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Editors at the independent poetry press Wave Books recently announced that they will host a three-day poetry event in Seattle at the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery. Slated to run from August 14 to 16, the festival will feature readings, film screenings, exhibitions, discounts on poetry books at fourteen local bookstores, and, according to the organizer’s Web site, wild blackberry picking.
Tennesseans are preparing to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of poet, writer, and critic James Agee. The Knoxville-born author is the subject of an upcoming art exhibition at the Nashville Public Library, and will also be feted with a three-day festival at the Knox County Library.
One month remains before the close of the first poetry book contest from Mississippi Review, the literary magazine of the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. The new series, whose deadline is August 1, will award three poets one thousand dollars each and publication of their collections in January 2010. The winners will also each receive one hundred copies of their books and distribution to fellow entrants and the magazine’s subscribers.
The inaugural judge is Dara Wier, author of eleven poetry collections including Remnants of Hannah (2006), Reverse Rapture (2005), Hat on a Pond (2002), and, forthcoming this fall, Selected Poems, all published by Wave Books. Weir was born in New Orleans and attended Louisiana State University. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University in 1974 and her first collection, Blood, Hook & Eye, was published by the University of Texas Press three years later.
In Wier’s profile on the Academy of American Poets Web site, John Ashbery
is quoted as saying of her work, "It may not be for the faint of
heart—most intense experiences aren’t—but those who stay with it will
find themselves face to face with a world whose eerily sharp focus
suggests recent satellite photographs of Mars. And they will never be
the same again."
Poets may submit any number of manuscripts (48 to 56 pages each) to the contest, with each entry accompanied by a twenty-five-dollar fee. The winners will be announced in September.
Last week, National Public Radio commenced a monthlong microfiction contest, seeking out prose that, in the words of judge James Wood, "strikes at the very heart of the short story as a project, which is to get something going rapidly." Writers are asked to submit original fictional stories that can be read in less than three minutes, with a length limit of six hundred words.
While no monetary prize is offered, Wood, a literary critic for the New Yorker and author of numerous essays on fiction, will read his favorite works on air throughout the summer, and one writer will be interviewed on a weekend edition of All Things Considered. The winning selections will also be posted on the NPR Web site.
Pointing to authors such as Anton Chekov and Lydia Davis as masters of the form, Wood offers some words of advice to writers of tiny tales: "One of the most effective ways to get a very short story vivid is to think in terms of voice," he says on the NPR Web site. "I'm going to be looking at a writer's ability to suggest a world, rather than to fill it in and dot every i."
Works can be submitted via the NPR Web site until July 18. As of Sunday, the contest had received thirteen hundred entries.
Author Richard Ford will be the keynote speaker next month when the Sage Hill Writing Experience celebrates its twentieth anniversary in Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley.
The Book Depository, a British online retailer, is gearing up for the launch of its U.S. Web site next month. Designed to make the Gloucester-based bookseller more competitive against North American vendors, the site will feature content and pricing geared toward American customers.
Not too long ago the Great Lake Colleges Association announced the winners of its New Writers Awards, given annually to a poet, fiction writer, and creative nonficiton writer to honor their first books. The University of Iowa Press published two of the winning titles: Don Waters's story collection Desert Gothic and Melissa J. Delbridge's memoir Family Bible. Indie publisher Curbstone Press released Teeth, the debut of winning poet Aracelis Girmay. (Incidentally, both Girmay and Delbridge have been featured in Poets & Writers Magazine.) As part of the award, each of the winners are invited to give readings, meet with students, and lead classes at several of the GLCA's member colleges, each of which pay five hundred dollars.
So, where might these three recent winners travel to collect their honoraria and meet potential readers? The following are the association's member colleges in Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvanie, and Ohio:
Albion College
Allegheny College
Antioch College
Denison University
DePauw University
Earlham College
Hope College
Kalamazoo College
Kenyon College
Oberlin College
Ohio Wesleyan University
Wabash College
The College of Wooster
Author Nedim Gürsel, who was charged with insulting Islam after the publication of his 2008 novel The Daughters of Allah, was acquitted yesterday by a court in Istanbul. According to the Turkish news network BIA, the court said that “the novel as a whole does not have any criminal intent and does not represent a crime.”
Poet Matthew Shenoda has been named the first Assistant Provost for Equity and Diversity at California Institute of the Arts. The newly created position is part of an institute-wide initiative to promote intercultural awareness and develop support mechanisms for students from varying ethnic backgrounds.
