Emerging Writers Network

The Collagist Meets Storyglossia

Storyglossia's Steve McDermott interviews The Collagist's Matt Bell for Storyglossia's blog.  It's as detailed a look at what goes on behind a couple of great literary journals as you'll find.  And it's great knowing that the editor of one of your top 2 or 3 journals appreciates what you've done with your own journal!

Source of Lit - The Collagist's Blog

Not sure if everybody's aware but beyond the fantastic writing in The Collagist, there is also a blog that is updated just about daily.  These updates include podcasts of the authors reading their work, interviews with the authors, etc. and make for a great daily diversion from whatever it is you're supposed to be doing on your computer.

Source of Lit - Five Chapters

As has been posted about many other places this week, Dave Delay's Five Chapters has given itself a tweak this week and for the next week as well I believe - posting full short stories each day, including the weekends, as opposed to the usual breaking single stories into five sections means of typically giving us great things to read.

I think Dave has a great eye for stories and have to believe he's another editor that believes stories have to start off with a sentence that makes the reader want to read the next one.  Cases in point from this week's efforts:

"The Super 8 Motel in Wendover, Nevada, was fairly Spartan even for one-star accommodation, but when Lakshmi pulled in at 8:30 p.m., thirteen hours after she’d left Berkeley, the place seemed as luxurious as the Winter Palace." from Lauren Grodstein's "Swimming"

"I have been defecated on three times in my life, literally crapped on that is, for I am not the sort to go around characterizing any victimization I might feel in such vulgar metaphorical terms." from Lori Ostlund's "And Down We Went"

"Dear Doris Boos, I never reply to these things. That’s been my steadfast policy ever since butcher knives started showing up in the mail after “Die For Your Dinner.” from Adam Davies' "Dear Doris" (and yes, I know I went to the second sentence here but I liked it a lot)

"Rebeca led her brother to the canal she’d found two months earlier, a place that before that day she’d resolved never to tell him about." from Jennine Capo Crucet's "Drift"

"On a scorching Monday in May, I drove to Super King." from Samantha Peale's "Super King"

Each of these led to my reading further into the stories Dave published this week and I was pretty happy each day that I did.  Wander on over and give Five Chapters a read, then remember to do so regularly.

St. Lawrence Book Award

Monday, August 31 is the deadline to submit your manuscript to Black Lawrence Press for the St. Lawrence Book Award.

Eligibility:
Each year Black Lawrence Press will award The St. Lawrence Book Award for an unpublished collection of poems or short stories. The St. Lawrence Book Award is open to any writer who has not yet published a full-length collection of short stories or poems.

Why:
If you win, you'll receive publication and $1,000. Plus ten copies of your book.

How:
In order to reduce the costs of printing and postage and in the spirit of being a bit greener, Black Lawrence Press now accepts electronic submissions rather than hard copies for our contests.

Please include the following in your electronic submission:
-A cover letter with brief bio and contact information including your e-mail address(es)
-A .rtf, .doc, or .pdf attachment including a title page, an acknowledgments page, a table of contents, and your manuscript with numbered pages.

Email your submission to editors@blacklawrencepress.com.

Please submit your $25 entry fee via Paypal. You can submit your entry fee by clicking here.

About the judges:

Black Lawrence Press does not use interns to screen entries. All entries are judged by the editors.

Notification:

Because of the high volume of entries received, all finalists and semi-finalists will be announced
on the Black Lawrence Press website. All finalists will be announced on or before October 31 of each year. The winner will be announced shortly thereafter.

Other Notes:

We may request hard copies of manuscripts that make it to the finalist round and are being seriously considered for the prize.

Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but you must notify Black Lawrence Press immediately if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere for publication.

All finalists will be considered for standard publication. In addition to each year's winner, Black Lawrence Press often offers standard publication to one or more other finalists.

Shya Scanlon - Forecast, Chapter 12

Forecast is being serialized semiweekly across 42 web sites. For a full list of participants and links to live chapters, please visit www.shyascanlon.com/forecast

Chapter 11 is at Joe Sullivan.  Chapter 13 is at Matt Briggs.

