Million Writers, American Short Fiction & Gabe Durham

- April Hobart has been out for a while. As usual, I am late (especially so this month) in my posting of this news. Anyway, great work by: John Dermot Woods, Aubrey Hirsch, Dan Sanders, Wendy Oleson, Patrick Walczy and Alice Lowe. Plus Hobart picks the 2011 season!


- The 2011 Juniper Literary Festival has come and gone. I was there, as usual, with Hobart and it was a great weekend. Got some Hobarts and some minibooks into good hands, bought too many books and journals and drank way too much. Many wonderful small presses, tons of great books and readings and lots of exciting talk about publishing and creating and writing. I also got to hang out with the one and only Roy Kesey, who was in town to read from Pacazo, and make general merriment here in Western Mass. It was a lot of fun to see Roy and to hear him read from his terrific novel. I will never think of turkeys quite the same again. 


I also had the opportunity to moderate a panel on book publishing called "Nuts and Bolts: From Manuscript to Book" with Margaret Luongo, Kiki Petrosino, Cynthia Arrieu-King, Mira Bartok and Pam Thompson. I'd never done anything like this before; luckily the panelists were all smart and funny and charming and informative. We talked at length about the publishing process, from putting together a manuscript, to submissions, to book prizes, to the editorial process and more. It was great fun. My thanks to the panelists and the audience for being thoroughly awesome all around. 


- In other awesome news, I am happy to repost that Gabe Durham's first book FUN CAMP is forthcoming from MLP! This is such great news. I had the pleasure of reading a draft of this book in workshop and it remains one of the most exciting, strange, funny, energetic and wonderful pieces of writing I read here at UMass. My heartiest congrats to Gabe on this news! Here are some samples from the book: "Free Time" in NOÖ Journal, "Perk" in Wigleaf. And more can be found in Hobart 11!


- My story "Not a Prayer but a Song" is going to appear next month online at American Short Fiction. I'm really very excited about this. I like the monthly series they have there and am happy to be a part of it. Many thanks to ASF folks for taking this one! This story is also from The Winter War.


-So is my story "Destination," which first appeared in Fifty-Two Stories last year, and has been named to the storySouth Million Writers Award list of notable stories. Big thanks to Cal Morgan for helping make the story better and for publishing it! And thanks to Christy Crutchfield, who nominated the story for the award. Also on the list is "The Private Eye's Investigation" by Sam Martone. This story appeared in Hobart and is one of those pieces of writing that makes me so happy to get to work as an editor. I love every story we publish, of course, but I still remember in particular the feeling of excitement I got from Sam's story when I first read it. I'm happy to see his work get this recognition.


- Speaking of, here's a thing I wrote over at the Hobart blog about some books I got recently, all of which deserve to get a whole lot of attention.