NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month

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

pay attention: a river of stones

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

Outside Voices - Jake Berry & Jeffrey Side (Otoliths)

Outside Voices is the protocol of an 18-month transatlantic email correspondence between poet, musician and artist Jake Berry and Argotist-editor Jeffrey Side, it ranges across and intertwines a variety of topics that include: poetry and music; film and TV; the changes in culture over the past few decades; the differences in regional U.S. and U.K. accents; the difficulty of reaching the famous in order to interview them; the songwriter as poet and vice versa. Two excerpts of the book are online in Jeffrey Side's blog: Published Email Correspondence.

Jeffrey Side is the editor of Argotist Online, a magazine that it is devoted entirely to poetry and poetics and has an own Ebooks-section.

Jake Berry is a poet, musician and visual artist, and the author of Brambu Drezi, Species of Abandoned Light, Drafts of the Sorcery, and numerous other books. He has been an active member of the global arts and literary community for more than 25 years. Recently, he created a cut-up long poem with Craig Hill, which is available as free dowload: SIXIXSIX

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 Unable to Fully California by Larry Sawyer and A Marzipan Factory by Grzegorz Wróblewski.

Jake Berry & Jeffrey Side: Outside Voices
Print: $13.45

Future Issue (Oxford American)

Issue 70 of Oxford American is a special Future Issue. While we can't guarantee our predictions will come true, we can trust the minds of our fearless explorers—our writers and artists—to point us in the right direction.

"Our visions include the Internet-fueled fears of Jack Pendarvis; William Caverlee calling upon Walker Percy's prophecies; Anne Gisleson coping with change in New Orleans; a surreal Frank Gehry structure beheld by Matthew Pitt; and Hal Crowther's version of the apocalypse.

But our greatest fears and unfathomable dreams come to light in our extra section: "The Future of Fiction: Visions from 2050" wherein eleven adventurous storytellers probe our all-too-human desire to ascertain what is to come: sexually active nonagenarians, happy pills, viral false information, and deleted childhood memories."

Several articles of the Future Issue are available online, visit the latest issue page for links, the list includes Ten Great Novels of the Apocalypse. In the Online Exclusives Section, you can find a related Governors' Forum: Six Southern governors address our concerns about the future.

An extra link: last year, Oxford American had a special Race Issue - again, with articles included online.

Future Issue
Oxford American
5,95$

Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt)

Short Circuit is the first textbook written by prize-winning writers for students and more experienced practitioners of the short story. The 288 page guide brings together 24 specially-commissioned essays from well-published short story writers who are also prize winners of the toughest short story competitions in the English language.

Each essay picks up on one or more craft or process issues and explores them in context, within the creative practice of the writer. Much of the guidance can equally be applied to writing longer fiction. A 25-page excerpt of Short Circuit is available online: Short Circuit pdf-sample.

Short Circuit is edited by Vanessa Gebbie. Contributions include five essays from winners of The Bridport Prize. There are interviews with Clare Wigfall — winner of The National Short Story Award — and with Tobias Hill whose short story collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. Other prize-winning writers in this book include winners of The Asham Award for New Women Writers, The Fish Short Story Prize, The BBC Short Story Prize, The Commonwealth Award, Writers Inc. Writer of the Year, The Willesden Herald Prize, NAWG Millennium Award for Radio Short Story and the Per Contra Prize.

Vanessa Gebbie’s short fiction has won over forty awards, including prizes at Bridport, Fish (twice), Per Contra (USA), the Daily Telegraph and the Willesden Herald, from final judges such as Zadie Smith, Tracy Chevalier, Michael Collins and Colum McCann. She is a freelance writing teacher working with adult groups at literary festivals as well as school students. Many of her prize-winning stories are brought together for the first time in Words from a Glass Bubble (Salt, 2008). A second collection, Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures, is forthcoming.

About Salt
Salt is an independent publisher whose origins date back to 1990 when poet John Kinsella launched Salt Magazine in Western Australia. Now, Salt publishes over 80 books a year, focussing on poetry, biography, critical companions, essays, literary criticism and text books by authors from the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Caribbean and mainland Europe.

