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This September Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference will expand its workshop from the historic Bread Loaf Inn in Middlebury, Vermont, to the Italian island of Sicily, with a condensed program of classes in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Ice Cube Press, the nineteen-year-old publisher based in Iowa City with a focus on the importance of place.
P&W-SPONSORED WRITER & PRESENTER: Collin Kelley
For the next few weeks, poet Collin Kelley, author of After the Poison, Slow to Burn, and Better to Travel, and curator of both the Poetry Atlanta reading series and the Georgia Center for the Book reading series will be blogging about his experience as a longtime R/W-sponsored writer and presenter of literary events.
In February 2005, I wrote my first grant approved by Poets & Writers, Inc., when it expanded its Readings/Workshops program to the Atlanta area. The recipient of that grant, Cherryl Floyd-Miller, hadn’t asked for any money, but deserved it for her many years of selfless and uncompensated work as a writer in the city. We had a standing-room-only audience that night at the Barnes & Noble on the Georgia Tech campus, and I was thrilled to be able to put a check in Cherryl’s hand.
Asking a writer to pay airfare, hotel (or sleep on an uncomfortable sofa), and other expenses with no compensation other than the “glory” and “honor” of being asked to read becomes more and more abhorrent to me the longer I’m in the business of words. Even if the writer is just coming from across town, they are giving up their time, paying $3-plus for gas and providing experiences for audiences.
Whether the poet is coming from Boston or Los Angeles (such was the case with January Gill O’Neil and Steven Reigns, respectively) or just around the corner (the newly-crowned Women of the World Poetry Slam champion Theresa Davis or local favorite Karen Head), my belief is that they all deserve to be paid.
Let’s face it: Unless some book-loving heiress has died and bequeathed her fortune, most literary organizations are struggling. And not just because of the recent economic downturn, but since time began. It’s not that people don’t value literature; it’s just often taken for granted as always being there. Writers are usually left in the gray area of trying to balance doing what they love and keeping the lights on in their dens.
Support for Readings/Workshops events in Atlanta is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
The Iowa Writers' Workshop, the nation's oldest postgraduate writing program, is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary this year. Jeffrey Brown delivered this recent report on PBS NewsHour.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation named yesterday the winners of its 2011 fellowships for writers in the United States and Canada. The writers receiving awards, which last year averaged $36,867, are most in the middle stages of their careers, with two or more books published. Award amounts vary based on a writers' individual budget requests.
The fellows are, in poetry:
Peter Campion
Claudia Emerson
Paul Guest
Kimberly Johnson
Eleanor Lerman
Maurice Manning
Bill Porter (translation)
D. A. Powell
A. E. Stallings
Matthew Zapruder
Cynthia Zarin
In fiction:
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Jonathan Dee
Christie Hodgen
Clancy Martin
Valerie Martin
Karen
Russell
David Vann
Lara Vapnyar
Brad Watson
In creative nonfiction:
Eula Biss
Mary Cappello
John D’Agata
Rosemary Mahoney
Katherine Russell Rich
Patricia Volk
In the video below, fiction fellow Lara Vapnyar, who emigrated from Moscow in the early nineties, describes her experience as a writer in America.
The Washington State–based literary journal Bellingham Review is offering an extension for submissions to its poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction contests.
Having received fewer submissions than they have in the past, the journal opted to accept entries until April 15.
Judging this year's entries will be poet Lia Purpura, author of King Baby (Alice James Books, 2009); fiction writer Adrianne Harun, author of the story collection The King of Limbo (Mariner Books, 2002); and creative nonfiction writer Ira Sukrungruang, author of Talk Thai: The Adventures of a Buddhist Boy (University of Missouri Press, 2010).
Last year's winners were Jennifer Perrine for her poem "When the Dazzle Isn't Gradual," Jacob Appel for his story "Bait and Switch," and Angela Tung for her essay "An Old Man on the Frontier Loses His Horse," selected by Allison Joseph, Jess Walter, and Rebecca McClanahan, respectively.
Complete guidelines for entry and samples of work published in the journal are available on the Bellingham Review Web site.
Zone 3 Press, housed at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, is accepting entries for a new book competition "open to anyone who can carve an artful exposition, drive a factual narrative, or strum a lyric sentence." One creative nonfiction manuscript will be selected for publication by the press, and the winning writer will receive one thousand dollars.
The judge is Baltimore poet and essayist Lia Purpura, author of the prose collections Increase (University of Georgia Press, 2000), On Looking (Sarabande Books, 2006), and Rough Likeness, which is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in 2012. Her poetry collections include The Brighter the Veil (Orchises Press, 1996) and King Baby (Alice James Books, 2008).
Eligible manuscripts should be 150 to 300 pages, and writers are encouraged to submit works that "embrace creative nonfiction’s potential by combining lyric exposition, researched reflection, travel dialogues, or creative criticism." The entry deadline is May 1. Complete deadlines can be found on the press's Web site.
In the video below, Purpura, whose prose works have been referred to as "lyric essays," reads from her latest collection of poetry.
On April 15 Little, Brown will publish The Pale King, David Foster Wallace's final, unfinished novel. In this BBC documentary, Geoff Ward discusses the life and works of the author who committed suicide in 2008, at the age of forty-six. Ward also talks to Wallace's editor, Michael Pietsch, about the difficult task of assembling Wallace's final fragments into The Pale King.
Linda Gray Sexton's memoir Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton, originally published in 1994 by Little, Brown, was just rereleased in paperback by Counterpoint Press. Anne Sexton herself wrote a play titled Mercy Street, and a posthumous book of poetry, 45 Mercy Street, was published in 1976, two years after she committed suicide. In 1986, Peter Gabriel released his fifth album, So, which includes the song "Mercy Street," dedicated to the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.
This short film by Tucker Capps, featuring music by Goldmund, is inspired by "First," an essay from Ryan Van Meter's debut collection, If You Knew Then What I Know Now, to be published next month by Sarabande Books.
