Win all of Bolaño’s stuff over at TQC
*The person known as my wife eats pies inside out.
In the latest issue of The Quarterly Conversation, Scott Esposito is running a contest to give away to his readers
every single one of Roberto Bolaño’s works available in English, plus a special preview of his forthcoming novel The Ice Rink (New Directions, 2009). That’s eight books, including his mammoth new novel, 2666, and his new poetry collection, The Romantic Dogs, both reviewed in this issue.
The contest is pretty simple – read issue 14 of TQC, answer the questions on the contest page, and send your answers to Scott’s email address by December 31, 2008.
*Enjoyment of eating pie = enjoyment of reading TQC?
WE WANT YOU: To Help Name Rachel Sherman’s Firstborn Child!
So yesterday I had lunch with Rachel Sherman (author of The First Hurt), who also teaches at Rutgers. She’s wildly pregnant, and told me she’s due in about 7 weeks. She mentioned that the baby is a girl, and I asked if she and her husband had a name picked out. She said there were several in the running, but nothing was settled. I suggested that maybe the best way to come to a decision was through an internet contest. And so, after I agreed to her single and only stipulation–which is that the results are non-binding–she basically told me to go knock myself out.
So it’s now up to YOU to help NAME RACHEL SHERMAN’S BABY. The rules of the game are simple: post your nomination for the baby’s name in the comments section of this post. Eventually, Rachel will pick a winner, and also explain what type of winner you are: (1) “winner” in the sense of “yeah I might totally call my kid that” or (2) “winner” in the sense of “that was really funny slash original slash offensive of you, but seriously dude.” (UPDATE: Rachel says the winner also gets a signed copy of The First Hurt.)
To help get you in the right spirit, here’s a picture of a tiny adorable primate clutching a teddy bear.
Kathy Fish Fellowship now accepting applications
Sorry to bump the Boobs Friday post down, but Friday is nearly over and I’d like to post this before I forget. Also, I ate a really bad hamburger tonight, so I’m in a bad mood. It was one of those patties that are precooked and you just pull it out of the freezer and heat it up in the microwave. See, HEB was giving them away for free at one of their new stores here (they mailed out coupons or something) and I could not resist. I have three more left. I will probably eat those too and complain again. Sorry. I cannot control myself.
Okay, to the important information.
Smokelong has just announced that they are now accepting applications for the 2009 Kathy Fish Fellowship. You can read guidelines at their site, but here’s a nice excerpt:
We want to foster that sort of commitment to new writers, and in that vein, we created the Kathy Fish Fellowship. All writers previously unpublished in SmokeLong Quarterly are eligible to apply.
I like the idea for the fellowship. I wonder if other journals do this? I know The Southern Review has a fellowship (but it’s a little different), and maybe the folks at West Branch too?
Anyhow, the deadline is December 20th, so yeah. Send in your applications, people.
The absence of your essays turns my blood into hot oil.
My boyfriend tells me that when I’m asleep, I radiate heat, that my skin is feels like it could inflict first degree burns. This is troublesome for a few reasons:
1. If I set the sheets on fire I will be screwed becuase I don’t have renters’ insurance.
2. Normal people are supposed to experience a one or two degree decrease in body temperature.
Last night I had a nightmare typical of literary journal slush readers everywhere: there were five submissions, an approaching deadline and nothing was any good. I am convinced that this recurring nightmare is the reason I turn into a little furnace-woman every night, but you can help. Submit some nonfiction to Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Fine Art. We have a contest going on until December 1, if cash prizes are your kind of thing, and if not, you can just submit the old fashioned way.
Why just nonfiction? Because I am on the nonfiction board and perfectly content to let the fiction people do their own begging. But I will also say this: the fiction editor these days has a wild streak and his fiction is hysterical and surreal, though his tastes are broad, I think he wants to laugh and cry at the same time when selecting fiction. So far he’s only gotten one story out of the slush (as opposed to solicited stories) and it’s his favorite story thus far. As for poetry… meh? The poets are a tad hermetic on the whole and I have no idea what their tastes are right now.
I like personal essay things over high-minded pie in the sky stuff and the other two people on the board tend to lean that way too.
Also, Columbia is run by 2nd year MFA students (at Columbia U) and the staff changes every year. If we’ve rejected you in the past, try again, because we are not the same we anymore
OUR CONTEST HAS A WINNER! CONGRATULATIONS TO MARK
It was difficult to pick a winner. Many of the submissions were excellent critiques of the photograph, especially Adam R’s Life is awesome and Darby’s Jesus Christ looks down and Larry and JImmy briefly… Jereme managed to draw some human interest to the pink-dress character as a professional tree-kicker. She’s almost forgivable in that light. Almost. Really, you are all winners in my eyes, but since I have to choose one, I think the winner is Mark:
[Here is the original photo, and the winning prose – JT]
Come in and eat something. It’s all free for me. It’s all free from me. Do the dodododo. What’s new pussycat?
