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In response to the Deep-water Horizon oil spill, writers Heidi Lynn Staples and Amy King created Poets for Living Waters, an online poetry forum featuring works written in response to the disaster, spurring a host of nationwide events that give poets not only an opportunity to take action against the catastrophe but also to speak out in support of our natural environment.
Our second annual ranking of the top fifty MFA programs; Monique Truong, the award-winning novelist, tells us why writers should think more like lawyers; novelist Darin Strauss tackles the tragic event that has shaped his life and his writing; Major Jackson, in his third collection, Holding Company, corrals the ecstatic in a ten-line form; and more.
Moon Milk Review, a free literary (and art and music) magazine whose aesthetic tends toward the "'otherlands' or 'slipstream' in literary style, including an appreciation for magical realist, surrealist, metarealist, and realist works with an offbeat spin," is holding a no-fee "prosetry" writing contest—but only through today. The journal is asking for a work of micro fiction, strictly under five hundred words, that responds to Salvador Dalí's painting Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra (1936), which is displayed on their Web site.
There is no cash prize, but the winning work will be published by Moon Milk Review, which offers a new issue monthly online.
Entries can take any form, as long as they relate to the painting and honor the length constraint. The online submission form and more about what the journal is looking for are available on the Moon Milk Review Web site.
For a bit more Dalí inspiration, check out the video below, the dream sequence scene from the 1945 film Spellbound designed by the artist.
For those interested in practicing their elevator speeches, the Algonkian Writer Conference will sponsor three events on the art of pitching your work. Pitch and Shop for fiction writers and creative nonfiction writers will be held from September 23 to September 26 at the Ripley-Grier Studios in New York City, Fisherman's Wharf Writers Conference for fiction writers will be held from October 13 to October 17 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, and Write and Pitch for fiction writers will be held from November 12 to November 14 at the Corte Madera Best Western Hotel, outside of San Francisco. Authors, editors, and, of course, agents will participate.
Borders will start selling Build-A-Bear merchandise; a Chilean art collective bombs Berlin with one hundred thousand poems; the Beijing Book Fair is off to a great start; the blurring line between comedy and poetry; and other news.
The Gertrude Stein stein and other "non-book literary oddities"; HarperCollins tests a new model of giving away content; the third edition of the OED may not appear in print, or it may; EcoGeek claims publishing industry raw materials come from the harvesting of 125 million trees per year; and other news.
Andrew Wylie is in negotiations with Penguin over digitial rights of books for which the publisher owns print rights; a child in the United Kingdom lands a deal for twenty-three books; the New Yorker Festival announces its all-star lineup; and other news.
New Orleans Review, published by Loyola University in New Orleans, is currently holding its Walker Percy Short Fiction Contest, named in honor of the late physician novelist whose novels were often set in the Big Easy.
The city has also been a realm of interest for this year's judge and NOLA native, Nancy Lemann, who called Percy her "hero" in a 1988 interview in BOMB magazine.
Lemann authored her first book, Lives of the Saints (Knopf, 1985), at age twenty, and has since published four additional works: the novels Sportsman's Paradise (Knopf, 1992), The Fiery Pantheon (Scribner, 1998), and Malaise (Scribner, 2002), and the nonfiction book Ritz of the Bayou (Knopf, 1987). Lemann's recent projects include, according to her bio on the Johns Hopkins
University Web site, "an intergenerational saga of New Orleans
culminating in the hurricane."
The prize is one thousand dollars and publication in New Orleans Review. The journal will also consider the stories of twenty-five finalists for publication.
Story submissions of up to 7,500 words can be sent online or via postal mail until October 1, along with a fifteen-dollar fee per entry. Contest details and select content from the magazine's archive are available on the New Orleans Review Web site.
Keith Richard and Jay-Z are set to give talks at the NYPL; Barnes & Noble launches another volley against investor Ron Burkle; the new Kindle is "almost ridiculously lightweight"; the PEN American Center announces support for the Park51 Community Center project; and other news.
