Third Coast

Small Press Month

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:48:00 +0000

March is small press month. For more information see this website.

Third Coast Contest Winners Announced!

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:29:00 +0000

Congratulations to the 2010 contest winners in fiction and poetry! A listing of the winners, runners up and finalists can be viewed on the Third Coast website. The winning entries themselves will appear in the Fall 2010 issue of Third Coast.

Thank you to everyone who entered! The 2011 contest will open in September. More details to be posted this summer.

First Impression, Last Chance

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:45:00 +0000

by Nathan Norton

Certain things in life are kind-hearted enough to extend to you a second chance. Your story’s initial impact on editors is not one of those kind-hearted things.

You get one little lonesome chance. A chance. Not chances . . . chance. One. That’s it. One chance to hook the editor, assistant editor, reading intern, or whatever other English-savvy entity that might be holding your publishing future in the palm of their usually rather opinionated hand.

As a reader for Third Coast, I can say with a certain degree of experience that this is resoundingly and inescapably true. If you don’t believe me, talk to some editors or other lit mag readers. They’ll tell you the same thing. Page one—often sentence one—is where you need to start shining, or else you’ll be discarded like Hillary Duff’s musical relevance.

The first line of a story has a hefty workload. Raise questions, introduce conflict, establish tone and voice, and many times introduce your primary player(s). It doesn’t have to do them all, but it has to do a handful of them. Without most of these elements in the first one or two lines, your reader is already asking, “Why am I reading this?”

The hairy and entirely realistic nature of the beast is that editors don’t have time to sift through your story looking for potential. Fluff is for pillows. Fat is for Albert. Cut them both. Be interesting and direct immediately.

Most editors I’ve spoken with and read advice columns from will give a short story one page to get them interested. The most generous among them ventured as far as three. The cruelest among them said if the first sentence isn’t unique and intriguing, they toss the piece immediately. That means that no matter how amazing your story might get on page twelve when your ninja-wizard detective launches a Montana-shaped fireball out of his Mysterious Trench Coat of Mystery and disintegrates the Dreaded Duck of Doom, the editor didn’t get that far. There wasn’t enough spice in the first page to keep him wanting more.

It really is quite a tall order. And if it crushes your soul just a little to know that many editors may be reading nothing more than a few paragraphs of that masterpiece you’ve been working on . . . well, it should. You have to be at the top of your craft at the top of your product. Evocative language, original voice, conflictive first sentences, they’re all early attention grabbers that seize readers by their easily distracted haunches and demand “I’M WORTH READING!”

Consider some of the following first sentences:

The Zamboni had to go around Joey Cooper, the man thinking about omelets. – Misha Angrist, “So Much the Better”

It was half-past love on New Day in Zenith and the clocks were striking Heaven. – J.G. Ballard, “Passport to Eternity”

A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. – Raymond Carver, “Viewfinder”

During these last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished. – Franz Kafka, “A Hunger Artist”

I stood in my filthy overalls and boots serving deviled eggs to a woman who had lost her rabbit. – Peyton Marshall, “Bunnymoon”

I know, right? Don’t you just want to read all of those stories right this very moment to find out what in G. Gordon Liddy’s name is going on? These are great examples of mere sentences—not paragraphs, but sentences—that capture attention quicker than Tiger Woods’ personal infidelity captured frenzied media coverage. This is the kind of effect you want to have on your readers. You want a reader to say, “Tell me more, Master Storyteller!” not “Who cares, ya hack?”

Polish that first page. Read it over and over again. If you don’t find yourself grinning just a little at your accomplishments in the preliminary sentences every time the words pass your eyeballs, re-write them until you do. Then re-write them again until your friends and family do. Then re-write them again until complete strangers do. Be sure to make it sparkle. Your first impression could be your last chance.

Nathan Norton serves as intern to the Third Coast fiction editors.

What is your process of creating a poem?

