Dzanc Best of the Web 2009
Dzanc emailed contributors encouraging them to spread the word, and I figured — and yes, I’m self-conscious about this — I’d employ my capacities at Htmlgiant and do it. Slightly edited from their template letter:
Dear Readers,
I’m excited to tell you that Blake’s and my stories have been included in the Best of the Web 2009 anthology recently published by Dzanc Books. The editors at Dzanc read thousands of works published by exclusively online journals last year and put together this collection of the 59 best short stories, poems and essays.
Last Tuesday there was an Invasion of the Internet as many of the authors included in the anthology wrote guest posts for various literary blogs, or were included in one large guest post for Book Notes at the Large Hearted Boy blog. A full list of these with links can be found here.
The book is available in Barnes & Noble, and Independent stores across the country, via Amazon, and the publisher’s website; I hope you’ll consider buying it to support our work, and the other great authors whose work you’ll get a chance to read.
Thank you.
Sorry for the disclaimer, but the implicit etiquette is generally not to promote one’s own work; but there are many other awesome writers involved with this book, and my aim is at them: Waqar Ahmed, Arlene Ang, Michael Baker, Marcelo Ballve, Marge Barrett, Carmelinda Blagg, Benjamin Buchholz, Amy L. Clark, Amber Cook, Bill Cook, Michael Czyzniejewski, Darlin’ Neal, Matthew Derby, Ryan Dilbert, Stephen Dixon, Alex Dumont, Claudia Emerson, D.A. Feinfeld, Marcela Fuentes, M. Thomas Gammarino, Cassandra Garbus, Molly Gaudry, Anne Germanacos, Matt Getty, Todd Hasak-Lowy, Karen Heuler, Ash Hibbert, Philip Holden, Roy Kesey, Hari Bhajan Khalsa, Tricia Louvar, Peter Markus, Michael Martone, Heather Killelea McEntarfer, Lindsay Merbaum, Corey Mesler, Laura Mullen, Joseph Olschner, Jeff Parker, Elise Paschen, Elizabeth Penrose, Kate Petersen, Glen Pourciau, Sam Rasnake, Jonathan Rice, Tom Sheehan, Claudia Smith, Lynn Strongin, Terese Svoboda, Jon Thompson, Davide Trame, Donna D. Vitucci, Helen Wickes, Kathrine Leone Wright, Jordan Zinovich.
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July 27th, 2009 / 1:21 pm
July 27th, 2009 / 1:21 pm
MERCE
Watch Merce Cunningham Beachbirds for Camera.wmv in Entertainment | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
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July 27th, 2009 / 12:14 pm
July 27th, 2009 / 12:14 pm
“How it would be, if a house was dreaming”
555 KUBIK | facade projection | from urbanscreen on Vimeo.
via engadget.
Cover War / Color War
(via Bookslut) Justine Larbalestier speaks at length about the problems she had with the US cover of her book Liar, a YA-adult crossover novel about a black teenage girl, that somehow wound up with a vaguely emo white girl face on its cover. Justine’s restraint and professionalism is remarkable. Quite a bit more of both than I’d have likely demonstrated in the same situation. The essay is a well-thought, engrossing exploration of the cover-choosing process, which is a bizarre mating ritual few people who have never been through it (or put someone through it) know very much about. I myself have just been through it for my story collection. Harper Perennial, btw, were super-responsive to my ideas, kept me in the loop at all times, and I’m counting down the days, minutes, seconds until I can show you what we came up with. They are amazing and just thinking about them–especially Michael Signorelli–makes heart bubbles float all around my head. But back to Justine. Another fascinating part of her story is how the whole whitewash experience stirred a change of her heart with regard to what the cover ought to be. Whereas originally she wanted the US cover to look like the Australian version, which is a sweet piece of design with no faces or other human parts on it, this experience led Justine to start noticing how under-represented people of color are on book covers in general (also the way that “colored” covers are frequently either rejected by stores/libraries or else ghettoed off in the so-called “urban fiction” section). Consequently, she seems to now feel strongly that the cover of the paperback edition of Liar should be representational, and depict a young black woman who resembles her main character, hopefully so young black women like her main character will see something they identify with when browsing the largely and unforgivably white shelves of the YA section. Here’s hoping she gets what she’s after. PS to Bloomsbury, if anyone in editorial/PR is reading this: we don’t usually cover YA, but if you give Justine the cover she’s gunning for, we’d love to hear about it / see a copy.
