Latino Book Contest at Conversational Reading and An Earnest Post About My Favorite Independent Bookstore
To enter, simply email me a short description of your favorite independent book store. Make sure to include the city and state it’s located in, and why it’s your fav. Also include your mailing address (sorry, no entrants outside the U.S. and Canada, and no PO boxes) and make the subject line Conversational Reading May Contest.
I’ll pick five winners at random and announce here next Friday.
Here are the books:
1. B as in Beauty By Alberto Ferreras
2. Into the Beautiful North By Luis Urrea
3. Hungry Woman in Paris By Josefina Lopez
4. The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos By Margaret Mascarenhas
5. Houston, We Have a Problema By Gwendolyn Zepeda
I’m not sure if he’ll post all of the entries, but I hope he does. I enjoyed reading the Bookstores Category at Maud Newton, so it would be nice to have more of that, I think. After the jump, some memories of my favorite used bookstore.
Tin House Giveaway and Sexy Stories
In a few hours, I’ll wake up and tour a handful of houses that my wife and I are thinking about seriously purchasing. We’re looking at a ‘move’ this summer, and I’m looking at my bookshelf and wondering how many books I’d like to carry around in big boxes and how many books I can afford to give away.
So it’s about time for another HTMLGIANT giveaway promo contest thing. What I’d like to do is offer four back issues of Tin House: the Winter Reading issue (30), the Evil issue (31), the Hot and Bothered issue (32), and the Fantastic Women issue (33). To be eligible, all you need to do is email HTMLGIANT your full name and mailing address by Noon CST on, let’s say, Tuesday the 12th. If you don’t hear from me afterwards, then that means the random integer generator did not favor you. But look out for more giveaways this summer, as I’ve got a shelf of books that I can’t pack up.
These four issues are pretty good. Highlights include Steve Almond’s essay “Condifreaks,” which is basically letters to Almond regarding his resigning from Boston University after the administration invited Condoleezza Rice to speak at graduation (he responds to them as well); an interview with a former member of the Manson Family; and, basically, the entire Fantastic Women issue, with stories by Aimee Bender, Miranda July, Kelly Link, Lydia Millet, etc.
I need to part with these issues, but wish to give them to someone who will enjoy them. So if you’re interested, please don’t hesitate.
Sexy writing after the jump.
Brandon Gorrell is holding an embarrassing contest at his blog.
from brandon’s blog
here are the contest guidelines:
work must be fiction, 300 – 5000 words
entry deadline is friday may 15, 2009
submit in the body of an email to brandongorrell[at]gmail.com with ‘contest’ in the subject heading
paypal your entry fee/ agree to mail cash or check to mailing address provided at the same time as submitting your story. stories without entry fees will not be considered
I think it’s sort of tacky that Brandon is doing this. I know he just lost his job at the BBQ Café and probably needs money. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like a worthwhile investment for anybody. Aren’t there are other more concrete things to do with your money? And if you win you get a copy of Brandon’s book? It reminds me of the bratty girls in elementary school who would tell me I could come over to their house after school if I did their homework for them. Like, cool, great, thank you. Do you also want seven dollars?
‘A Jello Horse’ Contest
True HTML Giant Matthew Simmons will release his first book, a novella, in May from Publishing Genius, fantastically titled ‘A Jello Horse,’ the inversion-politics of which already have me bubbling.
In the spirit of this soon forthcoming title, Matthew is running a contest at his blog: The Man Who Couldn’t Blog, in which you can one of a very limited run of hardback copies of the book.
Please do indeed:
What’s Up Rumpus? Two Pieces of Very Awesome News
(1) The Rumpus is having a book review competition open to all undergraduate and graduate students. There is no fee to enter. Book reviews must be at least 600 words (no longer than 1,500 words) and concern literary fiction, creative non-fiction, or memoir. The publication date of the book is irrelevant. The deadline to submit your review is June 1, 2009. (I know for a fact that editor Stephen Elliott is really psyched about this contest. If there’s a college student in your life (or if YOU are the college student in your life) who is interested in this sort of thing, you’d be doing him or her a big favor by passing the word along. Click anywhere here to see the details at the Rumpus.
(2) THE LONELY VOICE: A New Column About The Short Story by Peter Orner What else could you possibly need to be told about this? There’s basically no level at which it’s not exciting.
storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2008
soldier fighting in the south exerts his democracy by reading printed out online story
Here’s the list. I may need to be corrected on this, but I think this is how it works: 1) editors and readers nominate stories via blog comments under their respective categories, 2) notable anonymous editors pick through the list and come up with the ‘notable stories’ list, and 3) finally, Jason Sanford, the editor of storySouth, picks the winners (forthcoming).
This is a gathering of diverse tastes, wherein anyone (as readers), can nominate their favorite stories. So at this point in the process, these stories have received praise from at least two entities. With all respect to Jason Sanford’s final decision, I’m always more interested in this list, as it is indicative of a greater population of sensibilities.
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?
Three Things I’ve Found Interesting Within the Sphere of ‘Booklyfe’, or: Booklyfe 3
This is what all talent/literary/federal agents look like. It's code.
1. Literary agent Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown, Ltd. is offering readers the chance to play Literary Agent for a Day over at his blog. It’s pretty simple: Read the posted queries, pick the queries you think belong to books about to actually be published, win ______ (he hasn’t specified the prize).
2. Via Matt Briggs, an essay from Frederick Barthelme published in 1988. I’m sure quite a few of you have read this already, but I hadn’t. I think the essay is definitely worth talking about, still.
3. Interview Magazine writes about Five Dials, a .pdf/email distributed literary journal. Hey, who knew this interweb thing could be used for like, literature and stuff?
I’ve already blabbed about this stuff elsewhere, if you’d like a quicker river.
HTMLGIANT Wants to Know (a contest):
Greetings dear readers of important literature,
I am trying to clean up my dirty frathouse look so that people can take me seriously.
What should I do with these hairs that are coming up out of my shirt?
Like, they aren’t quite chest hairs and they aren’t quite neck hairs? So do I shave them? Or clip them? Or pluck them? Something else? Another thing?
Turtlenecks are not an option, because I live in Houston, Texas, and summer is coming soon.
I am really serious about being taken seriously here. I need to be taken seriously so that I can one day get a job in the real world and make money for my family, because I’m going to have a family one day, and probably a mortgage :( so yeah.
So any grooming tips are welcome and encouraged. If you want, post in the comments section those grooming tips. Person who submits best grooming tip (funniest? most succesful? creativest? meanest? i dont konw) will receive a really old copy of Barry Yourgrau’s Wearing Dad’s Head and maybe some hair clippings or something. So be sure to include a real email so I can email you.
Okay, bye, thank you!
Now I’m going to go make a resume.
***UPDATE***
Wearing Dad’s Head goes to Joe Young, because he made me remember how much I loved watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a kid. Thanks, Joe, for the memories.
Find the Story: A Contest
I am cleaning my office. This sucks. Right now, I am taking a break. Yet, I do find all sorts of fun stuff when I “organize” my life. I found this torn out page from a New Yorker. The date is December 25, 2006-January 1, 2007. Otherwise, all I have is the last page of a story that clearly moved me, in particular the ending (good job, mystery author) and I remember these lines filled a carved spot inside me at the time:
Existence in the here and now only made me realize how much attraction the past exerts.