Short Circuit
288 pages
Price: GBP 14.99, USD 26.95
ISBN: 9781844717248

99 Problems - Ben Tanzer (CCLaP)

Why is it that so many full-time writers seem to be full-time runners as well, and what is it about each activity that seems to fuel the other?

In 99 Problems, Chicago author Ben Tanzer tackles this very question, penning a series of essays completed after a string of actual runs across the United States during the winter of 2009, cleverly combining the details of the run itself with what new insights he gained that day regarding whatever literary story he was working on at the time; and along the way, Tanzer also offers up astute observations on fatherhood, middle-age, and the complications of juggling traditional and artistic careers, all of it told through the funny and smart filter of pop-culture that has made this two-time novelist and national performance veteran so well-loved.

A unique and fascinating new look at the curious relationship between physical activity and creative intellectualism, 99 Problems will have you looking at the arts in an entirely new way, and maybe even picking up a pair of running shoes yourself.

Parallel to the book, CCLaP plotted a story from the book into a customized Google map, splitting the text up into a series of placemarkers located at various spots mentioned in the story: Map link. There's a blog entry about the map, too, including an embedded verison of the map and screenshots of it running in Google Earth on an iPhone: Map-Blog.

Ben Tanzer is the author of the novels Lucky Man (Manx Media), Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine (Orange Alert Press) and the forthcoming You Can Make Him Like You, as well as the previous CCLaP story collection Repetition Patterns. He also oversees day-to-day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life and This Blog Will Change Your Life, the centerpiece of his vast, albeit faux, media empire.

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. On top of the seven books it has put out since 2008, the center also maintains a popular website, produces a bi-monthly podcast, and hosts a growing amount of live events all over the city of Chicago.

Ben Tanzer: 99 Problems
essays about running and writing
electronic book
"Pay what you want" at website

review
a review of "99 Problems" is up in Rose Hunter's blog: 99 Problems / A Picture of a Place

Traveling with Virginia Woolf - Kristina Marie Darling (Ungovernable)

Traveling with Virignia Woolf is a nonfiction e-book that explores the role of artist colonies in the careers of women writers. By blending personal narrative with journalistic techniques, the author situates her visit to the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts within a broader literary and historical context. As the book unfolds, autobiography becomes a point of entry to questions about the role of solitude in one's writing life, the extent to which this has been available to women historically, and the rapidly changing literary landscape that contemporary female writers inhabit.

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of Night Songs (Gold Wake Press, 2010) and the editor of narrative (dis)continuities: prose experiments by younger american writers (VOX Press, 2011). She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A graduate of Washington University, she currently studies philosophy at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.

About Ungovernable Press
Ungovernable Press is edited by translator and experimental poet Lars Palm. The press specializes in short e-books of poetry, essays, crime stories, and translations. Recent releases include David Wolach's book alter (ed), Adam Fieled's The White Album, Nate Pritts' Uniquely Constructed Self, and Brooklyn Copeland's Northernmost. Ungovernable Press was founded in 2008 and continues to seek and publish innovative writing.

Kristina Marie Darling: Traveling with Virginia Woolf
nonfiction e-book, 10 pages
online-pdf, free download

related links: on writing, about a place, e-books

Field Guide to Prose Poetry (Rose Metal)

A wide-ranging gathering of 34 brief essays and 66 prose poems by distinguished practitioners, including Nin Andrews, Joe Bonomo, Denise Duhamel, Arielle Greenberg, Carol Guess, Bob Hicok, Maureen Seaton, Mark Wallace, and many more, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry is as personal and provocative, accessible and idiosyncratic as the genre itself. With its pioneering introduction, this collection provides a comprehensive history of the development of the prose poem up to its current widespread appeal.
Half critical study and half anthology, The Field Guide to Prose Poetry is a not-to-be-missed companion for readers and writers of poetry, as well as students and teachers of creative writing.

