Ars Electronica festival + The Afghan Women's Writing Project

2 recommended links:

1) ArsElectronica: hybrid art (+much more)

Ars Electronica is an internationally unique platform for digital art and media culture. It’s made up of 4 divisions: an avant-garde festival, a competition that functions as a showcase of excellence, a museum, and a media art lab. In September, the media festival took place in Linz, and this year's competition winners were announced.

Here the direct links to the winning works in the category computer animation: Nuit Blanche - a short film / 'hyper real fantasy', a fleeting moment between 2 strangers by Arev Manoukian (Canada), there also is a making of online. And the winner in the category digital music & sound art: rheo: 5 horizons - an audiovisual installation by Ryoichi Kurokawa (Japan).

a walk through the festival: there's an excellent feature with many embedded videos online in the german newspaper Zeit. most videos are english with subtitles, so just scroll down, ignore the german, and click the videos: ars electronica videos page 1 / page 2 / page 3

more: more direct links to winners of the other categories are up here, and all winners and honorable mentions are listed here: ars electronica 2010 winners.

related books / categories in Daily s-Press
- let a thousand dictionaries bloom - Sean Burn (live art documentary)
- Letters Patterns Structures - Andrew Topel (visual poetry)
- daily bookshelf: experimental

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2) The Afghan Women’s Writing Project

The Afghan Women’s Writing Project is aimed at allowing Afghan women to have a direct voice in the world, not filtered through male relatives or members of the media:

"Many of these Afghan women have to make extreme efforts to gain computer access in order to submit their writings, in English, to the project. Most of our Afghan writers participate in the project partially or entirely in secret from friends and family. The Afghan Women’s Writing Project began as an idea during novelist Masha Hamilton’s last trip to Afghanistan in November 2008."

The project reaches out to talented and generous women author/teachers in the United States and engages them, on a volunteer, rotating basis, to teach Afghan women online from Afghanistan. They use women teachers due to cultural sensitivities in Afghanistan. The writing workshops are taught in three secure online classrooms. To read the stories, visit the homepage with latest essays and information.

related books / categories in Daily s-Press
- A Thousand Sisters - Lisa Shannon (the chronicle of a sponsorship)
- Zahra's Paradise(international graphic web novel)
- daily bookshelf: the world these days

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PS: there also is a personal editor's note on this feature, it can be found here: worlds.

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$

issue 1: telephone

telephone is a new print journal - the name is derived from the children’s game in which phrases change as you whisper them from one person to the next. telephone features four to five poems from one foreign poet in each issue, which are then translated roughly ten times by multiple different poets and translators. There are no rules about how each poem should be translated and we are soliciting a variety of interpretations.

The foreign feature poet of issue 1 is Uljana Wolf, who was born in East Berlin, studied German literature, English, and Cultural Studies, in Berlin and Krakow, and now lives in Berlin and New York. (German wiki page: Uljana Wolf)

Authors of telephone #1 include Mary Jo Bang, Priscilla Becker, Susan Bernofsky, Macgregor Card & Megan Ewing, Isabel Fargo Cole, Timothy Donnelly, Robert Fitterman, John Gallaher, Matthea Harvey, Christian Hawkey, Erín Moure, Eugene Ostashevsky, Nathaniel Otting, Craig, Santos Perez, Ute Schwartz & Uwe Weiß.

A table of contents with selected excerpts is up here: Telephone Contents. It starts with Uljana Wolf's poem in German: "[bad] [bald] [bet~t] [brief]" - and continues with the 'telephone translation' of it by Mary Jo Bang: "best bad bet/t brielfy". Make sure to check out the final excerpt, too: "(z)ed (z)oo (z)ee" by Erìn Moure - such good sound word play, here's a taste:

"..zap a bonspiel of zebras, zigzag in
the saga, zip to the zócalo, in the
ooze or ozone where zen zealotry zooms
home like Jingles to Ed. A toast to
the Ee, okay I agree!.."

