Dzanc Books to Publish Robert Coover

May 29, 2012 - Ann Arbor, MI—Dzanc Books is proud to announce that it will publish The Brunist Day of Wrath, the sequel to Robert Coover’s award-winning debut novel, The Origin of the Brunists, in September 2013. Dzanc Books will also publish an as yet untitled Coover short story collection in September 2014. The Dzanc rEprint Series will be publishing ten of Coover’s backlist titles to eBook form beginning in August 2012 and running on up through August 2013. Titles include the aforementioned award-winning The Origin of the Brunists; Pricksongs & Descants; The Public Burning; Spanking the Maid; Gerald's Party; A Night at the Movies, or You Must Remember This; Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears; Pinocchio in Venice; John's Wife; and Ghost Town.

Robert Coover has published fourteen novels, three short story collections, and a collection of plays since The Origin of the Brunists received the The William Faulkner Foundation First Novel Award in 1966. At Brown University, where he has taught for over thirty years, he established the International Writers Project, a program that provides an annual fellowship and safe haven to endangered international writers who face harassment, imprisonment, and suppression of their work in their home countries. In 1990-91, he launched the world's first hypertext fiction workshop, was one of the founders in 1999 of the Electronic Literature Organization, and in 2002 created CaveWriting, the first writing workshop in immersive virtual reality. Michiko Kakuntaini of The New York Times has said “Of all the postmodern writers, Robert Coover is probably the funniest and most malicious, mixing up broad social and political satire with vaudeville turns, lewd pratfalls, and clever word plays that make us rethink both the mechanics of the world and our relationship to it.” Coover has also received awards from the Lannan Foundation, American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment of the Arts, and the Rea Lifetime Short Story Award.

Dzanc's Executive Director, Dan Wickett, said of the acquisition: "We are thrilled to be able to bring out both new and past work from Robert Coover, a favorite author of ours here at Dzanc Books for many years. To be able to bring back many of his older works to a new readership is extremely exciting and to see him return to West Condon and the Brunists after all these years with a simply fantastic novel is something we’re very happy to be a part of."

This signing was made through Robert Coover’s agent, Georges Borchardt.

About Dzanc Books
Dzanc Books was created in 2006 to advance great writing and to impact communities nationally with our efforts to advance literary readership and our advocacy of creative writing workshops and readings. As a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc Books not only publishes literary fiction, but works in partnership with literary journals to advance their readership at every level. Dzanc is also fully committed to developing educational programs in schools.

For more information on Dzanc Books and its mission, imprints, books, authors, awards, and programs, please visit www.dzancbooks.org.

Dan Wickett
Dzanc Books

The bible of traditional Italian cooking

Originally published in 1950, The Silver Spoon Cookbook is an Italian kitchen staple. It's now been revised and updated, checking in at 1464 pages, with contributions from local heroes like Mario Batali and Rich Torrisi. It's $49.95 from Phaidon, the publisher, though Amazon has it for $27.14.

Visit me on Blog Train

Blog-Train.net was started by 3 Bloggers from Germany. Peter, Andreas and René. After the huge success with the german Blog-Train (http://blog-zug.com - more than 10.000 active blogs and very happy bog-owners) we decided to open the gates for english blogs and translated the german blog-train page to english.

click on my link: http://blog-train.net/?l=2696397448813710864

MUG summer reads





The 16 Best Books Coming Out This June

Oprah has some June suggestions for those who are making their summer reading list.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/book/The-Chaperone?editors_pick_id=37700#ixzz1wMJoFRU0

Pre-Order the Seven Halos Series

Become a part of the Seven Halos story by becoming a backer! Backers are listed in the acknowledgements, plus it's the only way to get the Secret Bonus Novel! Backer options start at $0.00 (nope, that's not a typo) and extend all the way up to $1000. Check out the pre-order options >>

Read Excerpts from Tin Soldier

Tin Soldier (Seven Halos #2) excerpts are now up! You can read the Prologue (from Bristol's POV) and the first six chapters to see what Brie, Pilot, and Rykken are up to in the shocking aftermath of Silver Smoke (Seven Halos #1). Read excerpts >>

Update #3

I have the first book in another series out right now! The beta version of Socialpunk has gotten great feedback so far and currently has over 70 reviews on Amazon, most of which are 4 and 5 stars. The website is http://socialpunktrilogy.com, though I plan to revamp that site in the next few days to set it up similarly to the Seven Halos series website. More on the Socialpunk trilogy soon.

