QUIDDITY Book Trailer Contest

Our neighbor to the west, Quiddity International Literary Journal, is sponsoring a book trailer contest for writers and small/Independent presses! Two prizes of $500 each will be awarded, and the deadline is December 10, 2011. Visit Quiddity's contest information page for complete guidelines.

Monster Mags of the Midwest!

The AWP 2011 countdown continues. Here's a reminder that one event you should put on your schedule is the joint Ninth Letter/The Cincinnati Review/Mid-American Review reading or as it is now known, Monster Mags of the Midwest!

As The Cincinnati Review's blog post puts it, join us "for a fearsome night of reading, Heartland-style, with plenty of poetry, fiction, and beer on tap. Lots of bread, too, for some reason."

There's a great line-up of readers: Lucy Corin, Bob Hicok, Cate Marvin, Erika Meitner, and Kevin Wilson. Head on over to The Cincinnati Review blog for bios and a fun fact about each reader.

Here are the rest of the details for the event.

Date: Saturday, February 5
Time: 7pm
Place: Bread & Brew, 1247 20th St., Washington, DC, 20036 (phone 202-466-2676)

Hope you can make it. It will be a lot of fun!

Illinois Alumni Authors Week

UIUC alums, Michael Czyzniejewski and Matthew Frank, are on campus this week as part of Illinois Alumni Authors Week. They've been visiting classes and participating in craft and career talks with students. Today, Czyzniejewski, editor of the Mid-American Review, will be part of an editing talk with 9L's editor, Jodee Stanley at 4:00pm in room 69 of the English Building.

All of this leads up to the main event tomorrow when Czyzniejewski and Frank read at the Illini Union Bookstore (Author's Corner, 2nd floor), 4:30pm, as part of The Carr Reading Series.

If you're in or around Urbana-Champaign tomorrow, please stop by. As always, The Carr Reading Series is free and open to the public. Hope to see you there!

Short Story Month – Dan Chaon

Dan Chaon’s take on the horror story is what I love about the two stories I’ll discuss today, “Patrick Lane, Flabbergasted” and “The Bees.” As I reread these stories, the term personal apocalypse came to mind. The world is unraveling for the men in both of these stories.

In “Patrick Lane, Flabbergasted,” which is in 9L’s fall/winter 2007 issue, Brandon Fowler is dealing with multiple deaths. The story begins with, “there had been several funerals of his old high school friends and Brandon hadn’t gone to any of them.” After missing the last funeral, the girlfriend of the deceased confronts him for basically being a terrible person.

Brandon agrees because he realizes, “…it was not the kind of argument that you could win. What could you say? He had known a lot of dead people recently. But was that a legitimate complaint? Was it enough of an excuse to say that he simply felt worn out?” We find out rather quickly that Brandon is also dealing with the death of his parents and living in the house where they died. A good deal of the story is about his withdrawal from the world. The decay in his relationships is mirrored in the decay of the house. He sees and hears things and worries about his mental state. At one point he wonders if he is actually dead and just hasn’t accepted it.

Despite dealing with dark, existential ideas, the story is never bogged down by them. The impulse to turn the page, to stay with Brandon is strong because Chaon keeps a nice casual tone to the writing. We are simply presented with Brandon’s life. All of the dramatic interest is there without it needing to be revved up any further.

So why is the story called Patrick Lane, Flabbergasted? Brandon works at a grocery store and in the bathroom, is “his favorite piece of graffiti: Patrick Lane: Flabbergasted! This had been scrawled above the urinal for as long as Brandon could remember, and he occasionally wondered about Patrick Lane as he peed.” Brandon’s life is not without moments of humor and wanting to reach out to other people. He thinks that him and Patrick Lane, a former grocery store employee, would have been friends. We find out why they could never meet, but I don’t want to ruin the story for people who haven’t read it. I’ll just say that the story is a great, emotionally complex read.

Is it a horror story? I’d say so. Perhaps not a traditional, blood and guts one, but a psychological one, which makes it all the more exciting.


“The Bees,” which appeared in McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales (2002), introduces us to Gene. He is married with a son, Frankie, working for UPS in the suburbs of Cleveland. Frankie has been screaming in the middle of the night with alarming regularity, “it is the worst sound that Gene can imagine, the sound of a young child dying violently – falling form a building, or caught in some machinery that is tearing an arm off, or being mauled by a predatory animal.” This is on the first page and sets a dark, violent tone.

