Rivalry)

2011-08-31T12:49:00.004+02:00

In Fat Girl, Jessie Carty asks us to strip and stand naked in front of a mirror. These poems are our own reflection. Bittersweet in nature, they are self-perception. They size us up and tell the truth: that man or woman, we all struggle to feel at home in our own skins.

Hunger, desire, overindulgence, shame, fitting in, transformation, and acceptance — these are the realities of human existence. In these unblinkingly honest poems, Jessie Carty covers them all, examining, revealing, and redefining individual and iconic images of self, femininity, and humanity. - Scott Owen, author of Fracture World

For a vibe of Fat Girl, try this poetry video: Class Reunion. There also is an author talk with Jessie Carty in this blog.

Jessie Carty’s poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in publications such as Iodine Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag and The Dead Mule. Previous to Fat Girl, she authored two chapbooks, At the A & P Meridiem and The Wait of Atom. Her first full length of poetry collection, Paper House, was published by Folded Word in 2010. When she’s not busy writing, Jessie teaches at RCCC in Concord, North Carolina, and edits the online journal Referential Magazine.

About Sibling Rivalry Press
Sibling Rivalry Press is a small publishing house based just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. Their mission and vision: "to develop, promote, and market underground artistic talent – those who don’t quite fit into the mainstream. Our vision? To create literary and poetic rock stars."
Recent and forthcoming titles include: "Burnings" - a poetry collection by Ocean Vuong, "Voices Through Skin" by Theresa Senato Edwards and "Collective Brightness - Poets on faith, religion & spirituality".

Jessie Carty: Fat Girl
poetry
$12.00; 48 Pages
ISBN: 978-0-9832931-6-3
release: September 15th.
Now Available for Pre-Order at 20% Off!

The Conversation Papers 1.1

2011-08-29T11:12:00.004+02:00

The Conversation Papers is the magazine of the Conversation International project, a not-for-profit publisher that aims to publish poetry from people and places often marginalised for reasons of capital or political culture.

The Conversation Papers 1.1, online at Issuu, feature a conversation with George Messo on translation, an article on the problems of publishing in Zimbabwe, and "Dialectisism": the first in a series of essays on dialectical approaches to poetry. Poetry by: Fabiano Alborghetti, Wirndzerem G. Barfee, Nancy Charley, William Doreski, Nigel Holt, Susanna Lang, Ruzvidzo Mupfudza, Gonca Özmen and Doug Pugh.
For more articles and bilingual poetry, visit The Conversation Papers 1.2

About the Conversation Paperpress
The Conversation Paperpress is the publishing arm of the Conversation International project: "We are a not-for-profit publisher co-operatively run by volunteers, working with the donated contributions of writers and editors. Through our international anthologies we aim to publish poetry from people and places often marginalised for reasons of capital or political culture, and we have gained critical attention for their promotion of emerging and unheard voices. Our developing pamphlet and paperback series promote original and exploratory poetry, including first collections and works-in-progress. As the mouthpiece of this movement and ambition, the publications of the Paperpress are part of an open dialogue; a conversation."

Upcoming anthologies: From This Bridge: Contemporary Turkish Women Poets and Next Stop, Omdurman: The Lost Poetry of 1980s Sudan

The Conversation Papers
international magazine
available online at Issuu

Book Sale at Lulu

2011-08-24T12:15:00.008+02:00

The small press print+distribution service Lulu announced a book sale:

SITE WIDE SALE
20% off any order
* The sale ends on August 27th at 11.59pm.
* The code can only be used once per account.
link: page with code

Several books and small presses that are featured in this book blog are printed and distributed through Lulu

1) overview
try this link for an overview of lulu-books featured in this blog:
blueprint blog books at Lulu

2) selected suggestions (with direct Lulu links):
Here some suggestions with a focus on blueprintreview authors, with direct links to each Lulu book page
- The Book of It by Daniela Elza
- triskelion, tiger moth, tangram... by Marcia Arrieta
- pay attention: a river of stones - collection
- mo(nu)ment - blueprintreview anthology
- Masala Moments + in transit by Dorothee Lang
- Walking Accidentally in the Dark by Margot Miller
- God Damsel by Reb Livingston
- let a thousand dictionaries bloom by Sean Burn

3) additional link: small presses with Lulu books:
- Otoliths books - authors: Paul Siegell, Mary Kasimor, Joel Chace and many more
- No Tell Motel books - Bedside Guide + poetry collections
- avantacular press - authors: andrew topel, john m. bennett, jim leftwich, john crouse

Freight - Mel Bosworth (Folded Word)

2011-08-23T16:29:00.002+02:00

Freight by Mel Bosworth is an unflinching, quirky novel that follows a flawed yet lovable everyman as he searches for Home. We never learn his name. Nor do we learn her name—the woman whose freight is still too much for him to carry. But we know he likes soft things. We know he works through pain. We know his childhood still clings to him, despite his graying hair. And through knowing him and all his freight, ours is easier to bear.

You can read an excerpt at Darksky: I Lost. And in Brooklyn: I Found. For an unwritten tune of Freight, try this Freight video.

Update: Freight will be released on the 9. September + received review praise by the Publishers Weekly: "...subtle and delightful... fantastically innovative..." (whole review)

Mel Bosworth lives and breathes in Western Massachusettes. He's never met a cup of tea he didn’t drink, a donut he didn’t eat, or a cat he didn’t try to pet. When Mel isn’t consuming things or making new feline friends, he’s usually busy writing. He is the author of the short fiction chapbook When the Cats Razzed the Chickens and Other Stories (Folded Word, 2009) and the novella Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom (Brown Paper Publishing, 2010). There's an author talk with him and Jessie Carty online at Daily s-Press: author talk: Mel Bosworth & Jessie Carty on breathing, writing, scares, yielding, greed and more

About Folded Word (+PicFic + unFold + Heron)
Folded Word is an independent press that continually seeks new ways of connecting readers to new literary voices. Though we do sell our books and chapbooks, we offer free poetry and fiction to the public in our Twitter-zines PicFic and unFold, as well as our print broadside, Heron. We also value craftsmanship, both of literary works and the medium in which they are rendered--as demonstrated by our handcrafted Signature Series chapbooks. Folded Word is managed by J.S. Graustein with the support of Rose Auslander, Casey Murphy, and the entire Folded family of contributors.

Mel Bosworth: Freight
release date: 9. September
209 pages
paperback: $14 + 1$ shippping worldwide
e-book: $3.50

100 Thousand Poets for Change: 24.9.

2011-08-18T11:45:00.000+02:00

100 Thousand Poets for Change is an event that is happening in over 350 cities around the world on September 24th. This event seeks to connect poets around the USA and across the planet in a demonstration/ celebration of poetry to promote serious social and political change.

"The first order of change is for poets, writers, artists, anybody, to actually get together to create and perform, educate and demonstrate, simultaneously, with other communities around the world. This will change how we see our local community and the global community. And of course there is the political/social change that many of us are talking about these days. There is trouble in the world. Wars, ecocide, the lack of affordable medical care, racism, the list goes on..."

Invite to join
100 Thousand Poets for Change is inviting participants by local region, city, or state, and looking for individuals in each area who would like to organize their local event.

There is a facebook-page: 100 Thousand Poets for Change/facebook + a twitter-account. There also is a web site with registered locations and further information: 100 Thousand Poets for Change/website.

About the event
100 Thousand Poets for Change is the idea of Michael Rothenberg, poet and editor of Big Bridge Press and zine (website) and Terri Carrion, associate editor and visual designer of Big Bridge Press and zine (website).

Moon Willow Press / Ecologue
Thanks to Mary Woodbury at Moon Willow Press for spreading the news! 2 connected links: the new science+nature blog from Moon Willow: Ecologue, and their new eco-poetry collection: The Sacred River of Consciousness by Tom Hibbard.

Spiral Jetta - Erin Hogan (University of Chicago)

2011-08-15T15:42:00.003+02:00

Erin Hogan hit the road in her Volkswagen Jetta and headed west from Chicago in search of the monuments of American land art: a salty coil of rocks, four hundred stainless steel poles, a gash in a mesa, four concrete tubes, and military sheds filled with cubes. Her journey took her through the states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. It also took her through the states of anxiety, drunkenness, disorientation, and heat exhaustion. Spiral Jetta is a chronicle of this journey.

Spiral Jetta is the current free e-book of the month at Chicago Press. There also is an interview with Hogan online.

"Hogan’s pilgrimage, sparsely illustrated, is part well-informed art historical travelogue and part light foray into self-discovery."—Publishers Weekly

Erin Hogan is director of public affairs at the Art Institute of Chicago.

About the University of Chicago Press
The Books Division of the University of Chicago Press has been publishing books for scholars, students, and general readers since 1892. The Books Division has published over eleven thousand books since the Press was founded. It has more than five thousand books in print at the present time.

Erin Hogan: Spiral Jetta
e-book: e-book-of-the-month page
190 pages, 2008
non-fiction, art, travel

editor's note: there is a related review on this book online in the editor's blog, including photo+video links to some of the featured land art, quotes, and a "Spiral Jetty" travel report of an art blogger: "Spiral Jetty & Arches - a road / art trip"

The Reprint - "The end of the world" issue

2011-08-11T15:40:00.008+02:00

"Here is where the world ends. Put down your Mountain Dew Slurpee and your iPhone. The universe is collapsing and this issue of The Reprint is the edge...."

The Reprint August issue is all about the end of the world. It features stories by xTx, Kirsty Logan, Aubrey Hirsch, Meg Pokrass, Travis Hessmann, Adam Moorad and Roxanne Gay.

All stories are illustrated with fabulous artwork by Joe Scarano, more of the jazz can be found on his website. The issue also includes bonus material: interview with author Travis Hessman, and with Annalemma Editor Christopher Heavener.

Make sure to check out the upbeat apocalyptic introduction to the issue by Reprint editor Sarah Rose Etter: "Everything in this issue of The Reprint is covered with the fingerprints of the end. Stand on the edge and balance yourself like a tightrope walker. Each one of these stories is a finger pressing up against your spine, pushing you a little, daring you to keep your balance. Stand on the edge. The end of the world couldn’t be more brutal or more beautiful."

About The Reprint
The Reprint is an online magazine with the mission to bring new life to already printed material. It also features reviews of online journals and an online literature calendar at Zine-Scene.
Submissions: "The Reprint is looking for previously published fiction up to 8000 words. The work must have been published in a print magazine and must not be available online... As for our aesthetic, we lean more toward experimental than high literary. We like risks, we like stories that breakdown boundaries, we like stories that challenge the establishment." (Guidelines)

Open City - Teju Cole (Random)

2011-08-08T16:15:00.002+02:00

Teju Cole's novel Open City tells the story of a young Nigerian-German psychiatrist in New York City five years after 9/11.

Published by Random House and reviewed in the New Yorker, this novel technically doesn't exactly belong into this blog on indie books and online literary magazines. Yet if you visit the Links section of the author's page, you arrive at a very indie note in section 4. Right between links to the African Cities Reader and Vanity Fair Teju Cole states: "I’m a frequent contributor to the excellent online journal Qarrtsiluni."

Small open world, it is. This cross connection also reflects in 2 recent reviews from fellow bloggers Jean Morris and Parmanu, who both are contributors to qarrtsiluni - and to BluePrintReview.

"It’s not a total surprise to see a friend first encountered through the different blogs he’s kept now find considerable success with his first novel. Not a surprise, but a new and engaging experience," notes Jean Morris in her blog post "Open City opens here". And if you follow the contributor link above, you arrive at the visualization of this cross connection: Ekphrasis 1: Jean + Teju Cole.

The second blog post, by Parmanu, is actually a letter to Teju Cole with a reflection on reviews in general, and also on the difference the earlier connection makes: "Looking at these reviews I sometimes wonder how I would have responded if I had known nothing about the author. Would it have been a different book for me?" - The Review Cycle

About Teju Cole
Teju Cole was born to Nigerian parents and grew up in Lagos. His mother taught French. My father was a business executive who exported chocolate. At fifteen he published cartoons regularly in Prime People, Nigeria’s version of Vanity Fair. Two years later he moved to the United States. Since then, he spent most of his time studying art history, except for an unhappy year in medical school. He currently lives in Brooklyn.

Teju Cole: Open City

and see what happens - Ursula Vaira (Caitlin)

2011-08-03T14:19:00.002+02:00

In her first book of poetry And See What Happens - The Journey Poems, Ursula Vaira captures the rugged and challenging beauty of the West Coast landscape and writes the poetry of 3 transformative journeys in British Columbia's wilderness.

The first, told through a set of linked poems, describe her thirty-day, thousand-mile paddle from Hazelton to Victoria. As a Caucasian civilian, the only woman in the canoe, Vaira bears witness.

"A heck of a wind/ bounces me into the mountains... " - So begins the second poem, the story of a woman's stay in an isolated hunter's cabin in the northern Rockies. The third and final journey in Vaira's new collection is a poem of place, of landscape and of westcoast imagery from a twenty-two-day kayaking journey that rounded Cape Scott and Cape Cook on Vancouver Island.

"These poems are talismans of grace, beauty and healing." - Lorna Crozier

Ursula Vaira grew up in northern BC and taught school in the Arctic and on the northwest coast. Her poems have been published in literary journals and in anthologies. Ursula worked at Oolichan Books for ten years then founded her own publishing house, Leaf Press, in 2001.

About Caitlin Press
Caitlin Press publishes culturally significant books, including fiction, non-fiction (both historical and creative), and poetry. It was established in 1977 by Carolyn Zonailo as a feminist literary press. In the 1980s, Caitlin Press moved from Gabriola Island to Vancouver and expanded its mandate to that of a BC literary press.

