Best of 2010

some end-of-year-s-press reflections, inspired by the "Popular Posts" in the sidebar, and a stroll through keywords and country lists. the most visited blog posts of 2010 are:

Frankfurt Book Fair - themes, sights, links
photos and notes from the Frankfurt Book Fair, with feature South America + thematic hotspots

author talk: Daniela Elza + Arlene Ang
poets Daniela Elza and Arlene Ang talk about poetry, collaborations, materialism and loss, the process of putting a manuscript together, and .. birds.

A Year of Flash This Summer
a feature on the flash writing challenge 52/250: A Year of Flash. the feature was included in the daily summer special

it's interesting that of the most visited blog posts in this blog that is basically about books - none is actually a book post. same goes for the current popular posts:

current popular posts:
NaSmaStoMo (january writing challenge), The Enpipe Line (poetic resistance project) and I Fucked A Girl and I Liked It - Eventually (essay)

the visitors of this blog come from:
the United States, Canada, Germany, UK, India, Italy, Russia, Netherlands, Cyprus, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand ...

& some highlights of the keyword statistic of searches that led to daily s-press
- "book that ends with the word mayonnaise"
- "catchy book fair phrases"
- "daily naked blogpost"
- "i am here and you are gone"
- "aquarium thunderclap"

blog birthday:
this blog started on March 8, and will have its first birthday in about 3 months.

The Enpipe Line

The Enpipe Line is 1,173 kilometers of collaborative poetry written in resistance to Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipelines proposal and projects like it around the planet.

Initiated and hosted by Christine Leclerc, this project started on the 1st of November and keeps growing continually at the Enpipe Line Project Page.

Christine Leclerc says: "The resistance of communities, activists and cultural workers to socially and environmentally destructive projects, like Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway Pipelines, inspire this project. I'm lucky to be able to collaborate on a project of this scale with so many inspiring people!" (there also is an interview in Geist on the project).

To contribute to the Enpipe lines, send new or existing work with date and place of creation. You can submit several times. For details, visit the guidelines.

Christine Leclerc is a Vancouver-based author and activist. She teaches Creative Writing at Langara College Continuing Studies, you can listen to her reading at the summer dream literary arts festival.

related links: other literary web projects (a river of stones, Glass Woman Prize,  >language >place blog carnival, #storysunday, 52/250 - a year of flash..)

Black Nature (UGA)

Black Nature is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated. The anthology is edited by Camille T. Dungy, who selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics.

"Dungy enlarges our understanding of the nexus between nature and culture, and introduces a 'new way of thinking about nature writing and writing by black Americans.'" —Booklist

This collection features major writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, and Melvin B. Tolson as well as newer talents such as Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements. A preview is available online at googlebooks: Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry

Camille T. Dungy is an associate professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University. She is the author of two poetry collections, What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison and Suck on the Marrow, and has helped edit two other poetry anthologies.

About UGA
The University of Georgia Press is the only scholarly publisher within the University System of Georgia. A full member of the Association of American University Presses since 1940, the Press is also the oldest and largest book publisher in the state. With a full-time staff of 24 publishing professionals, the Press currently publishes 75-80 new books a year and has 1000 titles in print.

Black Nature
poetry collection
432 pages

related links: nature, gender/race, international, anthologies, poetry

NaSmaStoMo - National Small Stone Month

You might have heard of NaNoWriMo, where participants are encouraged to write an entire novel in a single month. There now is a new event, taking place the first time in January 2011: NaSmaStoMo - National Small Stone Month, initiated by Fiona Robyn.

The challenge, should you choose to take part, is to write a small stone - a polished moment of paying proper attention - every day during the month of January.

The idea behind NaSmaStoMo? - Fiona explains: "I’m a believer in making use of the writing process to help us connect with ourselves and with the world. Writing helps me to pay more attention, and for me this leads to feeling more gratitude and love for everything around me (including the difficult and dark bits). I think writing can be seen as a spiritual practice. I was thinking about how I could encourage more people to try out writing a small stone as a daily practice, and my fiancé Kaspa came up with the idea of borrowing ‘NaMoWriMo’ and making it our own! We’ve had a stunning response so far."

To join, visit the blog note "Welcome to a river of stones!", and post the web address where you'll be posting your small stones in the commment section - then you get added to the blogroll. To get into the mood for writing small stones, read the recent a river of stones entries, and visit the growing blog roll in the sidebar - it already includes more than 30 participating blogs.

Fiona Robyn is a novelist, blogger and creativity coach living in the skirts of the Malvern hills in Worcestershire in the UK. Her three novels are published by Snowbooks and she has also published a book of ‘small stones’. She has been writing a short observational piece at a small stone every day for several years, and she publishes other people’s stones at a handful of stones.

related links: other literary web projects (Glass Woman Prize,  >language >place blog carnival, #storysunday, 42/250 - a year of flash..) + link to NaNoWriMo

On a Narrow Windowsill (Folded Word)

On a Narrow Windowsill: written on four continents and read on six, the works in this anthology celebrate the birth of a new literary form: the tweet. The editors J.S. Graustein and Rose Auslander note: "Ironically, the 140-character limit of the Twitter platform has inspired new and veteran writers alike to stretch traditional boundaries. Some experiment with abbreviated poetic forms. Others create back-story through innuendo. All make every word—every character—count. This collection will introduce you to 43 of these pioneers who venture out each day onto text's narrow windowsill. Come, join them, and sit a spell. There's room."

This collection of poems and stories from Folded Word's twitter-zines PicFic, Form.Reborn (now closed) and unFold, features the work of Nathalie Boisard-Beudin, Eric Burke, Ben White, Kaolin Fire, Karyn Eisler, Mel Bosworth  and others - here a full list of contributors and here a windowsill preview.

About Folded Word (+PicFic + unFold +Heron)
Folded Word is an independent press that continually seeks new ways of connecting readers to new literary voices. The editors say: "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."

On a Narrow Windowsill
twitter fiction and poetry anthology
(note: if you order from now until 31 December 2010 you can enter to win every 2011 title Folded Word will publish. details on the Folded blog in Loads of Windowsills)

related links: twitter fiction, international, anthologies

Last Winter’s Leaves - Michael J. Solender (Full of Crow)

What is it that ignites the fear
I don’t want to die
I just don’t want to live like this
there’s a difference

Last Winter’s Leaves is a collection of very short prose and stories, written by Michael J. Solender after his life took an unexpected turn when he became gravely ill and despondent. After several months, with the constant love and support of his wife and some very close and dear friends, the malaise he experienced lifted. Solender says: "The following works are the first pieces I wrote during my recovery. Writing has always been therapeutic for me. This is truer today than at any time during my life."

The collection is available as a printed chapbook in the Full Of Crow Chapbook Series and as free eBook.

Michael J. Solender is a freelance writer and editor of Full Of Crow’s MiCrow section, and On The Wing. He lives in North Carolina with his wife Harriet, and blogs daily at Not From Here, Are You?

About Full Of Crow:
Full Of Crow Press produces and promotes both print and web based content, including fiction, poetry, art, interviews, art columns, reviews, audio, flash fiction, zines, chapbooks, ebooks, and more. Many of their collaborative zines are developed at their community ning site, The Sphere.Their most widely distributed collaborative zine, "MUST" has been printed thousands of times, all over the world.

Michael J. Solender: Last Winter's Leaves
collection
available as printed chapbook + free e-book

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