Tell a story through the journal entries and/or correspondences of the central characters. Note how the switch between different perspectives and the reliability—or lack thereof—of the characters affect the way the plot is revealed to the reader. For inspiration, read Gary Shteyngart’s novel Super Sad True Love Story.

Spend a day at a museum or reading an art book. Choose a piece of artwork that you enjoy or that you find thought-provoking. Rather than composing an ekphrasis that comments on the artwork itself, try your hand at writing a poem in the “mode” of the artwork. This may mean writing a poem in the poetic style that you think is reflected by the artwork, or it may mean trying to write in what you perceive to be the “tone” or "voice" of the artwork.

Author Rick Moody will serve as the judge for the Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review’s inaugural Gertrude Stein Award for Fiction. The winner will receive $500 and publication in the Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review.

Eckleburg, the literary journal housed by the Johns Hopkins University M.A. Program in writing, launched the first annual competition, which is currently open for submissions, this past July. Writers, editors, publishers, and agents may submit short stories of up to 5,000 words, along with a $10 entry fee, by January 1, 2013. Second- and third-place winners will also receive publication in the journal.

Taking its name from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the online quarterly publishes original fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and translation from emerging and established writers. In addition to work by Rick Moody, the journal has also featured original writing by Stephen Dixon, Moira Egan, and David Wagoner. The journal looks for character-driven storytelling that is eclectic and experimental; it welcomes magical realism, surrealism, metarealism, and offbeat realism, and "humor that explores the gritty realities of the world and human experiences.

“It is Eckleburg‘s intention to represent writers, artists, musicians, and comedians as a contemporary and noninvasive collective, each work evidence of its own artistry, not as a reflection of an editor’s vision of what an issue 'should' be," the journal’s website states. “It is our intention to create an experience in which readers and viewers can think artistically, intellectually, socially, and independently. We welcome brave, honest voices.”

Rick Moody is the author of five novels, including Garden State, which won the Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award in 1992, as well as four short story collections and a memoir. He has received a PEN/Martha Albrand Award, an Addison Metcalf Award, the Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

For more information on the Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review or the Gertrude Stein Award, visit the website. 

Compose a table of contents for your life. Include titles, subtitles, sections, and chapters that outline a period—or the entirety—of your life. Once you've finished the table, write a brief summary for each section.

The Center for Fiction and the American Booksellers Association have announced the short list for the 2012 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. Of the seven finalists for the prize, the winner—to be announced in December—will receive $10,000.

The seven short-listed titles include: Absolution (Riverhead Books) by Patrick Flanery; Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco) by Ben Fountain; The Dog Stars (Knopf) by Peter Heller; Girlchild (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Tupelo Hassman; The Snow Child (Reagan Arthur Books) by Eowyn Ivey; Seating Arrangements (Knopf) by Maggie Shipstead; and Alif the Unseen (Grove/Atlantic) by G. Willow Wilson. Each of the finalists will receive $1,000.

Established in 2005 as the John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize, the Flaherty-Dunnan Prize is given annually for a debut novel published in the previous year. Author and Center for Fiction board member Nancy Dunnan, who has supported the award since 2010, renamed it for her father, the journalist Ray W. Flaherty. 

In order to help promote the seven short-listed titles, the New York City-based Center for Fiction announced a new partnership with the American Booksellers Association this past January. The ABA will select 450 United States bookstores to receive displays, posters, and other promotional materials for the seven books. Additionally, sixty-five independent booksellers from across the country were asked to serve as first-round readers for the 2012 prize.

“We believe that there are no better readers than the people who continue against all seeming odds to own and operate independent bookstores,” Center for Fiction executive director Noreen Tomassi said in a press release. Once the first round of readers recommended a long list, a panel of judges comprised of distinguished American writers then selected the seven finalists.

The winner will be announced at the Center for Fiction’s annual benefit and awards dinner on December 11 in New York City.

Past winners of the prize include The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books) by Junot Díaz; Lamb (Other Press) by Bonnie Nadzam; Matterhorn (Grove/Atlantic) by Karl Marlantes; Woodsburner (Nan A. Talese) by John Pipkin; The Good Thief (The Dial Press) by Hannah Tinti; and Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Viking) by Marisha Pessl.