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As literature concerned with today’s often-grim realities gains new prominence, a handful of literary organizations are highlighting the connection between poetry and politics and strengthening the network of socially conscious writers.
As Tree Swenson prepares to step down after ten years at the helm of the Academy of American Poets in New York City, she speaks about her next role as the executive director of the Richard Hugo House and returning to the Pacific Northwest.
Organizers of writing contests are, perhaps not suprisingly, wary of publicizing details of their budgets, but the organizers of three contest programs offered to share the numbers behind their 2011 contests as part of contributing editor Michael Bourne's “The Economics of Competition,” which serves as the centerpiece of the current issue’s special section on the risks and rewards of writing contests.
In this endearing short film by student Juliet San Nicolas, five lines of poetry by Frank O'Hara are intermingled with the sweeet sound of a typewriter and the song "Annie Green Quit Speaking to Me" by Jeff Pianki.
To accompany our May/June 2012 issue's feature "Winners on Winning," part of our special section on writing contests, we're posting a selection of mini-interviews with prize recipients on the benefits of their awards and what they learned from winning. The second author in our series is New York City poet and fiction writer Francine Witte.
Witte most recently won the Thomas A. Wilhelmus Chapbook Award (now dubbed the Editor's Fiction Chapbook Prize) from RopeWalk Press in 2010 for a collection of short short stories titled Cold June. Also the author of three other chapbooks of poetry and short fiction—Only, Not Only (Finishing Line Press, 2012), The Wind Twirls Everything (MuscleHead Press, 2009), and First Rain, which won Pecan Grove Press's 2008 National Chapbook Competition—she speaks with us about the hands-down best aspect of winning the Wilhelmus Award and what she'd suggest to writers looking to contests as a means to publication.
How did winning RopeWalk Press's Wilhelmus Chapbook Award change your career, if at all? Were you able to do anything special with the prize money, or did you make any important connections as a result of winning?
When I saw this contest listed in Poets & Writers, and I saw that Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler was the judge, my only thought was that this would be a chance to have his eyes on my work. That was all I was really hoping for at that point. I had always thought of him as a master of the short short form. When I was subsequently informed that I was one of the ten finalists, I had to take a deep breath. What if? Of course, I didn't want to become too hopeful. At that point, I did what I suppose many people do: I made a deal with God. I promised that if I were to win, I would give the prize money to my sister, who desperately needed it as her husband had recently suffered a stroke. The news of my winning came in an e-mail with the lead paragraph [containing] the magical words of Robert Olen Butler, who called my take on the short short "brilliant" and said I was a talented writer indeed. I couldn't even breathe. I immediately called my sister and told her the good news, that the money was on its way to her. But to me, the real prize was that beautiful paragraph that I later used as a blurb on the book cover. The exposure that came from the book was amazing. I now had people blogging about me. That was really a thrill. The reviews and comments I received were positive and when you are starting out—in publishing terms—it is very important that you know people are "getting" what you are trying to do. I also had an agent contact me—a first—though he wasn't really able to do much with a collection of short short stories.
Did the award have an effect on the path you've chosen to take in your work?
Just the validation and praise I received from having Cold June win the contest and get published has helped me on those dark days when I wonder what the hell I am even doing. All writers need that. I am a high school teacher, nearing retirement, so I am thinking that when I do have enough time to write that novel, I would probably structure it in short shorts. Winning the prize and hearing the comments from people I would not have normally have heard from has told me to keep true to the style in which I write.
What advice do you have for writers looking to contests as a way to get their work into the world?
Contests are an amazing way to get your work into the world. Winning a contest definitely raises your profile as a writer and certainly adds much to your cover letter. It's a concrete credit that people do respond to. When choosing which contests to enter, you'll want to choose carefully, though. Entering contests is expensive and time-consuming. You also want to make sure that what you're submitting really is your very best work. Choose a few good ones, contests you generally think you might have a good chance of winning, and avoid a scattershot method. Like any other submission, know the journal you are sending your work to. That will save you lots of time and money.
Located in Saginaw, Michigan, the Theodore Roethke Home Museum is the childhood home of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Theodore Roethke (1908–1963). The Friends of Theodore Roethke Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation with the mission to promote, preserve, and protect the literary legacy of Theodore Roethke. The museum currently offers tours of the house, along with poetry readings, talks, workshops, and school programs.
If this simple, evocative video shot at Shakespeare and Company in Paris and set to Melody Gardot's "Over the Rainbow" doesn't give you an almost irresistable urge to visit an independent bookstore today, you've probably been buying all your books online.
Kicking off the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this past weekend, a collection of standout books published last year were honored at the thirty-second annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.
In poetry Carl Phillips won for his eleventh collection, Double Shadow (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The book was a contender last year for the National Book Award, along with another Times Book Prize finalist, Bruce Smith for Devotions (University of Chicago Press). Also shortlisted for the Times honor were Jim Harrison for Songs of Unreason (Copper Canyon Press), Dawn Lundy Martin for Discipline (Nightboat Books), and Linda Norton for The Public Gardens (Pressed Wafer).
Alex Shakar won in fiction for Luminarium (Soho Press), his second novel after 2001's The Savage Girl (Harper). The finalists were Joseph O’Connor for Ghost Light (Frances Coady Books) and Michael Ondaatje for The Cat’s Table (Knopf), as well as National Book Award finalists Julie Otsuka for The Buddha in the Attic (Knopf) and Edith Pearlman for Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories (Lookout Books), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction went to Ismet Prcic for Shards (Black Cat). Prcic's novel won out over Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding (Little, Brown), Eleanor Henderson's Ten Thousand Saints (Ecco), Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station (Coffee House Press), and James Wallenstein's The Arriviste (Milkweed Editions).
The winner of the third annual prize in the graphic novel is Carla Speed McNeil for Finder: Voice (Dark Horse). Previous winners in the category include Adam Hines for Duncan the Wonder Dog (AdHouse, 2010) and David Mazzucchelli for Asterios Polyp (Pantheon, 2009).
The book prizes honor titles published in the previous year in twelve categories. For a list of all the winners, visit the award website.
Choose a well-known person from history or from the news. Write a persona poem from this person's voice and perspective. For an example, read the poet Ai's "The Good Shepherd: Atlanta, 1981," from her collection Sin (Norton, 1986), written from the perspective of convicted murderer Wayne Williams, or watch a video of Ai reading the poem.
Linda Källérus directed this video for the poem "Waltz of a Dream," from Nathalie Handal's latest collection Poet in Andalucia, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in January. The music is from "Take This Waltz" by Leonard Cohen.