Open Yale Courses
Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University.
There aren’t a ton of courses available yet, but there are a couple of literature courses that I thought I’d point out to everybody.
Although I’ve yet to listen to any of Hammer’s lectures on modern poetry, I’ve listened to the majority of Hungerford’s lectures on 20th century literature and found them to be engaging and worthwhile:
Modern Poetry with Professor Langdon Hammer
About the Course:
This course covers the body of modern poetry, its characteristic techniques, concerns, and major practitioners. The authors discussed range from Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, to Stevens, Moore, Bishop, and Frost with additional lectures on the poetry of World War One, Imagism, and the Harlem Renaissance.
The American Novel Since 1945 with Professor Amy Hungerford
About the Course:
In “The American Novel Since 1945” students will study a wide range of works from 1945 to the present. The course traces the formal and thematic developments of the novel in this period, focusing on the relationship between writers and readers, the conditions of publishing, innovations in the novel’s form, fiction’s engagement with history, and the changing place of literature in American culture. The reading list includes works by Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth and Edward P. Jones. The course concludes with a contemporary novel chosen by the students in the class.
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July 27th, 2009 / 10:29 am
July 27th, 2009 / 10:29 am
KITTY SNACKS NO. 2 AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER
Mary Miller
John Brandon
Leni Zumas
Kevin Wilson
Ryan Dilbert
Suzanna Best
Krammer Abrahams
Savannah Louise
Isadora Bey
Ben Segal
Howie Good
Meg Pokrass
Phil Estes
Jimmy Chen
& Hastings Hensel
a comic by Kent Osborne
interviews with filmmakers Ross McElwee,
Matt Wolf, and Matthew Robison
art by Len Clark and Josh Burwell
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July 27th, 2009 / 3:26 am
July 27th, 2009 / 3:26 am
If Blake’s post on Zak Smith wasn’t enough for you…
The good people over at Jezebel are asking “Why Don’t Women Watch More Porn?” The Jez post is actually a response to / analysis of this piece by Violet Blue, “Are more women OK with watching porn?” which was published in O the Oprah Magazine and for some reason is online at…CNN? Okay, sure. But I thought the fun really started in the Jezebel comments thread, especially after Lux Alptraum from Jez’s quasi-disowned sister-site Fleshbot showed up and offered to help the group out with recommendations of more palatable porn. Also, reading this post taught me a new word–kyriarchy. It’s one of those great crit-theory words that perfectly describe a really-existing situation, and yet you just know that if anyone ever used it earnestly in your presence, you’d bolt. Oh well. Still a cool word.
Oh also, since I forgot to give it its own post when it came out the other day, there’s also a new installment of Susie Bright and her daughter Aretha doing tag-team sex Q&A, which both is and is not what it sounds like.
Index of Poetry Slam Looks
I’ve always been fascinated by all the hand and body gestures employed in the reading of slam poetry. Slam poetry’s cultural rhetoric is often that of political disenfranchisement and harsh urban experience, so there’s a certain indignation which at times feels, to me, insincere. But hey, I’m a middle-class wounded narcissist, so there. What follows are my theories about what each gesture and/or overall gestalt means.
I. THE “LET ME TELL YOU HOW IT FEELS TO ME” LOOK
Here, the poet points at himself — kind of like “extreme first person,” where self-absorption is interpreted as introspection. This guy is probably saying: I just got back from Hawaii / where I gots this shirt bitch/ thems Hawaiian’s ain’t down with us black folks/ pacific ocean demotion y’alls.
Zak Smith’s We Did Porn
I have been reading Zak Smith’s We Did Porn this weekend. I am pretty sure you’re going to want this. One of those books that once you open you don’t stop thinking about wanting to read until it’s over. Plus it’s about porn and art. What else do I need to say?
Oh, it has drawings, along with the memoir, which follows Mr. Smith through his alt-porn career:
Quite quite engrossing, and in one of those voices that sounds fresh enough to not sound like anyone else while still maintaining the maximum fun and punk sass.
It was going to take a pretty amazing thing to follow up the Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow idea, but yeah, halfway through I am ready to profess: Buy.