About the Editors
Gary L. McDowell teaches writing at Western Michigan University where he is studying for his PhD in Contemporary Poetics and American Literature. His first collection of poems, American Amen, won the 2009 Orphic Prize and will appear in late 2010 from Dream Horse Press.
F. Daniel Rzicznek teaches English composition and creative writing at Bowling Green State University. In 2007, he won the May Swenson Poetry Award for his debut full-length collection, Neck of the World. In 2009 his second collection of poems, Divination Machine, appeared on the Free Verse Editions imprint of Parlor Press. (full bios of both editors are available on the Prose Poetry Field Guide website)

About Rose Metal Press
Founded by Abby Beckel and Kathleen Rooney in 2006, Rose Metal Press is an independent, not-for-profit publisher of hybrid genres specializing in the publication of short short, flash, and micro-fiction; prose poetry; novels-in-verse or book-length linked narrative poems; and other literary works that move beyond the traditional genres of poetry, fiction, and essay to find new forms of expression.
The press’s upcoming 2010 season includes We Know What We Are by Mary Hamilton (winner of the fourth annual Rose Metal Press short short chapbook contest) and Color Plates by Adam Golaski. Their 2011 season will include The Louisiana Purchase by Jim Goar and the chapbook anthology They Could No Longer Contain Themselves by Elizabeth Colen, John Jodzio, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Sean Lovelace, and Mary Miller.

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry
essay anthology
224 pages, paperback, $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-9789848-8-5

Flesh in the Inkwell - Winona Baker (Leaf Press)

The poems of Flesh in the Inkwell detail what it was like for a child growing up in the ‘29 depression. How sometimes when poverty enters the door, love flies out the window.

Winona Baker’s fascination with words and writing started very early: “On the farm we all went to the crossroads where every two weeks everyone gathered early to gossip, even the children. We waited for a van with drop-down sides to pull up. Stacked behind them was a selection of books. Heavenly! We could take two out every two weeks. It doesn’t sound like many for a budding bibliophile but in a big family that was quite a number. No TV then, but we had a radio, if the batteries weren’t dead.”

Winona Baker published her first poem when she was eleven years old. During a writing career that has spanned a lifetime, her poems have been published all over the world and translated into six languages; she has also received many international honours and awards. Flesh in the Inkwell is her autobiography in verse.

Winona Baker’s work is in more than seventy anthologies worldwide, and has been translated into Japanese, French, Greek, Croatian, Romanian, Yugoslavian. Her work is archived in the Haiku Museum, Tokyo; the Basho Museum, Yamagata; the American Haiku Archives in California, and the Haiku Collection in the Fraser-Hickson Library Montreal. Her other books include Beyond the Lighthouse (Oolichan, 1992) and Even a Stone Breathes (Oolichan, 2000).

About Leaf Press
Leaf Press is an independent poetry publisher located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Other titles include: Huge Blue by Patrick M. Pilarski, Obituary of Light: the Sangan River Meditations by Susan Musgrave, and Precipitous Signs: a Rain Journal by Leanne Boschman.

Winona Baker: Flesh in the Inkwell
poetry
112 pages, $18.00
978-1-926655-09-3

Mutating the Signature (qarrtsiluni)

Mutating the Signature is the Winter 2009 issue of the online literary magazine qarrtsiluni. The title refers to the issue's theme: all the writing, images, and multimedia works included were collaborations. Issue editors Dana Guthrie Martin and Nathan Moore, longtime poetry collaborators themselves, wrote in their call for submissions that they wanted "to emphasize the gnarly, brilliant, iterative, process-oriented mess that is the heart of any collaborative artistic endeavor."

The print edition couldn't include music or video and one set of image-poem collaborations for which color was necessary, but it contains all the other poems, essays, and stories that were published online. One of its most intriguing aspects is the inclusion of "process notes" by each pair or group of collaborators, explaining how they worked together and how the collaborative process not only mutated each person's original ideas into something new, but changed their concept of authorship itself.

After editing the collaborate qarrtsiluni issue, Dana Guthrie Martin and Nathan Moore continued the concept in their own online magazine, also called Mutating the Signature, each issue of which features real-time collaborations between two poets, or a poet and an artist.

About qarrtsiluni
As online literary magazines go, qarrtsiluni, at five-and-a-half years old, is positively venerable -- but retains the edginess, openness, vitality and editorial responsiveness that have set it apart from the beginning. 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.

Mutating the Signature (qarrtsiluni vol. 1.2)
Dana Guthrie Martin + Nathan Moore, editors
146 pages; 6 x 9", $13.95
March 2010.

