Open City, which is published by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, is awarding $5,000 grants to “talented Asian American emerging writers looking to hone their creative nonfiction skills by engaging directly with contemporary New York.” The application deadline is April 8.
Open City Grants
The Experience of Being Human
Recommended Reading: Over at BOMB Magazine, Jesse Ball and Catherine Lacey discuss strategies for a non-interview, why they write, and poetry’s “direct utility toward experience.”
Special Feature: Kathryn Stripling Byer
The new issue of Story South dedicated its “Special Feature: Southern Poets” section to the work of Kathryn Stripling Byer. To wit, you can check out two of her poems – “Waiting for Bob” and “Making Myself at Home” – as well as an interview between her and Terry Kennedy, and a review of her latest collection, Descent.
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“Life is a cutup.”
Graying Beats, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, discuss the cut-up technique and shamanism during a never before published 1992 interview in the latest issue of Sensitive Skin Magazine. David L. Ulin provides commentary on the conversation.
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Charm City, Murdaland
In a piece for Aeon, D. Watkins – who previously blew onto the scene with his Salon essay, “Too Poor for Pop Culture” – looks into “the two Baltimores” he has known. Tracing the city’s history back to the Civil War, he defines the city as “a place split on ideologies because it’s too south to be north and too north to be south.”
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Dostoyevsky’s Yard Sales
This edition of Apartment Therapy with Ivan Ilych from the good people over at McSweeney’s will have you packing up shop and heading for St. Petersburg in no time. For a slightly more serious take on Tolstoy, here’s a piece on morals and manners in The Death of Ivan Ilych.
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Sandra Cisneros Writes Stories That Take on a Life of Their Own
Sandra Cisneros discusses her new book, Martita, I Remember You, an unsent letter from a woman recalling a brief stay in Paris and the sisterhoods she formed there.
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