This week, there are all these ways you can win a copy of Pink & Hot Pink Habitat by Natalie Lyalin and more things along with it.

In two ways you might win the whole Coconut books catalog:

1. By commenting at fellow Coconut poet Gina Meyer’s blog.

2. By commenting at fellow Coconut poet Reb Livingston’s blog.

And in one way you can win a copy of P&HPH plus a badass t-shirt.

1. By commenting at A Mystery in Common

Here is a writing contest worth considering. I imagine the shapeless bodies of poets in a montage of activities training for this mighty event, a triumph soundtrack playing over their sweat faces, kind of like this

The Bathroom and Boo: A Journal of Terrific things present …
The First Annual Racquetball Chapbook Tournament

Tired of myriad chapbook contests whose winners are determined by their works’ literary merit? Are your poems being rejected for publication because editors deem them unfit to print?

Would you prefer your chapbook published because you displayed a level of athletic prowess and competitive determination that in no way signifies your achievements as a writer?

Are you a writer who wants an excuse to learn to play racquetball? Or a racquetball player seeking incentive for sitting down to write your first short collection of poems?

Then consider entering the Racquetball Chapbook Tournament.
In order to get your chapbook published, you just have to be the champion of our racquetball tournament.

For more info and tournament details, follow the link

For the most part, conservatives do horrible political satire. Ahem. Ahem. Ahem.

Browsing our sales table today, I found a book by a National Review contributing editor named W.H. von Dreele. It’s a book of poems. “Funny” poems. It’s called There’s Something About a Liberal (Arlington House Press, 1970). Here’s one:

Dr. Goldwater, Call Surgery

Although I live in New York State,
I’d cheerfully accept my fate
If Barry sawed the seaboard off
And watched us vanish in a trough.

New York is full of liberals. Hah!

Yeah. Well. How about this:

Repression, Anyone?

Take me back to boola-boola;
Row me to the Raritan
Strum a uke for dear old Duke;
Raccoon it, on rattan.
Tired watching campus cuties
Brawling for their next degree.
Sock ‘em up and lock ‘em up.
Then throw away the key.

Really stuck it to those campus radicals, there. I’m glad those kids got shot at Kent State.

Also in the book? At least two Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick poems. Which I think we all know is a classy thing to write funny doggerel about, right?

This book calls for a contest, I think.

What say we help ‘em out. We’re writers. Some of us are probably funny. If you are a liberal, drink deep from your well of self-loathing. If you are a conservative, bump your game up a little. Write me a funny, conservative-leaning satire in verse. Best poem gets a copy of There’s Something About a Liberal AND a copy of Ariana Reines book of slaughterhouse poems, The Cow. (Balance.)

Go.

Two Via Goodjobbbbbbbbb. Today’s Version:

Don’t let the mouth-breathers win!

Vote for the Neon Knome!!!

” Neon Knome is a new short cartoon created by Ben Jones of Paper Rad and PFFR“:

• “I have a very small wallet, everybody. So it’s hard to see.”
• “Hello. I am the narrator. Welcome to the New Dark Age.”

Also, less timely, but relevant for those going to New York this Friday:

FEBRUARY 16 – MARCH 18, 2010

THE ASSEMBLED PICTURE LIBRARY OF NEW YORK CITY

CLOSING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 6–8pm

Esopus Space is pleased to present “The Assembled Picture Library of New York City,” a collaborative exhibition and workspace environment organized by artists Robin Cameron and Jason Polan.

The exhibition will provide free and open access to hundreds of images from the collections of Cameron and Polan. Visitors are invited to come in during gallery hours (Mon/Tue/Thu from 12-5pm) and use these images—which include manuscripts, advertisements, prints, original drawings, and more—as raw material for their own artworks, which will be displayed on the walls of Esopus Space for the length of the exhibition. Polan and Cameron will also create a book featuring visitors’ artworks, The Assembled Picture Library of New York Book, that will be available at the closing reception on March 18.

HTMLGIANT is holding a writing contest.

