Lily Hoang
http://www.nmsu.edu/~english/mfa/faculty_lily.php
Lily Hoang has published some books and won some awards. She edits for presses and journals. She teaches in the MFA program at New Mexico State University.
Ken Sparling’s The Serial Library: Overview and Interview
[Guest Post: Greg Gerke]
Ken Sparling is a writer. He works in a library in Toronto. He has written six novels. His latest is Intention, Implication, Wind from Pedlar Press. His first, Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall, published by Knopf in 1996 will be reissued by Mud Luscious Press in August.
Lily Hoang—
Dana Levin is a poet. She’s super cool. She’s so cool that someone wrote a song about her. (Seriously, click the link, listen to the song.) How often do poets have songs written for them? Well, if you’re Dana Levin…
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Land of Enchantment, or, Fairy Tale Review
I live in New Mexico: The Land of Enchantment.
Most of us have wanted enchantment since we were kids. And if not enchantment, magic. Fairy tales. The stuff of Disney. And then we grew up and figured out Disney dreams are problematic, reinforcing heteronormativity, etc. Maybe not. But I think we all still want magic. And violence. And even more magic. Just look at the two Snow White remakes within 2012 for proof, each one portrays Snow White as a warrior. (Maybe “warrior” is too strong of a word.) But she’s no longer helpless. She’s in there, fighting, and looking hella glamorous.
So, if you’re keen on magic and fairy tales and enchantment, write something. And submit it to Fairy Tale Review. Our submissions are open until May 31, and what’s up? I’m guest editing. In the past, we’ve published people like: Kim Addonizio, Rikki Ducornet, Johannes Goransson, Lydia Millet, Joyelle McSweeney, Mary Caponegro, Francine Prose, Stacey Levine, etc.
In Real Life
Last week, Blake was in town to give a reading. The first iteration of my intro for him detailed our friendship, how virtual it is, and all this hoop-la reminds me – again – of the fucked up nature of the intersection of our virtual writer-avatar selves v. real personhood. Most of the writers I have relationships with, I barely know. Most of the writers I know, I’ve spent less than a day with in real life. Most of the writers I have friendships with, we met online, interact online, and I know very very little about who they are, what they do everyday, what they care about aside from what they post online. We may interact regularly – daily, weekly, whatever – but they’re still not real, not until we meet face to face, and still, it’s within the artificial space of a conference or a reading, so it’s not really real. And yet, they must be real people with real cares. I know almost nothing about them.
My Expectations, Fulfilled or Un
This may be obvious, sure, but my expectations for fiction have changed, and I’m not so sure I like it. I remember being a student, encountering new modes of fiction for the first time – new to me, old to others – and every time, I’d say to myself: Wow, I didn’t know I could do that. I didn’t know fiction could do that.
Opening the cover of Finnegans Wake and pages and pages of onomatopoeia.
Opening Raymond Federman’s Double or Nothing, metafiction and movement on the page! Poetry does that, sure, but fiction? Amazing.
Opening Dubravka Urgesic’s Museum of Unconditional Surrender, my first modular novel.
Opening Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red or Michael Ondaatje’s Billy the Kid.
Lily Hoang—
You are friends with writers even if you don’t like respect their writing: true or false?
Noah Cicero interviews Elizabeth Ellen
Elizabeth Ellen & Kendra Grant Malone
Elizabeth Ellen writes in the classical sense: she focuses her energy on the story being told. She doesn’t two things most writers fall into: she doesn’t over styilize and use experimental weirdness to express emotion. Her stories are always very linear, have beginning/middle and end. But at the same time she doesn’t write in cliché language and have big explosive plots involving guns and beautiful people walking around. Fast Machine by Elizabeth Ellen takes the middle ground between alternative/experimental and popular literature.
The stories come out strange and unique, I think because Elizabeth Ellen is inspired by writers like Dave Eggers, but at the same time because of the circumstances of her life she did not get an MFA and go through many writing workshops, her writing turned to be a marriage of Bukowski and Eggers. The writing has some of that nice Eggers clarity and smoothness but at the same time covers Bukowski themes like humiliation, failed romantic relationships, divorse, raising a child in difficult circumstances, violent sex, drinking, weight gain, disapointment, in general about failure and hardship.
NEA slams BlazeVOX authors
This letter just came from the NEA to a BlazeVOX author:
Dear XXX:
It has come to our attention that BlazeVOX books has asked authors to contribute to the cost of publishing their own books.
The eligibility requirements for the NEA’s Creative Writing Fellowships prohibit applicants from using publications from presses that require individual writers to pay for part or all of the publication costs (http://www.arts.gov/grants/apply/Lit/eligibility.html).
