TBR: House of the Ancients and Other Stories by Clifford Garstang

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe! 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

Nobody’s perfect, but some of us—mostly men, it seems—are blinded by hubris and baser urges. Judgment is impeded. Mistakes are made. The stories in this collection, many of them set outside the U.S., explore some of the consequences of these common failings.

Which story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And, which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

I had a lot of fun writing “The Scottish Play,” which is probably why I put it last in the collection. It’s based—very loosely—on a bizarre incident I witnessed during a performance of Macbeth, and I loved imagining what was going on the minds of the actors and the audience during the show. As for difficult stories, the whole first section of the book, including the title story, is about this guy, Nick, who is a controlling jerk. It’s hard to write about a character like that and still retain some amount of sympathy for him.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

I hate to admit it, because I’ve also experienced publishing lows in other situations, but it was all a high for this book. I have a great relationship with Kevin Watson at Press 53, who published my first two collections as well as the anthology series I edited. When I finished putting this manuscript together, I contacted Kevin right away and he agreed to publish it.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

My usual answer to that question is “stick with it”—because the key to success in publishing is perseverance. But lately I’ve come to appreciate a nugget of wisdom about the writing itself: If you can figure out what you need to say, the writing will follow.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

Looking over the stories in the collection, I seem to be drawn to misfits. Not sure what that says about me, but there it is. What did NOT surprise me is that I’m also drawn to stories set in exotic locales.

How did you find the title of your book?

The title of the book is from the collection’s opening story, which I felt introduces the themes I’m exploring in the book: realistic people, mostly men, who are blind to their own shortcomings.

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

There’s plenty of food (and drink) in the stories, but there’s really only one item that has a meaningful place in the book, and that’s the nut loaf (with gravy) centerpiece of the Christmas Dinner in “Pluck.” Here’s what that might look like:

https://www.veganricha.com/2018/12/vegan-meatloaf-nut-loaf.html

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READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://cliffordgarstang.com/

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR PILE: https://www.press53.com/short-fiction/house-of-the-ancients-and-other-stories-by-clifford-garstang

READ A STORY, “HOUSE OF ANCIENTS”: http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/2017/08/241-house-of-ancients-by-clifford.html

A Big Day Over at Redux

It’s been a busy week, but maybe you’d like to wind down with some good reading? Redux, the online journal that I founded*, marks its 200^th "anniversary" this week—that’s 200 posts of creative work since we started in August 2011. In honor of the big day, I posted links to the 10 most popular stories/poems/essays that we’ve published, along with some other favorites.

Let the reading begin:

http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/2016/04/200-two-hundred-posts-lets-celebrate.html

*Redux features previously published literary work that is not available in a print book or elsewhere online.

Redux Open to Submissions July 5 – July 31

Redux, the online journal of previously published work, is accepting submissions of fiction/poetry/essays during an open reading period: July 5 to July 31.  We’re looking for literary work of high quality that has been previously published in a print journal but that is not available elsewhere on the internet.  Our mission is to bring deserving work to a new, online audience.  Preference will be given to older pieces (i.e. published before 2012).

No novel excerpts, poems that appear in chapbooks, or pieces published in anthologies…even if these books are presently out-of-print.

Please read our guidelines for important submission information.  If your work is accepted, you will also be asked to write a short “story behind the piece” essay a la the Best American series. Pieces must be available in a Microsoft Word file.

Authors we’ve published include Margot Livesey, Sandra Beasley, Robin Black, R.T. Smith, Michelle Boisseau, Kelle Groom, Erica Dawson, Catherine Chung, Walter Cummins, Lee Martin, Dave Housley, and Terese Svoboda.

We look forward to seeing your work!

Redux:  http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/

Submission guidelines: http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/p/submission-guidelines-for-redux.html

Questions: reduxlj AT gmail DOT com

No More One & Done...How to Republish Your Work

This is an interesting topic and a wonderful blog post:  “The Benefits of Republishing Your Work,” written by Kelly Martineau:

One particular thing for which I look, thanks to the advice of poet Denise Calvetti Michaels, is ways to republish or repurpose my essays. Why? Republication naturally occurs for more established writers as their work is reprinted in anthologies, writing guides, and textbooks. However, submitting for republication is great strategy for writers early in their career with a small body of finished work because it enables you to leverage that work for maximum outcome. Not only will you gain a publication credit and exposure to new readers, you may also garner payment, an award, or a unique benefit like a reading, a meeting with an editor, or participation in a juried workshop.