The prize is the Dalkey Archive 100 books for $500. If you want to contribute to the prize pool, let us know in the comments and we’ll add it to the package.

We want your writing, up to 3,500 words however you want to assemble them.

The theme: love stories, however you interpret those two words. The numbers 100 and 500 should also somehow be involved in your writing and not just as an afterthought.

HTMLGIANT contributors will select 10 finalists.  Special Guest Judge Rick Moody  will determine the winner of which there can be only one.

The winning entry as well as the work of the finalists will be published on a sweet website to celebrate their words.

Send your entries both in the body of an e-mail and as an attachment (.doc/.pdf/.rtf) to contest@htmlgiant.com.

There is no fee to enter.

You do not need to submit a cover letter.

You do need to include your name and address so we know where to send your prize(s) if you win.

Deadline is Midnight, Sunday March 21. Winners will be announced on Tax Day, April 15.

Questions? Ask them in the comments or e-mail contest@htmlgiant.com.

I’ve gotten so used to thinking about The Rumpus as one of my go-to sites, and linking to something of theirs in damn near every web round-up I do, that I’ve nearly forgotten about the days when I used to put posts together that focused exclusively on them. Let’s do that now.

Top of the site: an interview with the painter Caris Reid; funny Woman Elissa Bassist on “How to Move to San Francisco.”

And in Books Stuff: Virginia Konchan reviews Catherine Bowman’s The Plath Cabinet; Andrew Altschul on Marisa Meltzer’s Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music; Catherine Brady on Eric Puchner’s first novel, Model Home; and that Steve Almond piece about self-publishing that I linked to yesterday.

All that and more. But hey, here’s something else important: New York folks, on March 11, Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott will be lecturing on “Writing From Experience,” something he damn well knows something about, at the LGBT Center on West 13th street. $30 reserves you a space, and you can buy your ticket here, but there’s also one free ticket up for grabs, and you can win it by leaving a comment on this post. From Stephen: comments can be “about anything at all, it could be why they should get it, what their project is about, or just random thoughts about the weather.” He’ll be looking over the thread and will choose the commenter whose post somehow says “Yeah, I’m worth giving free shit to and spending two hours with.” So, yeah. Happy Friday!

+

PS- Art by Ryan Lauderdale, who has a show opening at Red White Yellow gallery in Houston on March 13th.

New magazine Artifice, out of Chicago, has just published their first issue, with new work by many radicals, including myself and our own Roxane Gay:

Carol Berg – Jessica Bozek – Blake Butler – Neil de la Flor – Andrew Farkas – Ori Fienberg – Elisa Gabbert – Kelly Haramis – Roxane Gay – Kyle Hemmings – Tim Jones-Yelvington – Gregory Lawless – Jefferson Navicky – Lance Olsen – Joel Patton – Christopher Phelps – Derek Philips – Cynthia Reeser – Kathleen Rooney – Davis Schneiderman – Maureen Seaton – David Silverstein – Susan Slaverio – Kristine Snodgrass – William Walsh

Featuring:

Koalas, terror, that one time you watched your father boil lobsters, infidelity, faithful robots, faithless robot dogs, compromising situations, and at least one missing body.

In the spirit, they have offered to give away three free issues to HTMLGiant readers.

All you have to do is looking at their submission wishlist, which lists the kind of stuff they are looking to publish, and make a suggestion of something to add to that list. Examples are: # 1 piece you’d tell a child not to put in their mouth, # 3 halves of a story, # 1 game code that unlocks a secret level. Comment with your suggestion and 3 winners will be picked tomorrow afternoon.

In the meantime, consider picking up an issue, and/or sending your work!

[P.S. This is the 3000th post at HTMLGiant. Weird.]

by Chris Killen is the winner of HTMLGIANT & Annalemma’s “When Writers Get Off” contest. Congratulations Chris. Some notes from judge Chris Heavener of Annalemma:

First of all, yall should be ashamed of yourselves and your filthy, disgusting, brilliant minds.