Ursula Vaira: and see what happens
poetry
ISBN: 978-1-894759-58-8
112 pages, $ 16.95

Lea Graham - Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You (No Tell Motel)

2011-08-01T11:42:00.000+02:00

Lea Graham's poetry collection Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You is now available from NoTellBoooks, and was selected by Sean Singer for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club:

"Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You creates energy by relentlessly kneading its central questions. It mixes sophisticated word choice with images gleaned from mythology and popular culture, but these blur past the reader, like images seen through the window of a train."
— Sean Singer (more here)

Lea Graham is the author of the chapbook, Calendar Girls (above/ground Press). Her poems, translations, collaborations, reviews and articles have been published in or are forthcoming in journals such as Notre Dame Review, American Poetry Journal, American Letters & Commentary, The Capilano Review, and Shadow Train. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

NoTell Motel To Close Doors
Launched in August 2004 by Reb Livingston and Molly Arden, No Tell Motel published over 2000 poems by almost 300 poets so far, and various poetry pooks and No Tell Motel collections as No Tell Books.

This book is the last that NoTell will publish for a while, and also marks the closure of the NoTell Online poetry magazine, with archives to remain online. Here's the note from editor Reb Livingston: "In case you haven't heard, No Tell Motel will be closing its doors in October. It's been a fabulous 7+ years of publishing the magazine and we're going to stop while we're on top. Thank you to everyone who contributed work and helped support the magazine. The full statement is online here: NoTellMotel To Close Doors."

The China Issue (Asian Cha)

2011-07-28T06:37:00.004+02:00

China: a large country in East Asia. One of the world's oldest civilizations. An emerging superpower. A country in a state of transformation...

Asian Cha now devoted a theme issue to capturing a sense of this complexity, to provide a view of what a few people, both Chinese and non-Chinese, think of this multi-faceted and remarkable country at this fascinating juncture in history: The China Issue.

"In these works, you will see a handful of microscope slides, cross-sections of the contemporary Middle Kingdom, which when read together will hopefully provide a glimpse of the whole."

The issue includes a rich and varied range of formats: Poetry and Poetry in translation, Fiction and Fiction in translation, Creative non-fiction, Art and art criticism, and an interview with Pallavi Aiyar, author of "Chinese Whiskers". And: a fine selection of book reviews, which for this issue are all related to China. The list of contributors is online at Cha, it reaches from Ai Weiwei to Zhen Lianjie.

Editorial
Two thoughtful editorials form the starting point to the issue: "The Chinese Curse" by guest editor Mai Mang, and "China: What it is, what it could be" by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, who writes: "It is exactly because the country has become more confident and influential globally that we are interested in publishing a special issue of Cha devoted to the social, political and cultural forces that are shaping the nation. It is not an exaggeration to think that the once self-proclaimed "Middle Kingdom" is now coming back apt as ever as a metaphor to describe its current self-identified position in relation to the rest of the world. China is what it is or perhaps more accurately it is a near infinity of realities and possibilities."

A note: the Cha website is currently experiencing technical difficulties. You can also find an introduction to the issue + the editorials in the Cha blog.

Ayiti - Roxane Gay (Artistically Declined)

2011-07-25T16:40:00.001+02:00

The debut collection from the vibrant voice of Roxane Gay is a unique blend of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, all interwoven to represent the Haitian diaspora experience. Official release date of Ayiti is October 11. Pre-Orders will ship on or before the release date.

Roxane Gay is the co-editor of PANK, and assistant professor of English at Eastern Illinois University. Her story "Do You Have a Place for Me" was shortlisted in the Million Writers Award Top Ten List 2011. For a story from her about Haitia, visit "Things I Know About Fairy Tales" at Necessary Fiction.

About Artistically Declined Press
Artistically Declined Press is devoted to the pairing of fantastic writing with great design, creating complete works of art. The press publishes books of fiction and poetry, the literary journal Sententia, and ADP.PDF's, a series of free ebooks, and is run by Ryan W. Bradley, who writes and lives in Oregon with his wife and two sons.

Roxane Gay: Ayiti
collection, $9

The Found Poetry Review #1: Summer 2011

2011-07-21T16:33:00.003+02:00

The Found Poetry Review is a quarterly online poetry journal celebrating the poetry in the existing and the everyday. We publish found poetry, centos, erasure poems and other forms that incorporate elements of existing texts.

The first issue features found poetry by Christine Pacyk, Howie Good, Jill Crammond, Johnny Chinnici, Christina Burress, Jeanne Shannon, Mark Blaeuer, Clare Kirwan, Andrea J. Dickens, Claire Ferris, Jennifer Saunders, Guy Torrey and Ed Higgins.

The website also includes commonly accepted definitions of found poetry, links to examples of found poetry hosted elsewhere on the web, and guidelines to the fair use of existing texts, more here: About Found Poetry.

Submissions
The Found Poetry Review is accepting found poetry submissions through September 30, 2011, for its Fall 2011 issue. Guidelines: "Give us your poems made up of lines from newspaper articles, instruction booklets, dictionaries, toothpaste boxes, biographies, Craigslist posts, speeches, other poems and any other text-based source. Only found poems will be considered for publication; original poems, regardless of quality, will not be accepted."

related links: first issues, poetry, experimental

Nightfish - Kristine Ong Muslim (Shoe Music)

2011-07-19T13:28:00.003+02:00

Nightfish is a collection by the accomplished author Kristine Ong Muslim. Her poems explore the existence possible in between the realities of times: past, present, future, and between solid form and phantoms.

Kristine Ong Muslim has short fiction and poetry accepted in over five hundred publications. Her work received several Honorable Mentions in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. She also garnered five nominations for the Pushcart Prize and four nominations for the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Rhysling Award. Most recently, she was twice nominated for inclusion in Best of the Web 2011.

About Shoe Music Press
Shoe Music Press is a publisher of poetry and art through their serial publications Mastodon Dentist, Penny Ante Feud and Nefarious Ballerina, as well as full and chapbook-length book titles from new and established writers alike: "Through our numerous faces we offer a fresh yet experienced voice in the small press, without forgetting the community of writers and artists we belong to."

Kristine Ong Muslim: Nightfish
14 pages, $4

related links: poetry, blueprintreview contributor

Lily. A monthly Online Literary Review, returned.

2011-07-11T17:28:00.001+02:00

Lily was created in late 2003 by Susan Culver as a way to share the beauty of poetry, fiction and photography in a free and easily accessible way. Over the next four years, Lily was published monthly online - offering the creative work of newcomers and veterans alike.

In those four years, Lily published interviews with, and work by, writers such as Pushcart Prize winner, Beth Ann Fennelly; National Book Award nominee, Alicia Ostriker; Pulitzer Prize poets, Paul Muldoon and Claudia Emerson; and former U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser. Conversely, Lily has also been the first publication credit for a number of emerging poets and writers.

After a three and a half year hiatus, Lily has returned with a renewed energy and the hope of once again sharing the beauty of words and images.

You can read the new issues here: Lily Volume 5:
- Issue 1: May
- Issue 2: June (includes an interview with poet+editor Parneshia Jones)
- Issue 3: July (with Sherry O'Keefe and Lisa Zaran)

About Lily:
Lily is edited by Susan Culver and Indigo Moor. Their mission: "We believe that art can originate anywhere and responds favorably to quality writing that shows us the world in a new way. We are moved by photography that captures the unconventional angle or recognizes everyday moments that shouldn't be overlooked."

The Life Cycle of Software Objects - Ted Chiang (Subterranean)

2011-07-04T14:06:00.006+02:00

Locus online, the Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, announced the 2011 Locus Awards Winners. For the Category "Best Novella", the winner is "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" by Ted Chiang, pulished by Subterranean Press.

Ted Chiang is a science fiction short story writer. In his novella The Life Cycle of Software Objects, he takes a fresh approach to the development of artificial intelligence: "Chiang's novella--the second piece he's ever published that's long enough to stand on its own, following the 2007 Hugo- and Nebula-winning "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"--is a welcome surprise: a triumphant combination of the rigorous extrapolation of artificial intelligence and artificial life, two of the high concepts of contemporary SF, with an exploration of its consequences for the ordinary people whose lives it derails." - Publisher's Weekly

The novella is available as book, and is also inlcuded in the Fall issue of Subterranen Magazine online: The Life Cycle of Software Objects.

You can read an unusual interview with Ted Chiang at BoingBoing, where he talks about science fiction, philosophy, religion, and technology - here's a taste: "Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know". Link: Ted Chiang on Writing

Locus Awards 2011
The winners of the other categories are listed on the Locus Awards Page 2011, here some of the winners:
- Best Science Fiction Novel: "Blackout/All Clear" by Connie Willis
- Best Fantasy Novel: "Kraken" by China Miéville
- Best first novel: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin

related links: time + space, novels + novellas, prize winners

The Paris Magazine

2011-06-29T06:22:00.007+02:00

In 1967, the famous Paris "Shakespeare and Company" bookshop that was founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, published a literary magazine called The Paris Magazine. Two more issues of what was meant to be a quarterly magazine followed after long intervals. Now, in 2010, Shakespeare and Company picked up the magazine again.

The fourth edition of Paris Magazine is edited by former Granta managing editor Fatema Ahmed, and includes fiction, nonfiction, and illustrations. Shakespeare and Company says: "More than forty years later, and in keeping with that sentiment, this fourth edition is meant to be an intriguing and unfamiliar place for both its writers and readers—just like the bookshop itself."

The Magazine is available at the bookshop, or can be ordered online - for the contents and some excerpts, visit the Paris Magazine website. You'll find photos, and an interesting introduction by Sylvia Whitman, daughter of Geroge Whitman who founded the Paris Magazin. Here's a quote: "Having now drifted into bookselling myself, but in a very different era from my father, I often find myself being looked upon apologetically as a representative of the old world, someone who believes in the book as a living thing."

The magazine page also includes the story of how the fourth edition came into being - told by editor Fatema Ahmed, who also gives an introduction to the edition: "This fourth issue takes as its starting point the theme for this year’s festival: Storytelling and Politics. It may seem surprising to see a short story by this year’s winner of the Prix Goncourt next to an essay on the literary merits of a manual for diagnosing psychiatric disorders; or Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s translation of one of Apollinaire’s most famous poems beside a neglected satirist from the Indian subcontinent. It may seem surprising but it shouldn’t be. All these writers, and the others, share an interest in what it is that only literature can do, and the unlikely forms it can sometimes take."

The Paris Magazine #4
edition 4
€6 at the shop
online order €9,50 (France), €12,60 (Europe), €13,40 (World)
related links: on writing & reading, mixed formats, about a place

PS: the Ed arrived at this magazine while doing research for a trip to Paris. for more Paris moments and links, visit this post: Paris, Shakespeare, Dehli, Louvre..

To Begin Again - Jen Knox (All Things That Matter)

2011-06-27T11:43:00.000+02:00

Winner of the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Short Stories, To Begin Again is a lively and unique collection that examines the impact of unexpected and unconventional romance, unforseen wealth or loss, and the dynamics of family ties, despite distance.

The characters Jen Knox created are eclectic and engaging. Each is faced with a small decision that leads to life-altering circumstance. Some thrive and others surrender; but within each story there is a balance of grittiness and inspiration that will stay with a reader long after the last page.

You can read a review and an excerpt at Lit Endeavors.

Jen Knox works as a creative writing professor at San Antonio College and served as Fiction Editor and Workshop Coordinator at Our Stories Literary Journal. She is the author of Musical Chairs, her short stories and essays have been published in Annalemma Magazine, Bartleby Snopes, Flashquake, Foundling Review, Metazen,Slow Trains, SLAB, Narrative Magazine and other magazines.

About All Things That Matter Press
All Things That Matter is a no fee-royalty paying, POD small press that seeks to publish those books that help the author share their Self with the world: "Our interests are on spiritual, self-growth, personal transformation, fiction and non-fiction books with a strong message. We understand that new authors have an increasingly difficult time in wading through the morass of agents, publishers, query letters, and marketing. Our press may well be the place where you get your first book published."

Jen Knox: To Begin Again
story collection

Girl, Wolf, Bones - Nora Nadjarian (Folded Word)

2011-06-25T11:01:00.000+02:00

In this collection, Nora Nadjarian takes us on an alternative trip through the fables and fairy tales of our youth. The short stories in this chapbook explore multiple viewpoints of the same event with wit and imagination. “Once upon a time” takes on a modern flavor by exchanging Bavarian forests for IKEA, television commercials, and public transport. Even “happily ever after” is more redefined than guaranteed. Goldilocks, the Three Pigs, the Emperor, Sleeping Beauty—Nora gives these beloved characters, along with their cohorts, new life in Girl, Wolf, Bones.

For a reading, visit this video rendition of the story Wolf.

Nora Nadjarian is a Cypriot poet and short story writer. She has published three collections of poetry and her work has won prizes or been commended in various international competitions. Her first collection of short stories, Ledra Street, was published in 2006. Her second poetry collection Cleft in Twain was one of the books from Cyprus recommended in an article in The Guardian on the literature of the new member states of the European Union (May 2004). Her poems and short stories have been included in various anthologies and journals internationally, and her microvel has been previously feature in s-Press: "The Republic of Love".

About Folded Word (+PicFic + unFold + Heron)
Folded Word is an independent press that continually seeks new ways of connecting readers to new literary voices. Though we do sell our books and chapbooks, we offer free poetry and fiction to the public in our Twitter-zines PicFic and unFold, as well as our print broadside, Heron. We also value craftsmanship, both of literary works and the medium in which they are rendered--as demonstrated by our handcrafted Signature Series chapbooks. Folded Word is managed by J.S. Graustein with the support of Rose Auslander, Casey Murphy, and the entire Folded family of contributors.

