It's not exactly a secret around here that although I don't have children of my own, I'm quite interested in parent-child relationships and the infinite stories emanating from them. Today, I thought I'd point out some exemplary parenting-related writing.
First up: Recently, I reconnected with a friend who is now a mom to twin toddlers (and two wonderful older stepchildren). I was quick to recommend Jane Roper's excellent "Baby Squared" blog on Babble.com. I'm not exactly sure when I discovered this blog, but Jane, whose name I remembered from the Boston writing scene, instantly pulled me in with her smart, funny writing about life with her twin girls.
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Next: "Kelly James-Enger" is another name I've known for a long time, mainly from many years' worth of Writer magazine articles. The other day, I read Kelly's beautiful essay, "When Words Really Matter." It's an eloquent reminder that sometimes, our most significant writings won't earn us a penny of income. But they're infinitely more valuable than anything that might bring in a paycheck.
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Finally, Gene Weingarten's Washington Post article, "Fatal Distraction," is currently making the Internet rounds. This extended article is notable for its powerful writing (as well as its tragic subject matter). Warning: You may not be able to get through it. (For the record, I first found this article via Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog at NYTimes.com.)
Any of you want to recommend similar/related writings or writers? Please do so, in comments!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Don't Worry, Be Happy, Practicing Writers!
I don't know about you, but I'm going to bookmark Nathan Bransford's "Ten Commandments for the Happy Writer." (I may need to refer back to it frequently now that Nathan has shifted over into "negativity week" mode.)
Monday, March 09, 2009
Monday Morning Markets/Jobs/Opportunities
Updates from Tin House: "Tin House is now reading for the Fall, 2009 issue, which will have a theme of Hope/Fear. We are looking for fiction, poetry, and non-fiction that addresses the global tipping point - economically, culturally, and environmentally. What we are particularly interested in are personal visions, either optimistic or pessimistic. These can take on global concerns, but we are after singular voices. Please have your submission in by May 31 to be considered for this issue./We are also currently reading for our Winter 2010 issue, which is open (no theme). We recommend getting your submission in by September 30 to be considered for this issue; please also remember that we do not read unsolicited submissions between June 1 and August 31." Click here for more information.
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Teachers & Writers Collaborative has posted guidelines for its 2009-2010 Fellowships for emerging writers. There is no application fee. Deadline: June 19, 2009 (received). Details, including eligibility criteria, available here.
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LifeBytes seeks true stories of online dating. Deadline: June 15, 2009. Pays: $50-$100. Guidelines here.
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The Museum of Jewish Heritage (New York City) seeks emerging local Jewish artists (including poets and spoken word artists) for an upcoming evening show. Winners will receive $250 for their performances. There is no application fee. Application deadline: April 13, 2009. I've reprinted the full press release on my other blog.
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The Cup of Comfort series is calling for manuscripts for two new anthologies. A Cup of Comfort for Couples seeks true stories "that celebrate what it means to be in love." Deadline: October 1, 2009. A Cup of Comfort for Golfers seeks true stories "that celebrate the follies, the triumphs, and the joy of the game." Deadline: December 15, 2009. For details/pay rates for these books and others currently under development, please click here and here.
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And a few more jobs to share with you this week:
Director of Rose O'Neill Literary House, Washington College (Maryland)
Continuing education instructors ("The Life of a Writer," "Cultural Journalism," and other courses), State University of New York (SUNY)-Purchase
Editorial Associate/Web Content Writer, SUNY-Brockport
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (poetry), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English, Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)
Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader in Creative Writing, Northumbria University (UK)
Thanks to BJ Epstein for the leads on the UK jobs!
==========
Teachers & Writers Collaborative has posted guidelines for its 2009-2010 Fellowships for emerging writers. There is no application fee. Deadline: June 19, 2009 (received). Details, including eligibility criteria, available here.
==========
LifeBytes seeks true stories of online dating. Deadline: June 15, 2009. Pays: $50-$100. Guidelines here.
==========
The Museum of Jewish Heritage (New York City) seeks emerging local Jewish artists (including poets and spoken word artists) for an upcoming evening show. Winners will receive $250 for their performances. There is no application fee. Application deadline: April 13, 2009. I've reprinted the full press release on my other blog.
==========
The Cup of Comfort series is calling for manuscripts for two new anthologies. A Cup of Comfort for Couples seeks true stories "that celebrate what it means to be in love." Deadline: October 1, 2009. A Cup of Comfort for Golfers seeks true stories "that celebrate the follies, the triumphs, and the joy of the game." Deadline: December 15, 2009. For details/pay rates for these books and others currently under development, please click here and here.
