Lily Hoang
https://literature.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/lhoang.html
Lily Hoang has published some books and won some awards. She is Director of the MFA in Writing at UC San Diego.
Lily Hoang—
Lincoln Michel‘s class asked him what the current trending literary styles are. He said G-Chat Realism and Magical Tweeism.
Go!
15
Joshua Cohen’s Four New Messages
More info here. The book is good, very very good. Buy it.
“Jobs” you get “paid” for
It strikes me as funny that some commenters responded to my post below – letting people know about an opportunity to edit for the Volta – by questioning what a “job” is.
It strikes me as funny because most of call ourselves “writers”, but we’re not paid for it.
Many of us call ourselves “editors”, but we’re not paid for that either.
For the past few years, I’ve served as an associate editor for Starcherone Books, editor for Tarpaulin Sky, and prose editor for Puerto del Sol. I’m currently guest editing Fairy Tale Review. Blake and I co-edited an anthology. I’m editing an anthology right now with Joshua Marie Wilkenson.
All of it: unpaid.
Need a fucking job? Well, here’s one for you.
[Note: this is from Joshua Marie Wilkinson, so insert his name in instances of first person.]
***The Volta Seeks a Managing Editor***
Dear friends, poets, editors:
I started The Volta in January 2012 with poet Sara Renee Marshall to feature poetics essays, book reviews and author questionnaires, videos and poemfilms, interviews, audio conversations, and even poems.
Three of our columns are updated weekly, on fridays (Friday Feature, Medium, & Arroyo Chico), and the others have new content on the first of each month.
So far we’ve featured works by known and emerging writers (e.g., C.D. Wright, Rae Armantrout, Harmony Holiday, Joshua Clover, Farid Matuk, Juliana Spahr, Renee Gladman, and literally dozens of others: complete list is here).
We have new work coming out from Bernadette Mayer, Maggie Nelson & Brian Blanchfield, Douglas Kearney, Amy King, Rob Halpern, Lisa Robertson, Ammiel Alcalay, Tyrone Williams, Kate Bernheimer, Zach Schomburg, & dozens of others.
Lily Hoang—
What size shoe do you think Walter Benjamin wore?
I have small feet. I usually buy in kids, cheaper and cuter, though a little heavy on the glitter for my taste. It’s a problem.
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…
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.