Joan Didion: Model

Have a short story manuscript and you’re not sure where to send it? BOMB Magazine‘s Biennial Fiction Contest, judged by Sheila Heti (who wrote How Should a Person Be? and was interviewed by The Millions here), is accepting submissions until the end of the month.

This week in lit news: VIDA, the organization that’s been counting appearances by women writers in major literary journals since 2010, will expand their 2014 count to include data on race/ethnicity.

There’s a scandal gaining traction in the UK, and it involves sending books through the mail. The country’s justice secretary, Chris Grayling, is standing by a new law that bans inmates from receiving parcels of books. According to him, the law is intended to make inmates “earn [their] privileges.” (h/t Page-Turner)

What do SoCal’s “vapid consumerism, gang violence, and social apathy” sound like? Jesus Makes The Shotgun Sound!  Brace yourself and have a listen to their Raidohead-y latest single, “Do Not The Clothes Make The Man?!” or, if you’re looking to induce epileptic fits, try the video.

“The Disney character I most strongly identify with is the Beast before he learns how not to emotionally attack everyone around him, so.” Over at The Toast, Mallory Ortberg tells us why she is the perfect candidate for the job of Fisher King. T.S. Eliot would be proud. Or likely horrified.

Regardless of your Valentine’s Day plans, do not take advice from Nate Piven, the protagonist of Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Ron Charles asked Waldman to write another scene of Nate’s romantic saga. “He decided it would be best to hedge his bets by getting her something ‘ironic.'”