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Take a draft of one of your stories and cut it up into sections no longer than three to four paragraphs each. Reorder these sections and revise the story accordingly, writing transitions and discovering connections that lead to a new cohesive structure.
The third installment of Akashic's Drug Chronicles series, The Heroin Chronicles, edited by Jerry Stahl, includes stories by Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch, Nathan Larson, Ava Stander, and many others. In this video from Open Road Media, Stahl talks about William Burroughs, the difference between an alcoholic and a junkie, and how he selected the pieces for the anthology.
The Northern Colorado Writers (NCW) short fiction contest, which offers a grand prize of one thousand dollars and publication in the NCW anthology, is given annually for a short story. The deadline is March 31.
Fiction writers may submit a story of up to five thousand words, along with a twenty-dollar entry fee, via e-mail. Writers need not be NCW members or Colorado residents to enter.
Novelist and short story writer Alyson Hagy, whose most recent novel, Boleto, was published by Graywolf last year, will judge. A second-place prize of two hundred and fifty dollars and a third-place prize of one hundred dollars are also given. Winners, honorable mentions, and editor’s picks will be published in Pooled Ink, NCW’s annual anthology, which this year will be released in December.
Established in 2006 by freelance writer Kerrie Flanagan, the Fort Collins–based Northern Colorado Writers was founded in order to “encourage and support writers of all levels and genres.” The organization hosts an annual writers conference—including workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, as well as round-tables with editors and agents—which will be held on April 26 and 27 at the Fort Collins Hilton. NCW also sponsors a creative nonfiction contest (which accepts submissions from April 1 through June 30) and a poetry contest (which accepts submissions from July 1 through September 30).
Visit the NCW website for complete contest guidelines.
The author (and, yes, son of Stephen King) talks about the process of writing his first novel, Double Feature (Scribner, 2013), about a young man coming to terms with his life in the process and aftermath of making his first film. King's first book, We’re All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, was published by Bloomsbury in 2005.
Last week, during a ceremony at the British Library in London, the Folio Society announced the launch of a new literature prize worth forty thousand pounds, or roughly sixty thousand dollars.
The Folio Prize will be given annually for books of literary fiction, regardless of form or genre, written in English by an author from any country and published in the United Kingdom during the previous calendar year. The inaugural prize will be awarded in 2014.
Led by prize cofounder Andrew Kidd, a literary agent and former publisher of Picador/Macmillan, the advisory committee gathered over a hundred authors, editors, and critics from around the world to form the Folio Academy, from which a panel of five judges will be selected each year. The Folio Society—a London–based publisher that reissues classic works of literature in illustrated special editions—was announced as the prize’s sponsor earlier this year.
Academy members include Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee; Booker Prize recipients Margaret Atwood, Peter Carey, Ian McEwan, Michael Ondaatje, and Salman Rushdie; critics Geoff Dyer and Elif Batuman; Granta editor John Freeman, n+1 editor Keith Gessen, and New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman; American authors Michael Chabon, Michael Cunningham, Bret Easton Ellis, Junot Díaz, Ben Lerner, Richard Powers, Alice Sebold, and Maria Semple; and international writers Nam Le, China Mieville, David Mitchell, Philip Pullman, Zadie Smith, Miguel Syjuco, Colm Toibin, and Jeanette Winterson.
The panel of judges will consider eighty books each year for the prize. The Academy will nominate sixty titles (each member is encouraged to nominate up to three titles per year); publishers will also be invited to nominate titles, from which twenty additional finalists will be chosen. The panel will select a shortlist of eight books, and the final winner will be announced in the spring. The judges for the first Folio Prize will be announced this summer, and the inaugural winner will be announced in March 2014.
To watch a video from the launch and for more information, visit the Folio Prize website.
The acclaimed Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe died earlier today at the age of eighty-two. A statement released on behalf of his family described the author as one of the great literary voices of his time, whose wisdom was an inspiration to all who knew him. The Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan said Professor Achebe would live forever in the hearts and minds of present and future generations. BBC’s Bilkisu discusses his legacy with Stephen Sackur.
From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus to Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, there is a long tradition of fiction about monsters. Write a story of your own in which a monster is the main character. The monster could be based on another monster from literature or popular culture or it could be one from your imagination.
Torrene Boone talks with the Nobel Prize winner whose latest novel, Home, was published last year by Knopf (the paperback was published by Vintage International in January), at the New York City offices of Google.
Award-winning novelist, essayist, lyricist, and screenwriter Nick Hornby visits Columbia University’s Heyman Center to talk with poet and Barnard professor Saskia Hamilton.
Recently, Poets & Writers awarded one poet and one fiction writer with a trip to New York to meet with editors, agents, and other literary professionals as part of the California Writers Exchange contest. The winning fiction writer, Laura Joyce Davis of Oakland, blogs about her experience from NYC. (Stay tuned for another post from poet Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo as well!)
I am living a writer’s dream.
We’ve only been in New York for a few days, but we’ve packed in weeks of writerly wisdom, months of ideas to contemplate. The agents, editors, and writers Xochitl and I have met have been generous, thoughtful, and helpful. Writers, there is hope as long as these good people are here!
On Monday we met with Deborah Garrison, an editor at both Pantheon and Knopf. She told us about her fifteen years at the New Yorker, where she personally read through the “slush pile” of submissions and always hoped to find a voice unlike any other. It’s the same perspective she brings to her work now, whether reading poetry, fiction, or non-fiction. She said that the most important thing for a writer is to be true to oneself, to write what you must—not the story you think will be marketable. She said that the best writers appreciate editing that makes them better, and that they know how to recognize good advice without getting defensive. This is the reason I’m not interested in self-publishing: I want to learn from someone like Garrison, to become a better writer because of the perspective she can show me. Julia Glass calls Garrison an “incredible editor,” and now I understand why.
When I met Tea Obreht (author of The Tiger’s Wife) last week at the AWP writer’s conference, she told me that her agent Seth Fishman was amazing—not just a great agent who works hard, but also a really nice guy. She was right. I met Fishman on Monday, and he immediately put me at ease, but also gave great advice. Keep publishing in literary journals, he said, because the people reading those journals are the same people who are going to buy your book. He also emphasized that authors should do everything they can to get the entire publishing staff excited about their books; editors sometimes move to other jobs, but your book will be okay if you have a team of people rooting for it. Fishman is a relatively young agent, but he’s made an impressive start to his career in a short time.
On Tuesday I met with Gail Hochman (agent for Michael Cunningham and Julia Glass). “I’ve been doing this for a hundred years,” she said. Looking at the towers of papers in her office and hearing about clients who have called her while she was in the airport or the maternity ward, I don’t doubt that she’s packed a hundred years of work into the thirty-plus years she’s been doing this. She talked about the challenges of selling books, about how a story and its characters have to grab the reader in the first few pages or it won’t sell. When I asked her what she wished every young writer knew, she said to remember that everyone reading your book (even your agent) is a real person; they have a full life beyond their work with you, so cut them some slack.
It’s been a true gift to meet with people like Garrison, Fishman, and Hochman. I hope I get to the opportunity to work with some of them. But even if I don’t, they’ve given me a little more faith in the world of writing, and on any day, that’s worth a lot.
Photo: (left to right) Laura Joyce Davis, Deborah Garrison, and Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo.
The California Writers Exchange contest is made possible by a generous grant from the James Irvine Foundation.
