Peace Corps Writers - Review: Peter Blair’s poetry about the PC experience – Farang

I met Peter Blair at the AWP Conference in Denver this year. It's nice to see his book getting a little exposure!

Peace Corps Writers - Review: Peter Blair’s poetry about the PC experience – Farang

The New Yorker: "Twins" by C.E. Morgan

Whenever I discover that a New Yorker “story” is an excerpt from a book, I lose my enthusiasm for commenting on it, no matter how well written it is. It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with excerpts, but they should be approached and evaluated differently, which is why The New Yorker should disclose that it’s an excerpt.

So here we have an excerpt, which we know only because C.E. Morgan tells us so in the Q&A (link below). And of course you only see the Q&A if you go online looking for it, because it’s not in the print magazine.

I did go looking for it because this piece felt to me like an excerpt. There’s a lot of summary and there’s no real suspense or conclusion. I’m hopeful that the book will give us both the past and the future of the boys Allmon and Mickey, because this work succeeds in making me interested in them. Intriguingly, they are twins, one black and one white. Their mother is black and their father is “Mike Shaughnessy, truck driver, half-hearted Lothario, collector of children, poor Irish agnate, known in high school as that fucking Irish fuck.” The mother loves the guy and he’s around sometimes, but not all the time.

The excerpt culminates—after setting all that up—with a visit from Mike. He’s going to be with the boys while the mother is at work. But he’s been driving and he’s tired and . . . it doesn’t go quite as planned.

But that’s it. No real tension, no real suspense, no climax, no ending. Which is the problem with excerpts. I’d read more about the boys, and I think Morgan is a wonderful writer, but I don’t love this piece.

June 14 & 21, 2010 “Twins” by C.E. Morgan

[available online only to subscribers, but see Q&A with C.E. Morgan ]

The New Yorker: "The Kid" by Salvatore Scibona

There’s a kid wandering around the Hamburg airport and various airline personnel are trying to figure out what his story is. They aren’t able to communicate with him and he won’t tell them his name, or doesn’t seem to understand that they want to know his name. (He understands; he just knows he's not supposed to give out too much information!)

Then the story backs up and we find out that Elroy Heflin was in the army and was posted to the US Embassy in Riga, where he hooked up with Evija, whom he gets pregnant. She doesn’t want to get married (she doesn’t?--that's a twist that might be worth exploring), so when he is sent to Afghanistan she’s still in Riga with the kid. Then he’s back in the US visiting his father (his stepfather, actually, although that also isn't explored) and he gets an email that he can have the kid, she’s moving to Spain. He’s happy about this, he thinks (he’s crying, apparently), so he heads off to Riga to get the kid, Janis. A third party hands Janis over and off they go. He boards a plane with the boy, they have a layover in Hamburg, but then Elroy panics—he has no idea what to do next. (Um, passport? That might have been a good place to start. Why is this guy so clueless?) He leaves Janis in the bathroom while he goes off to think. One thing leads to another and he winds up on the flight to London, and then he just goes on to the US, and arrives at his stepfather’s place in Las Vegas. Oops.

He’s deployed two years later to Afghanistan again when he hears from Evija, saying that she’s back in Riga and wants him and Janis back. Uh-oh.

I have no idea if this is a story or an excerpt. It feels like an excerpt. Much of what we know we get in exposition, and the ending feels more like a beginning to me. What’s Elroy going to do now? How is he going to find Janis now? What are the consequences of what he's done? What's the deal with the stepfather?

Actually, that all sounds pretty interesting—but the story we’ve got here, not so much.

See the Q&A with Salvatore Scibona

June 14 & 21, 2010: “The Kid” by Salvatore Scibona

The New Yorker: "Dayward" by ZZ Packer

Packer has a forthcoming novel, The Thousands, from which this is presumably an excerpt. (She doesn't say this explicitly in the Q&A, but the new novel is set during Reconstruction, as this story is.) It doesn’t really begin and it doesn’t really end, so even though it’s exciting and well written, it doesn’t stand alone as a story.