I’m not just making admiring sounds because my online journal Redux is mentioned in the piece as a place that accepts (exclusively) previously published literary work (open reading period coming this summer!), nor because I’m quoted in Kelly’s post…but because she’s absolutely right: Try to maximize the ripples of your wonderful work! Don’t just assume that once it’s published it can never see the light of day! I’m also thinking of blog posts about more universal topics, that might be repurposed as republished (though you must be upfront that the piece first appeared on a blog).

Read the rest for a list of places that will consider previously published pieces: http://kellymartineau.com/2015/04/29/the-benefits-of-republishing/

And here is Kelly’s stunning essay “Bounty and Burden,” that appeared first in Quiddity, and then in Redux (which, I believe, means this is a repurposed republishing of a republished piece, or something like that, haha), and which may be on its way to somewhere else!

Excerpt:

HungerIn those days, when my parents were still married and we lived in the white colonial on a tree-lined street, I began curling my shoulders forward, wrapping my body so that my chest sagged and became a hollow.  Once, when I was four, I wore a candy necklace—an elastic round punctuated by pastel beads that I could crack with my baby teeth.  My father’s best friend bought the necklace at the grocery when he and my father escaped from their wives long enough to buy more beer on a muggy Saturday afternoon.  Long after the candy was gone, the adults still emptied the cans….

Read the rest:  http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/2013/11/104-bounty-and-burden-by-kelly-martineau.html

Thanksgiving Week Focus on Food: Hushpuppies!

Speaking of food, you just have to sneak over to my online journal Redux and read R.T.Smith's amazing ode to the hushpuppy.  (Warning:  you will end up starving and longing to drop everything so you can start building a catfish pond.)

Here's an excerpt:

...Now I’m not about to define “hushpuppy” in some partisan and proprietary way, though it is kissing cousin to a fritter, neighbor to cornbread and a far cry from a crepe.  I’m not even going to dictate how to concoct the ideal knee-knocking, unforgettable, whiplashing-scrumptious hushpuppy, other than to recommend some basic components and say that you’ve got to tickle the oil right up to about 400 degrees, which is also the temperature the mercury will register if you stick a thermometer under the tongue of most anyone in my family when their ire is aroused.  Our tribe’s tendency to run hot and express our displeasure in unruly and emphatic fashion should right away clarify a couple of things: the oral method is the only fever measurement method worth trying on us, and don’t stand between us and anything we prize or favor, especially our preferred provender.  But don’t get me wrong here; we are neither rabid nor deranged, only enthusiastic.
     My family at one time, individually and collectively, knew how to make a hushpuppy so delicious it would make you cut a buck and wing and forswear indoor sports and week-night church....  

Read on:  http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/2014/11/149-where-i-come-from-hushpuppy-is-not.html

Kinda Cool: My Essay Is Selected for "100 Notable" in New Best American Essays

 Hmm…I’m not sure how the New York Times Magazine’s Ethicist columnist would feel about an editor publishing her own work in her literary journal.  But apparently I don’t care because I’m doing it!

I found out this weekend that one of my essays was listed in the “100 Notable Essays” section in the back of the new edition of Best American Essays (thanks for telling me, Anna Leahy!).  So, yay for that, and yay that I hold the incredibly powerful position of editor/founder of Redux, the online journal that features previously published work not found elsewhere on the internet, allowing me to jump right into it and post the essay today. 

I’d like to add a shout-out to the literary journal that originally published this piece, PMS: Poem Memoir Story, which features work by women writers.  I bought a copy while at AWP and after reading it, knew that I wanted my work to appear in those pages.  I’m so happy to bring some more attention to that fine journal.

