Pasture Poet Eric Borden
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Missouri farmer Eric Borden talks about what inspires him to write poetry on the occasion of his releasing a CD of his poems.
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Genre: Poetry
Brian Dettmer's Altered Books
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Brian Dettmer, whose art has appeared in past issues of Poets & Writers Magazine, explains his process of altering used books, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, and medical guides, to create intricate three-dimensional works that reveal new interpretations of the original books.
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One Tough Mother
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A newly released two-DVD set, One Tough Mother, combines the films made of Charles Bukowski’s last two readings—in Vancouver in 1979 and in Redondo Beach, California, in 1980. The author of more than sixty books, Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9, 1994.
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Mr. Pleasant
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Poet Jim Daniels wrote the screenplay for Mr. Pleasant, a film about one weekend in the life of Red, a student in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, in the early 1980s. The film will be shown on Friday, November 19, at the Three Rivers Film Festival in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Watch the trailer.
W. S. Merwin on Being Poet Laureate
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The poet laureate recently discussed his new position on the PBS NewsHour. "It's a more public position and role and so forth than I normally would like," says Merwin, whose most recent book, The Shadow of Sirius, won the Pulitzer Prize.
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Literary MagNet
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features Pleiades, Nashville Review, Sycamore Review, One Story, the Oxford American, the Awakenings Review, Fairy Tale Review, and Bound Off.
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Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Sidebrow, the San Francisco–based independent press that publishes "works by multiple authors who aren’t timid about crossing genre boundaries."
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The Final Stage of Mike Heppner's Publishing Journey
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In the September/October 2009 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, we published the essay "Taking It to the Streets: My Year in Guerrilla Publishing" in which Mike Heppner writes about his trajectory from commercially published author to small press author to self-published, D-I-Y author. In this video, Heppner describes the final stage of his Man Talking Project: hand-delivering his manuscript to one of his readers.
Nine Emerging Writers Snag Fifty Grand Award
The winners of this year’s fifty-thousand-dollar Whiting Writers' Awards, given to promising writers nominated by established authors and literary professionals across the United States, were announced last night at a ceremony in New York City. This marks the twenty-fifth year of the prizes, which have bolstered the early careers of luminaries including Jorie Graham, Denis Johnson, Alice McDermott, David Foster Wallace, and C. D. Wright.
The winning poets are Matt Donovan, author of the collection Vellum (Mariner Books, 2007); Jane Springer, author of Dear Blackbird (University of Utah Press, 2007); and L. B. Thompson, whose chapbook is Tendered Notes (Center for Book Arts, 2003). The fiction winners are Michael Dahlie, author of the novel A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living (Norton, 2008); Rattawut Lapcharoensap, author of the short story collection Sightseeing (Grove Press, 2004); and Lydia Peelle, author of the story collection Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing (Harper Perennial, 2009). The nonfiction winners are Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux last February; Amy Leach, whose essay collection about animals, plants, and stars is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2012; and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of the memoir When Skateboards Will Be Free (The Dial Press, 2009).
Six of the winners hold MFAs—from New York University, University of Iowa’s nonfiction program, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, and Washington University—and two hold doctorate degrees. Among the magazines that have published multiple winners’ works are Granta, the New Yorker, and Orion. Full biographies on the winners are posted on the Web site of the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, sponsor of the awards.
In the video below, creative nonfiction winner Sayrafiezadeh reveals a dirty little literary secret.
MacArthur Genius Type Designer
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One of this year's MacArthur fellows, each of whom received $500,000, is Matthew Carter, a master type designer, who during his career has designed over 250 fonts. Most recently Carter has focused on developing easily readable fonts for computer screens, including those for handheld devices.
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