A Guide to Girl Geek Culture: The 2013 Eisner Award Nominees + links to online reads

The Eisner Awards are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books, sometimes referred to as the Comics Industry's equivalent of the Oscar Awards. The nominations in each category are generated by a five-member panel and have now been announced. They ate voted on by comic-book professionals, and presented at the annual Comic-Con International convention held in San Diego, California, in July.

"And you know what we do with nominees here!" says the geek web magazine The Mary Sue: "We try to find links to previews, excerpts, first issues, and entire runs that are available to read online for free." 

Check out their page for the full list of nominees and links: The 2013 Eisner Award Nominees You Can Read For Free On The Internet

Nominees Range:
Interesting to see that the nomination inlcudes famous names and publishers, but also self-published works, and webcomics and comic-related online magazines. Below the links to the works that can be accessed online completely or as excerpt:

Direct links to the nominated short stories, single issues, continuing series:

• “Rainbow Moment,” (excerpts) by Lilli Carré, in Heads or Tails (Fantagraphics)
• The Mire, (preview) by Becky Cloonan (self-published)
• Pope Hats #3, (PDF preview) by Ethan Rilly (AdHouse Books)
• Fatale, (first issue available free) by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Image)
• Prophet, (first issue of current run available free) by Brandon Graham and Simon Roy (Image)
• Saga, (first issue available free) by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Image)
• Bandette, (first issue available free) by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover (Monkeybrain)

Direct links to the nomintated webcomics

• Ant Comic, by Michael DeForge
• Bandette, by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover - now in print:
  Bandette, (first issue available free) by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover (Monkeybrain)
• It Will All Hurt, by Farel Dalrymple
• Our Bloodstained Roof, by Ryan Andrews
• Oyster War, by Ben Towle

Best Graphic Album and Best Adaptation

• Homer’s Odyssey, (excerpt) adapted by Seymour Chwast (Bloomsbury)
• Goliath, (excerpt) by Tom Gauld (Drawn & Quarterly)
• Sailor Twain, or The Mermaid in the Hudson by Mark Siegel (First Second)

Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism

• ComicsAlliance, edited by Joe Hughes, Caleb Goellner, and Andy Khouri
• The Comics Reporter, edited by Tom Spurgeon
• Robot Six, produced by Comic Book Resources
• tcj.com, edited by Timothy Hodler and Dan Nadel (Fantagraphics)

About The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue hopes to be a place for two things: highlighting women in the geek world, and providing a prominent place for the voices of geek women. Because all we really want is to just be able to geek out with all geeks, of any gender, without feeling like our femininity is front and center for scrutinization. To not feel like we have to work harder than guys to prove that we’re genuinely into geek culture. We want simple things, like to be able to visit a comic book store without feeling out of place. To be able to buy a video game without getting the sense that the cashier thinks we’re buying it for someone else.

New Collected Poems - Tomas Tranströmer (Bloodaxe)

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

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

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

Paper House - Jessie Carty (Folded Word)

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

The Best of It - Kay Ryan (Grove)

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

The Short Story Reader (a web project)

"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

Wild Flight - Christine Rhein (Texas Tech)

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

Xu Xi - Habit of a Foreign Sky (Haven Books)

In her novel Habit of a Foreign Sky, Xu Xi explores the abrupt shift for Gail Szeto when her mother, her last family member, is killed in an accident. For Gail, a mixed-race, single mother who buried her young son only two years prior, all she has left is a hard-won career at a global investment bank. Life rapidly goes into free fall for this woman with a complicated past, who was once so sure of her direction in life, and who now isn't able to see a clear future path.

This novel is finalist for the Inaugral Man Asian Literary Prize. An audio interview with Xu Xi is online at: Xu Xi explains the multicultural appeal of the novel (recommended).

Xu Xi, an award-winning fiction writer and essayist, has edited several literary anthologies including Fifty-Fifty: New Hong Kong Writing. She currently teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts and is Writer-in-Residence at City University of Hong Kong, where she founded the first international MFA program that specializes in Asian writing in English.

