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A frequent contributor to Poets & Writers Magazine (check out his urgent essay in the current issue), Benjamin Percy has a new book coming out. A werewolf novel for the literary set, Red Moon is forthcoming in May from Grand Central Publishing. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Founded in 1894, Vroman’s is an independent family-run bookstore, a literary landmark, and a community center. The bookstore hosts over four hundred events a year, including author signings, launch parties, children’s storytimes, craft classes, and trivia nights. With a strong history of philanthropy, Vroman’s has supported many institutions and charitable causes and the Vroman’s Gives Back program donates a portion of purchases to a local organization of a customer’s choice.
Founded in 1967, this independent bookstore provides new and used books of all genres. Green Apple often hosts local authors for readings and book signings. The main bookstore features two floors of new and used nonfiction, new releases, children’s books, cookbooks, and has book buyback hours everyday. A Fiction & Music Annex featuring new and used fiction, music, movies, graphics novels, science fiction, mystery, and more is located down the street at 520 Clement Street.
Founded in 1935, Penguin Books revolutionized marketing and publishing by producing inexpensive softcovers with an instantly recognizable design. Richard from AbeBooks.com gives viewers a color-coded survey of the iconic series of books.
Submissions are currently open for Black Balloon Publishing’s inaugural Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize, an award of $5,000 and a book deal with Black Balloon given for a fiction manuscript. The deadline is May 6.
Previously unpublished novels and short story collections of at least 50,000 words are eligible. Fiction writers may submit an excerpt of no more than 4,000 words via Submittable by May 6. Those who are selected to move on to the second round of judging will have one week after being notified to submit their final manuscript. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but entrants must notify Black Balloon if a manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere. Short story collections containing previously published stories are eligible. There is no entry fee.
According to the Black Balloon editors, “we champion the weird, the unwieldy, and the unclassifiable. We are battle-worn enemies of boredom and we’re looking for books that defy the rules, bend reality, twist preconceptions, and imagine the unimaginable.”
An independent press based in New York City, Black Balloon accepts submissions of literary fiction, nonfiction, and memoir year-round through its online submission form. The press also produces the Airship, a digital daily that features emerging writers from across the country.
The book prize is named for Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, a one-eyed and one-armed British naval commander made famous for his victories against the French during the Napoleonic Wars—a man, the Black Balloon editors write, “who defied convention at every turn.”
Believable, fully developed characters serve to engage readers and strengthen your stories. Choose a character from one of your stories-in-progress or imagine a character about whom you’d like to write. Compose a character sketch based on a day in the life of this character. Explore every detail of what this person does and why throughout one day. What are his or her morning rituals and routines? How does he or she go about choosing clothes? What does this person eat? What does the inside and outside of his or her car look like? How does he or she walk and what does it say about this person? Where does he or she go and why? Use this sketch to inform the revision or writing of a story.
The eighty-five-year-old prize-winning fiction writer whose new novel, All That Is, was published this month by Knopf, speaks at the New York State Writers Institute about The Lover by Marguerite Duras.
"All relationships between writers and readers are love stories," says Ruth Ozeki, author most recently of the novel A Tale for the Time Being (Viking, 2013), whose article "A Crucial Collaboration: Reader-Writer-Character-Book" appears in the current issue.
"If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything," said David Foster Wallace in this March 1996 interview with Leonard Lopate, animated by Patrick Smith.
The Butler University–based literary magazine Booth is currently accepting short story submissions for its annual literary prize. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in Booth. The deadline is May 31.
Using the online submission system, writers may submit a story between 500 and 7,500 words with a $20 entry fee. All entries will be considered for publication. One runner-up will receive $250. Roxane Gay will judge. Butler University students and staff, as well as friends and students of the judge, are not eligible to enter.
Established in 2009, Booth publishes two print issues per year, and features one author or new piece of writing on its website every week. The staff is comprised of students in the MFA program at Butler University in Indianapolis. The annual prize alternates genres each year, and the editors accept general submissions, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and comics, from September through April.
Visit the website for more information and complete submission guidelines, and check out the current installation of Poets & Writers Magazine's Literary MagNet to hear more from the Booth editors about future plans for the journal.
The current issue of Booth, above, features cover art and interior comics by Dustin Harbin.