Lazarus and Mary Celeste, his deaf sister, emancipated slaves, are running away from Miss Thalia, their former owner, who seems not to care that slavery has ended. She sets her man Kittredge and his dogs on their trail, and Lazarus is severely injured fighting one of the dogs. Eventually they make it to New Orleans and find their Aunt Minnie, who’s got seven other children to deal with. “‘Nine goddam children,’ she said to the dark. It was neither a curse nor a lament but a pledge.”

Okay. They made it to New Orleans. Now what? 

June 14 & 21: “Dayward” by ZZ Packer

[available online only to subscribers but here's a Q&A with ZZ Packer]

The New Yorker: "Lenny Hearts Eunice" by Gary Shteyngart

This is an excerpt from Shteyngart’s new novel, Super Sad True Love Story, due out in July. Not that the magazine is telling us this, but it is.

Lenny is keeping a diary, and he is apparently the last literate person on the planet. He reads books! He meets Eunice Park in Italy and falls in love with her, although she’s nothing but disdainful toward him. When he returns to the US—he is the Life Lovers Outreach Coordinator of the Post-Human Services Division of Staatling-Wapachung Corporation—he seems to be out of a job, and his quest for immortality also seems to be failing. But things turn around, his job is back, his life expectancy lengthens again, Eunice comes to visit and stays . . .

And I don’t think I’ll ever be a Shteyngart fan—I’ve tried—so I’m afraid I can’t do any more with this piece than that. And since it’s an excerpt from a novel, I’m not sure there’s really any point anyway.

June 14 & 21: “Lenny Hearts Eunice” by Gary Shteyngart. See also: Q&A with Gary Shteyngart

Wounds and Meteors: A Review of Electric Urgency by Maryanne Stahl

Wounds and Meteors: A Review of Electric Urgency by Maryanne Stahl (Pudding House Publications)

by Amy George

By the time you have finished reading this chapbook, a lump that feels familiar has settled in your throat, just above the beating instrument known as your heart. The sense of longing is unmistakable: the ripped filaments of broken dreams dangle in your mind along with the eerie notion that someone has written down feelings you have felt, but never faced up to.

By the time you have finished reading this chapbook, the universe will have exploded in your mind, and you will have realized that you have colors within yourself and the capacity to take in the world, one winding road at a time.

Welcome to the poetry of Maryanne Stahl.

In her collection, Electric Urgency, each poem is a story or a snapshot from Stahl’s life. We visit her childhood where she finds where the devil lives beneath the porch and creates a May altar of flowers for the Virgin Mary to distract her sister from a raging father. We feel the sting of bruises left by abusive husbands riding in cars, splintering the dashboard with their fists.  Finally, we discover a woman who has found that what she discovers inside of her is not ugly or misshapen, but bursts of color and possibility.  

In words that are wonderfully condensed for power and yet not too sparse to paint vivid pictures, Stahl introduces us to the uncomfortable places that make us human and also to the beauty of the world around us. It is the wide variety that makes this collection so distinct and such a pleasure to read. For instance, in her poem, Meteor Shower, Stahl writes: 

            “A shooting star slices the sky directly above me, parts it and then,

like a wound healed, disappears. I make a wish. Another meteor streaks

across the western horizon, another falls from the north. I wish and wish

again, and wishes become prayers.”

We breathe the night air with this dreamer as she continues: “Galileo must have felt this way. I imagine him, dressed in robes, yearning for possibility and finding comfort.”

Then we identify with her longing as she writes: “I try to reach you across time and continents, to send you the sparks.” We hope he feels her touch across the void.

On another continent, a woman leaves a man because she cannot bear living“beneath the twenty-seven tiny shadows of your accomplishments.”A woman dreams of losing a daughter she never bore. A cat, the only remaining memory of a family, is stroked, reminding a person of everyone she has lost. And we are taken to a room:
           

            “He doesn’t see me as I enter the room he fitted as our dungeon, though

            his eyes are open. He lies on the stone floor, gazing past me, the blood pooled

            around him dry and brown. I sit beside him and once again I explain to him,

            now that he has time to listen.”