About Haven Books
Haven Books is a dynamic English-language press based in Hong Kong, their books focus primarily on Asian and international themes, and are enjoyed worldwide by readers of all ages. "We publish strong, fresh titles on a wide variety of topics - including exciting fiction, cookbooks, photography and travel books, children's illustrated books, young adult novels, and reference books. A founding member of the Independent Publishers of Hong Kong, Haven Books actively promotes Asia-based writers and literary organizations."

Habit of  a Foreign Sky - Xu Xi
ISBN 978-988-18967-2-8

related links: international, novels, prize/best of

Coldfront Top 30 Poetry Books of 2010

The editors of Coldfront Magazine took some time and picked their favourite Top 30 Poetry Books of 2010.

John Deming, the editor-in-chief of Coldfront, explaines: "Unfortunately, we don't have the time to publish full reviews of every book we come across as it comes out. But we always strive to keep thorough records of what's happening in American poetry as it happens. This list was created by Coldfront's editorial staff, and surely there are books that others (including our future selves) might think are missing. But we think that lists like this are a lot of fun and can serve as a very useful record years down the line."

For some books, the list links to Coldfront reviews, which often include samples of the poems. Here a couple of direct links to reviews:

• One With Others by C.D. Wright - “So they slew the dreamer, and ever since they’ve been trying to slay the dream” - review by Steven Karl
• Like a Sea by Samuel Amadon - “each country has made these phrases for / us” - review by PJ Gallo
• Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder - "a little digital hope" - review by Kathleen Rooney

Included are books from various presses: Mississippi Review Poetry Series, Tarpaulin Sky Press, New Directions, Wave Books, Ahsahta Press, Graywolf Press, Coffee House Press, Copper Canyon Press,  Bloof Books (bee!), and many others.

About Coldfront
The goal of Coldfront Magazine is to serve as a general overview of contemporary poetry and related issues: "There have been more than 300 reviews published at Coldfront since 2006. We are committed to covering the development of American language and lyricism, whether that means bringing you the latest poetry-related news, reviews of new books, or features. Everyday in this morning we point to a new, bite-sized sampler of online poetry, handpicked by our crack staff and network of diligent tipsters."

related links: poetry, best of

The Glass Woman Prize

The Glass Woman Prize is awarded for a work of short fiction or creative non-fiction written by a woman. Winners of the Eights Prize have now been announced: The winning story (US$500) is Wanderer by Susan Gibb - for more about this story, visit the author's blog note. 

Second Prize (US$100) winner is Star Anise by Kari Nguyen. Third Prize (US$50) is A Virgin Fire by Andrea Price Berthot. Other top contenders for the Eight Glass Woman Prize are listed on the Glass Woman Prize Website.

About the Glass Woman Prize
This prize is an ongoing literary initiative by Beate Sigriddaughter, who explains: "I want women to be able to acknowledge, transparently, who we are, and that who we are is not trivial and unimportant, despite the fact that it is not typically rewarded in a man-made and money-motivated world."

The first glass woman prize was awared in March 2007, previous winning stories include: Sanctuary by Julie Innis, Notes from the Night by Louise Beech, The Story of My Life (So Far) by Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz, Vicky's Secret by Mary Saracino and Only the Homeless Find the Divine by Nanette Rayman Rivera. There is detailed archive page with more previous prize winners and links to their stories: Past Prize Winners. 

Beate Sigriddaughter grew up in Nürnberg, Germany and is now a resident of North Vancouver, British Columbia. She has published short stories and poetry, and has written several books. For more about her and her work, visit her biography page.