I'd like to contact you guys more often since you've all been so supportive of me and the two young adults series I've put out in the last year. You are true patrons of the arts, and we need people in this world who appreciate and put value on the work artists do. I'm aiming for 2-3 times a week so I can share the behind-the-scenes process of creating Tin Soldier.

I'm heading out for a run now (training for the Chicago marathon!) but I'd love to hear what you think of the new Seven Halos series website. Shoot me an email back to let me know!

Sincerely,
Monica

Update #2

I am currently raising funds for the Seven Halos series and taking pre-orders for all the books, including a Limited Edition set that contains a whole extra novel! Learn all about it here:
http://www.sevenhalosseries.com/pre-order-options/

I talk about why and how I'm raising funds at the new Seven Halos series website, so check it out… I'd really love for each and every one of you to participate in the process of creating Tin Soldier. It's not going to happen without you, but I sure would like it to happen!

Update from Monica Leonelle

Update #1

For Silver Smoke readers, you may not have to wait much longer for the sequel called Tin Soldier! I am currently writing the book and have about 10% of the first draft done, some of which you can read here:
http://www.sevenhalosseries.com/excerpts/

If you prefer polished versions, you should wait until the final release, because these are truly raw. But if you enjoy the behind-the-scenes process (or if you are dying to know what Brie, Pilot, and Rykken are up to in the shocking aftermath of Silver Smoke), these excerpts could be fascinating for you.

For those who haven't read Silver Smoke yet, you can also find excerpts for Silver Smoke at the link above.

My efforts are focused on getting the first draft of Tin Soldier completed by the end of June, and the book printed by August (it has to go through editing and such before printing).

10 Highbrow Books to Read on the Beach

A friend of mine asked me where she could find a list of good beach reads...

Poetry Sale

The McSweeney's Store has some great Poetry books on sale this week.

The 7% Solution by John Graves

The 7% Solution

by John H. Graves
isbn 978-0983573128
Pub. date 4/1/12

From the author: Our parents taught us to live within our means during the fifties. We carry this lesson through life: wise habits of saving, debt management, tithing and frugality. These are our foundation for a comfortable retirement lifestyle. We can manage our retirement portfolio, on our own, with these precepts in mind. Look for companies with strong ‘free cash flow, low debt, capital commitments to their future and in support of their suppliers, customers and communities. These firms also pay good dividends. As shareholders, we want to enjoy these dividends. We also look to own bonds from firms with good debt management. A wise combination of income from these sources, as well as others, can earn us as much as 7% during retirement. You manage the portfolio to your income needs. You CAN do this yourself, or working with an advisor who listens to you. The good steward of his resources plants and harvests in tune with his season.

My Thoughts/Review:

Managing money can be overwhelming and sometimes a professional is needed. Don’t be nervous about your future, this book contains practical advice and gives compelling reasons for the importance of planning for a comfortable future. Throughout the book, different investment options are explained in ways that non-professionals will understand. You’ll learn how to start a financial plan and how to maintain and monitor the plan once it’s in place. We all want less stress in the financial area of our lives and Graves will give you the confidence you need to gain a handle on your personal finances. The interesting approach the author takes is in his following of his own advice for years, sort of being his own guinea pig. 

Graves assures the reader that no matter what the economy looks like, it is up to us to take control of our finances. The reality is that no one will care for your financial needs and know what you will need in your latter years more than you do. He shows you how to get a clear picture of what you will need in your retirement years by explaining clearly, concisely and coherently what to do.

He helps you to develop a worksheet that will lay out the reality of your current financial situation and where that will take you. You will then be able to realize whether or not you are heading in the right direction towards the “7% solution” in your retirement years. You can then determine where the strengths and weaknesses in your portfolio lie and what adjustments can be made to get the desired results.

Although, I’d never heard of John H. Graves before reading this book, I will be highly recommending this book to my friends and colleagues that are in the process of retiring. It is a great book for understanding strategic portfolio depth, sources of income, decreasing debt, and alleviating the stress of retirement, by being responsible, strategic, and intentionally proactive in developing a plan that works for you and providing for your family in your latter years. This book is helpful for young people who are just starting out and older folks who are nearing retirement.

Disclosure:  I received a copy of The 7% Solution gratis. Any opinions expressed are my honest opinions and were not impacted by my receipt of the free book. I received no monetary compensation for this post.


