Moby-Dick in Pictures

Inspired by Herman Melville's masterpiece, Ohio artist Matt Kish crafted an original piece of art for each page of Moby-Dick. The resulting collection was published in October by Tin House Books. Take a closer look at Kish's work in this issue's installment of The Written Image as well as the related slideshow, which features eleven images from Moby-Dick in Pictures.

"Andrew Wyeth, Painter, Dies at 91"

L. S. Klatt reads a poem from Cloud of Ink (University of Iowa Press, 2011) in this short film by Tom Jacobsen. Andrew Wyeth, who died in 2009, was a visual artist best known for his painting "Christina's World," an image of which appears in the clip.

Self-Publishing Forum Hosts Poetry and Fiction Contests

Celebrating the kickoff of National Novel Writing Month, the website HubPages, a sort of micro-blogging community, is holding a no-fee writing contest—for poets as well as fiction writers. Prizes of five hundred dollars, one hundred dollars, and fifty dollars will be given to writers in both genres, and one overall winner will be offered publication of a poetry or story collection via self-publishing outfit Smashwords (though editing of the manuscript is not part of the prize).

Writers are invited to create a HubPages login and then publish the works they wish to enter as "hubs," or short posts that are housed on the website under a variety of topic headings: poems and poetry, creative writing, and so on. Every post must be accompanied by a photo (a separate photo competition is also being held in conjunction with the writing contests).

The winners, to be announced on December 2, will be selected by judging panels made up of staff members and HubPages users pulled from the more than two-hundred-thousand registered with the site. Entries may be posted (with the tag "contest") until November 22.

Complete guidelines, including links to the profiles of each panelist, are available on the Hub Patron of the Arts web page.

Joan Didion’s Blue Nights

Kimberly Farr reads an excerpt from the memoir Blue Nights (Knopf, 2011) in which Joan Didion writes with stunning frankness about the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo, as well as her own mortality.

The Corner Library

Poets & Writers Magazine takes a look inside the Corner Library, a tiny book depository serving the community in Brooklyn, New York's Williamsburg neighborhood.

Blake Butler's Nothing

In Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia, published last month by Harper Perennial, Blake Butler uses scientific data, historical anecdote, Internet obsession, and figures as diverse as Andy Warhol, John Cage, Jorge Luis Borges, and Stephen King to explore the tension between sleeping and conscious life. This bizarre trailer, directed by Drew Mobley, evokes Butler's own 129-hour bout of insomnia described in the book.

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