My chest is elevator globules. I’m less bouncing than freighting. I can’t say where my car was parked.
In retrospect, maybe this was a ridiculous idea.
This story’s richly detailed prose on vapidity validates the initial project: truthfully, a shallow one. I appreciate the ominous voice and its multiple perspectives, artfully equal in number to the characters in the photograph and at the same time also the subtle voice of the reader/viewer/narrator. I’m wondering, whose ridiculous idea was this in the first place? And which ridiculous idea are we speaking about? The jumping on the bed, the request for a story, my continual feelings of inadequacy? Artfully and well done, Mark–congratulations and thank you.
The prize for HTMLGiant’s first-ever literary contest is a bottle of homemade linen spray.
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MARK, to collect your prize, contact me via my website with your address and I’ll fwd the info to our anonymous contest-runner, who will mail you the homemade linen spray.
WINNER.
FIRST EVER HTMLGIANT LITERARY CONTEST (NO ENTRY FEE)
Friends, this picture was provided to us by an anonymous friend of mine, who is an excellent and well-known publisher. S/he forwarded it to me yesterday, with the following message appended: >>this girl made fun of me in high school (pink dress)<<.
For the first ever HTMLGiant literary contest, you are invited to write an original piece of literature inspired by this photograph. Poetry, prose & indeterminate forms are all acceptable. Feel free to simply provide a caption, or to produce a short-short up to, say, 300 words. Leave your entries in the comments section of this post.
My anonymous friend will judge, and it will be up to him/her what–if anything–the winner receives.
Day of Jubilee: Tao Lin offers free victory book to Barack Obama
with ‘obama’ as president my writing will increase in viability, i believe
Happy Actually Having a Future Maybe, Instead of Definitely Being Totally Fucked!
Here’s one for the road-
Starcherone Contest?
Maybe not a useful post, but if anything it reminded me that I have a few books that I must still purchase.
Starcherone Books has announced contest guidelines for its annual Innovative Fiction Contest.
The 2009-10 contest, offering $1000 and publication with Starcherone Books, is now accepting entries. Contest is open to story collections, novels, or indeterminate prose works up to 400 pages. Manuscripts will be blind-judged; the author’s name should appear on the first of two title pages and nowhere else in the manuscript. There is an administrative fee of $30. Please do not send cash. The postmark deadline is February 15, 2009. The winner will be announced in August 2009. All finalists will be considered for publication with Starcherone Books. See our ad in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers.
Also, they have a special offer going for those who want to submit. If you add an additional $10 to your entry fee, they’ll throw in a copy of The Lost Books of the Odyssey for your trouble.
Ben Marcus is the final judge.
Let’s play “how do you explain this to Grandma?”
A link to this blog turned up in my inbox this morning, with an attached note addressed to me and my little sister: >>This is my first cousin Arnold’s daughter. I never saw her. I do not know what this means. Can either of you explain it. You can tell me when you get here if you have no time now. Love, Grandma<<
Okay, let’s play the game. You’ve just woken up. You’ve clicked through and read the blog, and watched the video. You pretty much get what they’re up to (e.g. miscellaneous corporate nerd stuff). So……..keeping in mind that your goal here is not to snark your heart or out, sow confusion, or express derision, but rather to communicate just enough meaning to satisfy the person who asked the question……..H0W DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS TO GRANDMA?
I didn’t know Flannery O’Connor was a whore
In their manner of honoring the dead old lady from Milledgeville, GA, UGA Press, ever the pioneering visionaries, have ‘blindly’ selected Andrew Porter’s The Theory of Light and Matter, which comes, blindly, from an Iowa grad who has published stories in One Story, Epoch, the Pushcart Prize anthologies, and so on.
Those factors certainly don’t have to add up to a boring book, if a slightly predictable one, but then the copy on the book’s win already has the thing looking like it will be on the shelf next to all those books we could have read in its place:
In the tradition of John Cheever, ten stories that explore the loss and sacrifice in American suburbia: These ten short stories explore loss and sacrifice in American suburbia. In idyllic suburbs across the country, from Philadelphia to San Francisco, narrators struggle to find meaning or value in their lives because of (or in spite of) something that has happened in their pasts. In “Hole,” a young man reconstructs the memory of his childhood friend’s deadly fall.
Sure, O’Connor wrote narrative stories with development and all, but she did that years ago, before a lot of others, and I can’t imagine what she’d be doing now, years later. I honestly think this kind of repetitive story blandering is a knock on her name more than a praise.
‘Don’t shit in my mouth and call it a cookie.’
Even Barry Hannah’s blurb seems a little stilted: “I’ve known of Andrew Porter’s genius for ten years. He’s a born storyteller. Every page of The Theory of Light and Matter will change something in your life and refresh you. Yet it is an easy read, nothing like classroom lit. He makes his own space instantly and invites you in. Hats off!”
So here’s to another win we could’ve called from outside the stadium. Another contest rewarding mimicry. Can’t wait to read more Cheever. Yay.