 

 

12

 

Asseem didn’t change young Zara’s direction so much as quicken her pace.  It was clear to anyone watching that she’d been looking for a way out, that she was bored.  She was bored of her parents, their obsessive and vicarious focus on her own transgressive acts, bored of her absurd teacher and his split personality, and bored of her peers.  But it was a lazy boredom, comfortable, and lead to behavior which, unlike that of Asseem, broke boundaries in a kind of off-hand, easy-going manner, upsetting and in the same movement reestablishing balance, a cat burglar in the house of social norms.  It amounted, in her mind, to little more than ultimate compliance.  For all the ferocity, the reputation for a quick-lipped licentiousness that inspired anxiety in those around her, her attitude was not born of a desire to threaten, intimidate, or harass.  It came naturally, unforced.  It moved through her body like blood.  It radiated from her like the soft exhalations of a sleeping child: effortless. 

Even her frustration at this disposition gushed from her in attitudinally appropriate amounts, and her emotional spasms were a clock by which the adolescent development in others could be gauged for some sign of aberrance.  The Doc called her flawless.  I’ve always used slightly different criteria for my assessment, but I’d been inclined to agree.

So it was not difficult to see why she felt drawn to Asseem.  He shared her fire and determination, walked down the halls of their school without a glance to either direction, but did so without the grace that, paradoxically, seemed to cause Zara the most grief.  She was like a ballerina jealous of a break-dancer’s slouch. 

Not that anyone but the most careful observer could see the ballerina.  This is in her head, I'm talking.  The ballerina was hidden behind Zara's brusque manner, or rather, was this very manner, so in tune with her environment, a symbiosis of complementary forms.  This fact, however, only made the idea easier for people to accept.  "Two rugged outsiders drawn together by the world that wouldn’t let them in," etc.  It was the tag line from a movie she'd hate.  It wasn’t quite as easy as that.  Though Zara confessed her interest rather quickly, both to Asseem and herself, the boy openly fought it for a while, and even after public capitulation arguably never truly faced the extent of his feelings until the day she left him.  Not that Zara minded.  It was part of what she loved him for.

It belonged to his sense of intense entitlement, which she found equally provocative.

Asseem’s deep brown eyes smiled at her as he chewed the apple.  Her savior, the fool.  Juice dripped down the canals formed by his full cheeks as she studied his expression.  She steadied her nerves, glanced at the de-dogged doorway, and punched him moderately hard in the gut, taking the apple back.  She loved his sense of entitlement, but she wasn’t going to stand for it.

He wheezed, doubling over.

“Thanks for saving my ass, but the apple’s not for you,” she said, and bit into it herself. 

She’d swallowed the first bite and taken another by the time Asseem had recovered.  “Damn, girl, that shit ain’t right,” he managed.

“It isn’t right to take what doesn’t belong to you,” she returned, smiling to herself.

“Yeah well I shoulda juss waited to grab it rollin down tha street once ‘at dog’d took yo’ ass down.”

Zara considered.  “Okay," she said, handing him the apple, “but spare me the ebonics, fresh, I heard you in class today.  You’re not fooling anyone.”

This pissed him off.  He stood back, looked her up and down, and made the "tse" sound she'd soon learn to love.  "Shit, girl," he said with a lip-curling disdain, "I ain't even tryin' ta hear dat."  And with that he pushed past her and headed out, slamming into the blinding lights of 5^th Avenue like a slap in the face.  Zara watched him go, slightly amused, and took another bite of her apple before following him out of the building.  Back under the heat lamps.  She broke through a crowd of people gathered just outside the door, thought for a moment that they'd come to witness the commotion she'd caused, and turned to see she'd just exited a movie theatre.  Hmm.  Still scanning to find her target, she experienced a small let down at the idea that Asseem, this beautifully stormy brown boy, would be spending his time watching inane, uplifting feature films.  A voice inside her tried to excuse him, reasoned he could have been getting a hand-job, something redeemable, but Zara rooted the voice out as her mother's, and pressed the issue out of her head.  She just needed to find him.  She'd talk to him.  She'd see for herself.  She listened to her mother's fading cry, cliff-fall-crashing against the craggy shore of her daughter's subconscious.

Temporarily free.