Nora Nadjarian: Girl, Wolf, Bones
20 page chapbook
release date: 15th August 2011
available as e-book and as printed book (the prices include worldwide shipping)
Green Edition $7.00
Signature Edition $14.00
e-book list price $0.99

related links: stories, magic realism, chapbook

Bloody War - Terry Grimwood (Eibonvale)

2011-06-22T14:19:00.002+02:00

Bloody War. Always on the news, from somewhere around the world. War seems to be something humanity just cannot get out of its system. And yet, for most of us here in the UK, war is little more than a spectacle where we sit comfortably, tut-tutting over horrors taking place in far off and unknown lands, before returning to our grumbles about the spending cuts or immigration or whatever else it is that sets you off. That’s as far as it goes, save maybe for memories and stories of the dark days of WWII. But just suppose that all-out war was to come to Great Britain again? This dark, bloody and very British apocalyptic novel explores just this idea.

Imagine George Orwell’s 1984 updated for 2011, with the focus on family, character and relationships rather than political ideology, and you might have the measure of Bloody War. This book, like our society, is one where politics has become an opaque and distant game, and where most people can see no further than their own living rooms. If we are not careful then the price for such false comfort, Terry Grimwood seems to suggest, may one day be terrible indeed.

Suffolk-born Terry Grimwood started his working life as an electrician and is now a college lecturer. Along the way he has been a quality assurance manager, project manager and technical author. He has written and directed three plays and runs the Exaggerated Press. His novella, The Places Between is available from Pendragon Press and his novel Axe will be published by bad Moon Press in late in 2011.

About Eibonvale Press
Eibonvale Press is a small press run by a writer, artist and reader who loves books. "It's as simple as that. It is not intended to be particularly commercial or make large sums of money for me or anyone concerned (though it would be nice if it did, of course!), but it aims to produce beautiful and lovingly-designed editions of excellent writing in modern horror, magic realism and the surreal."

Terry Grimwood: Bloody War
Hardcover (276 pages.) £22.00
Paperback (276 pages) £8.99

thematically related books, featured in this blog:
- Battle Runes - Writings on War (anthology)
- Sally Weigel: Too Young to Fall Asleep (e-book)

Blue Fifth Review: "Male Voices" + "Glass Woman" & Discourse: "What Is a Man's Literature?"

2011-06-19T10:54:00.009+02:00

The Blue Five Notebook is the monthly series of poetry, flash, and art from Blue Fifth Review. In each issue, there are five works published. The Notebook series also features special poetry and flash issues and themed quaterlies.

Now the latest issue of Blue Five Notebook is online: Male Voices, New Places. The issue presents new flash by Ken Poyner, John Riley, Michael Dickes, Thomas O’Connell, and Ralph Uttaro. Art by Dorothee Lang.

This issue evolved organically as a companion set to the Glass Woman issue. Issue editor Michelle Elvy explains: "I did not set out to create a 'male' issue in the way I set out to devote the March flash issue to the Glass Woman writers. But when I stacked up stories in a row this month, these were the ones on top of my pile, and they all happened to be about place, and they happened to be from male writers. Also, a few of them were new voices to me, and I liked that. When Sam Rasnake (founding editor of Blue Fifth Review) and I discussed the works as a whole, we decided it was a really interesting approach, to create a companion to the Glass Woman Special."

Glass Woman Special
The Blue Five Notebook Glass Woman Special launched in March 2011 as a tribute to the Glass Woman Prize, and features new work by four of the 2010 winners: Michelle Lawrence, Julie Innis, Susan Gibb, Kari Nguyen. The fifth story in the issue is by Beate Sigriddaughter, who initiated the Glass Woman Prize. Art by Marta Sanchez. More about the glass woman prize: prize homepage + daily s-press: "Glass Woman Prize".

-----

Discource: What Is a Man's Literature?
The issue coincides with a larger literary discussion on gender and writing, sparked by author Naipaul in an interview. In the interview, Naipaul suggested that women writers are 'sentimental' and 'unequal to me', and also claimed that 'I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.' - which lead to various responses, including the Guardian's Naipaul test (with link to the original interviw) and a New Yorker essay that links back to a text from 1998: The Lingering Scent of a Woman’s Ink.

Almost parallel to Naipaul, Esquire Magazine released a list of "75 Books Every Man Should Read". Which caused a stir as it inlcudes exactly: 1 female author. Like Naipaul, Esquire sparked responses in various magazines and blogs, one of them the new indie forum "LitMag", with Ethel Rohan's forum essay What Is a Man's Literature?

In the comments, Chris Newgent made an interesting point: “Like would people have called it out and praised it and encouraged it for being so balanced if it had been?”

Things we Love to Hate
Seeing it from this angle, the big fuzz about the New Yorker summer story issue comes to mind. The hook back then wasn’t gender, but age: “Summer Fiction: 20 Under 40″. The result was similar: huge media coverage, discussions, an alternative list (by Dzanc), which led to even more discussionss, one of them titled: “The Lists We Love to Hate: First the New Yorker, Now Dzanc?” .

For more on the issue and the discussion + the links, visit the Daily s-Press feature: The New Yorker: Summer Fiction: 20 Under 40

A thing that went unnoticed about the NY list: it was gender-balanced. Back then, the blueprint Ed put a feature together for the blueprintreview blog, which included this line: “The 2010 summer issue caused a stir, and discussions about the validity of such lists, and the methodology – which probably were both expected and intended by the editors.”

The Ed's guess is: same probably goes for the Esquire editors, and for Naipaul. Maybe they even thought of the New Yorker list effect when planning the issue. Still, the discussions coming from them are interesting, and important, and raise the awareness for the issue, and the stir they cause show that they point at unresolved issues -the question remains, though, if this stir-approach isn't adding to gaps and stereotypes.

Gender, Race, Balance, Stereotypes
Related to the whole theme, some more links + quotes:

The indie magazine Luna Park featured a series on "Race, Class, Gender & Sexuality in Indie Publishing" last year. The Ed contributed an article on gender ratios, and the effects on categorization - it also includes a passage on the summer fiction issue:

"Categories influence the viewpoint — I was reminded of this again when The New Yorker launched their fiction issue in June. Instead of just calling it “Summer Reads,” they titled it: “20 under 40.” And that’s exactly what the reviews and discussions then picked up on: instead of focusing on the stories and authors, the focus moved to the age categorization, and the whole topic of “youth” vs” “aging”. What almost went unnoticed was the fact that the issue came in a fine balance of 10 male and 10 female authors, and with more than 30% non-native writers included. That’s another effect of categories: they define the directly accessible statistics."
essay link: Tag Poc 50/50, or: the Complexities and Effects of Categorization

+ the link to the blueprint blog feature on the New Yorker issue, with quotes from the live chat transcript of the issue and notes on the 2nd language authors included in the list: New Yorker summer fiction issue / 2nd language authors

Women + Men
And of course, once you start to gather links, more pop up. here are 3 links on the theme "Women + Men" and the indie lit scene, from the Ed's blog:

1) Women + Men, "White Heterosexual Male" + "I Am Not Sorry to Have a Vagina".
on female / male literary magazines, and also with links to and quotes from Roxane Gay's essay "I am Not Sorry to have a Vagina" in HTML Giant, which again links and quotes to an article in Guernica with this line: "Women make up 80 percent of the fiction reading audience in this country. So why, guest fiction editor Claire Messud asks, are women authors so frequently left off the best-of lists, and left out of prestigious book prizes?"

2) poetry 2000-2009 + number trouble + the internet
with this quote: "----> some number trouble: "as the Guerilla Girls pointed out in the 80's, less than 5 percent of the artists in the Modern Art sections were women but 85 pecent of the nudes were female. Things were different fo us, after all."... which also connects to another blog post:

3) indie lit scene gender imbalance?
with quotes from a Big Other discussoin hat reflects on the question to which degree the indie lit scene might be male-centric. it was this post that later sparked the Luna Park essay.

Best of Short Story Lists

2011-06-12T07:46:00.017+02:00

May was Short Story Month - which triggered a short story list. Plus, storySouth is on. And there was Best of Net. And also, a flash list, a bit earlier this year.

Here's an overview, starting with storySouth + the flash fiction chronicles, and moving at the pace of a list a day. Options to participate are marked red. Top10 / Top5 / Top3 lists are included directly, longer lists are linked.

For additional links, visit the feature on Short Story Month 2011.

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Your Personal best-of 2010
BluePrintReview
Usually, best-of-web lists are created by nomination, longlisting, voting, etc. BluePrintReview turns this system around for once and asks: "From your own works that got published online in 2010, what's your personal favourite?" - Visit the Best of 2010 page, and add the link to your own favourite story/poem/photo/etc. (this is open to all formats).

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Story South Million Writers Award

storySouth Magazine & Jason Sanford
The storySouth Million Writers Award for best online fiction of the year helps all internet-based journals and magazines to gain exposure and attent. For their list of notable stories 2010, it accepted nominations from readers, writers, and editors. The list included more than 150 entries - based on it, the Top Ten Stories are chosen. Public voting is now open for those, you can vote through July 6. More about the award, here: About the storySouth Million Writers Award.

storySouth Top 10 List:
• "Hell Dogs" by Daphne Buter (FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry)
• "Arvies" by Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed Magazine)
• "The Green Book" by Amal El-Mohtar (Apex Magazine)
• "Do You Have a Place for Me" by Roxane Gay (Spork Press)
• "Here is David, the Greatest of Descendants" by Spencer Kealamakia (Anderbo)
• "The Incorrupt Body of Carlo Busso" by Eric Maroney (Eclectica)
• "Cancer Party" by Nicola Mason (Blackbird)
• "Arthur Arellano" by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Narrative Magazine)
• "Elegy for a Young Elk" by Hannu Rajaniemi (Subterranean Magazine)
• "Most of Them Would Follow Wandering Fires" by Amber Sparks (Barrelhouse)

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102 Story Links in Honor of Short Story Month 2011
flash fiction chronicles
"We’ve created a long list of “Readers’ Choices” online. There are STILL many many many terrific stories out there not on this list so we will have to do this again. Just a reminder. These stories are in random order as FFC received them. No one story is considered better than another. That’s for YOU to decide. (But don’t vote for them here. This isn’t a contest). Please take the time to scroll through the list and read some pieces you might not have read before. Let the author know if you loved it. Share with others."

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The Micro Award
The Micro Awad is presented annually for the best work of flash fiction originally published in the previous calendar year (word length: max 1000 words). The winner receives a $500 prize. Winners, runners-up and finalists of the current and previous years are listed on the award page: Micro Award.

Micro Award winner + runner-up 2010:
• Winner: “Choosing a Photograph for Mother's Obituary” by Kevin A. Couture; The Antigonish Review(the story is not online)
• Runner-up: “Seven Items In Jason Reynolds’ Jacket Pocket, Two Days After His Suicide, As Found By His Eight-Year-Old Brother, Grady” by Robert Swartwood; PANK, April 2010

YB issue 4: Windows

2011-06-09T13:14:00.003+02:00

Looking in and looking out: "Windows" are the focus theme of YB #4. The issue features poems by J. Bradley, Jessie Carty, Brittney Corrigan, Risa Denenberg, Kathleen Kirk, Daniel Romo, Nic Sebastian, Elizabeth Kate Switaj, Troy Urquhart, Helen Vitoria and Megan Williams. There are also reviews by Melanie Moro-Huber and Nic Sebastian. And last but not least, a photo gallery by Dorothee Lang; "8 x8" - eight photos of eight countries.

As a new technical + animal "window", this issue of YB comes in a new design, is also available as Kindle edition or as pdf, and is presented by a tejón. (yes.) - YB issue 4: windows

Here's what (guest co-editor) John Riley says about #4: "Windows are full of space and questions without answers, and each of these poems is wise enough to know this. There are no attempts at answers here, only the exuberance that comes from reveling in the uncertainty. So raise the curtain, undo the latch, and escape into the doubt. We promise you won’t leave satisfied."

For more windows, visit the YB blog - it will continue the theme by hosting "Window Gazing" posts with photos and artwork by various writers and artists, as well as whimsical windows and other information. Included so far are blog windows to Baltimore, Dallas, Denton, Baden-Württemberg, Slovenia, Rudersberg and Portugal.

About YB:
YB is an online journal of new poetry. The YB founder and editor is Rose Hunter. YB issue 4, the Windows issue, is co-edited by Sherry O'Keefe and John Riley, with art work by Dorothee Lang. Kindle edition by Sherry O'Keefe. Issues 1-3 of YB are online here: ybjournal.blogspot.com.

YB issue 4: windows
theme issue
e-book (free pdf + kindle version)

related links: theme issues + anthologies, poetry, e-books + pdf-versions

author talk: Xu Xi and Sybil Baker

2011-06-07T11:52:00.005+02:00

In January, Daily s-Press featured Xu Xi's award-winning book Habit of a Foreign Sky. Through the mail exchange for the book, the idea for the next author talk developed: a conversation between Xu Xi and Sybil Baker, author of Talismans, a linked collection of stories.

The two know each other from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Both are fiction writers who have a strong connection to Asia, Baker having lived in Korea for 12 years and Xu who is from Hong Kong originally and has split her life in recent years between Hong Kong and New York. The conversation ranges from themes like fiction generally, teaching creative writing, and the general state of things for writers today.

FROM WEST TO EAST, AND FROM EAST TO WEST

Sybil L. Baker (SLB): Do you make distinctions (and should your readers) between expatriate, transnational, and global literature? When writing your novels, do you have a particular audience in mind?

