Beat Ball
Read Your Octopus
Recommended Reading: Octopus Magazine, Issue 15. It features poetry from Jason Koo, Daniela Olszewska, and Kathryn Donohue.
Teju Cole on the Leonard Lopate Show
Something you should hear: Open City author and prolific tweeter Teju Cole on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show.
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Dog Days in Tehran
Azadeh Moaveni writes about what it was like to own her dog, named London, in Iran: “Most Turks, like most Iranians, recoiled from dogs as though they were grotesque vermin; only ‘guard’ dogs, charged with protecting humans and their goods, were deemed less offensive, though still repellent.” To Moaveni, it was like cultural rebellion.
I am throwing up in my hat.
So, not only does The Paris Review now have a “booty call” tag on their blog, but certain of their editors can be seen dishing out fashion advice in the fiction issue of VICE. Party on, Paris Review. Party on.
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Not To Be Confused With Sparkles
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the “Ted Wilson Reviews the World” series over at Electric Literature. This week, he takes on everyone’s (least?) favorite confection — sprinkles. Unsurprisingly, sprinkles score a bit higher than Anxiety did a couple weeks ago: “Sprinkles can take an ordinary cupcake and turn it into a cupcake that looks like a rainbow shattered and fell all over it, and then the leprechaun at the end of that rainbow hid inside the cupcake and the only way to get him is to eat it.”
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fragment:story
If you know what the phrase “hypertext story” means, you’re likely at least passingly familiar with new media literature, which first appeared all the way back in the days of floppy disks. At Ploughshares, a brief introduction to the genre, with a nod to hypertext ur-teacher and novelist Robert Coover. You could also read Guy Patrick Cunningham on writing in the digital age.
Tis the Season: Micro-Volunteering
Imagine how many volunteer hours you could log if volunteering was as easy as playing a game of FarmVille or watching a video on YouTube. Now it is, thanks to Ben Rigby and the other folks at Sparked (formerly The Extraordinaries). Sparked directs you to challenges suited to your skills and interests submitted by nonprofits around the country and the world who need help with brainstorming, copy editing, IT, translations, marketing, fund-raising, and more. Now you can volunteer without leaving your desk.
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Me and my ghost and my ghost ghostwriting
There was an article in the New York Times on cook book ghostwriters, and it called Gwyneth Paltrow out for not writing My Father’s Daughter. Then the actress cum gourmand denied having worked with a ghostwriter in a tweet. Now Sari Botton, a frequent ghostwriter, has tried to clear the whole thing up in an essay on The Rumpus on why ghostwriting is such a fickle business, and a tricky term.