Indie Author Networks + Indie TV + 3 extra book clips

There are several websites that offer listings and services for independent authors who are self published or published by a small indie press and who actively promote their books - one of them is the Independent Author Network (IAN), a community of like-minded authors, with 750 authors who joined. Similar in idea is the Independent Author Index, with about 200 authors who joined. Both sites require set-up fees for joining authors (around 20-25$), but also offer extra services.

Indie Authors TV
The Independent Author Index now launched a special website that is dedicated to book video clips: Indie Author TV, and in a starting promotion, invited authors of recently published books to send their book video and a brief description. They are now featuring the clips, in a colorful and vivid mix of all genres. Watch and visit here: Indie Authors TV

3 Extra Book Clips
And some extra book clips, from Vimeo + Youtube:
- Birth of a Book: a book being created + printed
- The Bibilo-Mat: a random book dispenser
- The Joy of Books: in a bookshop at night..

Litro Lab - A Podcast on Literature

A London-based magazin with a focus on short fiction, that is Litro: "We find new ways of looking at the world through stories, seeking out the compelling and the controversial, the funny and the fantastic, the sad and the strange." 

Recently, Litro ventured into podcasting. Starting with a simple call for submissions from readers and writers in the form of a MP3 reading of a story, they developed Litro Lab: a literary podcast in episodes "with interviews and readings from guest authors... each episode will take on a life of its own as we explore the audio possibilities of short stories, poetry, readings and interviews."

The Litro Lab is hosted by Emily Cleaver, the co-editor of the Litro website, here's her bio: Cleaver is passionate about short stories and writes, reads and reviews them. As a former manager of one of London’s oldest second-hand bookshops, she also blogs about old and obscure books. You can read her tiny true dramas about working in a secondhand bookshop at smallplays.com and see more of her writing at emilycleaver.net.

Recent Litro Lab episodes include:

• Flash Fiction Special with Tania Hershman, Vanessa Gebbie, David Gaffnes, Calum Kerr (and Kafka)
• Chinese storyteller Fong Liu
• Sin City: Weimar Berlin

9 Film Festival Links: Oscars, Berlinale, Sundance, Independent Spirit..

It's the season of film awards again - the countdown to the Oscar Awards has started, and in Berlin, the international film festival opened its doors, with more than 400 films. 

All of the festivals have extensive websites, plus there are additional features and trailer pages. So even when you aren't there, you can visit virtually:

Film Festival Websites: 

• Oscars Nominations 2013 + Oscar Blogs
• Berlinale International Film Festival 2013
• Sundance Film Festival 2013
• Independent Spirit Awards 2013

.
Film Trailers Online:

• Oscar Trailer page (for all who live outside the US)
• Spirit Awards trailer page
• Berlinale: films in prize competition

.
Berlin / Berlinale / & the Language of Hollywood 

• As the Berlinale is happening right now, an extra link for it:
  Moments from Berlin + Berlinale film festival, with 12 film festival links + more 
• And an extra link - for all who are into films & storytelling, there is a first film online class at Coursera: a free 5-week course, 22 video lectures altogether, with a range of film examples that starts in 1928 and leads to 2002: The Language of Hollywood: Storytelling, Sound, and Color  

The Last Vispo

The Last Vispo Anthology is the first major anthology of visual poetry in decades. Edited by Crag Hill and Nico Vassilakis, the complete manuscript is 336 pages in length with poems, many produced in color, interspersed with essays from poets, critics, and scholars of visual poetry.

With its global scope of 148 contributors from 23 countries, The Last Vispo Anthology has three purposes: to document the recent upsurge in visual poetry, to make visual poetry available to a wider audience, and to be used as a pedagogical tool in poetry and art curriculum at the secondary and post-secondary level - and to extend the dialectic between art and literature that began with the concrete poetry movement fifty years ago.

Vispo Links
For more about the project, visit the website: www.thelastvispo.com, which also includes the list of contributors and their bios online at Vispo / Bios, and an interesting list of Visual Poetry Blogs/Websites

There also is a 35-page preview online underneath the order info and the quotes, the preview includes the introduction of the editors Crag Hill and Nico Vassilakis:  The Last Vispo / preview.

Literary courses online now: Fantasy & Science Fiction + Philosophy + The Language of Hollywood

Literary courses online: Earlier this year, the online eduction platform Coursera launched. In partnership with several US universities, Coursera offers free online courses in the fields of Computer Science, Medicine, Biology, Finance and Information, but also in Humanities and Social Science. The current course program also includes a literary course & a philosophic course, and a course on storytelling and the language of Hollywood:

**

Starting Now: "Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World"
This week, Professor Eric Rabkin will start to his course on fantasy and science fiction again. Here's the short summary: "We understand the world — and our selves — through stories. Then some of those hopes and fears become the world. This course will explore Fantasy in general and Science Fiction in specific both as art and as insights into ourselves and our world."