Here’s the opening to the essay, “Joy to the World”:

It’s mid-December, a morning of doing errands, a day like any other day, except that everything is going remarkably well:  I find a great parking spot.  The post office isn’t crowded when I arrive to mail my packages, though the man behind the counter tells me there’s been a line all morning, “until right about now.”  Find another great parking spot.  Stumble across the perfect Christmas gift for my hard-to-buy-for friend at a locally-owned boutique.  And so on.
 Last stop, the grocery store, where my luck continues, and the guy working produce locates in the back the last bag of parsnips in the building.  Parsnips are a key ingredient in the velvety-lush root vegetable soup I want to make for dinner tonight.  “Bet you’ve never seen anyone get so excited about parsnips,” I joke to him, and he laughs pleasantly.
 So things are moving along, and I’ve committed to a check-out aisle, unloading my cart onto the conveyer belt, doing my usual tidy job of it:  heavy stuff up front; frozen foods, meat, and milk grouped together; produce in one section, poisonous cleaners in another; fragile things at the end.  I’m daydreaming about the array of Christmas cookies on the covers of the food magazines, so I don’t notice the person in line ahead of me until she snaps, “I told you I can’t lift more than five pounds!  Those bags are too heavy!” ...

Read the rest here:  http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/2014/10/144-joy-to-world-by-leslie-pietrzyk.html

Read This Poem!

National Poetry Month continues at Redux…I’m so pleased to present “Solstice,” a beautiful poem by Richard Foerster.  (Redux is the online journal of previously published work not available elsewhere on the internet.)  Be sure to read the “story behind the poem” to see how a long-ago job at a dictionary company influenced the writing of this poem 40 years later!

Here’s the link.

Milestone: Redux Publishes 100th Piece!

Now entering its third year, Redux, the online magazine I founded/edit, has just published its 100^th writer!  That translates to more than 100 stories, essays, and poems that have been previously published in literary journals that are now available on the internet, finding a new audience online…so important in these “end of paper” times we live in.

Of course I love everything selected for Redux, whether it was chosen by me personally or by one of our fine advisory editors*, but I did save an extra-amazing essay to appear as lucky number one hundred:  “Your Hand Is My Hand” by Catherine Chung, which was first published in The Journal in 2007.  It is, the author noted on Facebook when sharing the link, “the first piece I ever published, and the one closest to my heart.”

It’s a gorgeous essay, about love and cancer and hope and vulnerability and family; you may need a box of tissues nearby as you read: 

About a month ago I had a tumor excised from my left breast.  The tumor was 3.3 cm in diameter, roughly the size of a ping pong ball, and was located under my left nipple. When it first appeared a year and a half ago, I told it, “You can stay so long as you respect the balance.” But in its last months it had spurned the balance and grown, rising to the surface so that it was visible: an alien marking out its territory. It started to develop what felt like appendages. It began to pull my nipple back into my breast, so that the skin around it puckered and collapsed.

Read on.

*Special thanks to our hard-working and super-smart advisory editors: Deborah Ager, Marlin Barton, Joseph M. Schuster, and Steve Ello.  I couldn’t do it without you!

And there are still a few more days left in our open reading period, if you’d like to send in a previously published story/essay/poem for consideration.  Here are the submission guidelines.

Redux Is Open to Submissions: ISO Previously Published Literary Work

Redux is accepting submissions of fiction/poetry/essays during its annual open reading period: September 10 to October 15.  We’re looking for literary work of high quality that has been previously published in a print journal but that is not available elsewhere on the internet.  Our mission is to bring deserving work to a new, online audience.  Preference will be given to older pieces (i.e. published before 2010).

No novel excerpts, poems that appear in chapbooks, or pieces published in anthologies…even if these books are presently out-of-print.

Please read our guidelines for important submission information.  If your work is accepted, you will also be asked to write a short “story behind the piece” essay a la the Best American series.

Authors we’ve published in our first two years include Margot Livesey, Sandra Beasley, Robin Black, R.T. Smith, Michelle Boisseau, Kelle Groom, Erica Dawson, Walter Cummins, and C.M. Mayo.

We look forward to seeing your work!