XU XI (XX): Even though I’m very aware by now that readers in Asia can and will read my books differently, I still try to forget about a specific audience when I write. In the end, I still believe that stories about what it means to human can and will matter if they’re written well enough. And being human today is increasingly transnational, expatriate, and global from West to East as much as from East to West.

SLB: I agree, and what’s interesting is that transnationalism affects people from all sides of the world who may never even travel beyond their town or village. World policies, a global economy with shifts in the winners and losers, as well as transnational companies affect culture and lifestyles in ways many people may not even be aware of.

XX: It’s a changing world, the 21st Century, and it is our job, as writers, to “record” that change through the stories we tell. I think that fiction is a way to create a world that parallels the real worlds we encounter, which includes the characters we create to people those fictional worlds.
SLB: How has the reception been for Habit of a Foreign Sky in Asia versus North America? Is that different from your earlier novels?

XX: Interestingly, the reception has been much more similar in these two spaces this time, which leads me to believe that the readership is changing -- i.e.: becoming more global like my characters -- and my writing is tapping into that liminal space where more and more readers and writers now reside.

But I’m interested also in what’s happened to the responses to your work. Your first book The Life Plan was a kind of comic romp while Talismans is much darker and paints a very different portrait of the young American woman abroad. I love the contrast between the two but how have your readers responded?

SLB: It’s funny because my feeling is that people I know associated (either as writers or readers) with high-end literary fiction didn’t take The Life Plan that seriously. They saw it more as a chick lit novel. Once Talismans came out though, my sense was that those people liked it better because it was a more “literary” work.
On the other hand, some readers who are not part of academia I think found Talismans too dark for them, and preferred The Life Plan. Of course some have liked both, which is great.

XX: Elise, your protagonist in Talismans, carries her grandfather’s pea coat as a sort of security blanket cum symbol cum justification for her travels. Yet in the end she simply gives it away to her former Korean lover. What did that gifting/release mean to her?

SLB: In “That Girl,” a story in the middle of the collection, Elise leaves the coat with her lover as she says goodbye to him and Korea.

Talismans Post card 1 - Click images to enlarge

At that point, I think she gives the coat away out of anger and sadness that the affair didn’t work out, but she’s still searching for many answers about her past. Five years later (in the final story,“Grape Island”), she writes him wanting the coat back. He returns the coat to her but by the end of the story she has given him the coat again, this time as symbol of closure for her—of her relationship with him as well as her father.

The pea coat provides several narrative turns in the collection. I think linked story collections like mine or novels do require narrative turns, sometimes linked to what’s happening in the world as well, and I’m curious about how you respond to that as a writer. For instance, the main character in Habit of Foreign Sky, Gail Szeto works in the international financial world soon after the Asian economic crisis and the British handover of Hong Kong. During that time the States was in a stronger economic short-term position, while Asian countries regrouped.

Now more than ten years later, we see America’s empire on the decline and Asia’s (and in particular China’s) star on the rise. Are you working on anything that is set in the context of these changing fortunes?

this HKG shophouse was the model
for protagonist Gail's home

XX: Interestingly enough the novel I’m working on now -- and hopefully am almost finished with -- is all about the changing world of America in relation to China’s rising position of power. At least, that’s the impetus behind the writing, although the story is about Gordie, Gail’s American half brother who was born to privilege in the U.S. but is finding that privilege isn’t how he wants to grow old. I think that America, which has had its economic and 1st world prosperity, is finding that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be if the “house of cards” can fall apart so easily with the sub prime mortgage crisis. Meanwhile, China is riding the headiest bubble where everything is about consumption and more consumption and designer labels and cars that choke their cities. Where does all this lead? I begin that investigation in my current novel in progress.

SLB: It’s interesting because I read in an interview that Chang Rae Lee is working on a novel that is set in the financial world of Asia and the West during the current recession. I’m looking forward to reading novels that might have a different perspective or more nuanced view of our world than someone writing only from the position of the West.

XX: What about you? What are you working on now?

SLB: I’ve just (I hope!) finished a novel that takes place mostly in Korea but also in suburban Washington, DC. It’s about two sisters (one an adopted Korean) and the secrets they discover about their family. The novel takes place in 2010 during the sinking of the Korean submarine, the Cheonan, and also in 1980 when their father is an enlisted GI in Korea during a time of major political upheaval. The way the East and West interact because of political or cultural change continues to interest me even now that I’ve moved back to the U.S.

In a Habit of a Foreign Sky, Gail, a Eurasian, straddles East and West culture. I know that you’ve mentioned you like to explore East and West as characters—how does Gail embody some of these complications? How do your other characters, for example Gordie, who is American but very familiar with Hong Kong culture, enable you to explore those tensions without being too didactic or polemic?

XX: Both Gail and Gordie are reluctant Americans in their own way -- Gail because she would prefer to deny the illegitimate side of her blood and Gordie because he loves his life all over Asia that has given him meaning. For instance, he and Gail’s mother have a sweet relationship in Hong Kong that he doesn’t have with his own parents, yet he wouldn’t be so privileged if he wasn’t the son of an American pilot who took him to Asia in the first place. Gail meanwhile, does extremely well in mainstream America -- she graduates from the right school, enters investment banking and is successful -- yet wants somehow to be more Chinese despite all that. Yet even she sends her son to an international American curriculum school, recognizing that is where the power is in her world. So both are in conflict with who they are, yet can’t entirely discard the American skins that fit uncomfortably.

SLB: And the flip side of that is, can an American (like Gordie) who is immersed in Asian culture and language ever “have” an Asian skin? On the other hand, I think a bit of alienation is good for us Americans—many of us take our position in the world and in society for granted and have never experienced being an outsider.

This NYC builiding was the model
for lead male character Xavier's apartment

Gail, Gordie, and other characters in Habit of a Foreign Sky appear in earlier works. Did you plan to continue to write about these characters? Without giving too much away, at the end of Habit of a Foreign Sky, Gail decides to move to New York. I’d love to see her managing her career and personal life there—will we see her again in any future work?

XX: As I mentioned earlier, Gordie reappears in an even bigger role in my next book. Gail is done, I think, although she might make minor appearances in future. A couple of other characters in Habit seem to want space -- one of Fa Loong’s “sisters” will, and possibly John Haight, the lawyer who discloses what he shouldn’t to Gail about her mother’s will. It is possible too that Kina, the storytelling daughter of Xavier, might grow up into a future story but I really don’t quite know yet.

SLB: In a recent Asian American Literature panel at AWP (Association of Writing Programs conference in DC), one of the commentators spoke about Asian Americans identifying more with affiliations and affinities instead of nationalities. It seems that Habit of A Foreign Sky takes that approach to the characters and their development. I was wondering if you could comment on that.

A KIND OF POSTNATIONAL CULTURE

XX: I really believe that the world is moving towards a kind of post-national culture -- perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part -- but I do think that Facebook, Twitter, etc. means that we connect through affiliations and affinities rather than because of nationality. There was a time that whenever I traveled and met Chinese people, there would be a kind of ethnic or national bonding; I find this has decreased hugely with travel becoming cheaper and people getting to so many parts of the world. In 1980 when I spent almost a year in Greece, there were hardly any Chinese tourists there and I was a real oddity -- everyone thought I was Japanese -- and the Greek consulate in Hong Kong were so happy to issue me a visa because they had hardly any visitors. I daresay that has changed quite a bit now.

SLB: And yet, I worry that social media like Facebook (which I’m on) and Twitter, give people a false sense of connection. There’s no doubt that social media has opened up the world and allows connections that would be hard to establish or maintain even ten years ago. Yet, the nostalgic part of me wonders what will happen to good old conversation—staying up for hours and talking with friends over a few drinks. On the other hand, here in Tennessee, more and more of my students want to travel to Asia—to teach English there for a year or two, and that’s great. When I went to Korea in 1995, most people thought I was crazy. Now Asia seems to be more alluring.

XX: It’s nice, isn’t it, to be proved right as we get older? But I’m curious, after years of teaching ESL students in Korea, you’re now teaching young American writers in the South from where you originally hail. How has the experience of teaching abroad filtered into how you teach American writers now?

Talismans Post card 2 (a note on the cards, at the end)

SLB: I learned many techniques and approaches from teaching composition in Korea that I’ve applied here in the States to all my classes. Certainly having to take a more formal approach to grammar and sentence structure with Korean students has been a surprising benefit here. My American writing students know so little about constructing sentences, and I feel that I can take them through that in a way I may not have if I hadn’t had to teach that in Korea. I also hope that my broad range of experiences traveling in Asia and living in Korea help other students think about ways they can realize their own potential as writers and readers.
But you’ve recently made a big change too at City University of Hong Kong, where you’ve started an Asian MFA writing program. What types of writers and students is the program aimed at, and what might they get from that program that they wouldn’t from an MFA from a North American university?

XX: We actually pay attention to what it means to write about, from, of, because of Asia, in English. While a North American MFA could readily teach someone to write an Asian story well, there will not necessarily be the focus, or expertise, at the program on Asian literature in English, what a perspective from Asia might do to a story, Asian languages (many of our faculty and students are conversant or fluent in Asian languages) and how that affects the way we articulate stories or poems of Asian cultures in English, etc. Our reading lists, even though these are individualized to each student given our low-residency curriculum, tend to have much more Asian writing in English that goes beyond Asian-American writing. In fact, you’re someone who is very conversant in Asian writing, and are a practitioner yourself of the “genre,” if we can call it that. But what also interests me is where you think contemporary fiction is headed in the 21st century of electronic reading (and writing)?

SLB: I think in terms of electronic reading, we’re going to see a larger difference between the haves and have nots, at least for a while. Fifteen years ago digital cameras were cumbersome, expensive, and of poor quality, but now digital cameras are tiny, cheap, and high quality—as a result, we assume that if you own a camera it must be digital. I think e-book readers will go the same way—it’s still early days. That said, most people in the world can’t afford a digital camera and those people also won’t be able to afford an e-book reader. Because of that, I hope that “real” books will still be readily available to those who don’t have e-book readers, or like me, like to mix and match. On the positive side, e-book readers are a great way to provide content globally, and in that sense, they are a vehicle for promoting and disseminating transnational literature. As for writing—I think we’d all better get used to signing Kindles!

XX: Now that’s an even greater challenge than writing our next books!

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About the Talismans Post cards

The post cards were done by Sebastian Matthews, a poet and collage artist (and friend) of Sybil Baker. You can see more of his work at 3 by the Fire / Blog + 3 by the Fire / Tumblr.

Sybil Baker explains: "The photos are from my travels during the time period of Elise travels around Asia in Talismans (1995-2000). The quality of the photos are not great as they were taken on a regular camera and then scanned in--but I think that graininess adds to the post card look. The phrases are lines from the book that Sebastian chose. There were three postcards total.

The inlcuded Post card 1 includes photos from Myanmar (Burma) (reflecting the story "Ice Queen"), Korea (the men playing a traditional game) and the girl at the bakery ("That Girl" and "Grape Island"), and Cambodia ("Picturing Snakes")--the skulls are from the Killing Fields from the Genocide museum in Phenm Phenh.

Post card 2 has photos from Thailand ("Blue"), Vietnam ("Talismans"), Myanmar and Cambodia's Genocide Museum. Yes that's me with boys at the Sittwe Pier in Myanmar."

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BIOS

Sybil Baker is the author of Talismans (C&R Press) and Life Plan (Casperian Books). Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including upstreet and The Writer’s Chronicle. Recently she was named an emerging star in fiction by Anis Shivani of The Huffington Post. After living in South Korea for twelve years, she moved with her South African husband to Chattanooga, Tennessee. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the Assistant Director of the semi-annual Meacham Writers’ Workshops. See http://www.sybilbaker.com/ for more information.

Xu Xi is the author of eight books of fiction and essays. Her latest novel Habit of a Foreign Sky (Haven Books, 2010) was a finalist for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize. A Chinese-Indonesian native of Hong Kong, she has spent recent years inhabiting the flight path that connects New York, Hong Kong and the South Island of New Zealand. Last year, she helped establish the first MFA in Creative Writing (Masters of Fine Arts) that focuses on writing of Asia in English at City University of Hong Kong, where she is their Writer-in-Residence. Please visit http://www.xuxiwriter.com/ for more information.

photo Xu Xi: Paul Hilton

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MORE AUTHOR TALKS

Daniel Elza + Arlene Ang
on poetry, collaboration, plus the birds, the beasts and the teeth that fall in between

Michael K. White + Nora Nadjarian
on night writing, mayonnaise, the 21st century and ice penii

Jessie Carty + Mel Bosworth
on breathing, writing, the internet, scares, yielding, boxes, greed + red, black and white

Rose Hunter + Dorothee Lang
on short stories, places, anticipation, reality, identity + ?

Where the Dog Star Never Glows - Tara L. Masih (Untreed Reads)

2011-06-03T10:17:00.003+02:00

In her debut collection, Tara Masih shows an intimate sense of understanding her characters' innermost feelings, creating a memorable map of diverse characters that span the globe and several eras. Ghosts dance, butterflies swarm, men crystallize, the sun disappears, and water plays a role in both destruction and repair of the soul.

With an unflinching eye, a mythical awareness of the natural world, and poetic, crafted prose, Masih examines the dark recesses of the mind and heart, which often leads to a small or great triumph or illumination that will resonate long after the last page is turned. Publishers Weekly says: “Striking and resonant.”

Update June 2011: Where the Dog Star Never Glows was a finalist in the National Best Book Awards and now is on sale at Amazon as an ebook with Untreed Reads publishing company and a new cover.

Tara L. Masih is a graduate of Emerson College’s Writing and Publishing Program. She has won awards for her fiction and received Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices, and Best of the Web nominations. She is editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (featured earlier at s-Press, here: Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction).

