Tim Jones-Yelvington Reviews Dzanc’s Creative Writing Sessions
A few weeks ago, Dzanc books announced that they’d started a new program called the Dzanc Books Creative Writing Sessions. There was a lot of coverage of this announcement for about a week, and then news fell off. For a while, I didn’t read anything about the program, how it was doing, what it was like, etc., so when I saw that Tim had posted on his blog that he’d signed up for it, and because he’s a regular reader around here, I thought I’d ask for his thoughts.
HTMLGIANT Book Exchange
HTMLGIANT Book Exchange is a place to post lists of books you want or books you’d like to get rid of in return for other books.
It’s pretty simple: in the comments section, post your lists. Then if you see a book you want, nest your reply under the list you found it. Though it’s up to you and the other person to work out details of the trade, we will manage the lists and hopefully make a market of it, perhaps one more closely-knit and attentive to ‘good books’ over ‘just any old thing,’ in light of the now overrun book trade sites like Bookmooch and etc.
[In that mind, when you are listing books, please try to be selective in your ‘what I have’ lists, avoiding the common things that most anyone would have or could easily find, and instead try to focus on books that might not be as readily available for trade: i.e. less classics, more contemporary. If someone is looking for, say, Stephen King or Mark Twain, they can ask for it by name, and then you can follow up.]
[Also, if you post a list and want to go back and add more, make a note nested under your original and we can consolidate. Don’t make more than one node post of haves/wants, as that will get messy.]
This will be chaotic and wonderful to begin with. We’ll learn as we go, and if plans go as plans might, we plan on developing the thread into a page of its own. More on that later.
For now, a good way to search for a specific book you want once the list populates, use the Find command in your web browser, and hope it got spelled right.
Please post your lists, use some discretion (a compendium of every book you have in your attic is not necessary). Let’s do some sharing.
Reading Russia: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is the dystopian novel you’ve never read. Or maybe you have read it. I don’t know. I had not heard of it until I found it on a recommended reading list of Russian novels, and then a former student of mine learned of my planned trip to Russia and loaned me his copy.
What follows the jump is another post about my ongoing Russian lit reading experience. This post is in two parts: the first considers We‘s place in the world, which I thought I should share because the novel doesn’t seem all that popular or familiar to readers, though that was only my experience; the second part consists of a selection from the book and a quick revisit of Notes from the Underground.
Uncategorized / 22 Comments
April 27th, 2009 / 1:59 am
April 27th, 2009 / 1:59 am
2007 Form 990 – Narrative Magazine
So, forgive me for posting, but there’s more talk about Narrative Magazine, which just announced the results of its Winter Fiction Contest: $3,000 goes to the winner, Janet Burroway.
The discussion begins at Literary Rejections on Display, where Writer, Rejected points at an old post at Arts and Palaver that suggests Eds. Jenks and Edgarian ‘fix’ the contests. Elizabeth Brody comments on the LROD post that she is working with Web del Sol to investigate Narrative Magazine. Then Jason Sanford, after posting the Notable Stories of 2008 and awarding Narrative Magazine best online journal of 2008, responds to various concerns at his blog. Words continue over at the Our Stories blog, where Alexis Santi offers suggestions to Tom Jenks and Carol Edgarian as to how they could improve Narrative Magazine‘s transparency. It was suggested that someone ought to post Narrative Magazine Inc.’s 990s, to which a commentor, Andrew W., responded by linking to the Foundation Center and reporting a few things:
Unfortunately it’s not all that helpful in putting together of story of exactly how they spend their money: for example, in 2007, Narrative had assets in excess of $230,000 (w00t!) and spent $50,000 on editorial services, $15,000 on copyediting, $29,000 on a webmaster, and $39,000 on author fees. There’s no way to know what the actual breakdown on all that was without asking them, but it’d be good to know how in the world they can spend $29,000 in one year on a webmaster.
I figured I might as well (re)post that information here.
After the break, a few selections from the 990. If you care to look at the entire 990 that Narrative Magazine Inc. filed for the year 2007, you may do so by clicking on this link (PDF). If you care to search the Foundation Center’s 990 Finder, then enter Narrative Magazine Inc.’s EIN: 03-0542711.
Uncategorized / 145 Comments
April 26th, 2009 / 2:05 pm
April 26th, 2009 / 2:05 pm
re: skill ping pong master – a response to Mark Baumer
The other day, Mark Baumer wrote me an email, the subject line of which is the title of this post. He wrote:
My friends fred and fred have been playing ping pong against each other. They are not very good. Do you have any tips or suggestions or tutoring videos I could pass on to them? They keep calling me coach, but I don’t really know too much. Any tips would be appreciated.
Here is my response:
Hi Mark Baumer,
I appreciate your writing to ask me questions about ping pong. I want to help you out as best I can. I watched all five video recordings of Fred playing Fred over at Everyday Yeah.
(For those who don’t know, Everyday Yeah is a wonderful site. You should go look at it now).
Four table tennis tips after the break.