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:59:00 +0000

Big Think has a series of videos available online from an interview with Edward Hirsch, Poet and President Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

The one above discusses the process of creating a poem. Other videos discuss the space and survival of poetry, whether the MFA hurts of helps poetry, if we are generating more poets than the system can absorb, as well as Hirsch's emphatic belief that what you really need to be a poet is to read poetry and read deeply. That you need not read everything but that you find that which you care about.

What the Editors Are Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:38:00 +0000

We read all the time. When it comes to submissions to the magazine, we only read certain months of the year (see website), but on a day to day basis, the editors are constantly reading published work. Some of it's new, some of it's classic, some fiction, some theory, some poetry and some of it blogs.

Here's what we're reading in this month:

Emily Hamilton and other writings by Sukey Vickery, with an introduction and notes by Scott Slawinski -- a recovered 1803 epistolary novel by an early American author
Werewolves in Their Youth, short stories by Michael Chabon
Patricia Hampl's memoir The Florist's Daughter
Wallace Stegner's collection of essays Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

Blogs of note:

Ward Six -- always thoughtful; the February 1 post "Throwing in the Towel" approaches an issue similar to intern Nathan Norton's blog post here about revisions and knowing when you're done, only on Ward Six, we approach the discussion of when to give up.
Rarely Likable -- a particular favorite are the "linkbucket" posts on this blog. The linkbuckets provide readers with direct access to more interesting material than could possibly be read in one sitting ... but that won't stop you from wanting to try.

Fanatical Fans: The Novel as a Franchise

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:46:00 +0000

by Candace Pine

It’s no secret that recently many novels or (even more popular) series, are being made into films. With books like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Twilight becoming their own cultural phenomenons, it’s sometimes hard to believe kids are all sitting at home staring at the TV or playing video games all day. Seeing massive crowds of fans dressed up and screaming to see their favorite stars from the movies that bring their beloved books to life is quite a fascinating sight. Some people disparage fanaticism in readers, especially since these books seem to attract younger and teen audiences, but there are also older readers (for example “Twilight Moms”) who can be just as obsessed.

So what is it about such novels that make readers fall in love with them?

Perhaps it feels like an escape from regular life. After all, many of these popular novels fall into the realm of fantasy. Or maybe readers like to imagine what it would be like to go on such adventures since nothing like that would happen in their own lives. Or it could be that people just find them exciting.

Despite the reasons for why these books are so loved, it’s the way they’re turned into full-blown franchises that really fascinates me.

Marketing types find a series that has a large fan base and exploit it, drawing in these fans first to the movies and then to the other large range of products that go along with it. There are the books and movies, of course, then the games, toys, trading cards, calendars, CDs, posters, backpacks, clothes, and anything else under the sun advertisers can think of to sell. The fact is, these books are turned into vast money making franchises.

In my opinion, that is the negative side of a really appealing book: The franchise takes something people love and vamps it up into a fanatic level because fans will pay money to surround themselves with commercial objects that go beyond reading. Plus, it draws negative opinions from outsiders who distrust it on the basis of popularity. The way people buy into these franchises just makes the opinion outsiders have about fanatical fans, and the books they read, sink even lower.

There is a tendency to look down on franchised books such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Twilight, and claim that they’re not good literature and therefore people shouldn’t waste their time on them. However, the love of reading fostered by such series could led to more advanced levels of reading and a taste for higher literature. What some people may consider "meager beginnings" could turn into a greater love for literature and a higher standard of quality.

What people should be careful of is being too negative about criticizing readers for being devoted fans because we don’t want to chase them off from reading. As long as people are reading and enjoying it and that feeling stays with them for the rest of their lives, then what does it matter what they’re reading?

Not everyone is going to agree on what’s “good.” The classic canon of literature has been in constant flux over the past three decades as scholars rediscover minority and women writers and fight against New Criticism’s notion of “aesthetics only.” No one should be discouraged from reading something they like, and if they want to buy into the franchise side of it too, that’s their decision. As long as they’re still able to make the distinction between fantasy and reality in their own lives, then people should just be able to read whatever they want without being judged for it. The world needs as many readers as it can get, not other condescending readers passing judgment on their choices.

Candace Pine serves as intern for Third Coast's managing editors.