Redux:  http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/

Submission guidelines:http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/p/submission-guidelines-for-redux.html

Margot Livesey on How to Create Vivid Characters

I’ll be leaving for AWP tomorrow, so no more blogging for the rest of the week.  But luckily, Redux has published a fantastic essay by writer Margot Livesey about creating characters, so I can leave off by urging you to read this smart and elegant piece:

Anyone who has read Margot Livesey’s books (which include Eva Moves the Furniture Homework, and The Flight of Gemma Hardy,) will find this hard to believe, but Livesey claims, “I am character handicapped.”  She writes,

“This essay grows out of my efforts to understand why the process of creating characters in fiction often seems so elusive and what we can do to make it less so.  To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor’s famous remark about story, everyone knows what a character is, until they sit down to create one.”

 

Through a close consideration of memorable characters, she comes up with valuable insights that will aid writers at any point in their writing career, reaching back to Aristotle, E.M. Forster, William Gass, and following up with her own observations, making a compelling case for one quality particularly necessary for successful character development:

 This seems to me the key to creating vivid and memorable characters.  It is also, I think, the reason why doing so can prove such a tricky task.  No amount of detail – eyes, teeth, hair, jobs, dreams, relationship to mother, history of dog ownership, bank balance – will avail unless it conveys attitude. 

 

There’s much more!  Read on.

Catching Up...

…on Redux:

A great story by Kim Church about love and the TV show Columbo…yes, really!

“After the hurricane, when our cable service was finally restored, we began picking up channels we hadn’t paid for.  It’s been months now and the company still hasn’t caught on.  My husband feels guilty, but I tell him to look at it this way: we’ve been given a gift, the best kind, one we didn’t expect or deserve, and we should make the most of it, especially since we know it can’t last forever.  The truth is, I don’t want to lose my Columbo reruns.  One of our new stations plays two Columbos every Monday morning and one on Thursdays, and I’ve been taping them all….”

 

Read more.

And a new poem today about silent movies by Adam Vines:

…The yellowing Friday Photoplays burn,

the women’s I dos and I can’ts engraved

in their expressions on the covers--words

their lost, soft tongues never had to crave. …

Read more.

Link Corral: ISO Poems About Bourbon; Lee Child on Creating Suspense; New on Redux

This week is really "hello—goodbye," as I’ll be away from the blog for the rest of the week.  But there may be some food-related posts in the future….

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Who can resist a call for poems about bourbon?

Winged City Press and Two of Cups Press announce a call for submissions for the forthcoming anthology tentatively titled BOURBON FOR BLOOD, due out in July 2013.

We are looking for well-crafted, full-bodied poems that mention bourbon. A passing reference or a traditional ode to your favorite distillery, we have no stylistic preferences other than to demand that your work is top shelf.

Submission guidelines

Send up to three bourbon-related poems to twoofcupspress@gmail.com by Jan 1, 2013
Previously published poems are accepted for consideration as long as all the required information is provided in the submission. Contributors will receive one copy with the option to buy additional copies at cost. Bios will be requested if your poem is selected.

For more information:  http://www.wingedcitypress.com/p/bourbon-for-blood-anthology-of-bourbon.html

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I thought this was a terrific article about creating suspense in your writing, by Lee Child:

How do you create suspense? I’m asked that question often, and it seems that every writers’ symposium has a class with that title. It’s an important technical issue, and not just for so-called suspense novels. Every novel needs a narrative engine, a reason for people to keep reading to the end, whatever the subject, style, genre or approach.

But it’s a bad question. Its very form misleads writers and pushes them onto an unhelpful and overcomplicated track.

Because “How do you create suspense?” has the same interrogatory shape as “How do you bake a cake?” And we all know — in theory or practice — how to bake a cake. We need ingredients, and we infer that the better quality those ingredients are, the better quality the cake will be. We know that we have to mix and stir those ingredients, and we’re led to believe that the more thoroughly and conscientiously we combine them, the better the cake will taste. We know we have to cook the cake in an oven, and we figure that the more exact the temperature and timing, the better the cake will look.

So writers are taught to focus on ingredients and their combination. They’re told they should create attractive, sympathetic characters, so that readers will care about them deeply, and then to plunge those characters into situations of continuing peril, the descent into which is the mixing and stirring, and the duration and horrors of which are the timing and temperature.

But it’s really much simpler than that. “How do you bake a cake?” has the wrong structure. It’s too indirect. The right structure and the right question is: “How do you make your family hungry?”