WHERE TO BUY - The book is available at a discount on Amazon.

Etgar Keret's stories read by an all-star cast

About the Author: Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Etgar Keret is the author of six bestselling story collections. His writing has been published in Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope. Jellyfish, his first movie as a director along with his wife, Shira Geffen, won the Camera d’Or prize for best first feature at Cannes in 2007. In 2010 he was named a Chevalier of France’s Order of Arts and Letters.

About the Book: Bestselling author Etgar Keret’s short story collection, "Suddenly, A Knock On The Door," has assembled a truly all-star cast of celebrities, actors and literary greats. Ira Glass, Josh Radnor, Jonathan Safran Foer, Willem Dafoe, Josh Charles, Neal Stephenson, George Saunders, Ben Foster, Mathieu Amalric, Aimee Bender, Miranda July, Ben Marcus, John Sayles, Gary Shteyngart, Stella Schnabel, Nathan Englander, Michael Chabon, and more have all narrated stories for the audiobook – and the final product sounds absolutely amazing! Many of the narrators are even planning on attending Keret’s events in their cities and reading along with him!

An Excerpt: "Tell me a story," the bearded man sitting on my living-room sofa commands. The situation, I must say, is anything but pleasant. I'm someone who writes stories, not someone who tells them. And even that isn't something I do on demand. The last time anyone asked me to tell him a story, it was my son. That was a year ago. I told him something about a fairy and a ferret--I don't even remember what exactly--and within two minutes he was fast asleep. But the situation is fundamentally different. Because my son doesn't have a beard, or a pistol. Because my son asked for the story nicely, and this man is simply trying to rob me of it. 

I try to explain to the bearded man that if he puts his pistol away it will only work in his favor, in our favor. It's hard to think up a story with the barrel of a loaded pistol pointed at your head. But the guy insists. "In this country," he explains, "if you want something, you have to use force." He just got here from Sweden, and in Sweden it's completely different. Over there, if you want something, you ask politely, and most of the time you get it. But not in the stifling, muggy Middle East. All it takes is one week in this place to figure out how things work--or rather, how things don't work.

To finish reading this excerpt, visit the Macmillan Audio book website HERE! 

My Thoughts/Review: I'm quite fond of the printed word, but I must say this collection might be best enjoyed as an audio book. Each piece has been brilliantly translated so that one forgets completely that it was originally conceived in another language. One of the best collections I've ever listened to and suggest you definitely consider the audio over the print version. 

The first story starts with the command "Tell me a story." Under gunpoint, the narrator - Etgar - is ordered to make up a story. He is interrupted early on: "That's not a story...That's an eyewitness report. It's exactly what's happening here and now. Exactly what we're trying to run away from. Don't you go and dump reality on us like a garbage truck. Use your imagination, man, create, invent, take it all the way." This story sounds like a joke. It’s compact, humorous, bizarre and packs a punch. What a great way to begin an audio collection. 

Keret’s stories are strange and slightly fantastical, funny, dark, impressive and affecting and I am often tickled and surprised by the way they develop and resolve themselves.  In “Lieland”, where the subjects of lies become real, is one of my favorites on disc one. The protagonist, Robbie, learns that his lies live and thrive in another dimension and he meets his "lies come alive" simply by turning a handle. If you like Kafka and think Vonnegut was a genius, then boy are you going to love this short story collection.

With overtones of science fiction and fantasy, Keret still maintains a sense of reality in his writing. In “Unzipping” the narrator finds a small zipper under her lover's tongue; when she pulls it, he opens up "like an oyster" with a second man revealed. This allows her to remove his current outward appearance, causing him to shed his previous personality and name, thus becoming a completely new person. I was intrigued by this concept, until the notion of the character discovering her own zipper was broached, and then the sadness of the story became real. 

One of the most striking stories is “What, of this Goldfish, Would You Wish?” an obvious play on the Aladdin tale. The conflict reveals a documentary film-maker who is planning to knock on random doors and record the reactions of residents to the question: “If you found a talking goldfish that granted you three wishes, what would you wish for?” This becomes awkward, when he knocks on the door of Sergei Goralick, who has just such a fish in a jar on his kitchen counter. 

Overall, I enjoyed the audio readings more than expected and looked forward to hearing how each and every writer and actor narrated these dynamic stories. My favorites, not in any particular order are: “Cheesus Christ”, “Mystique”, “Black and Blue”, “Not Completely Alone”, “One Step Beyond”, “Joseph”, and “Parallel Universes”.