The power of Stahl’s work is unmistakable; we want to read the book again and we want to put it on the shelf and hide it in the shadows. Like any great work of art, it moves us and shakes us and in the end, we are delighted, horrified, and mesmerized. Most importantly, we realize just how alive we are.

--Amy L. George is the editor of Birds Eye View

Bestseller! (at The Sacred Circle)

The Sacred Circle is a great little bookstore in Staunton, VA, and Carey, the owner, has been steadily selling my book since it came out last year. He's just released a list of his bestsellers, and In an Uncharted Country is #1! Check out the whole list:

Top 50 Books!

Prime Number Magazine . . . is coming

In a little under four weeks, the first issue of Prime Number Magazine will go live. Be sure and visit the website in order to put your name on the eMail list--not only will you receive news of new issues and updates to the Magazine, you'll also be eligible to win $250 worth of books from Press 53.

You can also follow us on Twitter or "Like" us on Facebook!

The Millions : 20 More Under 40

The Millions : 20 More Under 40

The New Yorker: "The Entire Northern Side Was Covered With Fire" by Rivka Galchen

Here’s another marriage in trouble, this time from the wife’s point of view. And again, a child is at risk. Trish is a novelist whose husband has left her. She’s pregnant, beginning to worry about money—the novel’s success is nice, but probably not enough. 

Her brother tells her that her husband has been writing a blog called “I Can’t Stand My Wife.” It turns out that her friend David knows about it, too.

She has a meeting with some “movie people” and they’re interested in completely changing her novel. Her mind is somewhere else, like on a letter she received from a fan who has an idea for a movie based on the Tunguska incident. After she looks that up to find out what it is, it stays in her mind.

I’m not sure the pieces of this puzzle fit together.

June 14 & 21, 2010: “The Entire Northern Side Was Covered With Fire” by Rivka Galchen

The New Yorker: "What You Do Out Here, When You're Alone" by Philipp Meyer

This story reminds me of a T.C. Boyle story in Harper’s earlier this year. Max, a Porsche mechanic with a successful business, is married to Lilli, trailer trash who, with the help of his money, as cleaned up her act. They’ve moved from Huntsville to a suburb of Huston that he hates, and now she’s ashamed of him. There’s already tension, but the story begins when they’re dealing with the aftermath of what Max thinks of as “the Accident”—their son having had his skull mashed during a night in jail after a cocaine bust.

Max is making plans, though, and that’s what the story is all about. Moving on. Resisting the temptation of the next-door neighbor. Coping. I don’t quite understand Lilli or her motivation, but Max I like.

And I like the ending, too, with Max having a clear vision of where he’s going. Whether he’ll actually go there is another question.

It's a good story. Not great.

[available online only to subscribers, but here's a Q&A with Philipp Meyer]

“What You Do Out Here, When You’re Alone” by Philipp Meyer

Penny C. Sansevieri: 12 Secrets to Selling More Books at Events

There are some excellent tips here. Some sound corny, but that doesn't mean they won't work.

Penny C. Sansevieri: 12 Secrets to Selling More Books at Events

The New Yorker: "Here We Aren't, So Quickly" by Jonathan Safran Foer

Does this story remind anyone else of Lorrie Moore? The story is short and until the last paragraph every single sentence uses a pronoun. The first paragraph is all “I” but the second is all “you” as the narrator gives information about a couple—the excuses they give, their quirks, their habits. Then there’s a paragraph that’s mixed “I” and “You” followed by a paragraph of “We.” Eventually “They” enter the picture—various third parties—and then “he” when the couple’s child is born. (Through him, time jumps forward: “He suddenly drew, suddenly spoke, suddenly wrote, suddenly reasoned. One night I couldn’t help him with his math. He got married.”