Just a few more revisions and it’ll be finished…

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000

by Nathan Norton

Yeah, all us writers have said it once or twice or thrice or umpteen million times about one piece or another. Who can blame you, though? You want it to be good. You want it to be moving, to inspire, to make readers set your story down afterwards and say, “My dear sweet God. I’m so very glad I consumed that nugget of literary brilliance.”

So the rest of us can’t blame you. Mostly because we’ve all been there. We revise, revise, revise, revise, only to look up from the computer screen to realize a year’s worth of suns has set on a fourteen page story. This is not the fast track to the writerly production train. In fact, it’s just downright unproductive. Don’t get me wrong, revision is important. Ridiculous amounts of important. But the danger of the revision process is that it’s comfortable. Nestled safely under the awning of the “finishing touches,” a writer never has to hear criticism not his own, never has to experience rejection, and never has to settle into the reality that yes, the story is done and it’s not getting any better. But what if that’s not good enough? Well, then your story is about as useful as mustard-flavored ketchup and you ought to try your hand at writing up another.

A finished story is a scary thing. Is it good enough? Is it, like the Army man, all that it can be? Annoyingly, a writer’s work is never finished in his own eyes. In every read through there’s something sticking out, be it a humdrum verb, a particularly and especially redundant adverb choice, a character name you suddenly wish was Jake instead of Jack, whatever. There’s always something. The rub of it is that there will never not be something. You, as your story’s creator, will never be finished. Get over it.

There comes a time when you have to let go of your story. A time when you have to say, “I suppose I’m pleased with this” and just set the thing down. Many times, a story is actually pretty good, but the author may think quite the opposite. This is an excellent, effective way of becoming completely obsessed with your piece. Don’t turn into the mentally creative equivalent of a petrified birchwood tree trying to make a single story your Magnum Opus. You’ll stalemate yourself and more than likely end up churning out pounds of useless verbiage because you want so very very bad for your piece to doted upon by literature buffs everywhere.

Revisions are absolutely necessary. Fill in those plot holes, make clear those blurry sentences, tighten loose paragraphs. But if you strive too hard for perfection, you may find that revision has become a crutch.

Writers can’t rely on revision. Many do, but they shouldn’t. Let trusted peer critics read your piece. Let your mom read it, let your significant other read it, let your mentally unstable Grandpa Jack read it and mention how “back in his day, revisions were done with some white paint and a piece of charcoal” and take their advice to heart. Make the necessary changes, but know this: run away if you find yourself continually revising. Beating the dead horse will just get you covered in flies, so freshen yourself up a bit by exercising your head on a new story. When you’re creative slate is clean, go ahead and read through that first story and see if you still feel the same about it.

It’s important that writers realize that revision ought to be done only as much as it needs and precisely no further. Fixating yourself on a story will often do it more harm than good. So after your first few revisions, stop and take a brain break. Remove yourself from a piece, and see what it looks like with fresh eyes.

Nathan Norton serves as intern to the Third Coast fiction editors.

Blogging Series: From the T.C. Interns

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:42:00 +0000

Every fall, Third Coast takes on a handful of talented interns to aid in the production of the magazine. These interns learn valuable skills for working both in publishing and other real world occupations. Our interns are culled from the general undergraduate population here at Western Michigan University through a two stage process of both application and interview before the work even begins. They may have wrapped up the majority of their internship projects, but we are pleased to say they are still around and still working hard through the spring.

And so we are pleased to bring you thoughts directly from several of our talented interns. Their posts on topics such as revision, and the novel as a franchise will grace our blog in the days and weeks to come.

WMU students interested in the opportunity to intern should look for information to be posted in September of each year.

Horrocks and the O'Henry

noreply@blogger.com (B. Marzoni) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:17:00 +0000

Congratulations from all of us at Third Coast to Caitlin Horrocks, whose short story, "This is Not Your City," originally published in our Fall 2007 issue, has won a 2009 PEN/O'Henry Prize. You can read more about the O'Henry Prizes and this year's other winners here.