The Ninth Glass Woman Prize reading period is now in effect, from September 22, 2010 through March 21, 2011. For guidelines, visit the webpage: Glass Woman Prize.

related link: web projects, gender and race, prize winners

Everything Was Good-bye - Gurjinder Basran (Mother Tongue)

Everything Was Good-bye centers around Meena, a young Indo Canadian woman growing up in the lower mainland of British Columbia and traces her life as she struggles to assert her independence in a Punjabi community. Raised by her tradition bound widowed mother, Meena knows the freedoms of her Canadian peers can never be hers, but unlike her sisters, she is reluctant to submit to a life that is defined by a suitable marriage. Though a narrative moving between race and culture, it is ultimately a story of love, loss and self acceptance amidst shifting cultural ideals.

This novel won the Search for the Great B.C. Novel Contest, chosen from sixty-four manuscripts by Jack Hodgins, who described it as "a fascinating story, skillfully written, of a rebellious young woman's remarkable courage.”

Gurjinder Basran studied creative writing at Simon Fraser University and The Banff Center for the Arts. Her work was shortlisted for the 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and earned her a place in the Vancouver Sun’s annual speculative arts and culture article, “Ones To Watch.” A 2006 graduate of Simon Fraser University’s award-winning Writer’s Studio, Gurjinder has read her work at the Vancouver International Writers Festival and has been both a panelist and facilitator on writing at the 2007 Writer’s Studio alumni symposium. She lives in Delta, British Columbia with her husband and two sons. This is her first novel.

About Mother Tongue Publishing
Formerly Mother Tongue Press, Mother Tongue Publishing concentrates on publishing unique, bold and stimulating books of British Columbia art history, fine art and literature. Recent publications include Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry, edited by Mona Fertig & Harold Rhenisch, and 4 Poets - this new BC poets series features emerging and established BC poets in a fresh format that explores the broader scope of the poet’s work.

Gurjinder Basran: Everything Was Good-bye
novel, 288 pages
ISBN 978-1-896949-07-9

related links: international, gender+race

The Women of Nell Gwynne’s - Kage Baker (Subterranean)

Kage Bakers's novella The Women of Nell Gwynne’s was nominated for a Hugo Award and a World Fantasy Award in the Best Novella categories. On May 15, 2010, the work was awarded the 2009 Nebula Award in the category novella. Sadly, Baker didn't live long enough to receive the award.

Set in early-Victorian London, The Women of Nell Gwynne’s is a steampunk novella that tells the story of Lady Beatrice - once a proper British daughter, until tragedy struck and sent her home to walk the streets of London. But Lady Beatrice is no ordinary whore, and is soon recruited to join an underground establishment known as Nell Gwynne’s - the finest and most exclusive brothel in Whitehall; and at the same time, the sister organization to the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society. "The beautifully drawn Victorian era is neatly spiced up with futuristic technology such as mechanical eye implants. Baker’s fans will delight in this slight, bawdy and funny confection." - Publisher's Weekly

There's an excerpt up on the publisher's page, just scroll beyond the reviews: Excerpt Nell Gwynne's .

Kage Baker (June 10, 1952 – January 31, 2010) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She was born in Hollywood, California and lived there and in Pismo Beach most of her life. Before becoming a professional writer she spent many years in theater, including teaching Elizabethan English as a second language. Her first stories were published in Asimov's Science Fiction in 1997.

About Subterranean Press
Subterranean Press specializes in scifi, horror, suspense, and dark mystery genres, and has published Peter Straub, David Morrell, Dan Simmons, Poppy Z. Brite, Robert Bloch, and others. They also publish the online magazine Subterranean.

Kage Baker: The Women of Nell Gwynne’s
120 pages
ISBN: 1596062509

Watermark - Clayton T. Michaels (qarrtsiluni)

Watermark, by Clayton T. Michaels, was the first-place winner of qarrtsiluni’s 2010 poetry chapbook contest, selected by Ken Lamberton. Watermark was simultaneously published in print and online. There also is a podcast available.