“And here we aren’t, so quickly,” says the narrator as the story nears its end. What does “aren’t” mean here? Non-existence? The sentences turn negative, although there are earlier negative sentences. Now, though, the statements are more . . . ontological: “I’m not twenty-six and you’re not sixty. I’m not forty-five or eighty-three, not being hoisted onto the shoulders of anybody wading into any sea.” Perhaps they’re dead, except he seems to say that they aren’t, or maybe he’s saying they did die—just peacefully, instead of the alternative. Or maybe they’re just retired, and that’s what “aren’t” means to him.

It’s a clever story, and thought provoking.

[available online only to subscribers, but here's a Q&A with Jonathan Safran Foer]

June 14 & 21, 2010: “Here We Aren’t, So Quickly” by Jonathan Safran Foer

Sewanee Writers' Conference

Only three weeks until Sewanee! I'm looking forward to getting back there, seeing a lot of old friends and making new ones, and soaking in the great writing. The schedule has been posted. I'm reading on July 18th at 2:30 in the afternoon. The readings are open to the public, so if you're in the neighborhood you are welcome to come!

The 2010 Schedule | The Conference | Sewanee Writers' Conference

The New Yorker: "The Pilot" by Joshua Ferris

I think we’ll put this one on the best-of-the-year watch list. It’s about Lawrence, a recovering alcoholic and aspiring TV writer who is working on a script for a pilot. His agent is obscure, and Lawrence’s recent work is an underarm commercial that was shot in “tax-friendly Winston-Salem.” Lawrence obsesses about an invitation he receives from Kate Lotvelt, an actress/producer/writer whom he’s met, briefly. He worries about how he responded, he worries that she invited him by mistake, he worries that she hasn’t responded to his RSVP. Beautiful obsessing and, I have to say, totally realistic.

There’s more, of course, from whether he should invite his roommate along, to what he should wear. (I’m surprised he doesn’t obsess about what time to arrive, since that’s pretty common obsession material.) On the way to the party, he goes to a bar, even though his mother has called as she does every day so that he will promise her that he won’t drink. In the bar, though, after he’s ordered the drink he’s promised he won’t have, he gets a sign to straighten up, and so he leaves without drinking.

And then he gets to the party, still obsessing. This is all beautifully done. He wants to present his pilot—he’s carrying pages—to Kate. As readers, we know that his pilot is derivative of the show Kate has just finished work on. He chats with her—after he reminds her who he is—but he doesn’t show her the pages. And when she moves on to another conversation, he begins to drink. From there, the ending is inevitable.

Good stuff. Ferris belongs on that “20 Under 40” list that this story is a part of.

[available online only to subscribers, but check out the Q&A with Joshua Ferris]

June 14 & 21, 2010

“The Pilot” by Joshua Ferris

The New Yorker List, the Dzanc List

Much has been written about the "20 Under 40" list promulgated by The New Yorker: "twenty young writers who capture the inventiveness and the vitality of contemporary American fiction." A lot of people (most writers other than the 20 who made the list, it seems) are critical of the list--the age cutoff is meaningless, small and independent presses aren't represented, etc. The editors of the magazine are careful to point out that the gender balance on the list was accidental, but I doubt that anyone believes them. It's also a creditably diverse list in other ways.


And completely useless. (But not to TNY and Farrar Strauss & Giroux who will publish an anthology of work by these authors, making the whole exercise, apparently, a clever marketing gimmick.)


Indie presses are responding. Under the leadership of Dzanc Books and the Emerging Writers Network (both the brain-children of Dan Wickett), a new list is being formulated. As a blogger I received an email inviting me to nominate writers for the list, which is being created primarily from names submitted by a number of small presses. I declined the invitation, but the list will be generated without my input. In fact, I've seen many of the names being considered for the list, and there are some fine writers included. It will be a nice feather in their cap to be on a list that will draw them a little attention and will generate some little controversy and, probably, give even MORE attention to The New Yorker's list.