Visiting with Alicia Ostriker

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Donnelly) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:06:00 +0000

Western Michigan University was fortunate to have poet, critic and midrashist Alicia Suskin Ostriker visit our campus this past week. On Tuesday she gave a lecture on contemporary midrash, and on Wednesday a reading which featured poems from her new volume The Book of Seventy, published just last month.

Poetry Editors Natalie Giarratano and Beth Marzoni will be conducting an interview with Ms. Ostriker, which we're excited to have slated for an upcoming issue of the journal.

Stuart Dybek Reading at WMU Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:55:00 +0000

Thursday, November 19 at 8:00 p.m., award winning writing Stuart Dybek will read on Western Michigan University's campus.

Stuart Dybek is the author of numerous books, including I Sailed With Magellan,The Coast of Chicago, and Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. Among Dybek’s numerous awards are a $500,000 2007 MacArthur Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Prize, a Lannan Award, aWhiting Writers Award, an Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, several O.Henry Prizes, and fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University and a member of the permanent faculty for Western Michigan University’s Prague Summer Program.

Dybek was also the judge for Third Coast's 2009 fiction contest. Stu's selection "Winter-Over," by Ashley Shelbey, can be found in the Fall 2009 issue out now. Remember there's still time to enter this year's fiction and poetry contests!

Two Weeks Till Contest Deadline

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Donnelly) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:16:00 +0000

Just a reminder that Third Coast's Poetry and Fiction Contest deadline is fast approaching! Our December 1 deadline is now a postmark deadline, which means you've got exactly two weeks left to polish your poems and stories and send them our way.

Contest winners receive $1000 and publication in Third Coast's 15th anniversary issue (which is already looking sharp, we must say).

The illustrious Ann Beattie will be judging our fiction contest, with David Wojahn judging poetry. Check out the full contest guidelines here.

What the Editors Are Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0000

This month our editors are reading:

Interview with a Ghost, Tom Sleigh
Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road
Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup
Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory
A Fans Notes - Frederick Exley
Losing Season, by Jack Ridl (poems)
Without End: New and Selected Poems by Adam Zagajewski
Stupid Hope by Jason Shinder
Versed by Rae Armantrout
Special Orders by Ed Hirsch
Black Sabbatical by Brett Eugene Ralph
Warhorses by Yusef Komunyakaa
Oranges and Peanuts for Sale by Eliot Weinberger
The Book of Seventy by Alicia Ostriker
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
It is Daylight by Arda Collins
All-American Poem by Matthew Dickman
Derek Walcott's "Omeros"
"Ali & Nino"
Kiterunner
This is Not a Book, Keri Smith
Alice Hoffman, "The Witch of Turo"
Plays: David Ives's Sure Thing
Shakespeare's Othello
A Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds, adapted by Tony Kushner, originally by S. Ansky
The Tenth Man, Paddy Chayefsky
plus an assortment of Arthur Miller and Tony Kushner plays.

Top 10 Books of the Year

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:18:00 +0000

Earlier this month, Publisher's Weekly posted their picks for Top 100 books this year in several categories, as well as a new feature to this year's list: their Top 10 picks that stood out from the rest.

As Alicia Suskin Ostriker points out on She Writes, every single title chosen for the Top 10 was written by a man. Perhaps the thing that is of even more interest than the gender of the writers is the similarities of their subjects (and in turn the subject's genders). Ostriker writes:

It was a little dismaying to read the descriptions of the books, which you can do at http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6704263.html, and realize how very much it was shaped by "boy" subjects. "Gritty, mostly honest-hearted ex-heroin addict protagonist Ricky Rice!...Rebellious Yankee son of a father who fell victim to the Depression!...[T]he men who built America’s intercontinental ballistic missile program in the 1950s and ‘60s!...Two 40-ish men seeking love and existential meaning!...Grann’s vigorous research mirrors Fawcett’s obsession with uncovering the mysteries of the jungle!...Philosopher and motorcycle repair-shop owner Crawford extols the value of making and fixing things in this masterful paean to what he calls manual competence!..." That's six of the ten.

Read Ostriker's full article "Publishers Weekly Versus the Rest of Us" here.