For those who are into sci-fi, this is a great opportunity to read one of the classics and parallel to that, watch the lectures. The course runs for 10 weeks, and in each week, another author is featured in several video lectures. Novels/authors discussed include: Caroll's "Adventures in Wonderland", Bram Stoker's "Dracula", Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", Hawthorne & Poe, Wells, Bradbury, Le Guin and Doctorow. 
Here's more: Fantasy & SciFi course info

The 2013 Sci-Fi Experience
And here an extra-link for sci-fi fans: all through 2013, readers of sci-fi books (or watcher of sci-fi films) are invited to share and discuss their current reads at the "2013 Sci-Fi Expericence" which is hosted by Carl Anderson at his blog: "And so I officially welcome you to The 2013 Science Fiction Experience, which runs from January 1st, 2013 through February 28th, 2013. The “rules” of the experience are simple: there are none. Remember, this isn’t a challenge. If you would like to join us in discussing any science fiction reading or television viewing or movie watching you do over the time period, please do."

**

Starting Monday 28th: Introduction to Philosophy 
On Monday, 28th January, the 7-week course "Introduction to Philosophy" will start: "This course will introduce you to some of the most important areas of research in contemporary philosophy. Each week a different philosopher will talk you through some of the most important questions and issues in their area of expertise." For more, visit the philosophy course info page and watch the intro video.

**

Starting February 4th: The Language of Hollywood: Storytelling, Sound, and Color 
This Film History course explores how fundamental changes in film technology affected popular Hollywood storytelling. We will consider the transition to sound, and the introduction of color. .. Our aim is to illuminate popular cinema as the intersection of business, technology, and art. Through film history, we will learn about the craft of filmmaking and how tools shape art." - course info

February is National Novel Reading Month - join #NaNoReMo with a classic novel

How about reading a classic novel in February? John from the Bathroom Monologues and fellow bloggers are initiating a National Novel Reading Month:

"It’s a simple idea. We’ve all got at least one classic book we think we ought to read and have put off too long.

Check your shelf. Check your conscience. Isn’t there something long removed from the Bestseller’s List you think you ought to read? Be it for craft, for history, or some gap in your personal English canon. #NaNoReMo is about catching up with the classics.

It begins on February 1st. We’ll be on the honor system; nobody cheat and start reading now. In advance you’re welcome to hop onto blogs and Twitter to chat about your potential choices. Our hashtag is #NaNoReMo. Then join us throughout February as we discuss our progress through our chosen classics. If it works the cross-pollination of encouragement will increase our reading lists as well as encourage us to finish reading great works."

for guidelines and a list of participating blogs, visit:
#NaNoReMo Megapost

and here's more about it: 
introduction blog post: #NaNoReMo: National Novel Reading Month
twitter: #NaNoReMo

*

The classic image above? That's as classic as books get: it's from the King's Library in the British Library in London.

Anonymous Drawings 2013 - Call for Entries

Anonymous Drawings was founded 2006 by the artist Anke Becker in Berlin, Germany. Since then, more than 5000 artists from all over the world have taken part in the project. More than 10 shows of Anonymous Drawings took place in Berlin and abroad up until today.

New exhibition upcoming in March
The next exhibition of Anonymus Drawings will take place in March 2013 in Berlin at the Uferhallen. Like all previous exhibitions, it is preceded by an international call for participation. 800 selected drawings of international artists will be presented anonymously in the exhibition. Everybody can take part: old and young, professional artists or laymen. Deadline for submissions: 31. January 2013 
 
The concept
The age, biography or gender of the participants will not be requested and do not play any role in the selection: selection will be made without looking at the names. What counts is the art itself and not the biography! All the drawings are available for a symbolic unit sales-price of 150 Euros each – no matter if they come from established artists or from unknown laymen. For each drawing sold, the artists receive 100 Euros – the rest will be used for the partial financing of the project.

Further information:

• Webseite: Anonymous Drawings
• Registration: Call for Entries
• Deadline for submissions is 31. January 2013

"tree" - Leaf Press 2013 co-op poem

Since 2009, the editors of Leaf Press organize a collaborate winter poem for the start of the year, collecting couplets from different poets, to publish as co-op poem on the first Monday of the new year.

The theme for 2013 was: "Trees" - now the poem is online: Leafpress co-op poem 2013: tree

It's composed of lines by 37 poets, here the first 4 lines from 4 contributors:

"the sea, the raft, the harbour and the shore

home of hope

lungs of the earth

a ballet, osmosis, umbilicus, nursling: bless..."

Beneath the poem is a version with poet names included. No one knew what the others wrote, the brief guidelines were: "An entry consists of one line or one couplet. Each line approximately 12 syllables."

The co-op series
And  here, for the joy of poetic cooperation, the previous poems:
2012 - Lines Drawn from Greening Winds
2011 - The Change in Winter Light
2010 - Cold
2009 - Snow

About Leaf Press
Leaf Press is an independent press located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Ursula Vaira founded Leaf in 2001 as a poetry chapbook publisher. Since 2007 Leaf has been publishing trade poetry while continuing the chapbook tradition and the weekly on-line Monday's Poem.