Asseem was just turning the corner when Zara caught sight of him, mercifully moving away from the unpleasant street.  He was heading back east, she saw - possibly home.  She crunched another bite of her diminishing meal and took off after him.  Happy, film-bound faces swirled around her, heading in for their dose, ready to be blasted into unbecoming, and she frowned at them as she passed, trying for at least an unemotional middle-ground of basic comprehension.  Something pre-judgement.  Something true.  Something.

Asseem was partway down the block when she turned the corner, and Zara quickened her pace.  She called out to him but he didn’t stop.  Bastard, she smiled.  They moved through the relative dim, shadows stretching before them from the blast of light behind, and Zara watched as her head began to lick his heels.  It moved up the clopping calves as she pressed forward, over his ass, and when her outline was etched across his back she asked again: Asseem?

The boy stopped.

"Asseem look I'm sorry if-"

"Ain't no if," he interrupted.  He was still facing away.  Zara stood in place, wondering how angry he really was.  She wasn't used to facing such hostility.  She caused it, of course, but people didn't normally confront her with it.  It was held in, tied up, released when she was gone.  Maybe, she thought, he was being intentionally melodramatic.  She was quick.  Of course, people had different feelings about this, over time.  Some of my colleagues thought his behavior was largely affected.  Some thought it was exaggerated, but unintentionally, a prop thrown up automatically by a genuinely diminutive self-image.  Though I never liked the guy, I gave him the benefit of the doubt with this.  He was just another confused kid trying to make his way in the world.

"Well, okay," Zara began.  She was surprised to find herself actually using a tender voice.  She wondered vaguely where she'd gotten it, but was almost entirely wrapped up in the telling.  "I'm sorry that I offended you."  She paused.  "It wasn't my intention."

People pushed by them, mongers making their way to and from 5^th Avenue, carrying their wares or carrying cash.  The street crowded in around them, but not, Zara felt, threateningly.  The grime and gush of ill-maintained urban landscape was a comfort.  The creatures trudging through, its keepers.  She waited.

"Handpepper is a fool," he finally said.

Now they were getting somewhere.  Zara fought the urge to express her full excitement about this statement, not only the sentiment, but the plain way he pronounced the word "fool".  He was reaching out.

"I think you might be on to something," she said.

He turned around.  His eyes seemed to struggle past their sockets, staring from somewhere deep inside his head.  His face was round but not soft, and the early whispering of whiskers broke through the skin of his cheeks and chin.  “You’re a fool too.”

Okay, she thought.  I’ll give it to him.  Zara just smiled.  Only fools don’t admit their own foolishness.  She hadn’t dismissed everything her father had said, after all.

“You think you only get one tongue?”

Whoa.  Here it comes.  She was captive at Go.  Tongues?  Tongues were good.

“You think just because I can speak your language, everything else I say is somehow inauthentic?”

Inauthentic.  This was too good to be true.  She silently chastised herself for paying more attention to his form than his content.  “I…” she began.

“You don’t know shit.”

They stood looking at one another for a while in silence.  He’d challenged her, of course.  It was Zara’s turn to prove him wrong.  But she knew this could only be achieved over time.  She chose instead to redirect.

“Did you know that Handpepper is the bottom in a master/slave relationship he has with his wife?”

Asseem scowled.

“As in she ties him up and makes him eat off the floor and stuff.”

He made the “Tse” sound again and turned back around, began walking.  Zara hopped up beside him, which he didn’t seem to mind, and walked with him.  They walked through the busy corridors of commerce she’d passed through on the way down, but instead of heading up the main artery connecting her neighborhood to downtown, Asseem kept to side streets.  They walked. 

They walked.

They passed a fallen poster advertising an older 5^th Avenue film, and Zara was reminded of the theatre he’d dragged her into.  She was fairly certain by now that he’d have a good explanation for it, but the idea wouldn’t leave her alone and eventually leapt from her mouth after a sharp inhale.  She wasn’t quite ready for it herself, and hoped it wouldn’t upset things further. 

To her surprise, Asseem didn’t seem to notice the judgmental undertones of her question, and gave her a near-animated response.  “It’s my job,” he said, “I work those theatres.  All of them.”