Outstanding In the out-of-control category:
– Jesus’ Cum
- 1984 = Nineteen-tranny-whores
- The Diarrhea of Anne Frank

Outstanding in the fucking hilarious category:
– Twats Heating Gilbert’s Grapes
- Leak, Mammory
- Dong of Solomon

Runner up: The Magic Mountin’

Winner: Finnegan’s Wank

Gives a new definition to masturbatory writing. Submit 250 words of this nasty novel and we’ll post on annalemma.net soon.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Annalemma will be publishing a collaborative effort entitled “Finnegan’s Wank,” a work of fiction containing multiple accepted pieces. Each writer is to submit ~250 words; one submission per writer, and, as succinctly offered by Chris, “No furries.” This is a private venture, independent of HTMLGIANT’s influence, and will be moderated autonomously henceforth. Thanks for playing along.

We were really blown away by the number of entries for the chapbook giveaway as well as the very interesting ways in which you take yourselves apart. Jereme, we would be inclined to answer your question with a question.  We thank everyone who entered.

Without further delay, Matt has carefully considered the entries, meditated, read some tea leaves and chosen his five favorites. If you’re one of these folks, e-mail me your address (roxane at pankmagazine dot com) and we’ll get the book in the mail to you early this week.

How the winners take themselves apart:

1. Teresa turns it up loud, takes an acidbath and gets sweaty.

2. Marco tears in with tongs and staple guns.

3. Bob follows the Way and does it ’til it’s done.

4. Cameron accomplishes it with panache, mustachioed.

5. Vaughan first undoes the leather.

Congratulations to you all and a big thanks to the anonymous donor who made this giveaway possible.

Per Annalemma Editor/Publisher Chris Heavener’s comment in the “When Authors Get Hungry” winner post, HTMLGIANT and Annalemma are joining hands for a “When Authors Get Off” contest, to be judged by Chris, who will procure the generous prize—the current and all back issues of Annalemma (or, if you’ll allow me the spirit, Analenema).

In the same fashion as with our preceding contest, name some porn parody titles (Girl with Curious Pubic Hair; Go Down, On Me, Moses; Howard’s End, etc). A call for submissions will also follow this contest, for a collaborative piece named after the winning title, edited by Chris and published online at Annalemma. Details forthcoming here with announcement of the winner.

Po-boy’s Complaint by David Swider, of Kitty Snacks, a venture located in Oxford, Mississippi, whose southern hospitality has hosted many Po-boys (also Po’ boy, Po Boy, short for “poor boy”), a southern sandwich featuring deep-fried seafood.

Of the many awesome entrees (White Nicoise; A Jello Course; Ulyssauce; 100 Years of Soul Food; A Handful of Crust; The Remains of the Danish; Babka on the Shore; Yeast of Eden; Romeo and Julie ate), PoBoy’s Compliant struck me as the most intuitive, playful, and unexpected.

Mississippi is still pensive about those Jews Mr. Roth, so let’s thanks David Swider for initiating this assimilation; it’s just a matter of time they’ll have you sitting next to good ol’ William. (Go Down, go Through, Moses — same difference.) David, congrats, I’ll be in touch with you regarding a free post on htmlgiant.

Aaron Burch’s How To Take Yourself Apart, How To Make Yourself Anew is now available and is currently shipping. All proceeds from sales between now and 2/13 will be donated to the American Red Cross or Médecins Sans Frontières but this isn’t about that, necessarily. A generous benefactor has purchased five copies of the chapbook for us to giveaway.

To enter the drawing, leave a comment on this post between now and Friday at noon answering the question “How Do You Take Yourself Apart?”

We’ll choose our five favorite answers and those individuals will receive a copy of this sexy little piece of work.