Blue Fifth Review: the blue collection 3: collaboration

For the Blue Fifth Review's "blue collection 3: collaboration", ten writers respond in poem and flash to five art pieces selected from Blue Fifth Reviews’s 2011 issues. The connections between the art, poetry, flash, and commentaries are a true testament to the possibilities of the creative process.

Featured authors and artists: Christopher Allen, Jenny Baker, Ann Bogle, Sheldon Lee Compton, Cheryl Dodds, Rupert Fike, Jane Hammons, Lynne Knight, Dorothee Lang, Sara Lippmann, Leslie Marcus, Felicia Mitchell, Rebecca Seiferle, Christopher Woods, and Bill Yarrow.

About Blue Fifth Review
The name of this online journal, Blue Fifth Review, has its origins in jazz: the mysterious third blue note, the blue fifth. Sam Rasnake began Blue Fifth Review in the winter of 2001, and from then until 2010 BFR appeared twice yearly in journal format, adding a themed supplement issue every other year. A quarterly Broadside series was added in 2006. In 2011, Michelle Elvy joined as an editor and BFR moved its online site to WordPress, launching the Blue Five Notebook Series. The format and number of issues broadened to include flash, while limiting the selections to five written works and a single piece of art per issue.

Recent issues include the Poetry Special – (December 2012) and the Fall Quarterly with the theme "Ekphrastic / Music" (November 2012)

magazine link: Blue Fifth Review

Top 5 posts of this blog in 2012

The end of the year is always a fascinating time to browse blog statistics, reflect on the posts, and see which were visited most often. For 2012, the most popular posts of this blog reach from a Women's Blog Carnival to Modern Poetry, and from How-to-posts to the list of current calls:

March On, Women
In honour of International Women’s Month, editor & writer Michelle Elvy created a mini-blog fest featuring women around the world...

How to create a book cover for print-on-demand services like CreateSpace 
Here are some notes on creating a book cover for print-on-demand services like Lulu or CreateSpace - back in August, YB-editor Rose Hunter and i mailed back and forth about her "Foal" cover. The mail dialogue includes the steps from first layout to final proof...

Current Calls
A list of current theme calls, weekly photo challenges, reading challenges, literary web events etc.

Literary courses online: Modern & Contemporary American Poetry + Fantasy & Science Fiction
The literary course "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (ModPo)" by Al Filreis is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, from Dickinson and Whitman to the present...

top 50 book blogs, 65 literary tumblrs & 5 lit blog streams
There’s an abundance of book blogs out there, with a wide range of themes: from current prize winners to crime and science fiction, and from books in translations to historic books to newcomers. But how to find all those blogs? Here are some links...

Solstice Reflections - an online gathering

Solstice Reflections is an online gathering of reflections by seven women on the spirit of winter and the migration from darkness to light, collected by Stephanie in her blog Creative Living Experiment in the hope that these reflections may offer a momentary respite from a sometimes hectic season, allowing you to sit with your own reflections as you enter your personal winter.

The Solstice Reflections include photography, art, poetry, a solstice podcast, and other contributions by Pixie Campbell, Liz Coleman, Juliette Crane, Jo-Anne Guimond, Rebecca Klier, Jen Lee and Kelly Letky.

Stephanie writes: "I've always liked images of winter. They soothe me, calling me to slow down and take stock. It's why I've chosen to highlight the official arrival of winter in the past and why I choose to highlight it again here, now, with the help of other kindred spirits.

During the next three weeks leading up to December 22nd I will offer guest posts from seven lovely women to help welcome winter, its rituals and its transformations - each woman interpreting the subject through the medium of her choice.

I am warmed and humbled by the contributions I've seen, by the pieces of themselves these women have chosen to share with me and with you."

All posts to date:  Solstice Reflections

(this is a re-post from 2011)

Writer's Houses - field guide & database

Writers’ Houses is an online publication dedicated to the exploring of writers’ spaces and art of literary pilgrimage. The website link is: Writer's Houses

The website was founded in July 2010 by writer A. N. Devers, she explains that the site was inspired by "a growing obsession, since childhood, with books, travel, and making connections between a writer’s work and place. It also came from a realization that there wasn’t a comprehensive resource online, or in print, that helped literary pilgrims find their way."

The Writers’ Houses database is designed to be a field guide to deceased writers’ homes, searchable by author, state, city, and country. The site features more than 130 writer's houses.

Suggest a Writer's House
The plan of Writers’ Houses is to document all writers’ houses open to the public in the world. The site notes: "This is no small task and can’t be done overnight or without help. There are apparently 290 writers’ houses in France alone. For that reason, the website is looking for experienced writers and editors to contribute to the blog and field guide. If you are interested, please feel free to get in touch, but please note that Writers’ Houses, being a labor of love, cannot offer compensation beyond the pleasure of having your work in its virtual pages."

Link: Writer's Houses

(with thanks to poet Marcia Arrieta for sharing the link)
.