TOA & Alabama

This week, The Offending Adam pauses our usual publication schedule for a specific and important purpose. We are presenting a week of writing on Tuscaloosa. You will see from this collection of writing from people connected to Tuscaloosa that Tuscaloosa is boozy, ghostly, quiet, funny, sad; it is the seasons, a mythic place, the trunk of a car, red clay, a hammer, a bird, bratty sometimes, a train spike, a blurry view, bridges, an escape, a purgatory; that it is graceful, and it is lordly. That it is not gone. I know that Tuscaloosa may be broken and that Tuscaloosa may be bruised but that Tuscaloosa will recover. And that it will recover with our help.

When we think of communities that support writers, we typically think of New York City and San Francisco, possibly Chicago and Boston and Los Angeles. Places that are big and obvious centers of creativity. What is easy to forget is that much of the nurturing of young, cutting-edge writers and artists happens in more surreal, odd places: Tuscaloosa, Iowa City, Las Vegas, Fayetteville, Syracuse, Gainesville, Missoula, Tucson, Greensboro, Nashville, and Baton Rouge, just to name a few off the top of my head. These are the communities that have set up programs and opportunities for us to set up shop and spend a few years working on our craft and our dream. These are not just off-beat or backwoods cities and towns; they are where a generation of writers are growing and developing, and the place that we call home, even if only temporarily. These are places that have inspired our writing and, oftentimes, come to inhabit our writing. Almost without my noticing it, Las Vegas as a place has crept into my poems and made itself at home. And in these writings from Alabama, you can see how important and vital Tuscaloosa has become for the group of writers who are down there. So, please, help support the greater community of Alabama and Tuscaloosa as well as the specific community of writers who have found a welcome home in the community.

An Anniversary

We are back. After a brief winter break, The Offending Adam has re-launched this week for a second year of publication. We kick off the new year with a special first anniversary issue. We asked four contributors from year one to respond to the prompts: “On Consideration” & “On Offending” & “On Adam”. Check out what Mark Yakich, Dan Beachy-Quick, Kelli Anne Noftle, and Craig Santos Perez had to say about that.

On a related note, we have also re-opened for submissions of new writing and will be reading submissions through April 30. So send us some work! As always, we are also on the lookout for essays, book reviews, and feature projects.

A Departure

Taking a brief sojourn from poetry&literature, I spent the last couple of weeks assisting a small jewelry and design company Love is the Key in building a new and improved website. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out and I think it’s a really cool product & brand. Not that I’m planning on changing professions anytime soon or anything…

On a semi-related note, the updated version of ACR is still in the works and hopefully will be ready to go live sooner rather than later…

Jorie Graham // Josie Sigler

An essay I wrote recently was just published at The Quarterly Conversation about reading Jorie Graham and Josie Sigler side by side:

One letter separates the names of these two poets. Move from “r” to “s” and Jorie becomes Josie. This simple nearness draws an inevitable and inappropriate comparison when these two poets are seen together on the bookshelf: from Jorie to Josie, a progression. The title of Josie Sigler’s first collection, living must bury, echoes the title of Jorie Graham’s seminal work The End of Beauty. Both of these titles reference themes of life, humanity, and the end of life and humanity. They also move toward declaring an objective, a purpose: this is the purpose of beauty, to live we must perform the act of burial…Read the rest here

Accepting Change

As readers who have found themselves here for upwards of 18-24 months have clearly noticed, the frequency I publish new content on this blog has reduced tremendously. When I started this site, I was slinging books at the Harvard Coop part-time and dedicating the rest of my life to figuring out how to write and how to enter the world of writing. Now, what is roughly I guess nearing 2 years later, I find myself approaching the halfway point of my MFA, working as head editor of The Offending Adam, working as assistant editor of Witness, and beginning to seek publication for my own work. When I began this blog, I was not even sure how to get a gig publishing a book review. This site became the home for my first attempts reviewing books, and those reviews and this site were integral in guiding me to where I currently am.

Now, when I do try to carve out time to write something for the site, I have trouble determining what to write about. I am not as connected to the poetry-blog world as I once was, and when I do find the time to return to that world, I find that many of the sites I once frequented have shifted gears or ceased publishing altogether. Perhaps Harriet was right when the blog editors sensed a shifting in the online-poetry-landscape and changed format from blog-style to link-roll-style. Perhaps this all has something to do with the continued rise in both popularity and quality of online journals and collectively-written sites.

For whatever convergence of reasons, and as 2010 begins to approach its end, I am compelled to finally admit that this blog has reached a natural ending point. Not as an end to my online presence, but rather as a point where I need to radically re-imagine what that online presence is. That new presence has not been designed, but the next couple of months should see a new creation that not only replaces this current site, but also revitalizes it as well.