Frankie, we find out, is not Gene’s only son. Gene had been married before and had another son, DJ. In this other life, Gene had been a “drunk, a monster.” After things got really bad, he left them. Now he worries that Frankie’s condition is payback for abandoning DJ, “something bad has been looking for him for a long time, he thinks, and now, at last, it is growing near.” Creepy to say the least.

One of the best aspects of this story is how Chaon is able to maintain and build the dread seeping more and more into Gene’s life. Gene begins to dream of DJ and the revenge his first son might seek. There is the image of the bees, “he remembers what Frankie had said a few mornings before, about bees inside his head, buzzing and bumping against the inside of his forehead like a windowpane they were tapping against. All of this builds to a horrific ending. An ending that will not be ruined here. It is disturbing and haunting and must be read in the context of the entire story. Whereas in “Patrick Lane, Flabbergasted” the deaths happen off stage, the same is not true in “The Bees.”

“The Bees” is a psychological horror story, but includes some of the more violent aspects we traditionally expect from that kind of story. “The Bees” horror reputation is further cemented by being included in Peter Straub’s anthology of new horror, Poe’s Children.

While it is interesting to ponder how these stories might fit into the horror tradition, in the end classification is irrelevant. Great stories are great stories.

EWN's Short Story Month

As you know, the short story is far from dead, but short stories can always use some extra love and support. Lucky for us, and the short story, Dan Wickett over at the Emerging Writers Network has declared May Short Story Month.

Here is what Dan plans to accomplish this month:

My goal each day will be to find three stories to read and blog about - one from a collection that maybe I've held onto a little too long, should have finished and reviewed by now, etc; one from a print journal; and one from an online journal.

By month's end, if all goals are met, just under 100 short stories will have been read and commented upon. I hope to meet these goals, if only because it means I'll have scared up the time to read nearly 100 short stories!

Head on over to the Emerging Writers Network to read about the stories already posted.

Short Story Month is a great time to revisit some favorites or to try some new ones. Tell us how you plan to spend Short Story Month.

New Review at NewPages

The literary review site newpages.com has a very nice review of our Spring/Summer 2008 issue. Singled out for praise are prose writers Ron Carlson, Steve Tomasula, Tom Whalen, and Dave King, and poets Francine J. Harris and Twilight Greenaway.

Bonus: The review of the spring issue of Monkey Bicycle, which appears immediately before our review, makes special mention of 9L friend and UI grad student Aaron Burch, so check that out as well!

Iron Horse Novella Competition

Iron Horse Literary Review is hosting a novella competition, judged by Ron Carlson. Carlson is the author of Five Skies, At the Jim Bridger, Plan B for the Middle Class, and numerous other novels and short story collections. He currently teaches in the creative writing program at University of California, Irvine.

The winning novella will be published in 2009 as a separate issue. Full-color cover art will reflect the novella’s content and emphasize the novella’s title, not the name of Iron Horse. The published novella will look like the single-author book that it is. The winner also receives a $1,000 honorarium.

Formatting Instructions:

Entries must be between 15,000 and 21,000 words.

Manuscripts must be typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins.

Manuscripts must be previously unpublished.

The author’s name and contact information must appear on a cover sheet, but it must NOT appear anywhere else on the manuscript.

Pages must be numbered.

Entries must include the $15 reading fee, which also purchases a subscription to Iron Horse.

Entries must also include an email address for results notification.

Mail entries to Iron Horse Literary Review, Texas Tech University, English Department, Mail Stop 43091, Lubbock, TX 79409-3091.

Postmark deadline for entries is November 15, 2008.

Entries failing to meet formatting instructions will be automatically disqualified.

Additional questions should be directed to the editors at ironhorselitrev@yahoo.com.

Submit Work to Short Story Podcasts

Beginning in September 2008, one story a week will be chosen and read on the Short Story website. The reading period is April-June 2008. The review is now accepting stories of 3000 words or less.

Send stories to: Short Story, P.O. Box 50567, Columbia, SC 29250. Check out more about this interesting opportunity by visiting http://www.shortstoryreview.org/.

Call for Submissions

Quiddity Literary Journal, along with its companion public-radio program WUIS 91.9/WIPA 89.3 announce a call for submissions for their second print issue. Quiddity is seeking short fiction and poetry from emerging and established writers. International submissions are encouraged. Quiddity is published biannually by Springfield College-Benedictine University (inaugral issue available spring 2008). Submissions are read year-round. Contributors may be invited to read their work for Quiddity's companion public-radio program on WUIS/WIPA NPR member and PRI affiliate.