But such a list is also, ultimately, meaningless. And I don't say that because I'm unlikely to be on it. (Actually, my absence is a certainty, but "unlikely" sounds more hopeful!) The nominations for the list come from a tiny pool of independent presses. There are thousands of deserving writers who won't be considered just because it's impossible to examine everyone.


But a few writers will benefit, and that's fine. Someone might even publish an anthology.

SWAG Reading: Bloomsday, June 16

About 30 people turned out for the inaugural SWAG (Staunton-Augusta-Waynesboro Group of Writers) Reading at the Irish Alley Restaurant and Pub last night, which happened to coincide with Bloomsday. We had arranged tables cabaret-style and the Pub served drinks and food to every table. We even had TV coverage, with a crew from WHSV-3 who interviewed me and then filmed some of the reading. Here's the clip they aired.

I kicked things off by reading the first page of Ulysses (from the copy of the book I used in college and grad school) in honor of James Joyce and his day.

Then Alan Christy read some wonderful poems. (Alan really needs to put a book together; his work is terrific and deserves a wider audience.)

And finally Domnica Radulescu spoke about the intersection of life and art and then read first from Train to Trieste, her first novel (which, coincidentally, has some references to James Joyce's work) and from her forthcoming Black Sea Twilight, both of which deal with young Romanian women fleeing the communist regime in search of freedom, as Radulescu herself did.

There were several questions for Domnica and then she was available to sign her books, which Carey from The Sacred Circle had brought to sell.

I thought it was a complete success. First, I had hoped for 25 people and we had more than that, which was good for SWAG and also Irish Alley, who let us use the big room upstairs. Second, the readings were great--both Alan and Domnica did a wonderful job and they are both really fine writers. Third, a bunch of books were sold (including one of mine!), which was a subsidiary goal of mine. And we collected names for the mailing list for future events.

Thank you to everyone who came out for this first reading. And thanks to Carey McCallum for being on-site to sell books, to Karen Lawrence for helping with publicity (which obviously worked) and arranging for the mic and amp, and to Lindsay Curren for design of the poster.

Shelf -- A New Digital Magazine for the iPad Generation -- DALLAS, June 16 /PRNewswire/ --

Shelf -- A New Digital Magazine for the iPad Generation -- DALLAS, June 16 /PRNewswire/ --

Chicago Lit50

Speaking of lists, Newcity has posted a list of the "Top 50" Chicago writers. It seems like an odd undertaking--maybe even more so than The New Yorker's self-serving 20 Under 40 list--but fun anyway.

And so I'm looking at the list and there are several people I actually know, which is cool.

It's funny to read the comments, too, like the one from "ALH" (could that be Aleksandar Hemon, #2 on the list?).

Literary Magazine Rankings

We know that some people put no store in rankings of literary magazines, and yet the lists persist. I've just found a new entry into the fray, and this one is more about raw data than subjective rankings, and I whole-heartedly approve of that methodology. Let the user of the information decide what to do with the data, but thanks to the data gatherer for making it possible.

In this case, The Rankings gives us a list of the best-known anthologies such as Best American Short Stories and Best of the Web and lists the number of times a particular magazine appears. The author, Marc Watkins, does NOT do the same for the Pushcart Prize Anthology because, as he acknowledges graciously, I've already done that here. Very useful information.

re:Joyce!

Do you find Ulysses intimidating? Frank Delaney proposes to help with that. Check out the weekly podcasts in which the Irish novelist will guide us through it -- sometimes sentence by sentence. So here it is:

Frank Delaney: Author of Ireland, A Novel.

The New Yorker’s One Over 40 - The Rumpus.net

The New Yorker’s One Over 40 - The Rumpus.net

The New Yorker: "Extreme Solitude" by Jeffrey Eugenides

The June 7th issue hasn't arrived. I've complained (again) to The New Yorker. I've finally given up waiting and have read the story online (or, to be honest, I was going to read it online but it's a little long so I printed it out, which is exactly what I do not want to have to do).

The story is a good one. Very good (although, as is often the case, it seems, I don't love the ending).