Telephone 1
13,95$

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$

Calendar of Regrets - Lance Olsen (FC2)

Calendar of Regrets is a wildly inventive and visually rich collage of twelve interconnected narratives, one for each month of the year, all pertaining to notions of travel—through time, space, narrative, and death.

It is a narrative about narrativity itself, the human obsession with telling ourselves and our worlds over and over again in an attempt to stabilize a truth that, as Nabokov once said, should only exist within quotation marks.

"Lance Olsen misbehaves in all sorts of grave and playful ways. He throws Hieronymus Bosch in the mix with Agamemnon; God in the mix with the devil. Here are postcards, podcasts, and fairy tales; terrorism and angels; aphasia and aneurysym; bludgeonings and vacuous friendships. Calendar of Regrets is a spectacular synthesis, a wild ride through a free mind. I have never read anything like it." — Noy Holland, author of What Begins with Bird

Lance Olsen's short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading. Olsen is an N.E.A. Fellowship and Pushcart Prize recipient, a Fulbright Scholar, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, and Finnish. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; Associate Editor at The American Book Review; and Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. Published escerpts of the Calendar of Regrets are online at: Perigree + ServingHouse + Brooklyn Rail.

FC2: Fiction Collective Two
Fiction Collective Two is an author-run, not-for-profit publisher of artistically adventurous, non-traditional fiction. FC2 is supported in part by the University of Utah, the University of Houston - Victoria, the University of Alabama Press, and private contributors.

Lance Olsen: Calendar of Regrets
a collage of 12 interconnected narratives
456 pages, $22.00
ISBN 978-1-57366-157-7

The politics of fiction + Reading and Race

3 recommended links:
1) TEDTalk video podcast: "The politics of fiction" by Eli Shafak
2) The Millions ethnicity essay by Edan Lepucki
3) Best of Web 2010 article in the Chicago Tribune


1) TEDTalks video podcast: Elif Shafak on the politics of fiction
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Elif Shafak was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1971. She is an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. From the podcast:
"We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about other clusters of people. In my opinion, one way of transcending these cultural ghettos is through the art of storytelling. Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls. And through those holes, we can get a glimpse of the other, and sometimes even like what we see."

Just as her books, her speech receives biased comments, from "Stunningly and gently radical :)" to "Slow down, woman." A transcript of Elif Shafak' speech is online at bakikuleyi.livejournal: Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction

related books / categories in Daily s-Press
- International Short Fiction (World Literature Today)
- Zahra's Paradise(international graphic web novel)
- daily bookshelf: international
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2) The Millions ethnicity essay: Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction
The Millions is an online magazine offering coverage on books, arts, and culture since 2003. Recently, Edan Lepucki reflects on the books she read about African-Americans, and on fiction / non-fiction books about ethnicity:
"Reading narrative requires empathy. The character’s perspective becomes your own, and through this relationship you begin to feel as another person would. As I read Roots, I felt what Kunta Kinte felt, saw what he saw, and by becoming him, I understood intimately the horrors of slavery. It’s why nonfiction slave narratives, like those of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass, were so important to the abolitionist movement, and why fictional slave narratives persist today.
But stories also require complicity: the reader participates in the action of the story simply by imagining and interpreting it. As Zadie Smith points out in this short interview: "Fiction is like a hypothetical area in which to act. That’s what Aristotle thought—that fictional narrative was a place to imagine what you would do in this, that, or the other situation. I believe that, and it’s what I love most about fiction."
related books / categories in Daily s-Press
- Had Slaves by Catherine Sasanov
- How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique
- daily bookshelf: gender + race
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3) Chicago Tribune article: "Best of the Web 2010" edited by Kathy Fish and Matt Bell
From the book section of the Chicago Tribune:
"Reading, poetry and prose written for the Web calls for a different kind of writing than one might find on the printed page and this annual volume is a terrific reminder of great possibilities and experiments in style and form." - Elizabeth Taylor, Literary Editor Chicago Tribune


related books / categories in Daily s-Press
- Best of the Web 2010 (Dzanc, edited by K. Fish + M. Bell)
- daily bookshelf: indie + small prize winners / best of anthologies