Death in Venison

War and Peas

The Flan Almost Rises

The Unbearable Lightness of Beans

Chow Mein Kampf

Moby Duck

Finnegans Wok

Animal Farm 2

Freshly rejected from McSweeney’s lists, oh how we all try. Figured I’d do something productive with it. More please — the person who does my favorite gets a “free” guest post on whatever they want, so long as it’s not mean spirited and not “not safe for wok.”

or

Who wins? READ MORE >

Alyssa Carver, "fragment from Faulkner" - Brooklyn, New York

From the very first day that Eva Talmadge and I announced that we were putting together a photo-anthology of literary tattoos–in a post I made from Hong Kong to this blog, on 7/24/09–we have been overwhelmed and elated by the response. Photos have come in from all over the world, from all different kinds of people, each with their own reason for having chosen their line or lines or illustrations that pay homage to everything from Twain to Twilight, from Shakespeare to King’s Dark Tower, Plath, Dickinson to Salinger, Shel Silverstein, Dostoevsky, John Berryman, J.K. Rowling, T.S. Eliot, Mark Z. Danielewski, David Foster Wallace, Moby-Dick–I could go on (which reminds me: several fine Becketts already, including at least two versions of the line alluded to here). And yet, despite the sheer volume of amazing work we’ve received–and the fact that we had declared 12/31/09 the submission deadline–we are still looking for more. We’d love to hear from you anytime between now and, say, Valentine’s Day. But don’t delay, because after that it really will be over. We will turn the book in to our editor at Harper Perennial very soon after that date, and it will be on shelves this coming fall. Detailed guidelines are posted on the original call for submissions, but here is the most important thing: Please send clear digital images of the highest print quality possible as an attached file in jpeg format to tattoolit@gmail.com. Pixel resolutions should be at least 1500 x 2000, or a minimum 300 dpi at 5 inches wide. I can’t tell you how many people have sent us excellent ink in unusable formats or at too-low-for-print quality levels–this close to the deadline, there simply may not be time to wait for re-sends, even if we love the work. A million thanks to everyone who has shared their work with us thus far, and to everyone else–hope to hear from you soon.

Alec Bryan, "Dore's Ezekiel with Melville Banner" - Ogden, Uta

Dan Slessor, "text from Neuromancer" - Brighton, England

Nicknames are for athletes and the occasional movie star. I would argue the finest as “The Hammer,” aka Charlie Sheen, only because it was bestowed by teenage Las Vegas call girls. In athletics, I’ll go Owen “What the Heck” Beck (a not so zealous Jamaican boxer), Nicolai “Old One Leg” Andrianov (Russian gymnast), and “He Hate Me,” startling, odd, possibly existential, always fucking awesome, and worn proudly by XFL running back, Rod Smart.

And for writers? (We are not talking pseudonyms, another thing entirely.)

READ MORE >

See that little advertising box up in the right hand corner? Right now it’s scrolling through 3 different pictures, which in weeks and months to come will be populated with new ads, images, etc. We thought it would be cool inside the stream if we opened that space up to our users, as a chance to promote their books, chapbooks, magazines, pics of self, or anything else. So we’re opening the gates…

Through the end of next week we’ll be accepting entries for the first of a monthly series of contest prompts where one person will get a free slot of any picture they’d like to see rotating in that box (linked out to wherever, waking hype, traffic, etc.). 1 in 3 viewers of the site will see it each time it reloads. No, it can’t be porn, or really disgusting. We reserve the right to streamline too much baddy.

To win this spot, for month 1, we’re asking that you submit a response to any piece of creative work published online. A mini review of a story you liked in Diagram, or a poem you liked in Typo, or a review of a chapbook, book, anything. Critical response, creative response, whichever way, but please make it clear what you are responding to (and include a link!). One winner, out of however many entries, will be selected by a HTML Giant contributor to be named later, and that winner will select an image/link to put in the box for the next month. Simple, fun, pimping.

Posts should be 300 words or more. We’ll reserve the right to use any entry, including the winning one, as a post on the site (with you credited, of course). Send your entires through next Sunday the 27th to contest@htmlgiant.com. We’ll pick the winner and host them through January of the new year. And then February, a new contest. Etc. Go!