And the answer is: You make them wait four hours for dinner.

As novelists, we should ask or imply a question at the beginning of the story, and then we should delay the answer. (Which is what I did here, and you’re still reading, right?)

 

Read on.

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New on Redux:  Former advisory editor Anna Leahy’s wonderful poems:

From “Anatomy Class”

We halved sheep’s eyes and hearts,

sliced frogs and pinned their skins down--

female frogs with tiny, black eggs

scooped gently from their bellies

and males frogs--and animal parts

with no sex, no attachment

to a particular body. Remember the walk

to the boys’ school, the blood taken

from fingers, our cat spread on the slate table,

its eyes closed and its mouth open,

teeth exposed and tongue rippled slightly,

curled up at the tip as if to pant. …

Read on.

Link Corral: ISO Work by Women Writers and Jen Michalski in Redux

I’ll write up an update about my personal “Ernest Hemingway Day” in Key West, Florida, later this week, but for now, a quick link corral.  (And don’t forget to vote today, if you haven’t already!)

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ROAR Magazine is a print literary journal dedicated to providing a space to showcase women's fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art.

We publish literature by emerging and developing writers, as well as interviews with established writers,such as acclaimed novelist and short story writer, Jill McCorkle, who, in our current issue, talks about balancing her life and writing.

ROAR Magazine is now accepting submissions for our 2013 winter issue.

ROAR accepts work that represents a wide spectrum of form, language and meaning. 
In other words, don't worry if your work isn't specific to feminist issues. If you're a gal, we just want your point of view!

For detailed guidelines, please visit our website at www.roarmagazine.org.

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New on Redux:  Jen Michalski’s story “The Safest Place,” previously published in Reed magazine:

When Andnej turned sixteen he set like concrete. His cheeks and jaw flattened and squared, and so did his nose, which pointed downward, like a beak. Basha wondered if he smiled whether his face would break. In the afternoons and evenings he sat on a playground swing behind their apartment complex, his necklace catching the sun as his Adidas and jean cuffs dragged across the pavement. When the boys came up to him, he no longer ran.

              “He sold drugs to Henka’s sister,” Kamilia said as Basha studied him through the apartment window.

              “How would you know?” Basha looked down at her. Last year Kamilia had played princess games with Henka, the other 9-year-old in the building. Kamilia, whose face colored and eyes found the floor of the elevator when the boy down the hall read aloud all the bad words spray-painted on its walls. “Do you even know what drugs are?”

              “He gives her aspirin.” Kamilia moved her thumb and pointer finger together to show the size of the pill. “Henka says that Ania takes them to lose weight.”

              Basha could not forbid Kamilia to play with Henka; if it was not one child in the complex, it was another. They were the children of mostly second-generation Polish and Chechnyian families, and they tended to stick together.

 

Read on.

Sandy!

Not sure what the next few days will hold...despite her cute-as-a-button name, Sandy is apparently going to be a mean girl.  I will post when I can, but all indications are that power outages will be widespread.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that front...and also that the giant oak tree next to our house lives to tell the tale of surviving yet another storm.  We take care of our trees--and this big one is beautiful!--but this is not a fun time to live on a wooded lot.  How I long for those flat, empty vistas I saw this summer in De Smet, South Dakota!

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And if you get the chance, check out the new poem posted on Redux, by Philip Belcher, one of our Converse low-residency MFA grads!

Link Corral: Redux Open for Submissions; Free E-Book About Living with Cancer

Part 2 of my Quebec eating experience—I  mean, vacation—will have to wait a day or two, so in the meantime here are a few items of note:

--Don’t forget that Redux, the online journal of previously published material, is open for submissions until October 31.  You can find more information here.

--Speaking of Redux, there’s a new story up by Tamra Wilson, “Nora”:

When Nora had all she could take of life, she doused her hair in kerosene and ran down the road swaying and hollering like a branded calf before she finally crumpled to meet her Maker face down.

Hal and Billy were there and they couldn’t forget the sight of their big sister turned into a heap of smoked meat, and it bothered them for weeks and months afterward. They’d wake up nights in bawling fits about a booger, and it about drove Mama distracted trying to quieten them down. (Of course, I was only a baby then, so I couldn’t have no such recollection of my own. I’m just relaying what folks said.) Mama thought maybe all this happened according to the Good Lord’s plan being as how Nora had been an odd sock, but it didn’t matter then; Nora was as dead this way as any other.

