http://twitter.com/#!/ryancall
Ryan Call is the author of The Weather Stations (Caketrain). His stories appear in Mid-American Review, New York Tyrant, Conjunctions, Annalemma, and elsewhere. He teaches English and coaches cross country at a high school in Houston.
At work today, I was looking at the wear patterns on my keyboard and I realized that when I type, I strike the space bar with my right thumb. I hardly ever use my left thumb.
I’ve tried to gather after the jump as many holiday sales as I could find over the weekend. Secret Santas, pay attention; some of these sales go above the $20 limit, but you can always keep some books, send other books, or bust the limit knowing you might not get the same in return. Any editors/publishers who’d like to drop their special on our internet, do so in the comments or email me and I’ll add the sales here. For those not in Secret Santa, many of these will still apply to you, though some are only for Secret Santa participants. If you haven’t, please consider signing up to participate in the exchange.
At Montevidayo, Megan Milks wrote about Anna Joy Springer’s The Birdwisher from Birds of Lace Press. She received The Birdwisher from her HTMLGIANT Secret Santa last year. If you haven’t signed up yet, you have less than two weeks to make sure you get a cool gift like Megan did.
How long it will take to print your book.
How long it will take to turn your book into toilet paper.
From now until December 14th, you can sign up to participate in our annual Indie Lit Secret Santa Gift Exchange. We are again using Elfster this year to handle the exchange, so if you’d like to sign up, head over to our gift exchange page and join.
When you click on the link, it will take you to the exchange page with an RSVP field. Add comments if you want, click ‘Yes’ in the left top corner of the field, and then click the green RSVP button. If you haven’t joined Elfster before, then you will be prompted to join.
If you’re unfamiliar with the exchange, it’s pretty simple. We’d like everyone to exchange gifts related to indie lit presses and publications. We’re thinking that $20 is a solid gift value. We’ll draw names the 15th, the day after the exchange closes, and then participants will have about a week and a half to buy and ship out their gifts.
If you have any questions about the exchange, let me know. Email me, comment here or at the Elfster page, and we’ll figure it out.
Glimmer Train (1990 – October 2010) Respected literary magazine Glimmer Train died of exhaustion yesterday evening, having finally succumbed to the strain of ‘going full steam ahead’ to ‘present stories in a handsome physical publication that people would keep.’ The literary community will fondly keep alive the memory of Glimmer Train by storing the colorfully illustrated issues in English Department libraries across the country. Glimmer Train is survived by its two founding editors, sisters Susan and Linda, and by approximately 22,250 contest finalists, many of whom will console themselves by listing the meaningless accolade in their submission cover letters. Funeral services will be held on Saturday, October 30th, 2010 at 2:30 PM, 1211 Glisan Street, Suite 207, Portland, OR 97209. Glimmer Train will be buried next to its siblings, Iron Horse Literary Review and Night Train, may they all rest in peace.
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Tin House (May 1999 – October 2010) Bi-coastal purveyor of literary culture, Tin House passed away on Monday after a long battle with alcoholism. Tin House will be remembered for its tin-sided Portland office, now an iconic landmark to many literary acolytes; its popular writer’s conference, at which authors could add their voice to the desperate din; and its less popular ‘New Voices’ magazine feature, occasional evidence of the staff’s tin ear. Memorial services (Theme TBA) to be held Sunday on the hallowed grounds of Reed College, Steve Almond officiating. In lieu of flowers, please send receipts of your latest purchases from a bookstore. If you cannot provide a receipt, please send a written explanation in 100 words or less.
We’re posting obituaries throughout Mean Week and wanted to invite you to email us your own or post in comments. Kill us, kill your favorite press, kill an author you hate, do whatever. We’ll post some of the ones we like, sure sure, and whoever writes our favorite will receive a few books for the trouble: Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball, The Pharmacist’s Mate by Amy Fusselman, and Ghost Machine by Ben Mirov. Deadline, Thursday at 11:59 PM CST.
