January 2012
27 posts
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Self-pub'ing and Amanda Hocking →
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Contradictions of the Heart →
New poems by the noted publisher Jonathan Galassi tell the story of a married, middle-aged man who falls in love with a younger man. “It’s about me,” he said.
“All of a sudden I felt, ‘This is how I’m supposed to feel,’ ” he said. “Susan and I spent years trying to figure it out and trying to work it out together, and at the end I felt I had no choice. Claiming your life for yourself feels like...
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World Book Night
World Book Night is taking place on April 23, 2012. Volunteers across the country will hand out free paperbacks to encourage reading among non-readers, and you can help!
Welcome to World Book Night
We need book-loving volunteers to fan out across America on April 23, 2012! Just take 20 free copies of a book to a location in your community, and you just might change someone’s life. Please...
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Twitter To Censor Tweets →
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Uglies Manga
I’m a huge fan of Scott Westerfeld (The Uglies Series, The Leviathan Trilogy, The Midnighters), so I’m sad that my first post about his work is a sigh… Shay’s Story is coming out, telling the Uglies story from Shay’s perspective. This is quite wonderful for those of us longing for more Uglies, but here’s the thing - it’s a manga.
I love manga almost as...
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A Wrinkle in Time - Meg the Hero →
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Stephen Colbert & Maurice Sendak →
Of course.
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Translators!
I am really interested in translation, and have been following Translationista obsessively. Today I came across this great article on the ALTA conference and travel awards available to attend. Needless to say, I’m going to spend the spring translating like crazy!
Link here to Young Translators at ALTA.
Yat Writer: The 22 types of critics you find in... →
yatwriter:
Regarding MFA and MA programs in creative writing, I mentioned before that they are helpful in teaching a writer to edit themself, exposing a writer to other kinds of work that they may never consider or critique otherwise, and helping to thicken skin. You learn to turn harsh criticism into…
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Workshop #1
Hey, who doesn’t have their own workshop stories to tell?
In this series, I’ll share some random thoughts about workshop this semester at my grad program! Obviously steering clear of private, personal information…
First day of class:
Our instructor asks us to introduce ourselves and discuss if we have any “publishing experience.” Because I have to answer this...
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Books of Unusual Structures
I came across this Books on the Nightstand podcast that has an incredible triumvirate of useful information:
Some ways to get into the publishing industry
Two novels with unusual structures: 253 by Geoff Ryman and A Field Guide to the North American Family by Garth Risk Hallberg.
Two recommended books.
Yay!
On Public Relations: Hierarchy of Book... →
paulbogaards:
Hierarchy of Book Publishing The Top 100 (circa 2012)
1). Brand-name authors (still)
Stephen King (since 1974)
John Grisham (1989)
Patricia Cornwell (1990)
Jodi Picoult (1992)
Nicholas Sparks (1996)
Jennifer Weiner (2001)
Etc.
2). Self-published authors with proven track…
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New book: Love and Islam
The book is Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women, in which 24 Muslim American women speak out about their universal concerns about love, and concerns related specifically to their status as Muslims in America:
The difficult experiences were all the harder to write about, contributors said, knowing they could provide ammunition to those who paint all Muslims as...
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Heroic Librarians!
Via Tiny Tips for Library Fun, I came across this article over at io9: “20 heroic librarians who save the world.”
Among the honorees:
Lirael in the Abhorsen novels by Garth Nix
Lirael is the first of the Clayr not to inherit the gift of the Sight, in hundreds of years. With her raven-colored hair, pale complexion, pointy face and unknown parentage, she looks nothing like the...
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MS in Publishing Students via NYU Pub Posts
NYU Pub Posts has some encouraging interviews with students from the MS in Publishing program. I’ve often wondered what the point of getting an MS in publishing would be, since you can simply push into the field as an intern. After reading these interviews, though, I think I’d really like to take some of these classes. Here’s a sample Q&A with Thea James, a co-creator of The...
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Guidebooks to Babylon →
A wonderful essay about guides to local prostitutes.
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Practical Tips on Writing a Book from 23 Brilliant...
David Shenk Author of The Forgetting and The Genius in All of Us
Make it great, no matter how long it takes. There’s no such thing as too many drafts. There’s no such thing as too much time spent. As you well know, a great book can last forever. A great book can change a person’s life. A mediocre book is just commerce.
An old article I rediscovered among my bookmarks today.
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Citing Security Fears, Rushdie Won’t Attend...
Via NY Times:
JAIPUR, India — In the latest setback for free speech in India, Salman Rushdie, the author who has survived a 23-year-old Iranian fatwa calling for his death, backed out of attending a literature festival in his native country because of a new assassination threat against him.
In a statement, Mr. Rushdie, the Mumbai native whose 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses,” inflamed many...
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Sound
FSG’s Work in Progress presents T. M. Wolf, author of the forthcoming novel Sound, which has a unique format. Wolf on his work:
I’m pretty convinced that there are about as many ways of writing and thinking about things as there are things to think and write about; fiction just seems to give me another way of thinking and writing. It’s not the ultimate way; it’s just one. But it can help...
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100 Most Powerless New Yorkers: #13 Librarians
The Village Voice has a worthwhile article on the “100 Most Powerless New Yorkers.” Some of these entries are tongue-in-cheek, some serious. Among them are the booksellers at St. Mark’s and at #13 are the NYPL librarians:
13. The NYPL’s librarians
Perhaps the only people less powerful in the library system than the homeless patrons are the librarians themselves. Gone are...
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Thalia Kids' Book Club: A Wrinkle in Time 50th... →
Childhood is calling.
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Reading and Speaking
Via Shelf Awareness: Vernacular Eloquence by Peter Elbow
In Vernacular Eloquence, Peter Elbow notes that the reason many people don’t write is because writing scares them. Schools teach writing as if it’s hard, and turn it into a high-stakes endeavor. “Everybody knows” writing is harder than speaking, often precisely because it’s not speaking; it’s...
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Video Game Writing Award
Via Galleycat:
For the fifth year in a row, the Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East will celebrate video game writing at their annual awards ceremony.
…
The winners will all be revealed on February 19, 2012 at simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York. Here’s more about the awards: “Credited videogame writers must have been or must have...
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Social Media Week in NYC
Social Media Week is February 13-17, 2012! I am really looking forward to this:
Literature Unbound: Radical Strategies for Social Literature
Here’s the description:
In all the hue and cry over the death of print, it’s easy to overlook the fact that readers are still out there, vociferously consuming (and more, importantly, hungering to share) the written word in a whole new variety of...
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