Over on the Editorial Ass(istant) blog, Moonrat, herself an editor states that she sees this all male top ten list as indicative of two factors in publishing:

1) Not enough books by women are being published relative to the total number being published
2) The books by women that are published are getting less marketing money relative to their counterparts by men, and are therefore catching fewer people's eyes

Read full article here.

Planting Words, Harvesting Snow: A book release celebration

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:01:00 +0000

On November 10, at 7:00 p.m. in the Kalamazoo Public Library (Central), Jennifer K. Sweeney, winner of the 2009 James Laughlin Award for the most outstanding second book by an American poet, and Chad Sweeney will read from their newest books. Event open to the public.

"Jennifer K. Sweeney's How to Live on Bread and Music is a remarkable achievement from the hand of a poet with a subtle and compassionate mindfulness."
— Afaa Michael Weaver

"The poetry of Chad Sweeney is exuberant, imagistic, and prophetic. . . . a poetry of awakening, of coming into knowledge."
—Paul Hoover

Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of How to Live on Bread and Music, winner of the 2009 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Perugia Press Prize. She is also the author of Salt Memory, which received the Main Street Rag Poetry Award. Nominated
four times for a Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared in Southern Review, Spoon River, Crab Orchard, Hunger Mountain and Passages North where she won the 2009 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize. She teaches poetry and writing privately, serves as assistant editor for DMQ Review and lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Chad Sweeney is the author of three books of poetry: Parable of Hide and Seek (Alice James, 2010), Arranging the Blaze (Anhinga, 2009), and An Architecture (BlazeVox, 2007). He is the editor of Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds (City Lights, 2009) and coeditor of the literary journal Parthenon West Review. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Verse Daily and elsewhere. He is working toward a Ph.D. in literature/creative writing at WMU where he teaches poetry and serves as assistant editor of New Issues Press.

Read the article here.

Issue 29 is Here!

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:17:00 +0000

The Fall 2009 issue of Third Coast is hot off the presses and flying straight into your mailboxes.

The issue features beautiful cover art by Sally Grizzell Larson and many literary goodies inside.

Copies are available for $9 starting immediately. See the subscription page for information on how to get one.

There are only a few copies of Issue 28, Spring 2009 still left.

National Book Award Finalist

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Donnelly) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:45:00 +0000

Congratulations to Bonnie Jo Campbell, who has just been named a National Book Award Finalist for American Salvage. We published a new story by Campbell, "Somewhere Warm," in the Spring 2009 issue of Third Coast.

You can check out our review of American Salvage in our soon-to-be-mailed Fall 2009 issue.

What the Editors Are Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:00:00 +0000

Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky
White Noise, Don DeLillo
Save the Last Dance, Gerald Stern
I Served the King of England and Too Loud A Solitude, Bohumil Hrabal
Patricia Smith's poetry collection Blood Dazzler
Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, edited by Madeleine Grynsztejn, (essays, etc., about the work of Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson)
Dobby Gibson's poetry collection Skirmish
Planets on Tables: Poetry, Still Life, and the Turning World, Bonnie Costello
Burn This Book, edited by Toni Morrison
For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book, Alicia Ostriker
In a World of Ideas, I Feel No Particular Loyalty (chapbook), Adam Clay
City Poems (chapbook), Cindy St. John
The Liar's Club (memoir), Mary Karr
"One Reader's Digest: Toward a Gastronomic Theory of Literature," Brad Kessler
the poetry of Wallace Stevens
Harley Erdman's Staging the Jew: The Performance of an American Ethnicity, 1860-1920
Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen, Henry Bial
Clifford Odets' play Awake and Sing!
Elmer Rice's play Counsellor-at-Law.
Paradise Lost, Milton
The Kite Runner
Til We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis

In addition to that list are assorted short stories by Rick Bass, Flannery O'Connor, and T.C. Boyle. And (for those of us who also teach) a flurry of student papers as it's just about that time of year when composition students finish up their first project.