About Untreed Reads
Untreed Reads is dedicated to bringing the best new fiction and nonfiction ebooks to readers throughout the world. In addition to their publishing, they also run The Untreed Reads Blog on their new e-books.

Tara L. Masih: Where the Dog Star Never Glows
story collection
e-book

Portrait of a Modern Family - Molly Gaudry (featherproof)

2011-05-31T10:35:00.003+02:00

Portrait of a Modern Family by Molly Gaudry tells the story of a family and a neighbourhood that is disrupted by the disappearance of a young girl.

Two interesting notes on the format: the story is published as free, downloadable, do-it-yourself featherproof mini-book. And the story itself was inspired by phrases borrowed from a Philadelphia City Paper. "I took a phrase from every single page and the task was to combine two such phrases and create a single paragraph from them," Molly Gaudry explains. " So, for instance, the final two phrases, which appear in the final paragraph, are: "Fox & Roach" and "Isabelle Meyer." Sometimes I think I'd like to write a novel inspired by a year of City Papers."

You can download the minibook here: Portrait of a Modern Family

Molly Gaudry is the author of the verse novel We Take Me Apart, which has been nominated for the 2011 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. She is also the editor of the soon-to-be released Tell: An Anthology of Expository Narrative, founding editor of the environmental literature journal Willows Wept Review, co-founding editor of Twelve Stories, and she runs Cow Heavy Books.

featherproof books
featherproof books is an indie publisher dedicated to doing whatever they want: "This might take the form of publishing an idiosyncratic novel, design book, or something in between. We love paper, but we're not afraid of computers. Our free downloadable mini-books are an invitation to all ten fingers to take part in the book-making process. We also have an experiment in attention span: the TripleQuick Fiction iPhone app. No matter the medium, we see our authors as creative partners involved in every step of publication. We make our own fun."

Portrait of a Modern Family
a minibook

related links: experimental format, stories

Matryoshka - Jamie Townsend (LRL textile series)

2011-05-24T14:38:00.005+02:00

Jamie Townsend's long poem Matryoshka is a delicate layering of language and sound. It just got published in the Little Red Leaves textile chapbook series: pocketbook size books that are sewn, printed, and bound with fabric covers scavenged from old curtains, bedsheets and other textile remnants. The textile format provides an intriguing physical wrap for the almost microscopic sensations in the poem, with its sutures that weave throughout the negative space. You can take a peek at the book online: Matryoshka

"In sections that move between anaphora & restraint, Townsend's material poetics charge the I and O divisions that begin each poem -- comprising a book in which the single and multiple slip in and out of each other in the "flocks of/ pelican/ un/ solvable/ sight." The title Matryoshka denotes famous Russian nesting dolls, and yet the subtle physics and physicality of such poems which attend to "sub-dermal termites scattering" reveal that such momentary nesting is in fact a station in orbit." - Ash Smith

Jamie Townsend lives in East Kensington, Philadelphia where he is organizer of the c/c reading series, and a co-founder and editor of con/crescent, a chapbook publisher & magazine focused on discursive essay / creative non-fiction. He is the author of the chapbook STRAP/HALO (Portable Press @ YoYo Labs, 2011) and recent work has appeared in various print and online publications, including Wheelhouse, Volt, Elective Affinities, Jacket2, The Poetry Project Newsletter and TRY.

About Little Red Leaves
Little Red Leaves is a collectively edited annual online journal of poetry as well as an ebook/paperback series of original books and reprints. The textile series is a special project of LRL, offering limited-edition poetry chapbooks with fabric covers and machine-sewn bindings. The LRL journal is currently taking submissions through the end of May 2011 for issue #6: The Ephemera Issue. Each poem selected for this issue will be "ephemeralized" into paper and printed objects, then mailed out to subscribers. To get a sneek peak of the upcoming issue or subscribe, visit our blog.

Little Red Leaves e-editions
Please look for forthcoming books in our e-editions series from Sarah Mangold, Hugo Garcia Manríquez, and Pattie McCarthy as well as a book length collaborative review of Michael Cross's Haecceities. An exquisite back catalog of the e-editions is available at littleredleaves.com/ebooks.

Jamie Townsend: Matryoshka
textile chapbook
$8

related links: experimental format, poetry

Flash Bites - Abha Iyengar

2011-05-21T09:31:00.002+02:00

Flash Bites by Abha Iyengar is a collection of flash and micro fiction, telling stories in a few words, letting the reader in into a world and allowing her to fill in the gaps to arrive at her own interpretations. The stories are sometimes down-to-earth and sometimes surreal. They open a different door to let the light in on what may seem to be the mundane and ordinary. They give an insight into what lies beneath the surface of things, people and places.

You can read more about Flash Bites, sample a few excerpts, or buy the e-book online at Smashwords: Flash Bites.

Abha Iyengar is an internationally published writer and poet. Her work has appeared in Bewildering Stories, Dead Drunk Dublin, Danse Macabre, Conversation Poetry Quarterly and others. She is a member of the ‘Riyaz' Writer's Group at The British Council, New Delhi. Her poem film “Parwaaz” has won a special jury prize at the film festival at Patras, Greece and has been screened to acclaim at various international film festivals. She received the Lavanya Sankaran Writing Fellowship for 2009-10. She blogs at Encounters of an Everyday Kind.

Abha Iyengar: Flash Bites
story collection
88 pages
e-book: $2.99

Family Album - Sheree Mack (Flambard)

2011-05-17T13:21:00.002+02:00

Family Album is preoccupied with migration, journeys and places. In poems full of energy and life, Sheree Mack catches the complexity of family history – ‘it was already there waiting for me’ – the pull of the past and the threads that have formed her identity.

Sheree Mack’s collection captures a sense of the migrations and changes of the last century, and shares with us, through the control and patterning of her poetry, an experience and insight that is her own. Her poems evoke images of sea journeys made from Barbados and Trinidad to England – ‘a place speckled / with a few brown faces’ – and onward travel to Bradford and Newburn on Tyneside.

"Poems that do not flinch from the conflicts and inconsistencies of family bonds." - Cynthia Fuller

Sheree Mack was born in Bradford to a Trinidadian father and a Geordie mother of Bajan and Ghanaian heritage. She has lived in Newcastle from the age of ten. She was Poet in Residence at the Durham Literature Festival in 2005. Married with two children, she works as a freelance writer and lecturer for the Open University and has recently completed her PhD in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. She participated in a river of stones and blogs at every day creativity.

About Flambard Press
Flambard is an independent press now based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Established in 1990, Flambard publishes about ten books of poetry and fiction a year. Flambard’s list includes writers from all across the UK and abroad, yet the press remains especially supportive of writers from northern England.

Sheree Mack: Family Album
poetry collection
90 pages
ISBN: 978-1-906601-23-2

related links: poetry, about a place

Short Story Month 2011 - Links

2011-05-15T10:54:00.006+02:00

It's Short Story Month! To join the celebration, here a collection of story links, lists, reviews, quotes, notes etc. There also are several short story initiatives that invite to participate, they are marked in red.

National Short Story Month - the history of short story month by Poets+Writers: "The concept has some history behind it. The Emerging Writers Network kicked off its first Short Story Month in 2007, and Larry Dark, director of The Story Prize, floated the idea even earlier." - Official links: Emerging Writers Network + The Story Prize Blog.

Short Stories in Daily s-Press: story collections (by Walter Bjorkman, Tania Hershman, Eric Beeny, Meg Pokrass and many others); anthologies (Writers Abroad, International Short Fiction, optimistic SF, ....); short story writing guides (Short Circuit); author talks

100 Story Links in Honor of Short Story Month 2011 - a list-in-progress by Flash Fiction Chronicles, writers are invited to share their flash story recommendations by posting on the flash fiction chronicle wall

The storySouth Million Writers Award - long list with 158 notable short stories of 2010, shortlist upcoming Friday, 20th May

#storysunday - a twitter initiative: on sundays, link to someone else's short story published somewhere online which will delight and astound readers this week. if you aren't on twitter, there's an online stream

52/250 A Year of Flash - a year-long writing initiative, now completed: 52 themes in 52 weeks, dozens of authors, hundreds of stories. (Daily s-Press feature)

The Short Story Reader - a blog about good stories on the web and other reading (Daily s-Press feature with interview)

Short Story Collection Giveaway Project - readers are invited to promote one of their favourite story collections by blogging about it and offering a copy as giveaway

The Short Review - online reviews of new, not-quite-so-new and classic collections and anthologies (Daily s-Press feature)

Short Story Month blog by Mat Bell - daily reviews of short stories published in print literary magazines

Paper House - Jessie Carty (Folded Word)

2011-05-07T10:00:00.001+02:00

Through the 64 narrative poems in this collection, Jessie Carty illustrates one woman's coming of age in the face of neglect and unmet social expectations. However, these are not poems of woe. Instead, Carty flings open closet doors and jumps in, describing the dark recesses with an innocent acceptance of what is rather than what should be. The births of babies and love. The deaths of elders and allusions. The reconstruction of homes and lives. An unflinching honesty folds them all into "boxes in boxes like Russian dolls," waiting for us to lift the lids.

Update May 2011: Paper House won the Northern California Publishers & Authors’ 2011 Best Poetry Book Award! To celebrate this achievement, Folded Word offers a special 3 for 1 sale.

For some more notes and reflections on "Paper House", read Jessie Carty's author talk with Mel Bosworth: on breathing, writing, the internet, scares, yielding, boxes, greed + red, black and white.

Jessie Carty's poems and non-fiction have appeared in publications such as The Main Street Rag, Iodine Poetry Journal and The Northville Review. Her first chapbook At the A & P Meridiem was released by Pudding House Publications in 2009. Her print & e-chapbook The Wait of Atom was released by Folded Word Press in 2009.

About Folded Word (+PicFic + unFold + Heron)
Folded Word is an independent press that continually seeks new ways of connecting readers to new literary voices. Though we do sell our books and chapbooks, we offer free poetry and fiction to the public in our Twitter-zines PicFic and unFold, as well as our print broadside, Heron. We also value craftsmanship, both of literary works and the medium in which they are rendered--as demonstrated by our handcrafted Signature Series chapbooks. Folded Word is managed by J.S. Graustein with the support of Rose Auslander, Ben White, and the entire Folded family of contributors.

Jessie Carty: Paper House
poetry collection
84 pages, trade paperback (e-book in Kindle & Mobipocket format available late-April)
$12 U.S. / £8 U.K. / €9 Europe
ISBN 978-0-9778167-4-3

Indefinite Space 2011

2011-04-28T10:26:00.002+02:00

A compilation of poetry and visual images. Indefinite Space, interweaves the roll of the dice, the fragile with the strong, shuffled emotions, the clear & the unclear, connected/unconnected—birds & streams.

The 2011 edition of Indefinite Space contains work from 28 poets & artists: Andrea Moorhead, Mg Roberts, Anne Gorrick, Chad Scheel, Howie Good, John C. Goodman, John M. Bennett, Sheila E. Murphy, Guy R. Beining, Steve Brightman, Adam J. Cooper, Felino A. Sorriano, Brandon Freels, Trina Gaynon, Jennifer McBroom, satnrose, Damon Falke, Kai Laursen, Andy Roberts, John Sandoval, Jean Esteve, Ruth Berman, J.T. Whitehead, Sally Molini, David James, John Marvin, Dorothee Lang, Raymond Farr.

Indefinite Space is edited by Marcia Arrieta. Her first book of poems triskelion, tiger moth, tangram, thyme is currently available through Otoliths (+ was recently featured in s-Press, here). Her chapbook experimental: was published by potes & poets press, and another collection the curve against the linear is part of The Quartet Series— An Uncommon Accord, published by toadlily press. She has a MFA in poetry from Vermont College.

About Indefinite Space
Marcia Arrieta founded Indefinite Space in 1991 after receiving a grant for her work from the Pasadena Arts Council. She has continued to publish the journal independently for 19 years. Indefinite Space has a penchant for the avant-garde, the philosophical, the minimal (but not always), the natural, and the intangible.

Indefinite Space 2011
48 pages
single issue $7
ISSN 1075-6868

related links: poetry, art

Mercy Island - Ren Powell (Phoenicia)

2011-04-26T10:00:00.001+02:00

The forty-one poems of Mercy Island, written by Ren Powell between 1998 and 2010, depict a coming of age that begins in a claustrophobic American trailer park and expands into the kind of borderless existence shared by all emigrants and homesick travelers.

Throughout this journey, the poet’s fears—which are the fears we all harbor—are balanced by her unflinching witness to what is real, just, true, and beautiful. Even in the face of pain and disintegration, the poet refuses to relinquish her humor or her humanity. Mercy Island: New and Selected Poems is Ren Powell's first collection to be published in North America. A preview is available online: Mercy Islands - preview.

An interview by Fiona Robyn on the collection, and on observance, routine, masculinity/femininity, routine, poems as a dialogue with the world, and the editing process, is up at: Writing Our Way Home: An interview with poet Ren Powell, and here's a new off-the-wall Woodrat podcast with Dave Bonta.

Ren (Katherine) Powell is a writer, translator, poet, and native Californian living on the west coast of Norway. She has published four full-length collections of poetry and eleven books of translations, and her poetry has been translated and published in six languages. Ren has a BA in Theater Arts and received her doctorate in Creative Writing from Lancaster University in England in January, 2011. She has taught theater and drama at a performing arts school for ten years and her dramatic works have been performed in the U.S., Canada and Norway. The founding editor of the online literary journals Protest Poems.org and Babel Fruit: Writing Under the Influence, Ren also represented Norway on the International PEN Women Writers’ Committee, and helped establish the International Cities of Refuge Network in Europe.