 

Read on.

--Tracy Krulik, one of the members of my neighborhood writing prompt group, is offering free e-copies of her memoir on Friday and Saturday: 

Told with both frankness and humor, I Have Cancer. And I've Never Felt Better! is the everyman's (or woman's) Lance Armstrong story. It's one woman's wild journey from unraveling a medical mystery that took nine years to solve, to navigating the science and art of medicine in search of the right treatments, to finally awakening to a healthier, more balanced life -- with cancer.

Just as millions of people live healthy lives with chronic diseases like diabetes and even HIV, Tracy Krulik shares how she learned to do the same in her fight against cancer -- using her bike and a plant-based diet as weapons.

 

You can visit the book's site on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Have-Cancer-Never-Better-ebook/dp/B0096DIHKM and download it Friday and Saturday free of charge to your Kindle or Kindle reader, or on your phone, tablet or computer.

Redux: New Story Now ~ New Board & Reading Period Coming Soon

New on Redux:  A beautiful story by my former writing group member, C.M. Mayo.  Her comments on my work often sounded like this, in a very sweet voice:  “Leslie, I can’t see this.”  So as I wrote, I tried to anticipate where she might not be able to see—and I became a far better writer in the process.  Still—miles to go before I ever come close to the wonderful visual sense and details that she captures, as evidenced in this wonderful story, “Revillagigedo.”

Rigoberto Castro had a flair for the dramatic, his wife Beatrix always said, and when she said it she rolled her eyes like a saint, engulfed in flames, imploring heaven. Beatrix had been obliged to speak to him recently about his new habit of wearing an ascot. Before they were married, when they were novios, when Rigoberto was twenty-two and Beatrix barely twenty-three, she had been obliged to speak to him about his habit of using an ivory cigarette holder. "Riggy dear," Beatrix had said, Riggy dyahr, in her plummy BBC accent, "You fancy you look like a movie director, but you look rather like Roosevelt. An old man with snaggly teeth." Rigoberto Castro did have snaggly teeth, which were now stained with the coffee and nicotine of five decades. He was sixty-nine years old, and with a bum ticker, too. Mitral valve prolapse.

 

Read on.

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Speaking of Redux…

Don’t forget that there will be an open reading period that starts on October 8.  Details can be found here. 

And I’ll be introducing a brand new editorial board in the coming days.  You can get a sneak peek here.

Redux Open Reading Period Sneak Peek & New Story

1.  Redux will have an open reading period, October 8 through October 31.  Guidelines can be found here.  Basically, we’re looking for previously published stories/poems/essays that are not found elsewhere on the internet.

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2.  Check out Nathan Alling Long’s story “Thrown,” just posted on Redux:

His body was stiff from the fall, but the snow had cushioned him from breaking any bones.  He yelled out for Mosby again, and after the horse did not appear, he did what he often did in infrequent encounters with terror.  He thought of the mundane, listing what was certain. “This is snow,” he whispered into the wind.  “My feet are dry and my boots are on tight.”

 

And be sure to read the writing process that led to the story:

“I recall sitting down to write one day and finding myself bored with any image or idea I came up with.  I decided then to write about how one writes a story, seeming from nothing.  I thought of an all white environment, and came up with the cowboy in the snowstorm, akin to a writer lost in the whiteness of a black sheet of paper.”

Read on.

Dan Rosenberg's New Book, The Crushing Organ

I’m pleased to announce that Dan Rosenberg, whose poem “Here” appears here on Redux, has just published his first book of poems:  The Crushing Organ, winner of the 2011 American Poetry Journal Book Prize.

Obviously I’m a fan, having selected Dan’s work for Redux, but this blurb is another compelling recommendation: 

"Quick, immediate, and deeply compassionate, Rosenberg’s poems cover the vast range of the immanent quotidian. Through all their impossible turnings, we’re nonetheless convinced that we’re in the presence of the concrete, even the documentary. And while they recognize pressing catastrophe when they see it, yet they also see a way out—in a burst of flame, in storms with eyes, in a wire hanger bent to the shape of a human heart. Rosenberg has given us a tour de force of hope achieved through, rather than despite, a clear view of the current world."— Cole Swensen

 

And if you’re still in doubt, go here to read three more poems by Dan, published on “I Thought I Was New Here.”

