My copy of McSweeney’s Issue 13 arrived while I was out of town, and this evening I did something unusual and special: I unwrapped it, and read a few pages. My key beef with the McSweeney’s publications, the Quarterly in particular, is that they are too beautiful to touch, let alone read. Each issue is …
Tag Archives: Writing & publishing
“Written from 12:26 to 12:47 (I got a phone call for one minute) in my awesome windowless office.”
The third-place winner in McSweeney’s Twenty-Minute Stories Contest has been published: Goodbye Ernie Flynn by Wendy Molyneux. For three days now I have been followed by an ambulance. I first noticed it while I was driving home from a lecture I gave at a museum. I am not an artist or an art historian. I …
This Friday: Gist Street Reading Series
From the mailbag: announcing this month’s Gist Street Reading Series Hello Gist Street! Spring is here even though the furnace just kicked on. Things are blooming, and it’s time to get out of the house. So come on over to Gist Street. We’re heading toward our May reading: Friday, May 7th. We’ll have Deb Bogen …
Drink of the week: Dirty Shirley
From the short story “Too Smart” by Emily Chenoweth, published in Tin House issue 19 (“Lies!”), Spring 2004: It is clear to me when I arrive at the hotel that I should have chosen something else to wear. That’s because the theme tonight–why didn’t I look at my calendar?–is the Equatorial Rain Forest (do they …
A change in service
Over at Fat Plum, my colleagues and I have been running a new blog, Sticky Notes. In keeping with Fat Plum’s mission of providing “juicy solutions for today’s writer,” we’re posting information and links related to writing and publishing. Sticky Notes is my first adventure in co-blogging, so I’m eager to see whether sharing the …
Twenty-Minute Stories
The third place winner of McSweeney’s Twenty-Minute Stories Contest has been published: “Untitled” by Mickey Hess. You become used to most things in the world, and you bring in somebody new so it all seems surprising again. Our friend Genny sends word that she is again pregnant. She and her first child, Mazzen, stayed with …
The sad state of chick lit
Choire Sicha tears apart
Make a good first impression
Five openings I adore, chosen randomly: “They put the behemoths in the hold along with the rhinos, the hippos and the elephants. It was a sensible decision to use them as ballast; but you can imagine the stench. And there was no-one to muck out. The men were overburdened with the feeding rota, and their …
“It’s not going to work”
Ad Age reports that “a growing number of marketers want to persuade the nation’s print magazines to open the text of their editorial pages to product placements.” I’m not particularly swayed by the moral arguemnts on either side of the issue, but I agree with the editor quoted in the article who feels that blurring …
Blogging is the new black
Rick E. Bruner reviews the latest research on bloggers and blog readers and wonders why more advertisers have not jumped on the opportunities presented by weblogs: Super-popular blogger Glen Reynolds, of Instapundit.com, leaves his traffic logs open, where we can see that he averages around 100,000 visitors a day and more than 2 million uniques …