Sample THE FUTURE with Barrelhouse
The editors of Barrelhouse have a PDF sampler online of their latest issue, #7: THE FUTURE. The sampler contains, among other things, Alex Irvine’s “The Truth About Ninjas,” an annotated version of Michael Czyzniejewski’s “The Atheist Reconsiders,” and a remixed version of Blake Butler’s “The Ruined Child,” now called “The Passionate Male Prostitute.”
Here’s one of Czyzniejewski’s notes on the phrase ‘crucifix-bearing alien’:
I also still love the idea that these aliens would be as in love with symbols and trinkets as we are. I just like the notion that they wear normal clothes – in movies and comics, aliens are either dressed like astronauts, all in silver space suits, or they’re naked. Why wouldn’t the clothing industry take off with other intelligent beings? I like the image of an alien wearing a suit, or kicking back in sweat pants and white socks. If God made them and gave them Jesus, why wouldn’t God give them shame? And soon after civilization started wearing clothes, there’d be fashion faux pas. And slobs. I just wish I’d worked in an alien rosary, to throw in the Mary angle as well. This story is part of a new manuscript, my second collection, and to be sure, I will throw an alien rosary somewhere – more than a crucifix, I think a rosary is what really separates Catholics from other faiths. Even thinking alien virgin and alien manger and alien little drummer boy makes me smile.
You have to read the piece, really. So go over to the Barrelhouse website, take a look at the sampler, and then buy the issue.
Czyzniejewski’s first collection can be ordered from Dzanc Books.
Uncategorized / 10 Comments
April 22nd, 2009 / 6:00 pm
April 22nd, 2009 / 6:00 pm
Reading Russia: The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov
It’s very hard for me to separate these two books in my mind. Elements of each strike me for their similarity: the characters Prince Myshkin and Alyosha Karamazov, Nastasya Filippovna and Agrafena Svetlova, Parfion Rogozhin and Dimitri Karamazov, Gavrila Ivolgin and Ivan Karamazov; there is some sort of complicated love triangle between everyone; someone is murdered in a gruesome fashion (by knife and by pestle); and so on.
The heft of these books encourages me to take them on long journeys, so that I may always have words to read. I want to wear them on my feet and grow two inches taller, because I am only 5’6″ and I read a study somewhere that taller people tend to make more $ in the business world. I want to hollow out these books and store smaller books inside of them and even smaller books inside of those books. These are the kinds of books that make me wish I could escape from writing stories that involve two people saying stupid things about sperm whales to each other. These are the kinds of books that make me miss good storytelling.
Uncategorized / 28 Comments
April 21st, 2009 / 8:29 pm
April 21st, 2009 / 8:29 pm
Reading Russia: Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground
As you may already know, this summer I’ll be traveling to Russia for a week. Because of that trip, I decided to read as much Russian literature as I could. I even blogged about my plans over at Conversational Reading. But so far, I haven’t read much; it’s taken me longer than I expected just to get through Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. What follows are some brief thoughts (perhaps too personal?) about Notes; look out for more posts on the next few books. Read on if you’re interested.
Uncategorized / 22 Comments
April 17th, 2009 / 1:40 am
April 17th, 2009 / 1:40 am
Time Out New York and Poets&Writers say kind things about things
Michael Miller wrote a nice article in the latest issue of Time Out New York praising three fine journals: The New York Tyrant, Agriculture Reader, and NOON. If you haven’t read it yet, here’s an excerpt or two:
Started in 2007, The New York Tyrant is the brainchild of GianCarlo DiTrapano, a former intern at FSG who decided to sell his house in New Orleans to start a literary mag, which he now produces in his studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. “I look for writing where it’s evident the authors have sweat over it,” he recently told TONY over drinks in midtown. “I respect writing where the authors expose the shit out of themselves and take risks.”
And this:
Agriculture Reader is so DIY that the first issue was entirely handmade. This is no small feat: According to Jeremy Schmall, who edits the publication with Justin Taylor, each cover had to be hand-painted and hand-cut. Now in its third installment, the zine-ish publication leans more toward poetry than the Tyrant does, but it shares a commitment to publishing bold voices and finding an audience.“Publishing is a conversation, and we don’t want to only be talking to our own little clique,” says Taylor. “I wouldn’t say that we have any particular aesthetic criteria, other than that the work has to thrill us in some way.”
Contest Insanity
Aside from the Keyhole bidding war ($405 at the time of this post) that has broken out recently, there are other insane contests around the internet that I wanted to link to.
First, I present to you a number of spambot contests running over at PH Madore’s blog and at Blake Butler’s blog. These two contests involve spreading word of the contest in as many other places as possible and then commenting in the respective blogs comment sections to link to where entrants have spread word of the contests. Jason Jordan is another blogger in the habit of running these sorts of contests over at his blog, which require entrants to comment on the post as much as possible in order to win free stuff, like issues of Ninth Letter and Annalemma. So keep an eye on him.
Tim Jones-Yelvington, frequent HTMLGIANT reader, is running a contest at his blog that asks entrants to describe in <1,000 words what their dinner with Lydia Davis might be like. Winner of the “My Dinner with Lydia Davis” contest will receive a one-year subscription to the lit journal of their choice. Wasn’t Lydia Davis married to Paul Auster at some point?