Readers of Millions Originals ebook Epic Fail are deeply familiar with Tommy Wiseau’s heroically bad 2003 film, The Room. So, too, are people masochistic enough to sit through the actual movie. Together, they might be wondering how such a production came to be – and how it came to fail so horribly. Well, finally a new book co-authored by Greg Sestaro and Tom Bissell seeks to answer that question. You can check out an excerpt over here.
How The Room Was Made
Must be all that Schadenfreude
Eating your manuscript, deliberately slicing open your own head during a reading, titling your work "Baby Fucker." These stunts are par for the course during the competition for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, a prestigious German literary award.
For Sale: Literary Homes
A spate of notable literary homes have dotted high-end real estate recently. Earlier, The Telegraph reported that Bran Castle, whose famed fictional occupants include Count Dracula from the eponymous novel by Bram Stoker, is seeking offers. Yesterday, Ray Bradbury's cheery 3-bedroom yellow house was listed at at $1.5 million. Sadly, the more-affordable $350,000 home of beloved children's book writer Beverly Clearly was snapped up last week. Writers hoping to add to the stock of literature-imprinted real estate, take note: Detroit nonprofit Write A House, which renovates vacant homes and awards them to writers and poets free of charge, is accepting applications until June 21.
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Free Poetry!
In honor of National Poetry Month, the Poetry Foundation will offer free copies of the April 2013 issue of Poetry. Sign up by March 24th!
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Red October
Haven't heard of Teffi? You can blame that one on the Bolsheviks. The early-20th-century Russian poet, playwright and journalist, whose fans included (oddly enough) both Vladimir Lenin and Tsar Nikolai, had to flee a Moscow in turmoil to avoid persecution as a dissident. Now, several publishers are reprinting her memoir of exile, for which The New Statesman has details and a short biography.
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Aspen Public Radio’s First Draft Radio Show
Forgive us for being slow on the uptake, Colorado residents, but this is the first I'm hearing of Aspen Public Radio's First Draft radio show, which features interviews with numerous authors of wide acclaim. A casual glance at the show's online archives, for instance, turns up the likes of Paul Harding, Kevin Barry, Laura van den Berg, Edwidge Danticat, and Ben Fountain. (h/t Edan Lepucki)
Struggle on Stage
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume My Struggle will be adapted to the stage — all 3,600 pages in under 150 minutes. Pair with Jonathan Callahan’s Millions review.
#ThisIsWhere The Sun Bakes Our Chancletas
To kick off South Florida’s O, Miami poetry festival (which I’ve written about before), event organizers and WLRN staffers are asking local residents to snap photos of “a place in South Florida that means something to [them],” and “write a short poem about it including the phrase ‘this is where.’” Then, share the poems and photos on Twitter or Instagram for a chance to be featured throughout the month of April. Meanwhile, the New York Times is on it.