“You work, what, at the ticket booth?”  Zara wasn’t sure how much better this was, but she was relieved that he wasn’t in there for the spectacle. 

“Hardly.  I’m a translator.”

She considered.  “A translator for what?”

“For the people who watch the movies.”

Zara wondered if he was being intentionally vague.  “Okay, so but what exactly do you translate?”

“You mean what language?”

“Sure.”

“Well, Zara, I happen to translate the fake language you take for some kind of lie I’m apparently telling the world,” he paused, “if not myself.”

Aha.  “You translate…”

“Ebonics, as you call it.  Though my people never use that word.  Black english.  Jive.”  He trailed off.  They stood a street corner, and Asseem looked at her, then took a deliberate turn.

Zara had only seen a few segments of these films, in-class screenings, and was trying to picture how the whole thing might work.  She saw an auditorium, many tiered, but couldn’t stop seeing them all sitting at desks.  She saw Asseem sitting beside some old, rich movie-goer, watched him passing notes to the man, crinkled up paper scrawled with whatever the black character on screen was saying, rapping away in barely understandable babble.

“Basically I sit next to old rich white folk and whisper in their ear when anyone speaks something even remotely unfamiliar.” He smiled.  A first.  “It doesn’t really matter what they’re saying.  I make it something I think the bastards want to hear, and the tips are healthy.”

This, thought Zara, was a great idea.  “What a great scam!” she exclaimed, excited by Asseem’s candor.  But when she looked over at him she saw a worried look.  His eyes scanned the street before them, and he craned his neck to look behind.  They were alone on this particular stretch, in between busier streets.  He came to a stop then, and she knew she’d crossed another line.

“Look,” he began, “first of all, can you try to contain yourself?  This doesn’t have to be a public discussion.”  He was annoyed.  “Maybe you’re used to just telling your secrets to anyone who’ll listen, and that’s fine.  You do that.  But do it somewhere else.  I obviously made a mistake telling you about my job, and I’m willing to accept those consequences, but-”

“Wait a minute,” Zara interjected, “never mind that no one’s around to hear what we’re talking about, but I, I…”  She trailed off.  His response seemed so out of line that she didn’t even know where to begin.  How could she communicate anything reasonable at this point?  They’d been together fifteen minutes and she already felt like an oaf.  The inner ballerina was all clumsy missteps.  She halted production, regained her balance, continued.  “Please, Asseem, just bear with me.  Obviously I’m a babe in the woods here.”

The boy kicked at the street, hands in his pockets.  He liked her.  He liked this crazy girl who punched him in the gut.  The Zarabarbarian.  His father would kill him if he knew he’d been with her.  He smiled.  He frowned.

“Well, it’s not a scam,” he said, low volume. 

Oh.  Insulted pride?  Partially, but there was something else in it.  Zara tried to piece it together.  This tough and delicate diamond, speaking from under an emotional shadow, source unknown.  She was falling hard.  The wind picked up and she watched Asseem’s top-mop curl into the air.  Cans blew across the street, scraping metal echoes into the awkward silence.

“The weather’s been going crazy,” she said.  A peace offering.  Asseem looked around, nodded.  He started walking, slowly, then turned back toward Zara.  He shrugged.

“You coming?”

Zara let a barely noticeable smile murmur across her mouth.  She shrugged back, and caught up with him.  The wind pushed them down the block, and although it was warm, Zara wrapped her arms around her waist.  Asseem kept looking around, always vigilant.  They walked in silence for a while, watching the wane of activity around them, the darkened streets interrupted by city-lit burning drums, and Zara wondered if she’d made the cut. 

“I didn’t mean it wasn’t important work,” she finally said.

“Yeah, well, I have plans.”

“I believe it.”

Zara realized that she was still holding her mostly eaten apple, and after seeing that it was all browned and dry from the windswept dust, she tossed it into the overgrown lot of an old Safeway.  A pang of hunger pulsed in her stomach, and she thought about home, then glanced at a street sign, trying to place herself.  She wasn’t more than a few blocks away from her house, but they were going in the wrong direction. 

“Are you coming back to class?” she asked, trying to hide her hopefulness.