About Phoenicia Publishing
Phoenicia Publishing, located in Montreal, publishes poetry, non-fiction, fiction, and photography, and is interested in "words and images that illuminate culture, spirit, and the human experience." The press's founder, Elizabeth Adams, says that a particular interest is on writing about travel between cultures — whether literally or more metaphorically — with the goal of enlarging our understanding of one another through experiences of change, displacement, disconnection, assimilation, sorrow, gratitude, longing and hope.

Ren Powell: Mercy Island: New and Selected Poem
poetry collection
100 pages; $13.95
(pdf-file: 7.50)

related links: human condition, bilingual author, poetry

The Best of It - Kay Ryan (Grove)

2011-04-20T16:07:00.003+02:00

The Best of It by Kay Ryan, published by Grove, an independent press, won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry 2011.

Kay Ryan’s current appointment as the sixteenth Poet Laureate of the United States is the latest in a cascade of accolades that have finally caught up with a poet who has always found her own way—both in the poetry she writes and the quiet life she has preferred. Over the years critics have noted that each new book of poems by Kay Ryan reads like a “selected” in its intensity. Now, in the much anticipated The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Kay Ryan further distills this supremely achieved body of work. Here is the poet’s own selection of more than two hundred poems, offering both longtime followers and new readers a stunning retrospective of her earlier work as well as a generous selection of powerful new poems. The result is a major event in American poetry.

"A body of work spanning 45 years, witty, rebelious and yet, tender, a treasure trove of an iconoclastic and joyful mind."

Kay Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress's sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 2008. Kay Ryan's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and other periodicals. The recipient of numerous accolades, including awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches at the College of Marin.

About Grove Press
Grove Press is an independent literary publisher, it published many of the Beats including William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg. Since 1993, Grove Press has been both a hardcover and paperback imprint of Grove Atlantic publishing fiction, drama, poetry, literature in translation, and general nonfiction.

Kay Ryan: The Best of It
New and Selected Poems
ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4521-5
Price: US $14.95
288 pp

Pooh in Meatspace - Mel Bosworth

2011-04-18T16:21:00.004+02:00

"Scifi, humor, fantasy, humor and romance, adventure thrillers, humor and satire" - all this and more is Mel Bosworth's Pooh in Meatspace, a story once published in a place that doesn't exist any more, and now brought back to inner and outer space as an e-book.

The story in a moonshell: When Captain Sheera and Billy discover that a Santa Claus Machine has been built on the moon of Moop, they have no choice but to investigate. Soon, they learn that the machine's builder is none other than Billy's childhood friend Drake, thus spurring a cosmic reunion filled with love, hate, violence, chocolate pudding, Cannabis sativa, old cast members of Baywatch, and an electrical storm.

The e-book is available at Smashwords: Pooh in Meatspace.

For some thoughts on e-books, technology, and the world at large - for example: "Technology is fascinating and fun, the internet, too, is fascinating and fun. Sometimes mind-numbing. Sometimes the quintessential time-suck. Both things. Technology and the internet." - visit Mel's blog entry "fun, fascinating, and probably completely unnecessary". Hint: you might also find a Pooh coupon code there.

Mel Bosworth is the author of the fiction chapbook When the Cats Razzed the Chickens (Folded Word Press, 2009) the novella Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom (Brown Paper Publishing, 2010) and the novel Freight (coming 2011 from Folded Word Press). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in elimae, PANK, Per Contra, Wigleaf, BLIP Magazine, Annalemma, decomP, Dark Sky Magazine, >kill author, Emprise Review, and Night Train, among others.

Mel Bosworth: Pooh in Meatspace
ebook, 20 pages
available as Kindle, Epub, Pdf, rtf, PDB etc. file

author talk: for more about Mel Bosworth, writing and technology, visit the author talk with him: "Mel Bosworth + Jessie Carty on breathing, writing, the internet, scares, yielding, boxes, greed, + red, black and white."

related links: e-books, time+space

The Short Story Reader (a web project)

2011-04-14T08:52:00.004+02:00

"A blog about good stories on the Web and other reading" - that's The Short Story Reader, which features more than 500 short stories and books so far - all read and reviewed by Jon Morgan Davies.

For reading preferences, stories are tagged by length: 1000+words, 2000+words.., by rating: Four-Star Stories, Five-Star Stories, by magazines, and authors. There also are reviews of nonfiction books and novels included. For all available categories, scroll to the bottom of The Short Story Reader.

Here's what Jon says about his blog:
The blog aims, first, to provide links to and short synopses or reviews of notable stories online and, second, synopses or reviews of books offline.
In essence, what it really is is a personal reading blog. I started it in April 2008. The write-ups on books were something I'd been doing for several years in personal e-mails, but I found I'd lose track of the e-mails and thus lose track of my past reading (this came to full light once when visiting with a friend who seemed to remember more about an Arabic reading list I'd stormed through than I did--and he'd only read my e-mails, not the books).

At the same time, I'd noticed several really good stories online, and I wanted to share those with other people, as well as keep track of them myself so that I could bring them back up at any time. When I first started the blog, I wasn't expecting to find as much quality material online as I have; my views of the online literary scene were largely biased against it based on a much earlier survey (in the late nineties) and on the general lack of cred online publishing has tended to get in the print world. That is, I think, changing and has, in fact, already changed greatly over the past decade. Now, there's so much good stuff online that a blog highlighting some of the best seems to make sense. Of course, these are all my own favorites; awards like the Million Writers Award and books like the Best of the Web anthology try to present a slightly broader view. And there are other people doing blogs similar to what Short Story Reader does.

The selection process
As for how I choose stories to feature on Short Story Reader: I read around various online literary journals, hitting up at least one a day. I have my favorites that I check regularly, others that I check less regularly. And I'm always slowly adding new journals to my reading list, as I find out about them and have time to get to them. The first time I read a journal, I usually try to read a substantial part of one issue, if not the whole thing. Unfortunately, time doesn't allow me to do such surveys for all magazines all the time, so after that, when I return to a magazine, I'm usually picking out the story in the most recent issue that most catches my eye. Of the stories I read, I probably write up about one-fifth of them, any of the ones that stick with me in some way. This isn't a strict science. I'll have weeks where virtually everything I read seems to work for me and will get written up, and other weeks where nothing seems to.

I keep a backlog of stories to feature so that the blog isn't primarily focusing on the most recent work. Partly, what I want to do is reintroduce people to great works in magazine archives, things people have forgotten about or won't know to look for. Hence, by the time a work gets featured, it's often a year or two after its publication.

Recent great stories
I like so much of what Necessary Fiction is publishing these days. I've also enjoyed many of the works at Corium, with Amber Sparks's story "All the Imaginary People Are Better at Life" (link) as well as Tara Laskowski's "Something More Interesting" (link) as highlights of things I've read over the past few months.

About Jon Morgan Davies
As for me, alas, I write too. (Part of me wishes I were just a disinterested fan, as I can say of music, rather than a fellow practitioner, since pure fans seem rare.) When I read so much great material online, it's humbling and helps me understand just why it is so hard to actually get work featured in many of these journals. Reading what's out there also helps me learn sometimes what works and what doesn't. And sometimes, I've seen writers pull off tricks I myself have wanted to pull off for a long while but have never figured out how to do it.
Also interesting to me is seeing how the Web is changing the short story Stories are, by and large, getting shorter. I've had to kind of retool, since my own work has tended to be longer--and was, until a couple of years ago, tending to grow even longer. (Here's my website with links to some of my stories). Even with the shorter stuff I am writing now, the stories are often linked so that they aren't really just short stories (which sometimes makes for them being less successful when the story is pulled out on its own). I guess writing wise, I still am wanting that longer form. That's harder for online reading, though.

The Short Story Reader
short story reviews

related links: short stories, best of, web projects

The Book of It - Daniela Elza

2011-04-11T15:57:00.007+02:00

The Book of It by Daniela Elza is about being and becoming in the inconclusive manuscript of life. It is about creativity and the alchemy of the imagination. It is about knowing, and perhaps how we know more than we know we know. It is about the contemplative mind that wants more. It is about that which cannot be named, but can be pervasive in our lives (if we let it).

"The Book of It is a tribute to 'none of the above' when it comes to the search for meaning and answers-both in life and in education. In this meditative book, Daniela Elza tries to find the It between 'cash and two pieces of ID' and 'a blue guitar with one string (forgotten)', between a tree trunk that 'needs more than one person to embrace it' and a measurement of '1000 words (can be more but not less).' Without doubt, The Book of It is a pleasant surprise even to itself." - Arlene Ang

Daniela Elza is currently finishing her doctorate in Philosophy of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her work (mostly poetry) appears in over 50 publications. The Book of It is Daniela’s first ebook. Her full length poetry book, The Weight of Dew, is forthcoming with Mother Tongue Publishing (Spring, 2012).

Daniela Elza: The Book of It
116 pages
available as paperback + download + kindle-version
- the book of It (paperback) $11.99
- the book of It (PDF file download) $2.99
- kindle version: amazon.com / amazon.uk

related links: poetry, kindle-books

How to Write Your Way Home - Fiona Robyn

2011-04-07T19:32:00.002+02:00

How to Write Your Way Home by Fiona Robyn is an inspiring ebook that combines writing advice with a story.

Lorrie, who has pea-green eyes and mousey hair, lives in a narrow grey house and works in a call-centre in a grey office building. If you asked her whether she was happy, she wouldn't know how to answer you. Until she is shown something that's right under her nose, and which changes everything...

Paired with Lorrie's story are simple instructions that help to feel more connected with oneself and the world. The book also contains information on hunting & polishing "small stones" (pieces of writing that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment, more here: pay attention: a river of stones), and advice on how to build a creative network & much more.

This is a free e-book, you can download your copy here: How to Write Your Way Home

Fiona Robyn is on a mission to help people connect with the world through writing. She is a novelist, a blogger, a creativity coach and a Buddhist. She writes a weekly inspirational newsletter & runs e-courses. She started writing small stones in '05, launched a handful of stones in '08, & started a river of stones with her fiancé Kaspa in '11. She is very fond of earl grey tea and homemade cake, her cats Fatty and Silver, & the lovely Malvern hills (which she can gaze at from her home office window). Her novel "Thaw" has been previsouly featured in Daily s-Press: Thaw by Fiona Robyn)

How to Write Your Way Home
free e-book
62 pages

related links: on writing, e-books

triskelion, tiger moth, tangram, thyme - Marcia Arrieta (Otoliths)

2011-04-04T14:26:00.002+02:00

triskelion, tiger moth, tangram, thyme is Marcia Arrieta's first book of poetry. Within its pages language and the invisible coincide, voyaging precarious, discovering.

"Arrieta’s poems are overlapping spheres, vanishing points, circles that reflect her fascination with modern cosmology, aesthetics, and the spirituality of language." — Andrea Moorhead

"Her poems are compelling, marked by deft and abrupt turnings, a total mastery of paratactic construction, and a dazzling sense of the landscape of the heart played against that insistent inner voice. Here, at last, they are gathered together, a gift well worth having, a quiet visionary voice which surprises and invites the reader to be attentive." — David Cope

As well as a poet, Marcia Arrieta is a mother, educator, and artist. Her chapbook experimental: was published by potes & poets press and another chapbook the curve against the linear was published by toadlily press in An Uncommon Accord. She edits and publishes Indefinite Space, a poetry journal. (featured in Daily s-Press: Indefinite Space 2010)

About Otoliths
Otoliths is a magazine of many e-things, published by Mark Young, Australia. The online issue of Otoliths appears quarterly, the current issue is: southern spring, 2010. The publishing arm of Otoliths began as print editions of the e-zine Otoliths, but has since expanded to include books & chapbooks by authors associated with the journal. Recent publications include the ulterior eden by j/j hastein and Market Street Exit by Caleb Puckett.

Marcia Arrieta: triskelion, tiger moth, tangram, thyme
poetry collection
80 pages, $13.45

related links: books by blueprintreview contributors, poetry

Dr Jesus and Mr Dead - Cooper Renner

2011-03-31T10:44:00.005+02:00

Cooper Renner's novel Dr Jesus and Mr Dead tells an immortal adventure that leads from medieval England to modern New Mexico.

When the Black Death struck Pleasant Wimberley, England, in 1349, it infected every resident. Only two survived, locked in stasis by the plague, unable either to die or to age, doomed by their immortality to be forever on the move. Through the centuries, 30-year-old Richard Dedemon spread suffering and even death as often as he could. But he never suspected that he was not unique, that an extraordinary 12-year-old hounded his steps in secret, diligent to undo the evil his former townsman sowed.
Their journeys intersect, for a final confrontation, in 1980s New Mexico where Dedemon poses as a traveling tent evangelist and faith healer as he plots his greatest devastation: the unleashing of another plague upon the unsuspecting people of the Southwest. Can Jonathan, with six centuries of experience trapped in a 12-year-old's mind, discover his enemy's intentions before it is too late?

An excerpt of the novel is available online: Dr Jesus and Mr Dead - excerpt.

Cooper Renner's fiction has appeared in New York Tyrant, Keyhole, The Anemone Sidecar and other publications. He is translator of Mario Bellatin's Chinese Checkers: Three Fictions (2006) and editor at the online magazine elimae. His poetry collection Mosefolket was published in 2007 under the name Cooper Esteban.

Cooper Renner: Dr Jesus and Mr Dead
e-book, Kindle
2,99$

Life After Sleep - Mark Brand (CCLaP)

2011-03-24T13:26:00.002+01:00

In his mini-novel Life after Sleep, Mark Brand takes a look at the world that might just await us around the corner -- a place where GPS, Facebook and cellphones mesh perfectly to tell us where even in a nightclub to stand, yet traditional enough for couples to still have fights over groceries, and for office politics to still have enormous repercussions.