Disclosure:  I received a copy of Suddenly, A Knock On The Door gratis. Any opinions expressed are my honest opinions and were not impacted by my receipt of the free audio. I received no monetary compensation for this post.

Suddenly, A Knock On The Door by Etgar Keret

Ira Glass reading from the audio book Suddenly, A Knock On The Door by Etgar Keret.
 To learn more about Keret and read some of his work, head to www.etgarkeret.com.

First four Merrill Joan Gerber eBooks Available

May 15, 2012 - Ann Arbor, MI—Merrill Joan Gerber is exactly the type of author we had in mind when we created the Dzanc Books rEprint Series. One of our goals with the series is to bring back great works of literature in eBook format and find a new readership and discussion for these works and authors.   Merrill Joan Gerber's outstanding body of work deserves the attention that the eBook format will offer her.

Gerber has published over a dozen critically acclaimed books. She’s frequently had her writing compared to greats such as Bellow and Roth. She’s had stories selected for both the Best American Short Story series and the O.Henry Prize anthology series. She’s had a novel win a Pushcart Editors’ Book Award and another receive the Ribalow Award from Hadassah Magazine for the “best English-language book on a Jewish theme.” The L.A. Times listed her Anna in the Afterlife as a Best Novel of 2002. Cynthia Ozick has called Merrill Joan Gerber "one of the masters."

Today Dzanc Books publishes the first four of sixteen eBooks of Merrill Joan Gerber’s writings, all sixteen of which will available by the end of June 2012:

    

Anna in Chains

Anna in the Afterlife

The Kingdom of Brooklyn

This is a Voice from Your Past

All four of these titles are available from Dzanc’s website for the low price of $20 for a limited time: http://www.dzancbooks.org/merrill-joan-gerber-reprint/ and they will also soon be available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and all other retail outlets where eBooks can be purchased. We do hope that you’ll help spread the word about this fantastic author’s work coming back into availability.

Dan Wickett
Dzanc Books

To Be Continued Bookstore

Charles Bondhus teaches Creative Writing at Raritan Valley Community College. He will be reading for the Somerset Poetry Group at the Bridgewater Public Library in October, the date still to be set by the library.

He will be reading on Friday, June 8, 2012 @ 7pm at the To Be Continued Bookstore, 431 Main Street, Metuchen, NJ (917) 686-6056

APRIL

Spring is the deadly time
when the yellow and black
spider builds a net in the garden,
swinging her pulpy mass
from lilac to forsythia,
pulling a banner of gauze as she goes,
proclaiming the potency of her venom.

Nearby, in the purple-green
thicket, soft beasts couple
brutally, the male’s crescent
teeth gnashing his mate’s neck
tissue-deep; her howls
startle a preening cardinal
out of his nest,
scattering twigs
and cutting a red gash
across the egg-blue sky.

No less frantic, the robins
careen into the patio door all morning,
their winged bodies ill-adapted
to the human world of glass boundaries.

And we two
no longer needing each other’s skin
to keep out the winter’s cold
spend the day soundlessly,
conceiving new excuses
to continue sharing a bed.

CALL FOR POETS AND PERFORMERS OF POETRY

John Irving of Café Improv, seeks to enlist poets, readers or those that recite poetry, for Café Improv, the monthly, [usually the 4th Saturday] televised cabaret at the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts that he runs with EmCee Thomas P. Florek and others. You can learn more about Café Improv at www.cafeimprov.com
Call or email John Irving.

Café Improv Cabaret
Paul Robeson Center for the Arts
102 Witherspoon Street
Princeton, NJ 08542-3204
irving@nas.org
(609) 497-2480 office
(609) 933-9155 mobile
http://www.cafeimprov.com/

The Fox Chase Reading Series 2012 Featured Poets

All readings will take place at
Ryerss Museum and Library,
7370 Central Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa. 19111.

Readings begin at 2pm.

May 20, 2012
Jack Veasey, Marty Esworthy, Christine O’Leary Rockey

June 24, 2012
J.C. Todd, Hayden Saunier

September 23, 2012
Ditta Baron Hoeber, Kirsten Kaschock

October 28, 2012
David Kozinski, Michele Belluomini

Fanwood Poetry Reading Will Feature Joe Weil and B.J. Ward

FANWOOD, NJ – The Carriage House Poetry Series invites the public to attend an evening of poetry on Tuesday, May 15, at 8:00 p.m. in the Kuran Arts Center on Watson Road, off North Martine Avenue, adjacent to Fanwood Borough Hall (GPS use 75 N. Martine Avenue). The free event will feature distinguished poets Joe Weil and B.J. Ward, followed by an open mic reading.