The images in Watermark are vivid and visceral; the writing superbly succinct; and that something extra — call it gravitas, call it cohesion — that makes a chapbook a work of art as well as a work of literature is present in each of these fine poems. —Pamela Johnson Parker, winner of the 2009 qarrtsiluni chapbook contest

Clayton T. Michaels is a teacher, poet and musician who currently resides in Granger, Indiana. He has been a featured poet at the online journal Anti-, and his poems have appeared in The Prism Review, Nerve Cowboy, >kill author, Makeout Creek, Slipstream, and The Chiron Review, among others. He currently teaches composition, creative writing, and comic book-related courses at Indiana University South Bend. An interview with Clayton on Watermark is online as podcast: inerview link.

About qarrtsiluni
As online literary magazines go, qarrtsiluni, at five years old, is positively venerable -- but retains the edginess, openness, vitality and editorial responsiveness that have set it apart from the beginning. In August, the journal published poems from all eleven finalists in its annual poetry chapbook contest: chapbook finalists. The current issue at qarrtsiluni is The Crowd, edited by Dave Bonta and Beth Adams, the managing editors of qarrtsiluni.

Clayton T. Michaels: Watermark
print + online + audio version
ISBN: 0978174925
32 pages, 7.95$

Pushcart Prize anthology 2010

The Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses series is published every year since 1976, and since the first issue, has represented hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays in the pages of their annual collections.

2010 Edition
The Pushcart Prize has an official homepage with general information at Pushcartprize.com. Some more detailed information on the 2010 Edition is available in a Publisher's Weekly Review: "This year's Pushcart anthology offers consistently good prose and poetry that covers a broad range of styles and topics. On the historical front, "Tied to History" by Greil Marcus and "A Poetics of Hiroshima" by William Heyen are among several pieces that reinvigorate well-plowed terrain from WWII.. .. The anthology is at its most innovative with its poetry, which surpasses the prose in experiments with language and form." (for the full review, visit the Editorial Reviews at the Amazon/Pushcart page.)

Behind the Scenes of Pushcart (or: Pushcart Dreamin')
Earlier this year, 2 essays provided some insights on the Pushcart nomination process. The first essay is from Mark Halliday, "Pushcart Hopes & Dreams", published in Pleiades (in print), and thus not available online. Yet author Mary Miller read the piece, and wrote a commentary with some quotes, published in Luna Park: "I’d never thought much about how it [the Pushcart Prize nomination process] worked, but this is what I always assumed: an editor at one of the contributing small presses listed in the back of the anthology recommends a particular story or poem and then the people who are listed in the front, along with the big cheese, Bill Henderson, make a final decision. After reading Mark Halliday’s essay, “Pushcart Hopes & Dreams,” in the current issue of Pleiades, however, it’s clear that my assumption was wrong..."
the full commentary is online at Luna: Pushcart Dreamin'

Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses 2010
600 pages, $18.95
ISBN: 1888889543

related links: prize winners / best of, mixed formats, anthologies

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?
In The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi explores the effects of bioengineering and a world in which fossil fuels are no longer viable. Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko, the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has appeared in High Country News, Salon.com, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His short fiction been anthologized in various “Year’s Best” collections of short science fiction and fantasy, nominated for two Nebula and four Hugo Awards, and won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best sf short story of the year.

His debut novel The Windup Girl was named by Time Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, won the Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards, and is a finalist for the Hugo Award. His most recent novel, Ship Breaker, has just been released from Little, Brown (more). He currently lives in Western Colorado with his wife and son, where he is working on a new novel.

About Night Shade Books
Night Shade Books is an independent publisher of quality science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Founded by Jason Williams in 1997, Night Shade Books has been publishing science fiction, fantasy and horror for over a decade and currently publishes about 30-35 titles a year, and appears regularly at genre conventions.

Paolo Bacigalupi: The Windup Girl
novel
hardcover, 376 pages, $24.95
ISBN 978-1-59780-157-7

related links: time+space, prize winners, novels

Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 3

The latest anthology of the Bristol Short Story Prize contains the top 3 prizewinning stories from the 2010 Prize and the other 17 stories selected for the shortlist.