Therefore, you may not use a book published BlazeVOX book to establish your eligibility. You have until 4:00 p.m. (Eastern) on Friday, March 9, 2012 to establish your eligibility for the fellowships using alternate publications. Please email your new Summary of Applicant Publications to me at bergerb@arts.gov by the deadline. Any applicant failing to meet this deadline will be deemed ineligible for the fellowships.
Lily Hoang—
Please forgive the shameless self-promotion, but did you guys know Puerto del Sol has a blog now? We’ve moved into the 21st century, yo. We’re talking writing, MFA, journal editing, AWP, fonts, avatars, internet, whatever. Come, visit, say hello.
On Starting Things
I’ve started something new. I guess I’ve been in the “starting” phase for months now. Every time I start though, I forget what beginning feels like. I forget how to write a novel. There is a process of re-learning. How many novels does one have to write before she understands the process?
The disheartening moment when I open a document – Document1 – Pages: 1 of 1 – Words: 24 of 24. Delete to Words: 0 of 0. Add some, Words 5 of 5, delete again. I know that page one will become two and on, but looking at page one, with the scant words, the lack of momentum, stagnation, it’s rending. And so I quit MS Word. I check Facebook. I check my eight email addresses. I check HTML Giant. I play games on my iPad. I check blogs. Read some reviews. I check email. I play more games. I put something pithy up on Facebook. No one responds, so I delete it after thirty seconds. I open MS Word. Of course, I didn’t save. There was nothing there anyways – what’s the use of saving five words, maybe a dozen, maybe, if I was very lucky, a full sentence? (I’d save a full sentence, probably.)
A Lesson on Not Apologizing
Ever written something salacious and regretted it? Well, you shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. Take pride, bitches. Badass Die Antwoord released this video for “Fok Julle Naaiers,” which uses the word “faggot” generously:
Being & Time without the Being
Today is Lunar New Year. Happy new year to those of you to follow that calendar. I don’t, but I like the idea of having two new years to celebrate. Also, I’m superstitious, and if one new year’s day isn’t what I wanted, I get another stab at it: today.
Like most Americans, I follow the Gregorian calendar. I grew up Catholic, so I never understood the whole lunar calendar thing, but I think the rest of my family – who are Buddhist – do. But it’s the year of the dragon. Dragons are cool. For those of you who watch Game of Thrones: how the fuck do you progress from dragons. Dragons enter the picture and it’s game fucking over, people.
Speaking of new year’s day: England didn’t accept January 1 as the commencement of the new year until 1752, when they adopted the Gregorian calendar. Other European countries were quicker to adjust, but England stood strong, until 1752 that is.
James Franco + Hart Crane
Two posts in one day after not posting for a century, but then I saw this:
James Franco, Hart Crane, discuss.
MFA fiction workshop syllabus
So, I’m teaching my first MFA fiction workshop this spring, which is exciting and pretty cool. I’ve decided to play with the traditional workshop model, which is two submitted stories per term. Here’s the syllabus.
ENGL 574 Syllabus
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This will be an intensive graduate workshop. I am working with a different model, one that emphasizes both generative practices and revision. You will be required to write three new stories very quickly (during the first nine weeks of class), which we will workshop, then we’ll spend the last five weeks of class workshopping one revision. It doesn’t take a mathematician to realize that we will be “flying” through the stories in the first part in order to focus our time on the revision.
Fan Mail #4: Ben Marcus
Dear Ben Marcus,
I just finished The Flame Alphabet. I woke up early on a Sunday morning to finish reading. And it was magnificent. I have read your books, or several of them at least. I read Age of Wire & String and Notable American Women the summer before starting grad school. They are audacious books, the syntax unlike anything I’d read before – call me a limited reader, of course, I’ve since read a lot more and come to understand its lineage – I wanted to emulate your style, your language, the way you created complex narrative by parataxis. I thought you were a fearless writer, and back then, I was young and afraid, although I didn’t show it in workshop, I wanted to be liked, as we all do when we’re young and insecure, but you, you were brazen, your writing was full of effrontery, and that’s what I wanted most in my writing. In short, you were an inspiration, maybe the biggest and most influential to me as a student.
Lily Hoang—
Let’s say someone cares enough about you to write your biography. Title it: this is fantasy anyway, so why not have fun?
Page Turner Festival: GO!
PAGE TURNER FESTIVAL
http://pageturnerfest.org/#festival
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2011, 11AM-7PM
POWERHOUSE ARENA, 37 MAIN STREET, BROOKLYN
$5 PER EVENT / $20 ALL-DAY PASS / $30 ALL-DAY PASS (W/ AFTERWORD PARTY)
Come rub elbows and knock knees with your favorite writers at one of Brooklyn’s best alternative literary festivals: the third annual PAGE TURNER: The Asian American Literary Festival. Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, the festival features a Korean taco trunk, two stand-up comedians, five National Book Award finalists, seven Guggenheim Fellows, a killer afterparty with the best playlist of all time, and you! READ MORE >