It's the 80s. Madeleine meets Leonard in an upper-level semiotics seminar at Brown and they begin to date. She's falling in love with Leonard, although she is also repulsed, and doesn't quite understand her feelings until she reads a Barthes book assigned for the seminar: "the lover's discourse is today of an extreme solitude." This make sense to her. (It even makes sense to me.) But as Spring arrives, they're pulling away from each other. So Madeleine makes a gesture, one to which Leonard reacts in a way she wishes he had not -- pointing to more from the text of the Barthes book.

While the outer story here, girl meets boy and girl gets mad at boy, isn't remarkable, the story appeals because the characters of Madeleine and Leonard draw the reader in. They're solid; we can see them and even smell them. But the reason the story works for me is the inner story, its attempts to "deconstruct" the love affair and to put it in lit-crit terms, whether or not it even makes sense to do so.

Having said that, the ending is a bit unsatisfying. (I really do need to read more Eugenides, though; this was a good introduction.)

June 7, 2010: “Extreme Solitude” by Jeffrey Eugenides

"On the Outskirts of Normal" by Debra Monroe

Check out this article about Debra Monroe's new memoir: "On the Outskirts of Normal": White mom, black daughter in small-town Texas town - Our Picks: Books - Salon.com
It sounds great to me. For one thing, I'm interested in adoption (see my story "White Swans" about a Chinese adoption in In an Uncharted Country). But also, what Malone is talking about brings another element to the discussion, and even advocates of adoption disagree. The book looks like a fascinating read.

Sewanee Writers' Conference

I got a bit of very good news last week when the Sewanee Writers' Conference offered me a fellowship. I love Sewanee. I've been to a lot of conferences and it is my favorite (with Bread Loaf a close second). Not only is the faculty first rate and the other writers generally very talented (admission to the conference is extremely competitive), but also the staff are the nicest people in the world. Really.

I first went to Sewanee in 2004, the year after I received my MFA. It was my first big conference (I'd been to Under the Volcano in Mexico that January) and I didn't know what to expect. I requested and was assigned to Richard Bausch's workshop, which he team taught with Jill McCorkle. It was fantastic. Bausch gave me advice on a novel that still hasn't quite recovered, but I think it was sound advice. Terrific experience.

I started publishing short stories and so when I applied again, in 2006, I received a scholarship. That year I got into John Casey's workshop, co-taught with Claire Messud. Again, fantastic.

The conference almost never awards two scholarships in the same genre to the same person, so in 2008 when I wanted to go again I applied and went as a participant. That year I had a mind-blowing experience working with Tim O'Brien, who was extraordinarily helpful. If I hadn't already been a Sewanee fan, that would have made the sale for sure.

Finally, this year, because my book came out in 2009, I was eligible to apply for a fellowship for the 2010 conference. (I only seem to apply in even years, but the conference really does happen every summer.) So I applied and held by breath because I wanted it so much. And I got it. Much cheering in my house when I got the word. And the conference yesterday posted online the bios of the fellows and scholars. I'm truly honored to be included in this bunch, and I can't wait for the conference to begin on July 13.

Cranky; The New Yorker; Hudson Prize

It's Friday morning and my computer is misbehaving, which is making me cranky.

Also, The New Yorker is beginning to piss me off. People are already talking about the Summer fiction issue (June 14 & 21), but I still have not received the June 7 issue--it's now a week late--so I haven't reviewed the week's story yet. I don't want to read it online or print it out. That's why I have an over-priced subscription to the stupid magazine that really doesn't do anything for me. I might as well drop the subscription if I have to read the damn stories online anyway.

I told you I was cranky.