Joe Weil teaches poetry and fiction in the creative writing program at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He has been a Dodge Foundation Poet and appeared on Bill Moyer's "Fooling with Words" series on PBS. Joe has lived in Elizabeth and Cranford, and was founding editor of Black Swan Review. His most recent collections of poetry include "Painting the Christmas Trees" (Texas Review Press) and "What Remains" (Nightshade Press). 

B.J. Ward's recent collection of poetry is "Gravedigger's Birthday" (North Atlantic Books). His work has been featured on National Public Radio, and New Jersey Network's "State of the Arts." He teaches in the creative writing program at Warren County Community College and his poems have appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Poetry Magazine, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, and thePushcart Prize Anthology.

The Carriage House Poetry Series is in its 14^th year at the Kuran Arts Center, an historic Gothic Revival structure. In the 19^th century, the building served as a carriage house.

The May 15^th reading in Fanwood is free and open to the public. An open mic reading will follow the featured performance. 

Seating is limited, so be sure to arrive early. 

For more information call 908-889-7223 or 908-889-5298. 

For online directions and information, visit http://carriagehousepoetryseries.blogspot.com/.

Galen Warden at Classic Quiche Cafe

Saturday, May 26, 2012 THE NORTH JERSEY LITERARY SERIES presents  Poet and artist Galen Warden accompanied by the musical stylings of Wayne Schrengohst. 9 PM in the Special Events Room of the CLASSIC QUICHE CAFÉ 330 Queen Anne Road, Teaneck , New Jersey FREE

Read more »

NYQ Books™ Announces the Forthcoming Publication of The Place I Call Home by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

April 25, 2012 - New York, NY - NYQ Books™ is proud to announce the forthcoming release of The Place I Call Home by Maria Mazziotti Gillan.  The place that Maria calls home is a universal haven built of enduring memories and peopled by loving family.  

In Gillan’s newest book of poetry, The Place I Call Home, we share her complex emotions of an immigrant childhood in Paterson, New Jersey, in the 1950s, her long marriage, her husband’s devastating illness, and her subsequent widowhood.  

Yet, we also share the sheltering family in which she grew up, the deep love binding her and her husband, the unfolding of her life as a mother and grandmother, and, most of all, her resilient spirit.  She reminds us that even when the bud of youthful naïveté flowers into the reality of an uncaring universe, we are home again when we recall the protection we felt within the warm sanctuary of family. These poems are beautiful crystalline narratives, sometimes exuberant and sometimes poignant, but always unflinchingly true.

Read more »

3rd Annual Bill’s Figs Poetry Festival

An outdoor, tented reading in a Fig Grove.

Sat. 5/19 2-4 pm,

Bill's Figs,
329 Old York Road,
Three Bridges, NJ. (near Flemington).

Bring your books to sell.

Guernica, 1937 by Pablo Picasso

Probably Picasso's most famous work, Guernica is certainly his most powerful political statement, painted as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's devastating casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish Civil War.

Writing Prompt: Write a poem that shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. 

Spring Cleaning Sale

The McSweeney's Store

Ugly Duckling Presse Exhibit and Launch Party

Thu Jun 7, 6:30 PM

at RH Gallery, 137 Duane Street, New York, NY

Exhibit: May 1-June 22, 2012
Launch: June 7, 6:30-8:30 PM

Featured Readers: Gary Sullivan; Catherine Taylor; Sandra Liu

Sponsored by Dandelion Wine (Greenpoint) and Sixpoint. Broadsides and special editions by the following poets will be available for sale: Ammiel Alcalay, Kostas Anagnopoulos, Jen Bervin, Julian T. Brolaski, Brent Cummingham, Joel Dailey, Michael Ford, Ernst Herbeck, Marisol Limón Martínez, Eugene Ostashevsky, Gabriel Pomerand, Maureen Thorson, Robert Walser, and Roger Williams.

