KAM: WOW Design Series

A new exhibit featuring the work of designer Marloes ten Bhömer opens today at the Krannert Museum of Art.

The exhibition is part of the WOW design series, which KAM started because:

We live in an environment that is hyperconscious of design...While this atmosphere is certainly exciting, the crowded marketplace makes the work of truly inspired and innovative designers even more difficult to recognize. As consumers and viewers, we are too rarely WOWed. This series of exhibitions seeks out that WOW factor. Each featured designer creates remarkable products through a transparent design process inspired by everyday visual icons, and pushes the quintessential into uncharted territory.

Ten Bhömer's experiments with the design and production of women's shoes, according to the KAM website, "offers new aesthetic and structural possibilities while critiquing the conventional status of women's shoes as cultural objects."

This is an exciting opportunity to see Ten Bhömer's design process from start to finish.

The exhibit runs Jan. 30 - May 31, 2009. For more information visit KAM's website.

Recent and Upcoming Book Releases from 9L Contributors

As we celebrate the release of our new issue, we can also share the good news of recent and upcoming book releases from past 9L contributors.


Vol. 1, Issue 1 contributor Katherine Vaz's Our Lady of the Artichokes and other Portuguese-American Stories was released by the University of Nebraska Press in October 2008.

Here is what Julia Glass said about the collection: "Katherine Vaz captures brilliantly the tragicomedy of people caught between ancient superstitions and modern values, people longing to cross over from one culture to another, from loneliness to love, from folly to grace. Her stories glow with a fairy-tale magic, yet they also feel uniquely and delightfully new."

Also, in October 2008 Scribner released The Wettest County in the World: A Novel Based on a True Story by Matt Bondurant (Vol. 4, Issue 2).

Publishers Weekly's review of the novel said: "Bondurant endows this gritty story with all the puzzle-solving satisfactions of a mystery. It's a gripping, relentless tale, delivered in no-nonsense prose."

Calamari Press recently released Ever, a novella, from Vol. 5, Issue 1 contributor Blake Butler.

Gary Lutz praised the novella saying, "Blake Butler is a daring invigorator of the literary sentence, and the room-ridden narrator of his debut novella, EVER, nerves her way into a hallucinative ruckus of rousing originality."


Erinn Batykefer (Vol. 5, Issue 1) won the 2008 Benjamin Saltman First Book Prize for her poetry collection, Allegheny, Monogahela. Red Hen Press will publish the collection in Feb. 2009.

Congratulations!

New Issue!

The new issue of Ninth Letter (Vol. 5, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2008-09) is out and on its way to subscribers. The issue is also available for purchase in our Webstore.

The new issue is very cool! We have fiction that deals with the psychological turmoil of a man finding a cigarette in his kitchen, a double date gone awry in ways that can only happen in a George Singleton story, and a father reconnecting with his son while searching for the inventor of the new toy in “Cute Monster Spirit Pet Fluffy You Up.” The nonfiction takes us into the world of U.S. synchronized swimming and what happens when a man tries to live without testosterone. We have poems in this issue that retell the Abraham and Isaac story from the point of view of Sarah, and that explore the mysteries of the Mary Celeste.

In addition to all the outstanding fiction, nonfiction and poetry, be sure to check out the art feature on Katori Hall’s Oreo Girl: The Miscegenation of Miss Emma Brown and the Music Poetry Feature with poems that, according to Tyehimba Jess’s introduction, “…attempt to grasp the many ways that music bends and breathes us…”.

Here is a list of all the Vol. 5, Issue 2 contributors:

Fiction: Cesar Aira, translated by Chris Andrews, Mai Al-Nakib, Keith Lee Morris, George Singleton, B.R. Smith, Allison Titus and James Warner

Nonfiction: Naton Leslie, Bruce Petronio, Mike Scalise, Julie Wittes Schlack and K.G. Schneider

Poetry: Neil Aitken, Tara Betts, Joseph Campana, Peter Cooley, Patricia Chao, Curtis Crisler, Kwame Dawes, Mitchell L.H. Douglas, Christopher DeWeese, Jehanne Dubrow, Megan O'Reilly Green, Eamon Goekel, Terita Heath-Wlaz, S. Whiteny Holmes, Michael Lauchian, Adrian Matejka, Louis McKee, Cheyenne Nimes, Ed Palvic, Hannah Louise Poston, Isaac Pressnell, Anne Marie Rooney, Patrick Rosal, Patricia Smith, Barbara Buckman Strasko, Rob Talbert, Frank X Walker, David Welch, Marcus Wicker, and Ryo Yamaguchi.

LeAnne Howe: Choctalking on Other Realities

And we're back. We hope everyone is having a great 2009. Without any further delay...


UIUC Professor LeAnne Howe will be performing her one-woman theatrical production of Choctalking, based on her short fiction on Friday, January 23 and Saturday, January 24 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana, IL. Both performances are at 7:30pm.

Here is some information on the show from the KCPA website:

...geography is at the heart of both Howe’s exploration of landscapes and the journey that she and her characters traverse in Choctalking. Howe roams from the 1970s to the early 1990s, from Oklahoma City to Jerusalem and Jordan and back again, breaking through spatial and temporal constraints to connect multiple cultures and countries. The dense textures of history, fiction, and analogous cultural references will conjure a modern odyssey in which new implications of the American Indian experience will be uncovered outside the US borders.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the KCPA website