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

author talk: Daniela Elza + Arlene Ang

ABOUT THE AUTHORS + THE TALK

Daniela Elza is a free-range poet, and a non-medicated scholar of the poetic consciousness. She has rel.eased more than a 140 organic poems into the wor(l)d in over 42 publications. Her inte.rests lie in the gaps, rubs, and b.ridges between poetry, language, and philosophy. She is currently compiling her second manuscript and collaborating with fellow poets. Daniela is the recipient of this year's Pandora's Collective Citizenship Award. She lives with her family in Vancouver and spo.radically blogs at Strange Places.

Arlene Ang is the author of The Desecration of Doves (2005), Secret Love Poems (Rubicon Press, 2007), and a collaborative book with Valerie Fox, Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press, 2008). Her third full-length collection, Seeing Birds in Church is a Kind of Adieu was published by Cinnamon Press in 2010. Her poems have appeared in Ambit, Caketrain, Diagram, Poetry Ireland, Poet Lore, Rattle, Salt Hill as well as the Best of the Web anthologies 2008 and 2009 (Dzanc Books). She lives in Spinea, Italy where she serves as staff editor for The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1. Website: arlene ang, Blog: event museum

This author talk took place in the virtual daily café in September.



Arlene: To begin at the beginning, how did you get started with poetry? How did this influence your writing?

Daniela: I have written poems for as long as I can remember. In the beginning, mostly for fun, for friends and family, for different occasions. Recently, my parents read me over the phone a poem I wrote for their anniversary. I was touched. They have kept it for close to three decades. There was something very rewarding and magical to express in words (words available to every one), something that touches another. Something I could give as a gift. It is empowering, especially for a child, this kind of giving. To create something real with your words. I am still under that spell. After two Masters degrees and an almost PhD I have not changed my mind about the power and magic of poetic language.

And for you, Arlene? Why poetry?
Arlene: What fascinates me about poetry is how it involves the reader and allows different interpretations depending on who's reading it. It's like Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and people would stand there saying: "That's a man. Trust me." "Don't like her. Bet she poisoned puppies and children." "Look at her hands. That's chronic arthritis for you." I find it quite fascinating. Fiction, on the other hand, requires less creativity on the reader's part. I also like to think that poetry has a higher alcohol content than prose since it's a distillation of experience or thought. It's no incident that alcohol travels faster in the blood stream and gives a nice rush to the system.

Daniela: Freedom in interpretation that poetry offers is important. Perhaps the kind of freedom that one experiences in reverie. Isn’t that how we come to own a poem? Although we do not tend to teach it this way. There is a tendency to put a straitjacket on it. Interesting you liken it to alcohol. Robert Bringhurst (2007) says: "Poetry, like alcohol and sex, is subject to rules and invested with ritual because of the threat it represents."

>> click to read the whole dialogue:
>> author talk: Daniela Elza + Arlene Ang
>> on poetry, collaboration, plus the birds, the beasts and ...

Aquarium - Ryan Bradley (Thunderclap)

In his new chapbook Aquarium, Ryan W. Bradley twists together his years of academia with words you just can't learn from a book. In his own words, the poems included in this chapbook are "outcasts of persona, confessional conventions and bastards of tradition."

You can read more about Aquarium and Ryan Bradley in a recent author talk at OWC with Mel Bosworth. Themes range from writing in general to Aquarium and related projects. The interview inlcudes a story on life choice: "I try not to get too longwinded here, but I think the best way to answer such a question is to start with the story of what my stepfather told me..." - interview link

Ryan W. Bradley has fronted a punk band, done construction in the Arctic Circle, and managed a children's bookstore. He is the author of a novel, Code for Failure (Black Coffee Press, 2012), and the editor of Artistically Declined Press. He received his MFA from Pacific University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a myriad of publications including The Oregonian, Oranges & Sardines, Sir! Magazine, and PANK. He lives in Oregon with his wife and two sons.