RH gallery is pleased to present Ugly Duckling Presse, an exhibition of limited edition broadsides by Ugly Duckling Presse. Highlighting recent projects, but including selected pieces from as early as 2005, this exhibition focuses on supplemental works produced by UDP that accompany the publishing house’s critically acclaimed books. Two new broadsides, which complement books from UDP’s Lost Literature series, have been exclusively printed for this exhibition. The exhibition will be accompanied by a pop-up shop showcasing selected UDP titles.

The first of the new works produce for this exhibition is a letterpress rebus poster from Gabriel Pomerand’s seminal Lettrist publication Saint Ghetto des Prêts. Published by UDP in 2006 as Saint Ghetto of the Loans (translated by Michael Kasper), the book reissued a legendary but little seen masterpiece of French book art from 1950. Born in Paris in 1926, Gabriel Pomerand was a habitué of the Left Bank bars, cafes, and clubs after the Second World War. He co-founded the Lettrist movement with Isidore Isou in the winter of 1945-1946. A prolific writer and painter, Pomerand withdrew from most Lettrist activities during the 1950s. He committed suicide in 1972 on the island of Corsica.

The second is a letterpress broadside for a forthcoming chapbook by the Austrian poet Ernst Herbeck (1920-1991). Everyone Has a Mouth (translated by Gary Sullivan) is the first English language collection of Herbeck’s work published in America. Herbeck was a well-loved Austrian poet who was institutionalized at the famed Maria Gugging Psychiatric Institute on the outskirts of Vienna. He was encouraged to write poetry by Gugging’s Head Clinician, Leo Navratil, a champion of outsider art who later established Gugging’s Haus der Künstler. From 1960 until Herbeck’s death in 1991, Navratil prompted Herbeck to write some 1,200 poems.

Greetings Spring Reading Series with Anna Moschovakis & Gracie Leavitt

Wed Jun 6, 8:00 PM

at Unnameable Books, 600 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn, NY

The 10th annual Greetings Spring reading series is curated by UDP author Jeffrey Joe Nelson.

Meet & greet at 8pm followed shortly by performances & readings by Anna Moschovakis & Gracie Leavitt.

Anna Moschovakis is the author of two books of poems, I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone (Turtle Point Press 2006) and You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake (Coffee House Press 2011) and of several chapbooks, including The Blue Book (Phylum Press), Dependence Day Parade (Sisyphus), No Medea (a Tinyside from Big Game Books), The Tragedy of Waste (Belladonna) and The Human Machine (Dusie). Currently a freelance editor and a visiting professor in the Writing department at Pratt Institute, she splits her time between Brooklyn and Delaware County, NY. Anna has been working with UDP since 2002 as an editor, designer, administrator, and printer. She has edited numerous poetry and translation titles over the years, is an on-and-off editor of 6×6, and currently edits poetry while also heading up the Dossier Series, which she founded in 2008.

Jeffrey Joe Nelson grew up in the Garden State. Extended sojourns throughout North Carolina, Wales, Florida, California, Italy, Holland, Cuba and Prague eventually brought him to Brooklyn when he has lived for the past 13 years. Jeffrey Joe’s work has appeared in Oyster Boy, New York Nights, Dial Tone, Lungfull!, Ashville Mountain Review, and Greetings, a magazine of the sound arts he founded in 1998. Recent chapbooks include a car/A Pome (Lew Gallery Editions), and Caption my Caption(Gneiss Books). He teaches English and coaches Basketball at the Coalition High School for Social Change in Harlem.

Ugly Duckling Presse in Paris

Mon May 14, 7:00 PM

at Shakespeare & Company, 37 rue de la Bucherie, Paris

Readings by UDP writers!

Steve Dalachinsky

Christian Hawkey

Filip Marinovich

Yuko Otomo

Sarah Riggs

Jacqueline Waters

Uljana Wolf

Matvei Yankelevich

with emcee Vladislav Davidzon

The Sorrows of Young Goethe: New Bio & Poems

Referred to by Ralph Waldo Emerson as "the surpassing intellect of modern times," Johann Wolfgang von Goethe indelibly altered the European cultural landscape. As well as being the author of The Sorrow of Young Werner, an intricate Theory of Colors, and the canonical epic poem-play Faust, Goethe also brought Shakespeare into the German language. Browse his poems and find out more about this iconic German poet. www.poets.org/jgoet

On Human Cylinders: Danielle Pafunda on the Pregnant Poet

"...Like death, birth offers a lens through which we can all peer and learn something about what it means to be an animal with culture." In this candid essay, Pafunda explores the poetic tradition of writing about pregnancy, birth, and the female body, and examines work by Mina Loy, Toi Derricotte, Alice Notley, Aase Berg, and Hiromi Ito, among others. www.poets.org/dpafu

Late Night Library

Brooklyn- and Portland-based Late Night Library is a series of podcasts featuring writers, not yet well known, yet well worth knowing. The podcasts are here.