He looked at her, quizzically.  “Of course I’m coming back to class,” he said.  “What made you think I wouldn’t?”

“I was just, you know… I mean you and Handpepper…”

“That’ll blow over.  He got what he wanted.”  Asseem said this was a convincing tone of certainty.

Zara thought about it, and realized it was true.  Handpepper had got what he wanted.  She pictured his smug mug as he’d stood in the doorway earlier.  She smiled. 

“I guess you’re right,” she said, and turned abruptly to the left.  “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

Asseem stopped and watched her walk away.  He shook his head, rubbed his stomach, and continued on his pathway home.  He had to think of a good story to tell his father.

Source of Lit - The Collagist

Dzanc Books is pleased to announce the publication of its newest venture: The Collagist, an online literary journal whose debut issue can be read immediately at www.thecollagist.com.  

 

The Collagist is edited by Matt Bell with Matthew Olzmann as Poetry Editor.  The debut issue includes fiction by Chris Bachelder, Kevin Wilson, Kim Chinquee, Matthew Salesses, and Gordon Lish, plus an excerpt from Laird Hunt's forthcoming novel Ray of the Star. Charles Jensen, Oliver de la Paz, and Christina Kallery each contribute several new poems, and Ander Monson and David McLendon offer  unique takes on the personal essay. The Collagist's first book review section includes coverage of Terry Galloway's Mean Little Deaf Queer, Michal Ajvaz's The Other City, and Brian Evenson's Fugue State, as well as a video review of Jonathan Baumbach's You, or the Invention of Memory.

This issue will also extend onto their blog, which will feature interviews with contributors and audio and video readings of work found in the issue, all of which will also be available as a podcast through iTunes. The blog can be found at www.thecollagist.com/wordpress/.

Dzanc Books' Best of the Web 2010 Information

The following can also be seen at the Dzanc Books News Blog:

The Best of the Web anthology series has a new Series Editor as of the 2010 edition, and that will be Matt Bell.  The Guest Editor for 2010 will be Kathy Fish, a writer and promoter of online publishing and journals that we're really excited to join forces with for next year's anthology.

Matt has recently sent out the solicitation to the editor's of all of the online journals in our database.  We've set up a special page as of today, for the Best of the Web, and it includes a special nomination form for editors of online journals. 

If you're the publisher/editor of an exclusively online literary journal, and you did not receive the following letter via email, please go on to the site and nominate three works anyway - it just means we either did not have you in the database, or had an outdated email address.

Here is the letter as Matt sent it out today:

Dear Editor,

Dzanc Books' Best of the Web series is a yearly anthology compiling the best fiction, poetry, and non-fiction published in online literary journals. Now beginning its third year, the mission of the Best of the Web series is to promote and expand the reach and prestige of online literature by offering this annual glimpse into the best writing the internet has to offer.

The 2008 and 2009 editions of Best of the Web were guest-edited by Steve Almond and Lee K. Abbott, respectively, and collectively published over one hundred established and emerging fiction writers, poets, and essayists. Continuing in this tradition, Best of the Web 2010, guest edited by Kathy Fish with Matt Bell as series editor, will include interviews with contributors, a list of the year's other Notable Stories, and a comprehensive index of over 330 online journals considered for inclusion in the anthology, including information on how to submit to each journal. This additional content will offer an added value above and beyond the already worthy writing by providing new opportunities for readers and writers alike.

Writing in Best of the Web 2010 will be selected by Ms. Fish and Mr. Bell along with in-house Dzanc editors. All editors of online literary journals are also invited to submit their nominations for this year's edition. Please see the guidelines below for further information, as well as the Best of the Web website. You'll also find blurbs from reviews of the previous volumes at the bottom of this e-mail.

Feel free to pass this call for nominations along to other editors or to post it online at your journal's blog, as our e-mail list—while extensive—is certainly not complete, and there may be journals we have not yet reached who would be interested in submitting nominations and in being a part of our index.

Thank you so much for your time and for all the hard work you do with your own publication and as part of the online literary community. We're very excited to once again read for this yearly celebration of your own efforts and those of your fellow editors and writers.