Predicate - volume one (Brown Paper)

Predicate is a bi-annual journal of literary dialogue from Brown Paper Publishing. Each edition features dialogues from a variety of independent novelists, poets, and authors of short-fiction. These authors participate in a three-tiered dialogue process with novelist and Brown Paper Publishing founder Pablo D’Stair. The dialogues are set through a particular filter selected by D’Stair, but the subject, direction, nuance, and conclusion of each dialogue is dictated by the artists. These dialogues are not offered as simply introductory Q & A sessions, nor as advertisements for any particular volumes—these rather are Portraits of the Artist: their individual drives, their thoughts on influences and contemporaries, and their in-depth feelings as to every minutia and nuance of the question "What Is Literature?"
Predicate is meant to position independent literature where it rightfully should be—at the forefront of earnest, imperatively considered literary discourse. Every edition of Predicate is sold as inexpensively as possible and is made available as a free PDF download on the site.

The first edition features dialogues with authors Mel Bosworth (When The Cats Razzed The Chickens), Darrell Epp (Imaginary Maps), Michael Paul Gonzalez (Angel Falls—currently in the semi-finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award), Natalija Grgorinic and Ognjen Raden (Mr. And Mrs. Hide), Caleb J Ross (Charactered Pieces), and xTx (I Dreamed I Fucked Stephen King While We Were Both On Vacation In The Cayman Islands With Our Spouses).

Pablo D’Stair’s own works (Kaspar Traulhaine; approximate; i poisoned you; bleed the ghost empty, bleed the ghost dead (forthcoming in June 2010) and witness nothing (forthcoming in September 2010) are distributed through Brown Paper Publishing in print editions absolutely free of charge in exchange for active reader feedback—positive, negative, or ambivalent. In the event readers do not wish to offer feedback, a purchase at cost option exists and the novels sell for either $3 or $3.50.

About Brown Paper Publishing
An independent literary press representing the works of novelists and writers of short fiction, Brown Paper Publishing is dedicated to presenting contemporary works of progressive literature. As a not-for-profit press, to Brown Paper Publishing literature is something that must be a direct expression of an individual concerned only with the craft and nuance of the art form, something created entirely outside of the demands of a marketplace–ideally, it is something created without regard for publication, distribution, critique or even readership: Literature-for-the-sake-of-Literature.

Predicate - volume one
dialogues on literature
350 pages, trade paperback, $6.50
also available as free download
ISBN 978-1-43829-199-4

Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (Rose Metal)

With its unprecedented gathering of 25 brief essays by experts in the field, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction meets the growing need for a concise yet creative exploration of the re-emerging genre popularly known as flash fiction. The book's introduction provides, for the first time, a comprehensive history of the short short story, from its early roots and hitherto unknown early publications and appearances, to its current state and practice. This guide is a must for anyone in the field of short fiction who teaches, writes, and is interested in its genesis and practice.

Featuring essays by: Steve Almond, Rusty Barnes, Randall Brown, Mark Budman, Stace Budzko, Robert Olen Butler, Ron Carlson, Pamelyn Casto, Kim Chinquee, Stuart Dybek, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Sherrie Flick, Vanessa Gebbie, Tom Hazuka, Nathan Leslie, Michael Martone, Julio Ortega, Pamela Painter, Jayne Anne Phillips, Jennifer Pieroni, Shouhua Qi, Bruce Holland Rogers, Robert Shapard, Deb Olin Unferth, Lex Williford.

Tara L. Masih is editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, and author of the short story collection, Where the Dog Star Never Glows (Press 53, 2010). She received an MA in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College.

About Rose Metal Press:
Founded by Abby Beckel and Kathleen Rooney in 2006, Rose Metal Press is an independent, not-for-profit publisher of hybrid genres specializing in the publication of short short, flash, and micro-fiction; prose poetry; novels-in-verse or book-length linked narrative poems; and other literary works that move beyond the traditional genres of poetry, fiction, and essay to find new forms of expression. The press’s upcoming 2010 season includes The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry, edited by Gary McDowell and F. Daniel Rzicznek; We Know What We Are by Mary Hamilton (winner of the fourth annual Rose Metal Press short short chapbook contest); and Color Plates by Adam Golaski.

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction
essay anthology
208 pages, paperback, $15.95
ISBN: 978-0978984861