The writers featured in the anthology are: Valerie O'Riordan, Mike Bonsall, Kate Brown, Darci Bysouth, Joanna Campbell, Tara Conklin, Rik Gammack, Rachel Howard, Ashley Jacob, Claire King, Ian Madden, Nastasya Parker, Jonathan Pinnock, Marli Roode, Rachel Sargeant, Yana Stajno, Natasha Tripney, Sherri Turner, Ben Walker and Clare Wallace.

The Bristol Short Story Prize page features an interview with the winner for this year's Bristol Short Story Prize, Valerie O'Riordan. The Bristol page also includes an interesting link section, themes: "writing", "writer's blogs", "short stories" to "magazines and journals", and more.

About The Bristol Short Story Prize
The Bristol Short Story Prize was founded by the editors of the quarterly cultural magazine Bristol Review of Books in 2007 with the aim of publishing great short stories and raising funds for the magazine, enabling it to remain a free publication. The magazine specialises not only in book reviews but also comments on a wide range of cultural events, history and arts.

Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 3
180 pages, paperback, £7.67
ISBN-13: 978-0955955549

related links: short stories, prize winners / best of

Best of the Web 2010 (Dzanc)

"There’s an astonishing amount of great writing on the web right now. How to even begin choosing the best? For me, I can say that the deciding factor was always the following: Did this writing open my eyes? Will I remember it months from now? Was it beautiful or strange or completely fresh and new? Did this writing unravel me? My own votes were always for those stories, poems and essays that very clearly mattered to the writer." –Kathy Fish, guest editor

Best of the Web 2010 is the newest edition of Dzanc's yearly anthology series compiling the best fiction, poetry, and non-fiction published in last year's online literary journals.

Now beginning its third year, with Matt Bell as series editor, and Kathy Fish as guest-editor of the 2010 edition, the mission of the Best of the Web series is to promote and expand the reach and prestige of online literature by offering this annual glimpse into the best writing the internet has to offer.

Best of the Web 2010 includes 95 stories, poems, and essays by Robert Olen Butler, Dan Chaon, Elizabeth Crane, Claudia Emerson, Brian Evenson, Amelia Gray, Stephen Graham Jones, Ander Monson, Oliver de la Paz, Christine Schutt, Terese Svoboda, Kevin Wilson, and many others.

About Dzanc Books
Dzanc Books was created in 2006 to advance great writing and champion those writers who don't fit neatly into the marketing niches of for-profit presses. As a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc Books not only publishes excellent books of literary fiction, but works in partnership with literary journals to advance their readership at every level. Dzanc is also fully committed to developing educational programs in the schools and has begun organizing many such workshops and Writers In Residency programs. Upcoming from Dzanc are: The Taste of Penny by Jeff Parker and Love Doesn't Work by Henning Koch.

Best of the Web 2010
Annual Anthology
512 pages, perfect bound paperback, $18
ISBN 978-0982520468

Other Prohibited Items - Martha Greenwald (Mississippi)

Other Prohibited Items is Martha Greenwald’s first poetry collection. The poems focus on what is banned in American daily life, post 9/11—physical objects, but also the meanderings of the subconscious. Precise, playful language, set against a scaffolding of forms, support the sense that ghost narratives can locate the beauty lost in chaos.

Other Prohibited Items is a winner of the 2010 Mississippi Review Poetry Series.

“Sonic delight in words and word combinations dominate Other Prohibited Items. The poet, almost, not quite, but almost, bows out to let something else think for her..." - Dara Wier, contest judge

Martha Greenwald’s poems have appeared in many journals including Best New Poets 2008, MARGIE, Slate, The Threepenny Review, Poetry, The Sycamore Review and Shenandoah. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, she has received awards from the arts councils of North Carolina and Kentucky. Currently, she lives in Louisville, KY.