Click here for submission guidelines.

Ted Morrissey, Managing and Production Editor

Joanna Beth Tweedy, Founding and Acquisitions Editor

Errata

Our current issue came back from the printer with a couple of rather serious errors, I'm sorry to say. Travis Kurowski's essay "Basquiat and Six Uses of Space" and Frankie Drayus's poem "Dear Mr. Denby (Film Collage)" both appeared incorrectly in our pages. Visit the current issue's web page to find correct versions of these pieces.

We can't express enough how sorry we are for these errors.

We also printed the URL for Travis's new literary magazine review, Luna Park Review, incorrectly in our Contributors' Notes, and we're sorry for that, too. Luna Park launches next week and you should bookmark it--it will be your favorite new site for all things literary.

Kenyon Review and Ohio too!

This weekend, Kenyon College hosted the Kenyon Review Literary Festival. The college is situated in arguably the quaintest town in the midwest. Truly hospitable folks, great cafe's, and a festival that culminated in a reading by Margaret Atwood. Could you ask for anything more?

Wait! It gets better... Jodee participated in a couple of panels and Ninth Letter was lucky enough to be situated between two great collegues, John Bullock (managing editor) from New Ohio Review premiering his second issue...

and M. Scott Douglass, editor and publisher of Main Street Rag.

Now, here's something you'll really like (as if the previous were not enough) we met a Michigan fan cheering for Illinois to win the big game. Yes, Illini Fans, there is a Santa Claus...Illinois 28-Ohio 21.

Congratulations to Kenyon Review for hosting such a successful event.

Looking for a New Place to Send Your Work?

Look no further, send to The Normal School - a literary magazine now accepting: Creative Nonfiction. Story. Poem. Critique. Experiential Recipes.Quirky. Boundary-challenging. Energetic. Innovative in both form and focus. The Normal School is the equivalent of the kid who always has bottle caps, cat's eye marbles, dead animal skulls and other treasures in his pockets. Contributing Editors include Steve Almond, Tom Bissell, Beth Ann Fennelly, Jacqueline Lyons, Duncan Murrell, Laura Pritchett, Steve Yarbrough, and MORE.

Are you The Normal School material? Send your work to: The Normal School 5245 N. Backer Ave. M/S PB 98California State University, FresnoFresno, CA 93740-8001OR as an attachment in .doc or .rtf format only to submissions@thenormalschool.com
http://www.thenormalschool.com/

Please include an email address in your contact information and indicate genre to the best of your ability.

End of an Era

Don Lee, who has edited the venerable litmag Ploughshares for 19 years, will be stepping down from the post to join the faculty at Macalester College. This truly will mark the end of an era in literary journal publishing, as Don has been a strong and influential force in the business for as long as many of us have been editors and writers. Fortunately, he'll still be part of our community as a writer, with his new novel Wrack and Ruin due out next year.

Lit Mags in NYC

Just back from New York and the Magathon--great reading on Saturday at the New York Public Library, where a bunch of editors of journals old and new read terrific selections from their publications. Highlights included Tom Roberge of A Public Space reading from an essay by Delia Falconer; Caroline Lord from Short Story reading a story by David Wright (not our David Wright, though), and Hannah Tinti reading from Austin Bunn's story "The Ledge" which appeared in One Story.

On Sunday, Housing Works Used Book Café hosted a big crowd of lit lovers looking for bargains among the racks and stacks of literary journals all on sale for only $2 a copy. All proceeds went to benefit Housing Works. It was great to meet new people (shout out to Pei-Ling at One Story, Caroline at Short Story, and Whitney S. and Kristin at Pindeldyboz) and it was super-iffic to see old friends like Jed from jubilat and of course especially my boy Jason, shown here modelling the latest in designer litmags.

To see more pics of the weekend's festivities, go to flickr. I took them with my blackberry, so apologies in advance for the quality.

SWINK is sweet

Swink, a semi-annual high-class literary journal after our own hearts, now has a hot new web site complete with new original web-only content. Features include fiction, poetry, essays, humor, and various other literary sundries. Check it out, and pay special attention to 9L contributor Jo Scott-Coe's essay "Data Will Save Us".