Link Corral: DC Writers’ Happy Hour TOMORROW! and New on Redux

Sorry to be so last-minute about this…the perils of haphazardly blogging while traveling, I guess.  DC writer Willona Sloan is hosting another writers’ happy hour tomorrow, Tuesday, July 31.  Details:

Write.Drink.Read.

Write.Drink.Read – a collaborative gathering of writers––will be held on Tuesday, July 31, 6:30 – 8 PM at Science Club (1136 19th St, NW. Near Farragut West metro).

Part writers workshop, part happy hour, part open mic reading, this laid back collaborative, creative gathering is open to writers of all levels and experience.

Space is limited. RSVPs are required. To RSVP, email Willona at creativegeniusdc@gmail.com.

Please feel free to invite your friends, writing groups, and writing partners but each guest must RSVP. I will be capping attendance to maintain a level of intimacy.  We will be doing writing prompts and generating new work so bring your writing instruments and implements and open minds.

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New on Redux: Sondra Spatt Olsen’s 1990 story, previously published in The Yale Review: 

Lief hates taxis.  The cabdrivers unnerve him with their wild driving and strange routes.  He likes to know exactly where he's going.  He doesn't want any confrontations or terrors.  On the other hand, as they stand on the busy street corner, he notices that both Max's and Sophie's shoelaces are untied.  He feels so tense that he doesn't think he can make it several blocks to the PATH station without screaming at them as their laces, already frayed and grimy, drag on the filthy sidewalk.

Read on.

Link Corral: "The Manuscript Is Ready--(Or Is It)?"; 6-Word Story Contest; New on Redux

C.M. Mayo has posted her talk “The Manuscript Is Ready—(Or Is It?)—What’s Next?” from the Writer’s Center’s recent conference on publishing, and what a boon it is for writers in the pre-publication process, trying to decide if self-publishing might be for them and what to expect on the road to the finished book.  Great links and resources abound!

From the intro:

“So you've written your first book. Now what to do with it? It might appear that you're about to enter the labyrinth, but no worries, we're going to take three easy steps, and then a bird's eye view at what is less a labyrinth than a conveyor belt. Finally, for those looking for commercial publication, we'll look at three key areas to consider working on immediately, if not already.”

And all laced with good humor:

“Similarly, a writer who aims for a place in the literary pantheon with Edgar Allen Poe, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Eudora Welty, and so on, had also better be prepared to do an unholy amount of revision. Readers, even the most cultivated ones, rarely guess at how many times a quality literary novel or memoir has been revised. The reason is simple: when the writer goes out on tour to flog their book, they have zero incentive to confess how much work went into it, no more indeed than the leading ballerina dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy would halt, mid-twirl, to shout to the balcony, "AYYY, my bloody feet!!!!"

Read the rest.

*****

Talk about short:  the six-word story (Hemingway’s famous example:  “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”  Fleeting Magazine is holding a no-fee contest for a six-word story, and the prize is a night at NYC’s Algonquin Hotel, where Hemingway came up with his gem.  Deadline is September 30, 2012.  More details are here.  (Thanks to Meredith for the link.)

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New on Redux:  four poems by NEA winning poet Michelle Boisseau:

From “THIS LITTLE CEMETERY WANTS TO GROW”:

Hurt things continue.

The frost last night singed

the roses, but they'll

brave it out a bit

longer till winter

closes tight….

Read on.  And be sure to look at Michelle’s fascinating “Story Behind the Poems”:

…These poems are likely to appear in my next collection, Million, Million (which I'm aiming to finish this summer or fall); in it I explore how poems can enact huge shifts in time and scale, and so reorient us suddenly, shifting where we are and how we got here.  A million million equals a trillion; a trillion seconds ago is 34,000 years ago when the human race was painting on cave walls, when rhinoceroses lived in Europe, and the proto-Indo-European language was being developed. …