It is the day after tomorrow, and a device has been invented that immediately induces REM sleep, otherwise known as "Sleep" with a capital S. Society has been transformed. The average person now only needs two hours of rest a night. The work day is officially sixteen hours long. Americans party at clubs until daybreak, then log into virtual worlds and party in a reunified Korea all morning too...

Mark R. Brand is a Chicago-based science-fiction veteran and former medical assistant. An interview with him regarding the process of writing this book is available online: CCLaP Podcast 68: Author Mark R. Brand

CCLaP / Pay what you want! Like the previous CCLaP-books featured in Daily s-Press ("99 Problems" by Ben Tanzer, "Too Young to Fall Asleep" by Sally Weigel), this book is published on a "pay what you want"-basis: "it means you pay only what you want for an electronic copy, even if you want to pay nothing, making this mini-novel (available in EPUB, PDF and MOBI/Kindle editions) easily worth taking a chance on."

About CCLaP
CCLaP Publishing is an imprint of the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, an organization dedicated to promoting the best of the underground and cutting-edge arts.

Mark Brand: Life After Sleep
mini-novel
electronic book
"Pay what you want" at website
kindle version: $5.87

related links: e-books, novels + novellas

issue zero: draft journal

2011-03-22T14:13:00.001+01:00

draft: the journal of process is a new educational literary journal which features stories, drafts, and interviews about the writing process. draft's mission is to emphasize the importance and diversity of the creative process, especially for new writers and students in writing classrooms.

"In draft, we’re interested in mechanics, techniques, approaches, triumphs, failures, concussive frustration--everything that goes into crafting a publishable piece of creative writing through revision. We ask authors to reveal their tricks behind the illusions. To tell us how it’s done, or try to."

issue zero - "the draft preview" - is now available, and 2 drafts are online as excerpts: “Saggitarius” by Greg Hrbek and “Once Upon a Time, Bananas” by Mary Miller

about draft
draft is edited by Mark Polanzak and Rachel Yoder. Mark Polanzak has published stories in Third Coast, The Southern Review, and The American Scholar, among others. He teaches writing at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Rachel Yoder has written for The New York Times, The Sun Magazine, Kenyon Review, and other publications. She teaches writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

blog
there also is a draft blog that features conversations, observations, and exercises related to drafting. "If you're a writer, teacher, or student, we hope you'll consider sending us your thoughts. We accept submissions for our blog via draftjournal@gmail.com. Please indicate "Submission" in the subject line."
blog link: http://draftjournal.blogspot.com/

draft - issue zero
draft preview with Greg Hrbek and Mary Miller
now available for $10

a brief guide to world domination (or: The Art of Non-Conformity) - Chris Guillebeau

2011-03-15T14:09:00.001+01:00

The Art of Non-Conformity project by Chris Guillebeau chronicles notes on how to change the world by achieving significant, personal goals while helping others at the same time. In the battle against conventional beliefs, Guillebeau focuses on three areas: Life, Work, and Travel.

Guillebeau is especially interested in the convergence between highly personal goals and service to others. He uses the metaphor of world domination (ruling and changing the world at the same time) to highlight all the things that can be achieved by choosing to live with gratitude and purpose.

His Brief Guide to World Domination was read by more than 100,000 people in 60 countries during the first six months.

The essence of Guillebeua's philosophy is:
1. You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.
2. You can do good things for yourself and help other people at the same time.
3. If you don’t decide for yourself what you want to get out of life, someone else will probably end up deciding for you.
4. There is usually more than one way to accomplish something.

Chris Guillebeau spent 4 years in West Africa as a volunteer. He is a writer, entrepreneur, and world traveler with the goal of visiting every country in the world. When not traveling, he lives in Portland, Oregon and publishes the Art of Nonconformity blog.

Brief Guide to World Domination
free e-book

related links: e-book, non-fiction, the world these days

Battle Runes - Writings on War (Editions Bibliotekos)

2011-03-10T19:21:00.001+01:00

Battle Runes - Writings on War is an anthology that consists of twenty-one authors – thirty-seven works (short stories and poems) from all over the world – writing about the physical and psychological ravages of war on individuals and families. Parts of the book are shocking and horrifying, but in the end there is hope.

In the preface, publisher Fredericka Jacks writes: “Battle Runes opens in a child’s voice and ends with a child’s concern; the book begins in horror and terror and ends with care and hope; the collection starts in darkness and ends in color. The stories and poems – while focused on war – include private and public spaces, often addressing family relationships, such as those between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, or parents and children. While there is blood in these pages, the emphasis is on the complex psychological dimensions of war.”

Contributors include Muhammad Ashfaq; Thom Brucie; John Gifford; John Guzlowski; Alamgir Hashmi; Margaret Kingsbury; Geoffrey A. Landis; Mitch Levenberg; Hunter Liguore; Mira Martin-Parker; Rebecca Newth; Norah Piehl; Nahid Rachlin; C.R. Resetarits; Nancy Riecken; Dawn Sandahl; Lisa L. Siedlarz; Lisa M. Sita; Patty Somlo; Marko Vešović; Jenny D. Williams.

About Editions Bibliotekos
Editions Bibliotekos is a small press operating out of Brooklyn, NY, whose mission is “To produce books of literary merit that address important issues, complex ideas, and enduring themes.” Their previous anthologies was also featured in Daily s-Press: Common Boundary: Stories of Immigration. Submissions are now open for the next anthology, theme is: Nature's World (the environment).

Battle Runes - Writings on War
ISBN: 978-0982481943
186 pages, paperback
$15.95US

related links: human condition, the world these days, anthologies
+ previous editions:

pay attention: a river of stones

2011-03-08T13:35:00.004+01:00

a river of stones
The challenge: to notice one thing properly every day during January ’11, and to write it down. The result: more than 350 people across the world paying more attention to what was around them, and writing small stones. The birth of a new community of daily writers. A new movement - a river of stones. Which now also turned into a book.

a river of stones - the book
This book contains a selection of these engaged moments, written both by experienced poets and complete beginners, and a guide to writing your own small stones: "You will receive 320 amazing small stones written by all of you lovely talented people, short prose pieces written by Kaspa & me, longer quotes by several small-stoners and an appendix with lots of information about how to write small stones." - Fiona Robyn

a river of stones - a quote and links
The river of stones started in January with a blog and a welcome-post, here's a quote from it: "Why would you want to join in? - Because choosing something to write about every day will help you to connect with yourselves, with others, and with the world. It will help you to love everything you see - the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the beautiful and the ugly. You don't have to be a 'writer' to get involved. The process of paying attention is what's important." The month of writing small stones and sharing them online then sparked the open and ongoing community that is open to everyone who is interested in writing, reading and the world: Writing Our Way Back Home.

About the editors
Fiona Robyn is a novelist, Buddhist and creativity coach and blogs about being a writer at Writing Our Way Home. Kaspalita is a Buddhist priest and blogger and is engaged to Fiona.

pay attention: a river of stones
paperback: $10.56
download: $6.03
there also is a hardcover edition

Related Links: poetry, on writing, web projects

Elsie's World - Walter Bjorkman (GOSS183::CASA MENENDEZ)

2011-03-02T10:47:00.007+01:00

Elsie’s World is a collection of most of the short stories that Walter Bjorkman wrote over a ten month period after returning to the format in 2009. The stories were not written with a collection in mind, that followed after a few of them had been published online and in print. Stop by at Voices for a first story: Sooz & Sid.

"I've never met Walter Bjorkman in person, but I know his characters as well as I know my own. We've collaborated on several projects in recent times, and his inimitable style keeps me playing along. His is an immigrant's tale – a writer who extends from a long line of proud Norwegians and their quirky family history of departures and arrivals, remembering and forgetting. And it is his immigrant heart that makes his stories sound so authentically American, and real." - Michelle Elvy

Walter Bjorkman is a writer, poet and beginning photographer from Brooklyn, NY now residing in Maryland. His poems have appeared in various issues of Poets & Artists (O&S), and stories and poems in issuses of OCHO and MiPoesias magazines.

About GOSS183::CASA MENENDEZ
Established in 1998, GOSS183::CASA MENENDEZ publishes poetry books and the literary journals OCHO, MiPOesias Magazine, and Oranges & Sardines, which also features visual works by contemporary artists. Poems that have first appeared in GOSS183 publications have been included in the anthologies of the Pushcart Prize, Best American Poetry, and others.

Walter Bjorkman: Elsie's World
150 pages, $18

related links: short stories

The storySouth Million Writers Award

2011-03-01T11:50:00.004+01:00

Great stories are being published online. The storySouth Million Writers Award for best online fiction of the year will help all internet-based journals and magazines gain exposure and attent.

The storySouth award was initiated and is organized by author and editor Jason Sanford. The story of how this award started during the time when online journals often weren't considered to be real publications by some, and is still online, here.

The current introduction to the award also shows how times have changed: "When I founded the online journal storySouth ten years ago, the literary establishment didn't believe online magazines were legitimate places to publish fiction. In fact, many of these heads-in-the-sand fools also believed that the internet was a passing fad. Now these same people are tweeting each other links to their favorite online stories. It's amazing how the literary world can change in a decade."

Rules + Timeline
The award is for any fictional short story of at least a 1,000 words first published in an online publication during 2010. To help promote online stories, the Million Writers Award accepts nominations from readers, writers, and editors (and the volunteer preliminary judges who assist with the award). There is no entry fee. For more details, visit the Rules page.

Prize"Thank to generous donations, the 2011 storySouth Million Writers Award now has over $500 in total prize money, along with a $100 gift certificate from the great people at ThinkGeek. At the moment, this means the prize money for the award breaks down as First place: $350 plus the $100 ThinkGeek gift certificate, Runner-up: $150" - Prize Money / Feb 18

Nomination Pages + Timeline
- Reader nominations can be made here: Reader nominations
- Editor nominations can be made here: Editor nominations

The deadline for nominations is March 15, 2011. The list of notable stories of the year will be released by April 1, 2011, with the top ten stories released by the first of May. Voting on the top stories of the year will last for one month after the top ten stories are released.

Link: The storySouth Million Writers Award

Related links: The Glass Woman Prize, writing initiatives + web projects

Smoke Ghosts & Other Outré Tales - Anthony Wright (Moon Willow)

2011-02-25T13:30:00.001+01:00

In Smoke Ghosts & Other Outré Tales - a collection of dark but humorous short stories - Anthony Wright weaves his past travels in Australia, South East Asia, Mexico, and Central America to create a lively pattern of outré tales, interlaced with the supernatural, in which the author’s outsider philosophy is central to the thread of existence. A sample story: Banano's Bar

“In an extremely imaginative and well-written collection of vignettes from travels to adventurous non-tourist destinations, Australian Anthony Wright has invoked Burroughs, Bowles, Dostoyevski, Kerouac, and even to some degree Joyce as he searches out the sacred and profane of conemporary society." - Tom Hibbard

Anthony Wright was born in Melbourne, Australia, graduated in film production at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and was employed in various occupations and traveled through 20 countries before settling in Mexico City in 1993. He lived and worked as a journalist before returning to Melbourne in 2001, where he completed an education diploma at the University of Melbourne and began work as a teacher. He returned to Mexico City in 2008. His fiction, journalism, poetry and photography have been published in Australia, China, England, Mexico and the United States. (Anthony Wright on Facebook)

About Moon Willow Press
Moon Willow Press is a small, independent publisher helping to sustain arboreal ecosystems while celebrating the written word. MWP publishes novels, poetry chapbooks, and non-fiction titles that explore science and nature. First-time authors are given consideration.

Anthony Wright: Smoke Ghosts & Other Outré Tales short story collection
e-book
ISBN: 978-0-9813924-4-8

The Last Jewish Virgin - Janice Eidus (Red Hen)

2011-02-22T22:42:00.000+01:00

The Last Jewish Virgin is Lilith Zeremba, a vibrant young woman in rebellion against her emotionally complex feminist mother. Lilith is determined to make her own way—on her own terms—in the world of fashion, but she unexpectedly finds herself in a place where mythology and sexuality collide. She meets two men to whom she is drawn in ways that feel dangerous and yet inevitable: the much older, wildly mercurial and mesmerizing Baron Rock, and Colin Abel, a young, radiant artist determined to make the world a better place, one socially progressive painting at a time.

The Last Jewish Virgin, an innovative, humorous, and universal tale of longing and redemption, refreshes and reinvents the classic vampire myth for a contemporary world in which love, faith, and politics are forever intersecting and evolving.

Janice Eidus two-time O.Henry Prize winner, author of The War Of The Rosens, lives in Brooklyn, New York and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. An interview with her about the novel is online at Fiction Writers Review: Vampires are People, too.

About Red Hen Press
The mission of Red Hen Press is to discover, publish, and promote works of literary excellence that have been overlooked by mainstream presses, and to build audiences for literature in two ways: by fostering the literacy of youth and by bringing distinguished and emerging writers to the public stage.

Janice Eidus: The Last Jewish Virgin
160 pages
ISBN-10: 1597093939

Movie Plots - Nick Admussen (Epiphany)

2011-02-16T14:29:00.003+01:00

Movie Plots by Nick Admussen is an experimental chapbook, both in content and format. It features a series of disorientingly absorbing prose poems that take thirty different film genres as points of departure for riffs on identity, the imagination, the meaning and coherency of life, and even more indefinable matters. Sample plots are available online at epiphany: Read a sample.

But that's just half of the book's unique story. The book is published as "book kit", which consists of 1) a printer-ready PDF, 2) a limited-edition letterpress cover and 3) an instruction. There is a how-to-build-your-book-pages with trailer and guidelines online at Printing your book kit.