==========
And a few more jobs to share with you this week:
Director of Rose O'Neill Literary House, Washington College (Maryland)
Continuing education instructors ("The Life of a Writer," "Cultural Journalism," and other courses), State University of New York (SUNY)-Purchase
Editorial Associate/Web Content Writer, SUNY-Brockport
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (poetry), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English, Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)
Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader in Creative Writing, Northumbria University (UK)
Thanks to BJ Epstein for the leads on the UK jobs!
Friday, March 06, 2009
Friday Find: Hold this Thought
"Hold this Thought" is "a daily, 1-minute thought from literature, history, or culture designed to inspire reflection and conversation." I discovered it thanks to my friend Anne, and I've been checking on it from time to time since she pointed me to it. Apart from sheer reading/listening pleasure, Hold this Thought, produced by KSKA public radio in Alaska, can be a good place to promote one's book! Check it out here, enjoy, and have a great weekend.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Bolaño's Bio-Bibliographical Dictionary: A Review of Nazi Literature in the Americas
Although I haven't yet seen a copy of the latest (Fall 2008) issue of The Chattahoochee Review, I'm told by a reliable reader that my review of Nazi Literature in the Americas indeed appears there. I'm pleased to share the review with all of you as well.
Bolaño's Bio-Bibliographical Dictionary
Nazi Literature in the Americas. Roberto Bolaño. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. New Directions, 2008. 280 pp. $23.95
Review by Erika Dreifus
One of the first assignments I received as a freelance writer back in 1994 was a series of profiles intended for publication in a reference text titled Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. Not once in the course of researching, writing, and, later, proofreading entries — including a considerable number of entries focusing on writers — did I encounter the name “Roberto Bolaño.” Published by a highly reputable reference text company, the dictionary failed to account for this particular author, moving swiftly from Adolfo Bioy Casares (whose profile I was in fact assigned to write) to Jorge Luis Borges.
Today, five years after Bolaño’s death at the age of 50, it would be unthinkable to omit his name from any serious discussion of Spanish-language, or, for that matter, world literature. For those who cannot read Spanish (myself among them, I must confess), the Chilean-born Bolaño’s work is becoming increasingly available in English translation. I’ve lost count of the reviews that focused on The Savage Detectives (translated by Natasha Wimmer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007); at this writing, the blogosphere is already filling with anticipatory posts from readers awaiting 2666, also translated by Wimmer and scheduled for a fall 2008 FSG release.
Sandwiched and, I fear, somewhat lost between these two blockbuster titles is Nazi Literature in the Americas, the fifth translation, to date, of Bolaño’s oeuvre from New Directions (Australian Chris Andrews, who translated this book, also brought us the first four). It’s a work of fiction that doesn’t quite read like one. Rather, it’s constructed like a work of history: a reference work. Which is not to say that those who love fiction — not to mention those who write it — won’t be drawn in.
Nazi Literature in the Americas is an imaginative and, despite its apparent straightforwardness and simplicity, an intricate creation. Let’s begin with the characters at the heart of the profiles. The book’s title notwithstanding, these fictional men and women don’t all belong to the era of the Third Reich (although it’s true that “Luz Mendiluce,” we read, throughout her life “treasured the famous photo of herself in Hitler’s arms”); some, in fact, belong to the future, with death dates cited as far into the future as 2029. The narrator/biographer also alludes repeatedly to a “Fourth Reich” with which he associates several of his biographical subjects.
Thirty central characters emerge here, with half of them hailing from either Argentina or the United States. They write prose and poetry; they travel. Their lives are chronicled, for the most part, in just a few profile-format pages, and they are grouped into categories ranging from “Poètes Maudits” and “Wandering Women of Letters” to “Speculative and Science Fiction” and “Magicians, Mercernaries and Miserable Creatures.” After the 30 profiles, Bolaño appends a list of “secondary figures,” collecting the names of still more invented figures, individuals whom the reader may or may not remember from their appearances in the chronicles of the lives of others. For example, “Luz Mendiluce” receives a full profile; “Susy D’Amato”’s name appears within it, and D’Amato therefore merits a brief identification at the end: “Susy D’Amato. Buenos Aires, 1935-Paris, 2001. Argentinean poet and friend of Luz Mendiluce. She ended her days selling Latin American handicrafts in the French capital.” The inventions continue with a list of all the fictional publishing houses, magazines, and assorted places that have similarly emerged throughout this “history,” plus a bibliography of works by Luz Mendiluce and the 29 other primary “Nazi” writers in the Americas.
Sound complicated? Bolaño mixes it up even further by having his fictional writers interact not only among themselves, but also with “real” writers. For instance, “Juan Mendiluce Thompson” (born in Buenos Aires in 1920, we are told, and died in that city in 1991)
A conventional novel or collection of short fiction, Nazi Literature in the Americas is not. But it’s undeniably an extremely intriguing exercise in literary imagination. And for some readers, who may also delight in reading about literary life in all its potentially inglorious, which is to say human, aspects, it may well offer a most enjoyable read.
