Stephen Schmunk is the winner of the Lamination Colony nice sentence raffle, receives a free copy of Scorch Atlas. Stephen, please email me your address for shipping. Forgive me the indulgence, too, for mentioning that you can read the shortest story in Scorch Atlas now at 52 Stories. Leave a comment on the story there from now until Friday and I’ll give another copy away to a random person. Thanks!

This just in: Collective nouns for supernatural beings. Truly beautiful. What’s your favorite?

Nice interview with Laird Hunt by M.T. Fallon @ elimae: “Both of these books got started because I was unable to let go of the books they evolved from.” See also strong pieces by Jaclyn Dwyer, Sean ‘Blank Nacho’ Lovelace, Zack Wentz, and many others.

Spoken Word at the White House!!

to read about this evening and to see video performances click here

and who says poetry is dead!!??

Publisher’s Weekly has compiled their best books of 2009 and it has been pointed out, in a few places, that there are no women writers on the list. There are lots of other exclusions on that list too. Poor poetry. I’ve only read two of the books on the list—Await Your Reply and Shop Class as Soul Craft, both of which are fantastic—so I can’t really speak to the rest of the list but as I tried to think about major (mainstream) books written by women in 2009, the only two that come to mind are Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs (which I am currently reading, which I respect, which I do not love) and Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood. As I’ve thought about which books I would include on my own Top 10 list, none of them were mainstream books but about half were written by women. (My list, includes, in no order: American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell, Scorch Atlas by that one guy, Light Boxes by Shane Jones, AM/PM by Amelia Gray,  and How to Leave Hiealeah by Jennine Capo Crucet.)

Were no great (mainstream) books written by women in 2009? What would appear on your Top 10 list for 2009?

Following up on Blake’s Finnegan’s Wake post, here’s Ulysses as a graphic novel. Prepare to say “holy shit” again, Thomas.

Finwake.com illuminates Joyce’s fatboy with ‘glosses, tips and explanations’ of its bonkers words.

My very Christian cousin just emailed to let me know she had bought my book, and her and her husband are going to read it to each other soon. As kind as this is, I imagine I might not be invited to the summer reunion next year. How does your family respond to your writing? Do they care? Are they down?

Free copy of Scorch Atlas for someone who comments with a sentence they like from the current issue of Lamination Colony. Winner will be selected at random from all entrants by Wednesday afternoon.

do you ever consider the amount of time spent on a work as contributing to the quality (quality not necessarily meaning good or bad but characteristic) of a piece of writing (your own or otherwise)?  meaning, is there any additional consideration to be made about a piece of writing, other than nominally, if the amount of time spent on its creation is known?  or does that knowledge only refer to generalizations made about other qualities supposedly consequent to time?  and if amount of time is considered to impact anything, doesn’t then the use of time become unclear?  i can imagine shorter periods of time, while usually referenced as evidence of laziness, to be better for a piece in that it more fully allows one state of mind to dominate and avoid paranoia.  paranoia of course, would then be the negative result of a longer period of time spent on a piece of writing, whereas most would reference longer time as evidence of hardwork.  i think some of the same mentalities are applied to other bare facts like age, level of schooling et cetera.  go phillies.