Grace Paley
Since its release last year, Grace Paley: Collected Shorts, a documentary directed by Lilly Rivlin, has won awards at several film festivals, including the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Washington Jewish Film Festival.
Jump to navigation Skip to content
Since its release last year, Grace Paley: Collected Shorts, a documentary directed by Lilly Rivlin, has won awards at several film festivals, including the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Washington Jewish Film Festival.
Abe's Penny, a "micro-magazine" that presents stories and poems serialized on postcards along with images, is looking for poems to accompany four series of photographs it will present in a Miami exhibition this April. The magazine will accept entries live at the New World School of the Arts' ArtSeen gallery on April 2, opening night of its exhibition featuring works by photographers Robby Campbell, Francie Bishop Good, Lee Materazzi, and Samantha Salzinger (and, incidentally, poetry readings by Gabby Calvocoressi and Denise Duhamel).
Writers will also have to opportunity to submit work during poetry and music events promoting the exhibition's run, which ends on April 26. (The show is held in conjunction with the new, monthlong, O, Miami literary festival, and information about all events is available on the festival Web site.) At the end of April, Abe's Penny will select one collaboration to publish as an issue of its magazine, which will be published piece-by-piece over the course of four weeks.
Writers visiting the gallery are invited to pen their poetry in "utopian but functional" workspaces created by New World School students. In order to offer writers more time to interact with the photography, the gallery will open to poets one hour prior to each scheduled event. There is no fee to submit poems, and the events are free and open to the public.
Salma Hayek announced plans to produce an animated version of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet; an iPad 2 review roundup; some of Borders' creditors ask for their books back; O, The Oprah Magazine dedicates its April issue to poetry; and other news.
Think of a piece of gossip you've heard and identify the least sympathetic person involved. Maybe it's the adulterous mother of two? Or the Salvation Army bell ringer who, during the holidays, pocketed some of the donations he'd collected? Write a story from the perspective of the least sympathetic person with the piece of gossip as the narrative climax. You might also try writing the story with the piece of gossip as the inciting action of the story, as the event that sets everything in motion.
This week's fiction prompt comes from Bret Anthony Johnston, fiction writer and editor of Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer.
Poet, novelist, and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu recently delivered a lecture about art, the Internet, and his latest book, The Poetry Lesson (Princeton University Press, 2010), at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. In this clip he talks about how Google is killing creativity and what Facebook is "really" all about.
Senator Reid criticized for cowboy poetry reference; F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby house destined for demolition; editor Sonny Mehta receives lifetime achievement award; crafting poetry from celebrity fodder; and other news.
The "mortal work of art," as Shelley Jackson called her 2003 story "Skin," each word of which has been tatooed on the skin of over two thousand volunteers, has found new form in this clip. The author recently asked her original volunteers to record a video of their word tattoo. She then edited the word videos together to create a new story for the Berkeley Art Museum.
Looking at literary heroines on International Women's Day; Jane Eyre alights onscreen once again; Charlie Sheen reads his poetry; libraries get a makeover; and other news.
In this clip, produced by Open Road Media, novelist Pat Conroy talks about his early years as the eldest of seven children raised in a strict military household in Beaufort, South Carolina. "I was making up stories about my life at a very early age," says the author of The Prince of Tides and The Lords of Discipline. "I was writing fiction long before I knew I was writing fiction."
Problems with the portrayal of characters of color; the ten greatest poets; a publisher's limits on library lending; another top honor for Vargas Llosa; and other news.