This review was published in the Fall 2008 issue of The Chattachoochee Review.
Bolaño's Bio-Bibliographical Dictionary
Nazi Literature in the Americas. Roberto Bolaño. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. New Directions, 2008. 280 pp. $23.95
Review by Erika Dreifus
One of the first assignments I received as a freelance writer back in 1994 was a series of profiles intended for publication in a reference text titled Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. Not once in the course of researching, writing, and, later, proofreading entries — including a considerable number of entries focusing on writers — did I encounter the name “Roberto Bolaño.” Published by a highly reputable reference text company, the dictionary failed to account for this particular author, moving swiftly from Adolfo Bioy Casares (whose profile I was in fact assigned to write) to Jorge Luis Borges.
Today, five years after Bolaño’s death at the age of 50, it would be unthinkable to omit his name from any serious discussion of Spanish-language, or, for that matter, world literature. For those who cannot read Spanish (myself among them, I must confess), the Chilean-born Bolaño’s work is becoming increasingly available in English translation. I’ve lost count of the reviews that focused on The Savage Detectives (translated by Natasha Wimmer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007); at this writing, the blogosphere is already filling with anticipatory posts from readers awaiting 2666, also translated by Wimmer and scheduled for a fall 2008 FSG release.
Sandwiched and, I fear, somewhat lost between these two blockbuster titles is Nazi Literature in the Americas, the fifth translation, to date, of Bolaño’s oeuvre from New Directions (Australian Chris Andrews, who translated this book, also brought us the first four). It’s a work of fiction that doesn’t quite read like one. Rather, it’s constructed like a work of history: a reference work. Which is not to say that those who love fiction — not to mention those who write it — won’t be drawn in.
Nazi Literature in the Americas is an imaginative and, despite its apparent straightforwardness and simplicity, an intricate creation. Let’s begin with the characters at the heart of the profiles. The book’s title notwithstanding, these fictional men and women don’t all belong to the era of the Third Reich (although it’s true that “Luz Mendiluce,” we read, throughout her life “treasured the famous photo of herself in Hitler’s arms”); some, in fact, belong to the future, with death dates cited as far into the future as 2029. The narrator/biographer also alludes repeatedly to a “Fourth Reich” with which he associates several of his biographical subjects.
Thirty central characters emerge here, with half of them hailing from either Argentina or the United States. They write prose and poetry; they travel. Their lives are chronicled, for the most part, in just a few profile-format pages, and they are grouped into categories ranging from “Poètes Maudits” and “Wandering Women of Letters” to “Speculative and Science Fiction” and “Magicians, Mercernaries and Miserable Creatures.” After the 30 profiles, Bolaño appends a list of “secondary figures,” collecting the names of still more invented figures, individuals whom the reader may or may not remember from their appearances in the chronicles of the lives of others. For example, “Luz Mendiluce” receives a full profile; “Susy D’Amato”’s name appears within it, and D’Amato therefore merits a brief identification at the end: “Susy D’Amato. Buenos Aires, 1935-Paris, 2001. Argentinean poet and friend of Luz Mendiluce. She ended her days selling Latin American handicrafts in the French capital.” The inventions continue with a list of all the fictional publishing houses, magazines, and assorted places that have similarly emerged throughout this “history,” plus a bibliography of works by Luz Mendiluce and the 29 other primary “Nazi” writers in the Americas.
Sound complicated? Bolaño mixes it up even further by having his fictional writers interact not only among themselves, but also with “real” writers. For instance, “Juan Mendiluce Thompson” (born in Buenos Aires in 1920, we are told, and died in that city in 1991)
became known as the Argentinean Cato. He fought with his sister, Luz Mendiluce, over control of the family magazine. Having won the fight, he tried to lead a crusade against the lack of feeling in the contemporary novel. To coincide with the publication of his third novel, Springtime in Madrid, he launched a campaign against francophilia, the cult of violence, atheism, and foreign ideas. American Letters and Modern Argentina served as platforms, along with the various Buenos Aires dailies, which were keen to publish, although sometimes flabbergasted by, his denunciations of Cortázar, whom he described as unreal and bloodthirsty, and Borges, whose stories, so he claimed, were “parodies of parodies” and whose lifeless characters were derived from worn-out traditions of English and French literature, clearly in decline, “repeating the same old plots ad nauseam.” His attacks took in Bioy Casares, Mujica Lainez, Ernesto Sabato (who, in his eyes, personified the cult of violence and gratuitious aggression), Leopoldo Marechal, and others.Elsewhere, we learn about American Jim O’Bannon, a “poet and football player” who “remained firm in his disdain for Jews and homosexuals to the end, although at the time of this death he was beginning, gradually, to accept African Americans,” and his rather complicated connection to Allen Ginsberg. Well-read readers can’t help being lured in.