I found out this morning by reading the newsletter of WriterHouse that I was named a semi-finalist in the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize for my story collection/novel in stories What the Zhang Boys Know. Thanks a lot, Black Lawrence. I'm happy to have made it to the semi-finals, but what is it with contests not even informing the semi-finalists and finalists? The same thing happened with the Crazyhorse fiction contest recently. People started congratulating me for being a finalist and it was news to me. Note to contests: inform your finalists and semi-finalists before you post their names on your website. But on the Hudson Prize, here are the finalists and semi-finalists (which I'm posting because I can't link to the post on the Black Lawrence site since it's buried) (and note that Jacob Appel, the very talented and prolific story writer, entered at least four books in this contest because 2 are finalists and 2 are semi-finalists; congratulations, Jacob!):

Fiction Finalists
Andrew Milward- The Agriculture Hall of Fame
Annie Weatherwax- The Possibility of Things
Ira Sukrungruang- The Man with the Buddha Heads
Annie Dawid- Resurrection City: Stories of Jonestown
Brenda Goldberg- Amazing Grace
Geoff Schmidt-  Out of Time
Jacob M. Appel- Scouting for the Reaper
Jacob M. Appel- Natural Selection:  Stories
Nick Kocz- Disposable Baby and Other Stories
Xu Xi- Access- Thirteen Tales

Fiction Semi-Finalists
Adam Prince- The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men
Clifford W Garstang- What the Zhang Boys Know
Jacob M. Appel- Choose Your Own Genetics: Stories
Jeremy Griffin- A Last Resort for Desperate People
Jacob M. Appel- Shell Game With Organs
Rebecca Lloyd- Don’t Drink the Water
Richard Sonnenmoser- Other Women
Tracy DeBrincat- Troglodyte

 

VQR Unveils iPad Edition

Here's some news from Publishers Weekly: VQR Unveils iPad Edition

And here's the same news, direct from the horse's mouth: VQR Now Available for the iPad

James River Writers Conference

The James River Writers Conference is now open for registration. The conference is October 8 & 9 and will be at the Library of Virginia in Richmond. This year the conference also features workshops on the afternoon of Thursday, October 7. I'll be giving one of those workshops and I'll also be on panels on Friday and Saturday.

This is a terrific, intimate conference, and I urge interested writers to sign up early--it always sells out. It's fun, it's informative, and it's also a great way to help build your network.

Young blossom

SWAG Reading Series: Bloomsday!

I recently formed the Staunton - Waynesboro - Augusta Group of Writers (SWAG), a subchapter of the Blue Ridge Writers Club, which is a chapter of the Virginia Writers Club. The goal of the group, as I see it, is to elevate the profile of writers in Augusta County, Virginia, including the cities of Staunton and Waynesboro. We aim to do that through public readings, primarily, although we plan to hold other events as well.

The first reading will be at 7PM on June 16, 2010, which happens to be Bloomsday. For this event we'll be at Irish Alley Restaurant and Pub at 19 W. Johnson St. in Staunton. (It's not really an Irish Pub, but close enough for our purposes.)

Featured will be Poet Alan Christy, an adjunct literature teacher at Mary Baldwin College and also denizen of Cranberry's, and Novelist Domnica Radulescu, professor of Romance Languages at Washington & Lee University. Radulescu's novels include Train to Trieste and the forthcoming Black Sea Twilight. (The Sacred Circle will be on hand to sell copies of the books!) With these great writers on hand, plus the wonderful food and drink at Irish Alley available for purchase, it promises to be a great evening.

SWAG Writers will be hosting additional readings and events in the coming months. If you are a writer and are planning to be in our area, or even nearby, let me know and we'll try to schedule something.

[Thanks to Lindsay Curren of the Curren Media Group for the terrific poster and to Karen Lawrence of Karen Lawrence Media Services to help with publicity.]

Buy a Book and Press 53 Will Send a Book to a Soldier

Here's the deal. Go to the Press 53 website and buy a book (or several). That could include MY book, In an Uncharted Country. When you buy a book from Press 53 before Flag Day (June 14), Press 53 will send a copy of the same book to a soldier. It's a great way to support the troops and get some good reading for yourself. Visit Press 53 to place your order.

Paris Literary Icon Launches Prize and Magazine

A new journal: Paris Magazine -

Paris Literary Icon Launches Prize and Magazine