To what author/press/litmag should HTMLGIANT send a box of Kleenex and why?
Please continue to nominate. So far, we have nominated:
Yesterday, we posted about our birthday and had a Backwards Birthday Celebration. Thank you for your nice comments and emails. We really liked that. If you haven’t yet, send us an email to be eligible for the gift drawing.
Today, however, we celebrate the hate. I’ve tried to gather a few mean blurbs, some from our own comments section and others from around the internet. Some are sincerely angry, others are meant to be silly (I think?). I’ve pulled them out of context and pasted them below for fun, but no linkies. You could find the sources if you wanted, I guess.
Feel free to add to the blurb collection: complain, whinge, talk shit, poke fun, lambast, and otherwise roast us if you’d like.
That’s all from me today. Have fun and thanks for reading. I’ve got a bandwagon to board.
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“Reading HTMLGIANT is a pretty good way to get burned out on contemporary literature. Honestly, they promote and overpraise some senselessly crappy stuff.”
I discovered Object Press via this entry on Chad Post’s Three Percent blog, and Post’s enthusiasm for the press and its latest book, a reprint of Christian Oster’s In The Train, convinced me to contact Richard di Santo, the founder. He sent me review copies of the two books he’s published so far and agreed to answer a few questions by email, which you can read below this introduction.
Jacob Dahlstrup made this banana boat.
Gestures from João Machado on Vimeo.
['The Effect of a Book, Extending Beyond The Form'] intends to construct an essay or open-ended process, embracing the participation of the reader as a producer of a book. It relates to the experience and performance of a book, looking beyond intended function.
(via Swiss Miss)
Composition With JavaScript: create your own Mondrian.
(via @Powell_DA)
Frederick Barthelme will soon leave The Center for Writers and the Mississippi Review, and it seems that he’s taking the Mississippi Review Online editorial staff and vision with him in order to create a new online magazine.
A few weeks ago, The Hattiesburg American ran this article about Frederick Barthelme’s leaving The Center for Writers and the Mississippi Review. There was a little bit of a spat in the comments section of that article, then Brevity picked up the news, as did the MFA blog, but that’s about all the coverage the story received (that I could tell from briefly clicking around yesterday). Then, several days ago, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a story about how Barthelme’s departure will directly affect the status of the Mississippi Review:
The Chronicle asked Barthelme via email what’s going to happen with the Review. “At present, then, there is no staff at all, and there is no one here who has actually run a magazine previously,” he responded. “The interim department chair has been talking to other English faculty (non-creative writing) about taking over the magazine. He is also talking to the remaining CW faculty about the same thing, and it’s unclear which way the tree will fall.”
John Jodzio picked the following three people to win the Jodzio Book Giveaway: Brooks Sterritt, Snowden Wright, JScap. Winners, please email us your mailing address at htmlgiant [at] htmlgiant.com so we can send you the books.
John Jodzio has sent us three copies of his collection If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home for a quick giveaway contest. If you’d like to be eligible for the giveaway, tell us about the weirdest thing you or someone you know has swallowed. John will select from the comments section his favorite three later this week.
In light of the recent Tin House submissions controversy, maybe you’ll enjoy this brief exchange between ZYZZYVA editor Howard Junker and an anonymous author [my correction: she was not a former student of Junker's as I had previously posted, but rather a writer he had published at one time] who required her class to submit their stories to literary magazines.
We noted when UT acquired David Foster Wallace’s papers here. And now we’ll note the purchase of Denis Johnson’s archive, which includes floppy disks and baby footprints.
I think I like the idea of archiving authors’ papers, but I wonder how these libraries will acquire their electronic materials? I remember one of my professors saying that UVA had passed on purchasing his email archive. Will such an acquisition be important in the future? How will those of us who are interested in that sidewise material access it? Who will look after it? What do you think about this impulse we have to sift through an author’s unpublished papers, and how will that translate to his or her electronic writing?
