Gather.com, the folks who put together a chat with Jonathan Safran Foer not too long ago, have announced a new writing contest. Online writing contests are a dime a dozen, but the cool thing about this one is that the four winning short pieces (fiction or non-fiction) will be “published and sold on Amazon Shorts,” which would undoubtedly be a terrific venue for any aspiring writer. In fact, it’s along the lines of what I hoped Amazon would do with its Shorts program.
A way in to Amazon Shorts
NYRB Classics: Not Just for Grownups
We're not shy about our praise for NYRB Classics. Their volumes are smartly edited and well designed and quite a few favorite books of The Millions contributors - The Dud Avocado, Wheat That Springeth Green, and, of course, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - were first encountered in their NYRB Classics incarnations.While I had always planned on passing NYRB Classics books down to my progeny one day, I've just discovered that I may get to do that sooner than I had anticipated. NYRB Classics has a line of children's books, the NYR Children's Collection.One of the latest to come out under the imprint is James Thurber's The 13 Clocks with an introduction by Neil Gaiman and illustrations by Marc Simont. The new book provide fodder for Sonja Bolle's sentimental (in a good way) essay in the LA Times.The 13 Clocks is the first book I remember loving, and it is one of the few books I managed to wrest from my family's library and preserve through all the mundane disasters of my life. Everything about it is dear to me: The texture of the cover, the cloth spine now in shreds, the gorgeous endpapers with the Duke's shadowy castle on the hill overlooking the sunlit town.Young readers - and the older readers who are trying to get young readers to read good books - will likely find many more such discoveries among the NYR Children's Collection.
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A Writer Without Borders
As a reader and writer, the current moment is endlessly confusing to me. Sometimes I feel like I’m on a one-man mission to save publishing, buying books weekly from indies and chains alike, for the sake not only of my future work, but that of future writers, young people far from urban centers, dreaming up stories in Texas or Idaho or Michigan.
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Dispatches from Vilnius
Three flights and twenty hours after departing New York, I arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, the land of potato pancakes, sour cream, and Baltas beer, where "thank you" is pronounced "achoo," like a sneeze. Vilnius is the city closest to the geographical center of Europe, and because it's also at a cultural crossroads, the city has been hit hard by the forces of history. Napoleon's army liberated Lithuania from the Russians in 1812, and during their later retreat through Vilnius, forty thousand men died. The twentieth century saw both German and Soviet rule and genocides at the hands of the Nazis and the KGB. Independence came less than twenty years ago, when Lithuania was the first of the Baltic States to throw off Soviet rule. Even now, landlocked Vilnius is the hardest of the Baltic capital cities to travel to.I came to Vilnius by way of the Summer Literary Seminars, which is currently holding its first ever Lithuanian conference. Poets and writers have traveled from as far as Australia and South Africa to take classes with writers like Lynne Tillman, Phillip Lopate, Mac Wellman, and Peter Cole. Class days are interspersed with lecture days, and all days usually end with readings. The Lithuanian stage director Gytis Padegimas spoke about the state of contemporary Lithuanian drama and how critical resistance to new playwrights keep many of them from writing. Almantas Samalaviciu, the editor of Lithunia's largest cultural journal, traced the developments in twentieth century Lithuanian literature, from Soviet rule through the liberation. But not all of the focus is on Lithuanian literature. Catherine Tice of the New York Review of Books gave a lecture on the contemporary essay and its provinces. Max Winter of Fence and Mike Spry of Montreal's Matrix offered guidance on publishing with North American literary magazines.With Vilnius as our campus, the history of place, as well the new sights and sounds play a large role in the conference, too. Over a handful of entries, I plan to guide you through some of the more interesting discussions and events of the conference, and intersperse some Vilnius culture as well. If you want a head start, Open Letter recently published a translation of Ričardas Gavelis's Vilnius Poker, the preeminent postmodern Lithuanian novel. Or for more of a historical background, turn to Laimonas Briedis's City of Strangers. I'm on Lithuanian time, which is notorious for lagging behind, but more dispatches will be coming soon.
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Mrs. Millions buys a book
Mrs. Millions thanks all of you for your suggestions. We stopped by the Borders today, and she selected Michael Frayn's Headlong. She wanted to purchase The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, as well, but the staff at Borders was unsuccessful in its half-hearted attempt to locate the book for us nor did it appear to be on the new releases/bestsellers table, all of which seemed odd to me because isn't this supposed to be one of the big books of the summer? Well, hardcovers are no good at the beach anyway, so maybe we'll pick it up when we get back. That's all for now; time to go catch a plane.
Daniel Alarcon interviewed
The Loggernaut Reading Series has a truly exceptional interview up with Daniel Alarcon author of the acclaimed collection, War by Candlelight. He touches on many topics: the Iowa Writers Workshop, Peruvian literature, falling out of love with the New York Yankees. There's also this bit about being on book tour:I like readings. I like meeting people, and generally it works this way: folks that don't like your book or don't like you as a person stay at home. The folks who are likely to enjoy it are the ones who show up. So of course it's very gratifying to have ten or fifteen or however many people buy your book and tell you they think you're very smart, write well, smell good, etc. Still, I can't say that I really enjoy traveling, though these days I seem to do a lot of it. When I started the tour I'd been traveling already for three months in Latin America, didn't really have a place to live in the US, and still had books and clothes scattered in the apartments of various friends, my parents' place in Oakland, my sister's house, and elsewhere. I felt incredibly un-tethered to anything, which is exactly the wrong time to be spending nights in hotels, airports, and shopping malls: the trifecta of sad American non-destinations. They bring out the very bleakest in people who are prone to be depressed from time to time.The best readings were in places I've lived before - New York, Iowa City, the Bay Area, Birmingham - where friends showed up and brought their friends, or where peruanos showed up just to say they were proud of me and whatnot. Chicago was also excellent, lots of fun. In Boulder I started my reading with two people in the audience. I introduced myself to both of them and shook their hands. The reading was fine, I think they both enjoyed it, and actually a few more people showed up by the time the story had ended. They asked me to read another story and I did. Then afterwards some dude wanted me to sign a galley, an advance reader copy, the one that says very clearly "not for sale, uncorrected proof" on the cover. He told me with an innocent smile that he'd bought it used on Amazon. I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? I think he expected me to congratulate him on having found such a bargain. But he was so earnest and excited to meet me that he even had his two daughters pose for a picture with me. Maybe he'll buy my next book. Or not. I don't even know why I was mad; it's not like I don't buy used books.
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