Nick Admussen is a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, currently researching contemporary Chinese prose poetry and living in Los Angeles. His poetry has most recently appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Barrow Street, the Mid-American Review, and Blackbird.

About Ephiphany
Epiphany is committed to publishing literary work in which form is as valued as content: "We look for writing, wherever it may fall on the spectrum from experimental to traditional, that is thoroughly realized not only in its vision but also in its commitment to artistry. We are especially open to writers whose explorations of new territory may not yet have found validation elsewhere."

Nick Admussen: Movie Plots (Epiphany)
short stories
book kit: 5$

related links: experimental, short stories

Two Weeks (Linebreak)

2011-02-14T13:16:00.001+01:00

Two Weeks is an ebook and audio book anthology that was compiled, edited, designed, coded, and recorded in only 14 days. The editors of Linebreak took public submissions for the first week (reviewing more than 1,000 poems), and spent the second week editing and producing the book. For the audio book, each poem was read and recorded by a contributor other than the author.

The final result includes 58 poems. One of the goals was to prove that you can preserve line breaks and other formatting in ebooks, which a lot of poetry ebooks to date have not done. The book is available at the Linebreak website, and will also be listed in the Kindle store. More infos: Two Weeks.

Two Weeks includes new poems from Bruce Bond, Geoffrey Brock, Dorianne Laux, Seth Abramson, T.R. Hummer, Oliver de la Paz, Joe Wilkins, Hannah Miet, Jazzy Danziger, Randall Mann, Jeffery Bahr, Matthew Henriksen, Mary Meriam, Amanda Auchter, Ernest Hilbert, Matthew Zapruder, Brian Spears, Rachel Richardson, Christina Stoddard, Kimberly Grey, David Roderick, Josh Kalscheur, Kerry Krouse, Benjamin Glass, Rose Hunter, Lauren Camp, Jon Tribble, Patricia Lockwood, and more.

About Linebreak
Linebreak is a weekly magazine with a bias for good poetry. "We look for poems that we wish we had written, poems that take us somewhere we didn’t even know we wanted to go." Submissions of both poetry and prose are welcome throughout the year. In addition to text, Linebreak publishes audio recordings of all poems. Each poet’s work is read and recorded by another working poet selected by the editors.

Two Weeks
anthology of contemporary poetry
58 pages, download: 4.99$

related links: poetry, e-books

Valentine Day Massacre (Cervena Barva)

2011-02-10T15:01:00.007+01:00

It all started in February 2010, when author Susan Tepper put up a note in the fictionaut writing forum for a Valentine Writing Challenge with an egde. Here's the short version of it: "Get your Feb. 14 (V-Day Massacre) stories or poems ready to post. Only criteria: use the word "heart" or "hearts" somewhere in your piece."

The first stories and poems trickled in, more followed, and at some point, the challenge started to snowball. "Just wading through the challenge submissions - what I particularly like is how the pieces all present a dense network of heart & intellect - pure joy to read all of it on this special day," Marcus Speh commented.

More submissions kept arriving, sparking the idea for a printed collection. Which now, for Valentine 2011, came together: Valentine Day Massacre, edited by Susan Tepper, and published by Cervena Barva Press. The collection includes Valentine Massacre stories and poems by Meg Pokrass, Nora Nadjarian, Frank Hinton, Sheldon Lee Compton, xTx, Sam Rasnake, Susan Gibb, Ajay Nair and many others.

Susan Tepper is the author of Deer & Other Stories (Wilderness House Press, 2009) and the poetry collection Blue Edge. Over 100 of her stories, poems, interviews and essays have been published in journals worldwide. Susan hosts the reading series FIZZ at KGB Bar, and is Assistant Editor of Istanbul Literary Review.

Cervena Barva Press was inaugurated in April 2005. In a mere 5 years, Publisher Gloria Mindock has released 52 chapbooks and 20 full length books. Projected for this year are 7 more books. Cervena Barva Press has published authors Gary Fincke, Lucille Lang Day, CL Bledsoe, Nancy Mitchell, Kathleen Aguero, Linda Nemec Foster, George Held, Eric Greinke and many other unique voices.

Valentine Day Massacre
49 pages, $7.00

Asymptote - issue 1

2011-02-08T11:18:00.006+01:00

Asymptote is a new journal dedicated to literary translation, run by an international team of editors: "We are interested in encounters between languages and the consequences of these encounters. Though a translation may never fully replicate the original in effect (thus our name, “asymptote”: the dotted line on a graph that a mathematical function may tend towards but never reach), it is in itself an act of creation."

Issue Jan 2011 features original essays by Mary Gaitskill and Alain de Botton, fiction by Thomas Bernhard and Yoram Kaniuk, poetry by Aimé Césaire, Tan Chee Lay, and Ko Un, drama by Toshiki Okada, and nonfiction by Masahiko Fujiwara and Pablo Martín Ruiz. In total, Asymptote presents more than thirty-five authors via some of the finest translators working today, including Clayton Eshleman, Forrest Gander, Soren Gauger, Rika Lesser, Pierre Joris and Howard Goldblatt.

Included in the debut issue are stories, poems, visual works, critical essays, and reviews of the latest books. Some recommended links:

Himalaya Poems by Ko Un, translated from the Korean
Höpöhöpö Böks by Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, a video poem from Iceland
Alain de Botton on La Rochefoucauld - a review
Literature and Mathematics by Masahiko Fujiwara - an essay from Japan

All of it is available free online at the Asymptote website, which features not only the translated texts, but also, when available, the works in their original languages, audio recordings of those originals, and accompanying artwork specially curated for each issue.

About Asymptote
The editorial team of Asymptote presently comprises the following editors: Chief/Fiction/Visual: Lee Yew Leong(Singapore/Taiwan) ; Poetry/Criticism: Brandon Holmquest(USA); Drama: Nathalie Handal(Palestine/France/USA); Nonfiction: Aditi Machado(India/USA); Special Feature: Anthony Luebbert(USA); Contributing Editor: Sayuri Okamoto(Japan). Asymptote is now inviting submissions for their next issue, feature theme: "encounter between languages" - guidelines.

related links: bilingual authors, international, first issue

70 faces: Torah Poems - Rachel Barenblat (Phoenicia)

2011-02-03T11:53:00.003+01:00

The poems in 70 faces are written in response to the weekly Torah portions in the Jewish lectionary. One by one they converse with the texts in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy -- the legal material alongside the narrative parts of the Torah, the texts which are easy for moderns to relate to alongside the texts which may challenge us and our theologies. An excerpt of the collection is available online: 70 faces.

"Rachel Barenblat’s Torah poems open the doorway into sacred text so that we can walk in and make it our home. She invites us to bring all of our passion, doubt, humor, humility and chutzpah as we encounter these ancient words and bring them to Life.” - Rabbi Shefa Gold, author of Torah Journeys

Rachel Barenblat holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is a Jewish Renewal rabbi, ordained in January of 2011. Since 2003 she has blogged as The Velveteen Rabbi; in 2008, her blog was named one of the top 25 blogs on the internet by TIME. This is her first full-length poetry collection.

About Phoenicia Publishing
Phoenicia Publishing, located in Montreal, publishes poetry, non-fiction, fiction, and photography, and is interested in "words and images that illuminate culture, spirit, and the human experience." The press's founder, Elizabeth Adams, says that a particular interest is on writing about travel between cultures — whether literally or more metaphorically — with the goal of enlarging our understanding of one another through experiences of change, displacement, disconnection, assimilation, sorrow, gratitude, longing and hope.

Rachel Barenblat: 70 Faces: Torah Poems
100 pages; $13.95

related links: human condition, philosophical, poetry

Elevate Difference

2011-02-01T16:27:00.004+01:00

Elevate Difference is a forum for thoughtful critique that aims to embody the myriad—and sometimes conflicting—viewpoints present in the struggle for political, social, and economic justice. The forum features reviews of books and films, with a focus on indie publishers and producers. The forum also features music reviews, interviews, etc.

2 selected book reviews from Elevate Difference:
"My Sisters Made of Light" by Jacqueline St. Joan (Press53), a book that is "traversing the diversity of Pakistan’s distinct cultures and classes" (review by Alicia Simoni).

"Each and Her" by Valerie Martínez (University of Arizona Press), a poetry collection that "bestows a quiet honor on the lives of nearly 500 victims ... many females, often students or factory workers, who have been (and continue to be) murdered in or around Juárez anc Chihuahua, Mexico. Justice often comes through awareness and empathy, and the way that Valerie Martínez reverently and tenderly handles her collection of meditations about this terrifying cultural pattern buoys the possibility of justice, and hopefully, a remedy."(review by Julie Ann Brandt).

About Elevate Difference
Elevate Difference is a volunteer-run publication, the Editorial Collective includes: Alicia Izharuddin, Andrea Dulanto, Annette Przygoda, Barbara Barrow, Brittany Shoot, Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch, Farhana Uddin, Gita Tewari, Gwen Emmons, Mandy Van Deven, Payal Patel, Priyanka Nandy, Tina Vasquez. There also is a call for contributors up: "Elevate Difference seeks writers who subscribe to our mission and want to write reviews and feature interviews with activists and culture-makers." - Contribute

Related links: gender and race, web projects

Writers Abroad Short Story Anthology

2011-01-26T17:38:00.001+01:00

The Writers Abroad Short Story Anthology, with its theme of Expat Life, was compiled during November 2010 during the National Short Story Week in the UK, and features short stories by 29 authors, including Christopher Allen, Valerie Collins, Jill Brown, Paola Fornari, Janice Dunn, and many others.

An online version can be found in the 'Our Books' section of Writers Abroad, there also is an Isuu-version online.

"Containing a variety of fictional tales covering the highs and lows of living abroad, I‘m sure many of the stories will have been based on real life situations – often much stranger than the fictional versions found within these pages. Maybe that‘s one of the reasons so many expats pick up the pen (well, switch on the computer) and become writers. The experience of living abroad enriches our lives to such an extent that we feel the need to share, initially through letters and emails to friends and loved ones back home. One thing leads to another and, before you know where you are, another expat writer is born." - Lorraine Mace

About Writers Abroad
Writers Abroad is a community for Expat writers who wish to join a group of like-minded people. Members are expected to regularly contribute to the group’s aims of developing our writing abilities via mutual reviewing, sharing writing opportunities and working outside our natural comfort zones.

Writers Abroad Short Story Anthology
143 pages

related links: short stories, international, anthologies, bilingual authors

Wild Flight - Christine Rhein (Texas Tech)

2011-01-21T07:23:00.004+01:00

Soaring across extensive terrain, from the working world of Detroit to American suburbia and pop culture, from the European landscape of World War II to present-day Iraq, Christine Rhein opens her personal world to the world at large in Wild Flight. In poems that explore the historical, social, and scientific as well as the poignant and humorous, Rhein relishes life’s juxtapositions.

“Wild Flight reveals a poet of versatility, one who has the ability to look at suffering with insight and present compelling social commentary. Christine Rhein is an uncompromising voice, whose poetry is profound, illuminating and always surprising.” —Melanie Buckowski, Chiron Review

Winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Competition in Poetry. For a taste of Wild Flight, visit "Tuning" in The Writer's Almanac, and for a note on the process, visit "How a Poem Happens".

Christine Rhein, formerly a mechanical engineer in the automotive industry, lives in Brighton, Michigan. Her poems have appeared in literary journals including The Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Southern Review and have been selected for Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best New Poets, and The Writer's Almanac. Wild Flight is her first book.

About Texas Tech University Press
Texas Tech University Press, founded 1971, publishes nonfiction titles in various areas, including natural history and the natural sciences; Latin American literature and culture; and all aspects of the Great Plains and the American West. In addition, the Press publishes several scholarly journals, acclaimed series for young readers, an annual invited poetry collection, and literary fiction of Texas and the West.

Christine Rhein: Wild Flight
poetry, 120 pages
ISBN: 978-0-89672-667-3

related links: poetry, the human condition, prize winners

Sylvow - Douglas Thompson (Eibonvale)

2011-01-17T17:19:00.005+01:00

In his novel Sylvow, Douglas Thompson follows his cast of characters through a spectacular clash between everyday life and life on the evolutionary scale – as society dissolves and is stripped away under the onslaught of surreal environmental disaster. The novel explores the disastrous state of civilization and its effect on both ourselves and the world around us – in the process touching on elements as diverse as literary surrealism, philosophical tract, horror, disaster novel and visionary science fiction.

"Thompson likes his maybes, his doubts and ambiguities, the darkness of the forests of our minds. Come in and enjoy this wild walk in the woods, and step out again unscathed –maybe." - Martin Bax, from the Introduction.

Douglas Thompson has published short stories in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, most recently New Writing Scotland, Chapman, Ambit, and reviewed architecture for The Herald. He won second prize in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition in 2007, and currently works as an architectural designer and computer 3d-visualiser. His first novel, Ultrameta, was published by Eibonvale Press in August 2009.

About Eibonvale Press
Eibonvale Press is a small press run by a writer, artist and reader who loves books. "It's as simple as that. It is not intended to be particularly commercial or make large sums of money for me or anyone concerned (though it would be nice if it did, of course!), but it aims to produce beautiful and lovingly-designed editions of excellent writing in modern horror, magic realism and the surreal."

Douglas Thompson: Sylvow
hardcover: 274 pages, £22.00
paperback: 308 pages, £8.99

editor's note: there is a related review on visionary/desaster books (and films) online in the editor's blog, including a novel by Doris Lessing, Sylvow (with a quote), the film 2012, and our dealing with those future scenarios: "popcorn armageddon"