So Underrated We Are Overrated

On The Huffington Post a couple weeks ago, though I just saw it yesterday for the first time, Seth Abramson listed 25 MFA programs that he deemed “The Top 25 Underrated Creative Writing MFA Programs”. This list included my very own UNLV, which was a nice nod of support. Odd in some ways that a program that recently got particular attention from The Atlantic (here and here) could be underrated, but then again as someone in the field I felt that many of Abramson’s programs were pretty ‘obvious’–moreso I’m sure to me than to others. Cornell, for instance, which was listed in the top ten programs according to The Atlantic, was still eligible as underrated for Abramson’s list. I’m curious what exactly made a program underrated. My guess would be something to do with number of applications. Also, I guess, even though The Atlantic‘s list is more recent, the old US News list from way way way long ago still seems to in many ways be the most well known, at least until the recent emergence of Abramson’s own list on Poets & Writers. Maybe it has something to do with the semi-rational/scientific way (in the sense that a methodology and ranking system was used, though the two systems differ entirely) US News‘ and Abramson’s lists operate, whereas The Atlantic attempts a somewhat more holistic approach that is less scientific and more rooted in the logic of the humanities.

Whatever the reasoning, I guess it is still good to get listed here and get some more attention for the program. I’ve been rather happy with the program and even the city (which, though Vegas is not New York City or San Francisco, is still superior to where the vast majority of MFA programs are housed and is also relatively cheap), so I’m glad to see the program continue to get recognition. Here’s what Abramson said in his little blurb about UNLV:

If you can stand the heat, there’s so much to like here: the opportunity to workshop with creative writing doctoral students, the presence of one of the nation’s most competitive postgraduate fellowship programs, a stellar faculty, a stand-out focus on international issues and public service, and full funding for all for three years. [Website]

NeonLit October ft. Tom Raworth

The Neon Lit event for October just went down here in Vegas, and I think we can now say the event is 2-for-2 this school session in delivering a winner of a literary evening, once again at the upstairs gallery of the Las Vegas Contemporary Arts Center. And, once again, standing room only, packed house, etc. even with the addition of more chairs. We were lucky enough to have Tom Raworth come as the special guest of the evening, which resulted in a rousing and stellar reading from one of my favorite poets. In addition to a couple of poets who have contributed poems and reviews to The Offending Adam (see below). As a side-note, the reading from September as well as this reading were videotaped and will, I hear, be posted somewhere online in the near future. Until then, here is what it looked like (photo credits to Zeliha):

Kat Kruse, Director of NeonLit

Andrew Wessels (yours truly) doing a turn as MC of the event

Andy Nicholson (read some of his poems at The Offending Adam here)

John Douglas

Jordan Reynolds (read a review of Matvei Yankelevich’s Boris by the Sea he wrote for TOA)

Ashley Siebels

Tom Raworth

And here are some shots from just after the conclusion of the event:

Yours truly chatting with Uwem Akpan, current fellow at BMI & unreal fiction writer

Laura Breitenbeck & Tom Raworth

The crowd rushing the bar after the conclusion of the reading.

Joan Dudley, Andy Nicholson, Tom Raworth, & yrs truly.

Andy Nicholson & Zeliha Sahin Wessels

Yours truly & Zel

Lots of writers enjoying Thai food at Lotus of Siam

Dzanc Best of the Web

The end of the year is coming upon us, which means end of the year round-ups, shopping guides, and, yes, awards anthology nominations. Over at The Offending Adam, we are getting into the mood this week by announcing our nominees for Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2011. I would like to congratulate and thank Jennifer Sweeney, Alexander Long, Mark Yakich, and Christopher Schaberg for their wonderful writing. Check out what they wrote here:

Jennifer Sweeney:: Old Town Square

Alexander Long:: Photograph: Poet on Dust Jacket, Richmond, Virginia 1966

Christopher Schaberg & Mark Yakich:: Real Poetry from The Airplane Reader

Awards season is not over, so fear not. Pushcart Prize nominations will be coming just around the corner so place your bets now…

Richard Nash & Cursor Launch with Lemonade

What seems like a long time ago, but I think was only around 18-24 months ago, Richard Nash left Soft Skull to start a new publishing platform, one that sought to embrace the digital medium and be at the forefront of the new publishing world. The goal, it seemed, was to find a new sustainable business model, one that broke away as entirely as possible from the traditional way of running a publishing house and began anew, from the ground up. This model is now here and ready to launch. I should actually at some point talk about the details of what makes Cursor work, how its imprints function, etc. because it is very interesting and an experiment that I am watching intently. Until then, here is the announcement from Nash’s blog:

CURSOR LAUNCHES ITS FIRST IMPRINT, RED LEMONADE, AND ANNOUNCESSPRING 2011 LIST

FRANKFURT, 5 OCTOBER 2011

On the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair and on the day of Tools of Change Frankfurt, Cursor’s founder and CEO, Richard Nash, is pleased to announce the line-up of books for Red Lemonade, their first publishing imprint.

Someday This Will Be Funny Lynne Tillman (Apr 2011)
Zazen Vanessa Veselka (May 2011)
Follow Me Down Kio Stark (June 2011)

They will be available in the book trade in trade paperback, as digital downloads in all formats and channels, and as a limited edition artisanal object direct from the publisher.

NeonLit

Last Friday night was the first NeonLit reading of the season at the upstairs gallery of the Las Vegas Contemporary Arts Center. Here is what it looked like:

Kat Kruse, Director of NeonLit

Shannon Salter, MC for the evening

Christopher Seelie

Andrew Wessels (yours truly)

Veronica Villalobos, reading off her computer, which I’ve never seen before but am quite intrigued by…

Joan Dudley

Juan Martinez, dressed impeccably as always

Joshua Kryah

And here are some shots of the event as a whole: