SAND - Issue 1

An English literary journal printed bi-annually in Berlin, SAND features prose and poetry in the English language, as well as translations from other languages, art, and photography.

An index of the first issue is available online and includes some web previews: SAND Spring 2010.

“SAND, Berlin’s new English literary journal, is... a kind of lyrical introduction to the city. The low-gloss presentation and discriminating choice of photos, graphic art and nudes round off the picture. You’ll recognize a number of the contributors, but many are new and amongst these, we welcome the inclusion of some Germans. The editors are also new, and they’ve done a good job of combining prose and poetry, translations and reviews to give a good overview of what makes this city tick when it speaks English.” (- from a review in the Exberliner, June 2010)

About SAND
Co-founders Becky Crook and Jason Andrews paired up in 2009 after deciding that Berlin had waited too long for a new English literary publication to showcase the undiscovered, up-and-coming and already glamorously established talent of the city. Featuring a diverse range of art, photography, poetry and prose, some in multiple languages with side-by-side English translations, the journal—published twice annually—also accepts works from writers and artists living outside of the city. SAND is now accepting submissions for the Fall 2010 issue, which will be published simultaneously with the Berlin International Literature Festival.

SAND spring issue
Issues of SAND are now available at Saint George’s Bookshop, East of Eden International Bookstore, and Artificium Kunstbucher & Galerie in Berlin, at various readings throughout Berlin, or for direct order (email info@sandjournal.com with inquiries, issue price: 5 Euros).

related links:
- first issues of new print lit journals / magazines
- bilingual authors

lulu summer reads

The small press print+distribution service Lulu announced a summer offer:
Free Summer Shipping in the US
for orders over $19.95

"This offer can be used on multiple orders, it will be automatically be applied to all qualifying orders." (details)

Several books and small presses that were recently featured in Daily s-Press are printed and distributed through Lulu, below the direct links to the books / small presses:

1) selected single titles, previously featured in Daily s-Press
click the links, or visit the overview of the books
- Blue Crow issue 1 (Blue Crow)
- in transit - Dorothee Lang (blueprint)
- God Damsel - Reb Livingston (No Tell)
- "let a thousand dictionaries bloom" - Sean Burn
- 7x 7 - Crag Hill (Otoliths)

2) general overview of small presses with Lulu books:
- Otoliths books - authors: Paul Siegell, Mary Kasimor, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, Joel Chace and many more
- No Tell Motel books - Bedside Guid & authors: Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Laurel Snyder, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Karl Parker, Reb Livingston and many more
- avantacular press - authors: andrew topel, john m. bennett, jim leftwich, john crouse
- Small Bear Press - A Working Writer's Daily Planner 2010, LCRW magazine

3) additional selected titles (wild mix)
- Bizarro Fiction! - Journal of Experimental Fiction
- The Unicorn And... - Beate Sigriddaughter
- Wrong Tree Review: volume 1
- qarrtsiluni "Journaling the Apocalypse"

4) some suprise summer reads at Lulu to round up your order:
- The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
- East, West: Stories - Salman Rushdie
- The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

PS: if you are an editor or author, and have a lulu book to add to the summer reads list, send the link to be added. (e-mail: editor AT blueprintreview DOT de)
.

7 x 7 - Crag Hill (Otoliths)

Scattered parts
now lie about what happened.

"Implicitly comparing a book to a deck of cards, and that deck of cards in turn to the world of social violence we’re dealt, Crag Hill stakes his ante on the power of poetry to witness and document the multiply-layered, self-inflicted insanity of US daily life in the Bush years. As readers we become participants and are thus empowered to say no to the game of death." —Maria Damon

"It's pure serendipity that the 49th book to bear the Otoliths imprint just happens to have the title that it does..... 7 x 7"

Crag Hill is the editor and publisher of SCORE Magazine since 1983. He tries to go where no one knows to go.

About Otoliths
Otoliths is a magazine of many e-things, published by Mark Young, Australia. The online issue of Otoliths appears quarterly. 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 wild life rifle fire by Paul Siegell and & cruel red by Mary Kasimor.

Crag Hill: 7 x 7
poetry collection
paperback, 56 pages, $13.45

#VSS Anthology Volume 01 (Made in DNA)

Everyday hundreds of 140-character (or less) stories are posted to Twitter. This is a collection of just a few. # is a hashtag—an identifying marker—allowing users on social networking services to separate out and/or convey certain messages to other users utilizing the same markers. 'VSS' stands for 'very short story'. The #VSS Anthology Volume 1 contains over 150 stories by 37 authors.

"More than anything else, these pieces demonstrate that obstruction can spur creativity. In this case, there's something liberating about being forced to stay under 140 characters." - Moxie Mezcal

The 37 authors featured in the ebook come from many parts of the world and different walks of life, but they all met on Twitter and shared fiction. Some of the authors included: Allan Revich, Toronto (Digitalsalon); Deepti Lamba, Bangalore (deeptilamba); CharlieClose, Grand Blanc (CharlieClose); hyperjapan, Japan (hyperjapan); blpawelek, California (blpawelek); Helene Kwong, SF (hkwong), and many others - for more #vvs reads, try the hashtag-link in twitter: #vss.

About Made in DNA
The editor Made in DNA is an American short story author who is living in Japan, and an author like the 37 authors featured in this ebook. As Twitter users are scattered across the globe, he wanted a small place where a little bit of a lot of folks' work could be enjoyed.

#VSS Anthology Volume 01
anthology, 36 pages
the VSS Anthology is available in a wide variety of formats including PDF, Kindle, LRF, epub and more, and an online version.

Zahra’s Paradise - Amir and Khalil (First Second Book & coop)

So a Persian writer, an Arab artist and a Jewish editor walk into a room… Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. Actually, that’s something like the start of this unusual editorial adventure, the first of its kind. Zahra's Paradise is an online, serial webcomic in various languages: English, Farsi, Arabic, French, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew and more. It is published by First Second books in cooperation with Casterman in French and Dutch, Rizzoli Lizard in Italian, and Norma Editorial in Spanish.

Zahra’s Paradise weaves together a composite of real people and events: Set in the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections of 2009, this webcomic tells the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has disappeared in the Islamic Republic’s gulags. Mehdi has vanished in an extrajudicial twilight zone where habeas corpus is suspended. What stops his memory from being obliterated is not the law. It is the grit and guts of a mother who refuses to surrender her son to fate and the tenacity of a brother—a blogger—who fuses culture and technology to explore and explode absence: the void in which Mehdi has vanished.

author Amir + artist Kahlil
The author Amir is an Iranian-American human rights activist, journalist and documentary filmmaker. He has lived and worked in the United States, Canada, Europe and Afghanistan. His essays and articles have appeared far and wide in the press. Khalil’s work as a fine artist has been much praised. He sculpts and creates ceramics and has been cartooning since he was very young. Zahra’s Paradise is his first graphic novel. The authors have chosen anonymity for obvious political reasons.

About First Second Book, Casterman, Rizzoli Lizard, Norma Editorial
First Second Book is an imprint of Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers. Casterman is a French comic publisher ("La maison Casterman a intégré le monde de la bande dessinée dans les années 1930 en éditant les albums de Tintin"). Rizzoli Lizard is an Italian comic publisher. Norma Editorial is a Spanish comic publisher.

Amir and Khalil: Zahra’s Paradise
online serial webcomic in English, Farsi, Arabic, French, Italian, Spanish and other languages
start reading at page 1

following the theme: more daily s-press books that focus on the theme of middle east / prohibited stories / east/west etc.

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

Oblivious to the Obvious - KJ Hannah Greenberg (French Creek Press)

Hannah Greenberg's collection of essays Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting invites all grownups to celebrate, to contemplate, and to gyrate in tempo to the stresses and joys of raising young ones. From mountains of laundry to lizards left roaming among dirty dishes, Oblivious to the Obvious sets up house in the hallowed hindmost region of sleep deprived adults’ minds. Junk mail, endlessly chiming computers and incorrigible kittens are only a sample of the denizens that populate this book.

"Hannah Greenberg has a gift for finding those parenting moments, big and small, that lead us to reflect, to reconsider, and to smile. With a great deal of heart, and plenty of humor, she writes about her family, and in doing so, leads us to embrace the best in ourselves and to appreciate the best in our own children." - Jeffrey Zaslow, coauthor, The Last Lecture

Online excerpts: Fiction and Phobias & Negotiating with a Kitten

Although KJ Hannah Greenberg is currently a fiction writer, essayist, and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, she has played in other sandboxes. She worked for organizations such as The Weizmann Institute of Science and The University of Pittsburgh’s Medical Center, and as a blogger and columnist for venues such as The Jerusalem Post and Type-A Mom. As a rhetoric professor, she received National Endowment for the Humanities monies and National Communication Association honors.

About French Creek Press
French Creek Press offers all traditional publishing services. In addition French Creek Press uses print on demand for the do-it-yourself author and full social media support as the primary marketing drive.

KJ Hannah Greenberg
Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting
Collection of essays
paperback, 144 pages, $18.00 (US)
ISBN 9789655440034

Metrophilias - Brendan Connell (Better Non Sequitur)

Thirty-six cities. Thirty-six stories of obsession. From ancient Thebes to present day Berlin, Brendan Connell's little portraits of humans superimposed on their suburban environment are corroding treats thrown together in a past-modern beaker, landmark tales of darkness and love in the metropolis.

“With delicate minimalism and poignant specificity, Metrophilias demonstrates the human contagions that come with our increasingly urban life.” —Lucius Shepard, author of Life During Wartime

Brendan Connell was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1970. He has had fiction published in numerous places, including McSweeney’s, Adbusters, Fast Ships, Black Sails, and the World Fantasy Award winning anthologies Leviathan 3 (The Ministry of Whimsy, 2002), and Strange Tales (Tartarus Press, 2003). His published books are: The Translation of Father Torturo (Prime Books, 2005), Dr. Black and the Guerrillia (Grafitisk Press, 2005), and Metrophilias (Better Non Sequitur, 2010). His forthcoming books are: Unpleasant Tales (Eibonvale Press, 2010), The Architect (PS Publishing, 2011), and The Metanatural Adventures of Dr. Black (PS Publishing, 2012).

About Better Non Sequitur
Better Non Sequitur publishes independent media of towering quality and is located in San Diego, CA, and is known in intimate circles for its previous editions of See You Next Tuesday, as well as other underground fictions: The Producer, The Famous & The Anonymous, Incidents of Egotourism in the Temporary World, and the short film Rubix Cube Dinner.

Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004 / Joy of Cooking - Tan Lin (Wesleyan)

How do we read a book as an object in a network, in a post-book, post-reading, meta-data environment? Seven Controlled Vocabularies models a generic book, a kind of field guide to the arts, wherein distinctions between various aesthetic disciplines are relaxed or dissolved and where avant-garde notions of difficulty are replaced with more relaxing and ambient formats such as yoga, disco, and meditation. Each of the book’s seven sections is devoted to a particular art form — film, photography, painting, the novel, architecture, music, and theory — and includes both text and found photographs as it explores the idea of what it means to be a book in an era when reading is disappearing into a diverse array of cultural products, media formats, and aesthetic practices. Seven Controlled Vocabularies will be available in a variety of print and electronic book delivery systems and formats.

Interview and excerpts: Bomb Magazine - Tan Lin by Katherine Elaine Sanders

Tan Lin is a writer, artist, and critic. He has published three books of poetry, Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe (1996), BlipSoak01 (2003), and Heath: Plagiarism/Outsource (2007). His visual and video works have been exhibited at the Yale University Art Gallery, the Sophienholm (Copenhagen), and the Marianne Boesky Gallery. He is a professor of English and creative writing at New Jersey City University.

About Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press has an editorial program that focuses on poetry, music/culture, dance and performance, early classics of science fiction, film-TV, American studies, and Connecticut history and culture. The mission of Wesleyan University Press is to develop and maintain a sound and vigorous publishing program that serves the academic ends and intellectual life of the University. Publishing in its current form since 1957, Wesleyan University Press has lived through many transitions while continuing to thrive.

Tan Lin: Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking
foreword by Laura Riding Jackson
224 pp, 100 b/w illus. 6 x 9"
Poetry / Fiction / New Media
$22.95 Paper
ISBN: 978-0-8195-6929-5

Blue Crow - Issue 1

The inaugural issue of Blue Crow offers short stories for the mind and soul, and also for the funny bone. It includes enthralling fictional tales from thirty authors from all around the globe, and 2 interviews (Justin Bridges interviews deceased serial killer Peter Manuel + the late writer, J D Salinger).

A free sampler of Blue Crow #1 is available as [pdf].

Contributing authors: Grace Andreacchi, Lili Pâquet, Janie Dempsey Watts, Joseph M. Gant, John Dodge, Corey Mesler, David Day, Laura Solomon, Sandra Gail Lambert, Michele Freeman, Therese Mobayad, Ricky Ginsburg, Les Zigomanis, Jonathan Elsom, Matt Dennison, Tony Parker, Daniel Trask, Arne Hogan, Linda Visman, Charles Thomas, Trish Honeyfield, Blaise van Hecke, A. S. Patric, Marie-Claude Bourjon, Mark William Jackson, Ann Walters, Belinda Fidler, Kate Simonian, and Jason Gray.

About Blue Crow
Blue Crow Magazine has been created for writers who struggle to get their material published by the mainstream publishers. We like difference, and individuality. Novice writers will also be published if their stories show the necessary merit, we mainly publish short fiction only. Submissions for issue 2 will be called for from August 1, 2010.

The magazine’s all-Australian staff consists of Andrew Scobie, Matthew Ward, and Justin Bridges. All three writers pursue their own interests away from Blue Crow. Matthew also publishes Skive Future, an online journal featuring fiction, poetry and art, and has recently had a book of short stories published by World Audience (New York) titled, ‘John F Kennedy Lives in the Future!’, to go with his other published works. Andrew is currently looking to publish a novel, ‘Johnno’s Hideaway’, after previously mainly concentrating on books of short fiction. Justin remains fixed on developing his interviewing and reviewing career: he has temporarily suspended his interest in interviewing the dead and is currently looking for live souls to embarrass.

Blue Crow #1
240 pages
free sampler pdf of Blue Crow #1 [download]
paperback: $14.95
e-book: $5.00

Published For a Day - Monday, June 7

Today is “Published For a Day” day on Word Riot. The day is based on this call for manuscripts: "Do you have an atrocious novel sitting on your hard drive? Do you have an awesome short story collection you want to expose hard and fast like the town pervert? Well, step right up…"

63 authors followed the call.

The novels and story collections are all up now.
Link: Published For a Day - Monday, June 7

The list with links to downloadable PDFs of novels and book length short story collections is available for one day and one day only: 12 a.m. -11:59 p.m. on Monday, June 7.

Full list of participating authors: Grace Andreacchi, Mila Arz, Alex Bernstein, Summer Block, Paula Bomer, Linda Boroff, Chris Bowen, Jess Bowers, Mary Bowers, Arndt Britschgi, Tobias Carroll, Robert Castle, Feng Sun Chen, Chris Conroy, Jackie Corley, Dawn Corrigan, John Counts, J Francis, Adam Ford, Foust, Bruce Gatenby, Joseph Goosey, Nels Hanson, Nicholas Hayes, Russell Heller, Steve Himmer, John Oliver Hodges, Larry Kovaks, Susan Lago, Dorothee Lang, Chris Lenton, James Lewelling, Anthony Luebbert, C.K. Lowe, Larry Menlove, Drew Minh, John Minichillo, Bryson Newhart, Brian Oliu, bl pawelek, Diane Payne, Anna Reed, Christian Rose Bradley Sands, Shya Scanlon, Bart Schaneman, Pawl Schwartz, Jonathan Shipley, Ron Singer, Tyler Stoddard Smith, Mike Stein, Nick Stokes, J. Ryan Stradal, Joseph Sullivan, Jack Swenson, Matt Thomas, Nathaniel Tower, Joel E. Turner, J. A. Tyler, Pavelle Wesser, H V Whitehead, G.K. Wuori, Thom Young

Some additional links:
- Published For a Day: Guidelines
- google link list "published for a day / word riot"

About Word Riot
Word Riot publishes the forceful voices of up-and-coming writers and poets. Their take: "We like edgy. We like challenging. We like unique voices." Word Riot is published by Jackie Corley, and first opened shop in March 2002 as the literary section of a now defunct on-line music magazine, Communication Breakdown. Each month the magazine provides readers with book reviews, author interviews, and, most importantly, writing from some of the best and brightest making waves on the literary scene.

Daily s-Press: additional search tags

some extra seach tags, for more browsing joy:

flavours:
- nature
- magic realism

covers:
- faces
- black and white

format:
- e-book / pdf (free download)