Rybicki in Best American Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (B. Marzoni) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:28:00 +0000

John Rybicki's poem, "This Tape Measure Made of Light," which originally appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Third Coast, was selected by David Wagoner for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2009. We couldn't be happier for him. Congratulations, too, to our past poetry editors Elizabeth Knapp and Kim Kolbe on a job well done.

The "Vanity" Search

noreply@blogger.com (Eileen Wiedbrauk) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:41:00 +0000

Do you Google yourself? We do.

I'm happy to say that when I type in "Third Coast" to that ubiquitous search engine Third Coast Literary Magazine was the first entry to appear.

The journal comes in ahead of Third Coast International Audio Festival, Third Coast Guitar Repair, Third Coast Rubber Stamps, and even the Wikipedia article that takes a stab at defining just what a third coast is:

an American colloquialism used to describe several (usually coastal) regions distinct from the West Coast and the East Coast of the United States ... most often used to refer to the Great Lakes region.

We're pretty darn proud of our search placement even if it is only a matter of algorithms. But you don't have to Google us to find our information; Third Coast is listed with all of the major directories of literary journals.

But when all is said and done, the one thing that surprised me in my search was the Third Coast Surf Shop in New Buffalo, Michigan. I've been a Michigander most of my life, and up until now I never thought you could "surf" the Great Lakes. Guess you learn something new every day.

MacArthur Genius Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Donnelly) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:00:00 +0000

The new geniuses have been announced, and they include writers Heather McHugh, Edwidge Danticat, and Deborah Eisenberg. Asked about what she'd been up to since learning the news, McHugh replied that she'd "bought a pair of good walking shoes, a whole bag of used clothing at Value Village [thrift store], and a good gag" (LA Times "Jacket Copy"). I kind of love Ms. McHugh. She spoke more seriously, later, in this NPR interview , about wordplay, form, and pushing her writing further. We're pleased to see all three of these amazing women recognized.

Robbins & Best New Poets

noreply@blogger.com (B. Marzoni) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:13:00 +0000

All of us here at Third Coast send a big congratulations to Joshua Robbins on his inclusion in Best New Poets 2009. Robbins, winner of the 2008 James Wright Poetry Award, is the Alwin Thaler Fellow at the University of Tennessee where he is completing his PhD and serves as poetry editor for Grist: The Journal for Writers. His poem "Collateral" is forthcoming in our Spring 2010 issue.

KBAC - Poets in Print

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Donnelly) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:22:00 +0000

The Kalamazoo Book Arts Center (KBAC) is hosting a Poets in Print reading tomorrow, Sept 12, from 7:00-9:00pm. John Gallaher, Wayne Miller and Michael Robins will be reading. Broadsides featuring their work will be available at the event, along with "other book arts creations" made at the KBAC.

The KBAC is a non-profit organization housed in the Park Trades Center in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan (326 W Kalamazoo Ave). Their mission is "to become an educational resouce for the community, offer programs for people who enjoy reading and making books, and provide a working studio where visual artists, printers, paper makers, bookbinders, and writers can collaborate on creative projects."

Jennifer K. Sweeney - James Laughlin Award Winner

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Donnelly) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:18:00 +0000

Congratulations to friend of Third Coast Jennifer K. Sweeney for winning the 2009 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poetry for her second book How to Live on Bread and Music. Jennifer's beautiful first book, Salt Memory, won the 2006 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and we here at Third Coast can't wait to read her new work.

Mark Irwin writes:

“In Jennifer K. Sweeney’s How to Live on Bread and Music we discover words that weigh the earth carefully and sing it into existence for this poet knows ‘song is the yeast / when the body wants.’ Her poetry is ‘pained with sensation’ and has the power to transform the reader, to resurrect dandelions from a field of armor.”

Summer Reading (Presidential Style)

noreply@blogger.com (Laura Donnelly) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:07:00 +0000

Thanks to Brian for pointing me towards Swampland Blog's report of President Obama's summer reading list, which includes the following:

The Way Home, by George Pelecanos
Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Tom Friedman
Lush Life, by Richard Price
Plainsong, by Kent Haruf
John Adams, by David McCullough

It makes me glad that our president reads.