Sincerely,

Matt Bell
Kathy Fish
Steve Gillis
Dan Wickett
Best of the Web Series
Dzanc Books   

NOMINATION GUIDELINES

Nomination for Best of the Web 2010 will be accepted from August 5, 2009 until October 31^st, 2009. Each online literary journal is allowed to nominate up to three works they've published, in any combination of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.

To be eligible, works must have been published exclusively online between November 1st, 2008 and October 31st, 2009.

To nominate your three choices, please use the web form found at the Best of the Web website (http://dzancbooks.org/BestOfTheWeb/index.html), being sure to fill out the required fields completely. Not only will this ensure that we receive your nomination, it will also help us include your journal in our index of online literary magazines that will appear in the 2010 book and on the website.

Our judging process will be complete by early January, after which we will send e-mail notifications to those editors whose works have been selected for inclusion in this year's anthology, as well as requests for reprint rights from the writers selected.

Thank you very much for your interest in Best of the Web, and for the impressive work you do at your individual journal. It's our deep belief that the internet publishing scene produces much of the most innovative and interesting work being printed anywhere, and it is our great honor to read your nominations in the hopes of spreading the very best of that work to new audiences.

 

PRAISE FOR THE 2008 AND 2009 EDITIONS OF BEST OF THE WEB

"The book is heartily significant, featuring work that is sometimes surprising...and sometimes exhilarating--not unlike the Web itself." –Los Angeles Times

"The book both recognizes a wide range of quality online writing, and gives its readers a comprehensive look at the field from which its contents come – two characteristics of a good anthology... Such a development could not have come at a better time for online literary publishing." –NewPages

" in addition to the work itself, the open structure of this collection also encourages an interesting conversation about style and aesthetics. Between these covers poetry bumps up against fiction; longer work is juxtaposed to shorter; traditional narrative meets the absurd; and canonical authors like Stephen Dixon share equal page space with writers who’d probably never identify themselves by that title." –Fiction Writer's Review

EWN'er Receives a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award

Per their website, the Rona Jaffe Foundation has selected the six winners of this year's Writers' Awards and they include EWN'er and poet extraordinaire, Vievee Francis!  For those not familiar with the Foundation or these awards, the following is from their website:

In recognition of the special contributions women writers make to our culture and society, The Rona Jaffe Foundation is giving its fifteenth annual Writers’ Awards under a program that identifies and supports women writers of exceptional talent. The emphasis is on those in the early stages of their writing careers. This unique program offers grants to writers of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry to make writing time available and provide assistance for such specific purposes as child care, research and related travel costs.

Six emerging women writers have been singled out for excellence by the Foundation and will receive awards of $25,000 each. The 2009 winners are Krista Bremer, Vievee Francis, Janice N. Harrington, Lori Ostlund, Helen Phillips, and Heidy Steidlmayer.

Rona Jaffe (1931-2005) established The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards program in 1995. It is the only national literary awards program of its kind dedicated to supporting women writers exclusively. Since the program began, the Foundation has awarded more than $1 million to emergent women writers.

For those not familiar with Vievee Francis (well, shame on you), here is the bio from the RJF website:

Vievee Francis lives in Detroit, Michigan, where for 15 years she has been instrumental in fostering a literary community for youth and young-adult poets. She received her B.A. from Fisk University and will receive her M.F.A. from the University of Michigan in 2009, where she is the Alice Lloyd Hall Scholars Program Poet-in-Residence. Her first collection of poems, Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press, 2006), is described by her nominator as a “remarkably compassionate and clear-eyed debut that is a masterly poetic sequence rooted in mid-19th-century American voices and history. It is confident and utterly compelling.” Her poems have also appeared in Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Rattle, and in the forthcoming Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poets. She was a Cave Canem Fellow in 2005 and 2007. Next year with the help of her Rona Jaffe Award, she will complete the research for her new collection of poems on the Wendish region of Texas, where her family has lived since the 1800s when the slave holding region was settled by German immigrants seeking religious freedom.

Blue-Tail Fly is an excellent collection and some publisher out there is going to be lucky enough to be the one to publish Francis' second collection, poems from which I've been fortunate enough to have heard read aloud over the past couple years.  This is well deserved and very exciting news.