A conventional novel or collection of short fiction, Nazi Literature in the Americas is not. But it’s undeniably an extremely intriguing exercise in literary imagination. And for some readers, who may also delight in reading about literary life in all its potentially inglorious, which is to say human, aspects, it may well offer a most enjoyable read.
This review was published in the Fall 2008 issue of The Chattachoochee Review.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
The Wednesday Web Browser: "Our" Professor Matteson, Essay on John Balaban, and Suspicious Signs for Freelancers
The new issue of Harvard magazine includes this excellent profile of John Matteson and his book, Eden's Outcasts, a double biography of Louisa May Alcott and her father, Bronson Alcott. (Before he became an English professor and Pulitzer prize-winning author, Matteson was a lawyer, and he is a Harvard Law School graduate. (Please do not confuse him with the Professor John Matteson involved in this story.)
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John Griswold (alias "Oronte Churm") has published a moving essay about a mentor, writer John Balaban, in War, Literature & the Arts.
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And in the realm of freelancing, Michelle Rafter offers signs that a magazine is in trouble.
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John Griswold (alias "Oronte Churm") has published a moving essay about a mentor, writer John Balaban, in War, Literature & the Arts.
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And in the realm of freelancing, Michelle Rafter offers signs that a magazine is in trouble.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Final Reminder: Jewish Fiction Writers' Conference
This weekend, I completed the handout I've prepared for my presentation on "Publishing Your Jewish Short Stories," slated for Sunday, March 15, at the Jewish Fiction Writers' Conference right here in New York City. It's a pretty good handout, if I do say so, myself! And it can be yours—if you come to the conference! Registration continues until March 9. Details here.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Monday Morning Markets/Jobs/Opportunities
If you've seen the latest Poets & Writers magazine, you may have noticed a column describing New Ohio Review (NOR). That's where I learned that NOR is becoming a paying journal. From the NOR Web site: "Beginning with its fifth issue, New Ohio Review's contributors will receive honoraria of $10/page for prose and $15/page for poetry, $30 minimum, in addition to two copies of the issue and a one-year subscription."
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And if you're a student enrolled in a New England college, you might want to consider competing for the John Holmes Award. Conferred by the New England Poetry Club, this is a $100 prize for a poem. No fee. Details here.
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Meet literary agent Alanna Ramirez, who represents "literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, memoir, pop culture and lifestyle books."
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"Lyon College, Batesville, Arkansas, a highly selective four-year liberal arts college, seeks a distinguished writer of fiction for its 4th biennial Visiting Fellowship in Creative Writing, a semester-long residency scheduled during the autumn 2009 semester. While the fellowship is considered mainly an opportunity for the writer to spend time on his or her own work, he or she will also give a public reading and teach a beginning fiction-writing workshop (3 hours per week). An honorarium of $5,000 plus campus housing and meals are provided, as well as a travel stipend of up to $350 for round-trip transportation to and from Batesville." There is no application fee. Deadline: April 1, 2009. Check here for more information.
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And what kind of Monday morning post would this be without some jobs to round out the picture?
Communications Administrator, Smith College (Massachusetts)
Web Writer/Editor, Quinnipiac University (Connecticut)
Writer, Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY (New York)
Public Relations Specialist, Marymount Manhattan College (New York)
Public Relations Specialist, Georgia State University
==========
And if you're a student enrolled in a New England college, you might want to consider competing for the John Holmes Award. Conferred by the New England Poetry Club, this is a $100 prize for a poem. No fee. Details here.
==========
Meet literary agent Alanna Ramirez, who represents "literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, memoir, pop culture and lifestyle books."
==========
"Lyon College, Batesville, Arkansas, a highly selective four-year liberal arts college, seeks a distinguished writer of fiction for its 4th biennial Visiting Fellowship in Creative Writing, a semester-long residency scheduled during the autumn 2009 semester. While the fellowship is considered mainly an opportunity for the writer to spend time on his or her own work, he or she will also give a public reading and teach a beginning fiction-writing workshop (3 hours per week). An honorarium of $5,000 plus campus housing and meals are provided, as well as a travel stipend of up to $350 for round-trip transportation to and from Batesville." There is no application fee. Deadline: April 1, 2009. Check here for more information.
==========
And what kind of Monday morning post would this be without some jobs to round out the picture?
Communications Administrator, Smith College (Massachusetts)
Web Writer/Editor, Quinnipiac University (Connecticut)
Writer, Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY (New York)
Public Relations Specialist, Marymount Manhattan College (New York)
Public Relations Specialist, Georgia State University
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