A teaser from The Believer...

THE BELIEVER: From what I understand, you’re a writer who writes exclusively in front of the screen.


JONATHAN LETHEM: I don’t have a lot of paper in my immediate work environment, except when I’m doing things like checking these godforsaken proofs. Yet I’m making a book and I’m going to care immensely about what words get bound in the pages, and I want the object to look good. I won’t believe in it and it won’t be real to me until there’s a finished book I can hold. The computer is the way I’m making it. I think of the books I write on a sculptural level.

I was an art student. That’s what I did before I realized I was going to write, and I still think about the physical properties. I visualize the length of a book, the proportions of a book, in material terms. For better or worse, I’m attached to talismanic things.

BLVR: Near the end of Chronic City, Perkus Tooth ends up with an excerpted passage stuck to his cheek. Am I going to find that your books are missing pages from where you literally excerpted certain passages?

JL: I don’t cut up books. I’m really anxious about this. I hate underlining—even in pencil. I’m like: just remember what was important to you. This is where I’m like a bookseller in that way. Don’t fuck up the book.

I hate libraries for the way they put stickers on things. I don’t approve of folding over pages, or of writing in books. God, forget scissors—that’s beyond the pale.

—from Peter Andrey Smith’s interview with Jonathan Lethem, in the May Issue! To read the rest—and to see who one this year’s Believer Book and Poetry Awards—pick it up right here.

Susanna Rich

PoetsWednesday

582 Rahway Ave., Woodbridge, NJ

732-634-0413

8:00 PM

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Open Reading to Follow

Workshop at 7:00 PM

Workshop Facilitator: Deborah LaVeglia

Pushing the Boundaries: Memoir as Poetry

Featuring

Susanna Rich

performing ashes, ashes: A Poet Responds to the Holocaust

Wichita

In Thad Ziolkowski's aptly named first novel, Wichita, Lewis Chopik, a recent graduate from Columbia University, leaves New York City for his hometown of Wichita, Kansas. He's escaping the pain from a recent breakup with his girlfriend, Victoria, who left him for a Rhodes scholar, and he's avoiding the Ivy League future of his professor father, Virgil. Lewis quickly settles into the home of his New Age mother, Abby, whose house functions as a sort of commune, housing his bipolar brother, Seth; Abby's two boyfriends (earnest Donald lives inside, while eccentric Bishop sleeps in a tent in the yard and operates the basement drug lab); and a bevy of drifters who float in and out.

Taken from: http://www.oprah.com/blogs/Book-of-the-Week-Witchita

Steven Jaffe

Seeing New York City history through a military lens is an unexpected, but as it turns out, illuminating view of what has happened here from colonial times through 9/11. Steven Jaffe makes the case in his just-published New York at War: Four Centuries of Combat, Fear, and Intrigue in Gotham and in a talk at the Tenement Museum on May 22, 6:30pm.

James Joyce's Ulysses stars.

The 31st annual Bloomsday on Broadway event is on June 16, 7pm, at Symphony Space.

Each of the 18 episodes of Joyce's Ulysses celebrates a different organ of the human body and a different art. The SIRENS episode, which takes place in the Ormond Hotel bar and dining room is devoted to the human ear, and the art of music. Before turning to writing, young James Joyce's ambition was to become a concert tenor. ULYSSES is filled with music and songs, especially in the SIRENS episode, where Leopold Bloom is having his lunch, and listening to the men in the barroom flirting with the two barmaids (sirens) and singing great operatic selections and Irish songs.

Five Women, One Journey

Poetry Round Table in Celebration of Mother's Day

We share a common journey as women, each with a unique voice.

Five women sharing their poetic voice and inspiration.

Monica Bottone, Suzann Brucato, Elissa Gordon,

and Jennifer Heine-Baughman, Kathe Palka

Free Family-Friendly Event at the Middletown Arts Center

36 Church Street, Middletown, NJ 07748

Additional information: (732) 706-4100

An Interview with Helen Chantal Pike

Is there any special method to your writing? I keep a journal that's equal parts musings, interviews, scrap booking (tkt stubs, for example) and lists; I only write on the right-hand page, leaving the left for notes/observations when I go back to review and harvest from those pages. It's a trick from my days as a travel writer when I composed the first draft of an assignment on the airplane home.