About Mississippi Review Press
Mississippi Review Press is a spin-off of the Mississippi Review Magazine. The MR poetry series was started last year with a contest to select three collections of poetry for publication, the other selected winners are: Minimum Heroic by Christopher Salerno and Fifty Poems by Liana Quill.
Mississippi Review Magazine also publishes Mississippi Review, one of the oldest and most popular literary magazines on the Web, established in early 1995 as a site for the publication of literary writing.

Martha Greenwald: Other Prohibited Items
poetry collection
Mississippi Review Poetry Series 2010
64 pages, paperback, $9
ISBN: 978-0-9842652-0-6

Sublimation Angels - Jason Sanford (Interzone)

Jason Sanford's novella Sublimation Angels is a hard science fiction story set on the planet whose atmosphere has frozen, leaving humanity to continually mine the frozen air to survive. Into this comes Chicka, a young man struggling with the death of his identical twin and his twin's quest to understand their world--a quest which goes against the rigid nature of their survival-minded society.

The novella was first published in issue 224 (Sept./Oct. 2009) of Interzone. In addition to winning the 2009 Interzone Readers' Poll, Sublimation Angels is also a finalist for the 2009 Nebula Award and has been longlisted for the British Fantasy Award.

Jason Sanford's fiction has been published in Year's Best SF 14, Interzone, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Tales of the Unanticipated, The Mississippi Review, Diagram, Pindeldyboz, and other places. His 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. His fiction has also been reprinted in several languages, including French, Russian, and Czech.

About Interzone
Interzone is Britain's longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine. It is edited by Andy Cox. Since 1982, Interzone has launched the careers of a great many SF and Fantasy writers. Interzone often is shortlisted for many awards, and has won the Hugo and British Fantasy Awards. It belongs to TTA Press, and is currently published bimonthly, in alternate months to Black Static.

Jason Sanford: Sublimation Angels
novella
32 pages
the complete novella is available on Jason Sanford's website in a PDF format.
direct dowload link: Sublimation Angels by Jason Sanford - pdf-file
.

McSweeney's Best American/National Magazine Award Bundle

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern publishes on a roughly quarterly schedule, and each issue is markedly different from its predecessors in terms of design and editorial focus.

Stories of the issues 30 and 32—"Memory Wall," by Anthony Doerr, "Raw Water," by Wells Tower, and "Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events," by Kevin Moffett—have brought home a National Magazine Award:
"National Magazine Award 2010 FICTION - Recognizes excellence in fiction published in magazines - Winner: McSweeney’s Quarterly: Dave Eggers, Editor for “Memory Wall,” by Anthony Doerr, October 1; “Raw Water,” by Wells Tower, October 1; “Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events,” by Kevin Moffett; March 3"

In addition, both Kevin Moffett's and Wells Tower's stories, as well as Jim Shepard's "The Netherlands Lives With Water," have been selected for the 2010 edition of the Best American Short Stories.

To mark the event, McSweeney's has bundled issues 30 and 32 together at a special price, and has put the award-winning stories online.

About McSWEENEY'S
McSweeney’s began in 1998 as a literary journal, edited by Dave Eggers, that published only works rejected by other magazines. But after the first issue, the journal began to publish pieces primarily written with McSweeney’s in mind. Today, McSweeney’s has grown to be one of the country’s best-read and widely-circulated literary journals, with an expanding subscriber base and strong independent bookstore following. As a small publishing house, McSweeney’s is committed to finding new voices — Gabe Hudson, Paul Collins, Neal Pollack, J.T. Leroy, John Hodgman, Amy Fusselman, Salvador Plascencia and Sean Wilsey are among those whose early work appeared in McSweeney’s—and promoting the work of gifted but underappreciated writers, such as Lydia Davis and Stephen Dixon.

McSweeney's Best American/National Magazine Award Bundle
Product Code: BABDL
click here to read "The Netherlands Lives With Water" by Jim Shepard
Regular Price: $39.00
Sale Price: $26.00