About Thunderclap
Thunderclap's goal is to always make people feel something sublime in as few words as possible. They also publish Thunderclap Magazine.

Ryan W. Bradley: Aquarium
Paperback, 26 pages, $7.00
order link (lulu)

International Short Fiction Issue (WLT)

The September 2010 issue of WLT (World Literature Today) includes a first-ever marquee section devoted to International Short Fiction, introduced by guest editor Alan Cheuse. Several pages are available online (names are linked).

Authors contributing short stories include Ana Menéndez (Cuba/US), Raija Siekkinen (Finland), Nicole Lee (Malaysia), Andrei Cornea (Romania), Fatou Diome (Senegal/France), Cyrille Fleischman (France), Simon Fruelund (Denmark), Benjamin Percy (US), Amanda Michalopoulou (Greece), Alix Ohlin (Canada), and Ru Freeman (Sri Lanka), with original artwork by Edel Rodriguez on the cover and Danica Novgorodoff inside.

Highlights include: an excerpt from Vietnamese American author Andrew Lam’s forthcoming essay collection, East Eats West, new poetry by Tedi López Mills (Mexico), Jyrki Heikkinen (Finland), and Roger Sedarat (Iran/US), plus interviews with Israeli author Eshkol Nevo and Dutch crime writer Charles den Tex.

Alan Cheuse is best known for his frequent book reviews on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. As part of the International Short Fiction issue, his essay "The Form Read Round the World: American Short Fiction and World Story" is online at WLT, author profile included.

About World Literature Today
World Literature Today was founded as Books Abroad in 1927 by Roy Temple House, a scholar of vision from the University of Oklahoma. From a modest seedling of 32 pages in January 1927, Books Abroad grew to 256 pages by the end of its fiftieth year (Autumn 1976). In January 1977 the journal became known as World Literature Today, reflecting the truly international range that its coverage and reputation had acquired. Now in the 84th year of uninterrupted publication, WLT is the second-oldest such literary periodical in the United States, and remains devoted to their mission of serving students, scholars, and general readers worldwide.

International Short Fiction issue (WLT)
online excerpts (click title row)
several print / online subscription options available

related links: short stories, bilingual authors

A Thousand Sisters - Lisa Shannon (Seal Press)

A Thousand Sisters is the story of how a single moment can change a life – and the lives of others. How a life’s mission can come to you, not in contemplation, but sprawled out on the couch, watching TV:

"I had a great life—a successful business, a fiancé, a home, and security. But in the wake of my Dad’s death, and soon-to-be thirty years old, I found myself depressed, camped out in my living room watching Oprah. It was there that I learned about Congo, widely called the worst place on earth to be a woman. Awakened to the atrocities –millions dead, women being raped and tortured, children starving and dying in shocking numbers –I had to do something. A Thousand Sisters chronicles how I raised sponsorships for Congolese women, beginning with a solo 30-mile run, and then founded Run for Congo Women..." - Lisa Shannon

Lisa Shannon recently spoke about Congo and her book with ABC World News, you can watch the interview online here.

Lisa Shannon presently serves as an ambassador for Women for Women International. She previously owned a photography production company, where she served as art director and producer. She lives in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. A Thousand Sisters is her first book.

About Seal Press
Inspired by the simple yet radical notion that a book can change a woman’s life, Seal Press is devoted to publishing titles that inform, reveal, engage, delight, and support women of all ages and backgrounds. Seal Press was founded in 1976 as a small DIY publisher to provide a forum for women writers and feminist issues, and since then, Seal has published groundbreaking books that represent the diverse voices and interests of women. "From cultural revelation to pop culture, our books are smart and fun, insightful and hilarious."

Lisa Shannon: A Thousand Sisters
non-fiction, 336 pages
ISBN: 1580052967

related links: the world these days, gender + race + age, non-fiction

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