How many hours a day do you spend reading/writing? It varies, but usually I try to spend an hour reading and always try to read something in the morning to feed my imagination. Uninterrupted writing can occupy anywhere from one to four hours (in one-hour clips). Then there are the 10-minute quickies when other work disrupts the flow and so I try to "steal" a concentrated 10 minutes to stay with an idea. Sometimes it's only 5 minutes.



What inspires you to continue being a writer? Inspiration to keep writing has varied, but lately it's been about making deeper emotional connections with readers and dialing down the amount of facts I've unearthed.



If you could have been the author of any novel, which title would it be and why? "Praxis" by Fay Weldon or "The Women's Room" by Marilyn French or "Walking to Gatlinburg" by Howard Frank Mosher. The first 2 because they really spoke to where I was in the 1980s; Mosher's magical realism take on morality and war is truly an inspired piece of Americana.



Do you think you will ever change audiences? I think I'm about to change audiences somewhat with this new book project, a memoir about my late father. It's going to be less unearthed facts and forgotten history and more an examination of the cultural, emotional, and economic issues that shaped each of us at different times in the 20th century. My previous books, with the exception of the co-written "The Spirited Ladies of Liberty Street" were straight-ahead history.



What advice would you give anyone who wants to become a published author? Write, even when you think you're empty. Read to fill yourself up. Experience life: Be the adventurer who drives a convertible with the top down, not caring that bugs get caught in your teeth.


And do you have a list of favorite books/authors? The Northeast Kingdom's Mosher; Edie Clark of Yankee magazine; Marc Mappen of New Jersey, Cara Black because of her mysteries set in Paris which is where my mother was from and I lived for a while as a student at the Sorbonne.

PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature

The unforgettable book Memoirs of an Anti-Semite (part of the Bukovina Trilogy), by Gregor von Rezzori, is discussed at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, focusing in on Bukovina, an area that was once a vital corner of the Austro-Hungarian empire. 

May 6, 1pm, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. 

A tony group of authors to do the discussing: Michael Cunningham, Deborah Eisenberg,Daniel Kehlman, and Edmund White, moderated by NY Review of Books editor Edwin Frank. 

"Voice" By Melih Cevdet Anday, translated from the Turkish by Sidney Wade and Efe Murad

I woke to find myself filled with sound
My face my eyes my mouth my nose my hands
It was the sound of a sea-door opening
The sound of the sun-hen shaking dust from her feathers
The sound of a tooth-colored hawser creaking
Of a trumpet in the shape of a tree
Of tomorrow’s wheat, of a moving bone
It was the sound of an historical wrist, of resistance
Of capering cars, of embracing horses.
I watched it, as blue as a carnation cooling in the sun
As beautiful as the pencil behind a construction worker’s ear
As intense as a wet barrel in the rain
As ecstatic as a clothesline brushed by the wing of a sparrow
Like pigeons strolling through a schoolyard
Like a lip kissed on the coast, a lip kissed in the rain
Like faceless minutes nuzzling up to shadows
Like celestial toys.

Melih Cevdet Anday was a ground-breaking poet in Turkey’s modernist period. He published eleven collections of poems, eight plays, eight novels, and fifteen collections of essays. Together with Orhan Veli and Oktay Rifat, in 1941 he published Garip, or Strange, a collection of poetry that radically altered the course of Turkish poetic history.

Born in 1987 in Istanbul, Efe Murad is currently working towards his Ph.D in Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard. He has published four books of poetry and a book of translations from the Iranian poet M. Azad in Turkish. His translations from Turkish poetry, together with the American poet Sidney Wade, have appeared in journals such as Asymptote, Little Star, Talisman, and Two Lines. He is working on the complete Turkish translations of Ezra Pound’s Cantos.

Sidney Wade has published five collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Stroke, from Persea Books. Her sixth, Edge, will be published by Persea in April 2013. She has served as President of AWP and Secretary/Treasurer of ALTA and has taught workshops in Poetry and Translation at the University of Florida’s MFA@FLA program since 1993. Along with Efe Murad, she has translated a substantial collection of the poetry of Melih Cevdet Anday.