Tuesday, August 31, 2010

All Steam Ahead

Yesterday, we officially opened Poetry and Nonfiction. So if you spent all summer revising, revisiting, revisioning, revamping, reviewing, reading your essays and poetry now's the time to submit your work to us. We're open. Click here for guidelines.

Also, its FICTION PRIZE season at Indiana Review We're super stoked to have Dan Chaon as our final judge this year. Check out the details here for a chance to win $1000 and publication. All who submit will also receive a year subscription!
--aks

Monday, August 23, 2010

From the Blue - Contributors Read & Recommend #4

Back-to-school shopping is raging here in Bloomington; it's time for defensive cart steering down the aisles of every store! Don't forget to pick up some reads while your out and about. And if you haven't already seen the summer issue, its not too late to get your own copy. Today on our reading series, Erika Meitner, poet featured on our bluecast and in 32.1 shares with us what books are catching her eye and a great gift idea. Her newest book, Ideal Cities, just came in the mail to our office. I'm looking forward to reading it!

Which upcoming book releases are you most looking forward to?
There are so many good books due out this fall! In poetry, I can’t wait to get my hands on Matthew Zapruder’s Come on All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon). Also Jason Schneiderman’s Striking Surface, Sean Thomas Dougherty’s Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line (BOA), and Julie Carr’s Sarah — of Fragments and Lines (Coffee House). Julie’s 100 Notes on Violence ( Ahsahta Press) is also on my to-read shelf. And Sarah Vap’s Faulkner’s Rosary (Saturnalia Books). I’m also ridiculously excited for Laurel Snyder’s forthcoming kids’ book, Baxter, The Pig Who Wanted to be Kosher (I have a three-year-old son, so we read a lot of children’s books). And Ghita Schwarz’s novel Displaced Persons (HarperCollins) sounds remarkably similar to my family’s history, so I can’t wait to read that (due out any day now). Would it be totally gauche to say that I’m very much looking forward to my own book release too, any day now (Ideal Cities, HarperCollins)?

What are you reading right now?
I’m right in the middle of Lighthead (Penguin), by Terrance Hayes. “The Golden Shovel” is a devastatingly perfect poem. When I finish that I’m hoping to start in on my friend Susanna Daniel’s novel Stiltsville (HarperCollins), which just came out a few days ago, and is en route to my house via amazon.com.

What else have you been reading this summer?
I just finished Carrie Fountain’s book Burn Lake (Penguin), and adored it. I also just finished re-reading both Anna Journey’s book, If Birds Should Gather Your Hair for Nesting (UGA Press), and Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s Apocalyptic Swing (Persea Books)--both stunning. I’ve been mailing either Rachel Zucker’s Museum of Accidents (Wave Books) or Jehanne Dubrow’s Stateside (Northwestern U Press) to friends as thank you gifts because I thought they were so terrific that I had to share them. Everyone should give poetry as thank you gifts!

Friday, August 13, 2010

From the Blue - Contributors Read & Recommend #3

The summer semester is winding down, hot and quick, and so ends the term of current interns. Of course I'm sad, but trying not to show it, and I'll miss the office and my fellow interns and editors. Luckily, though, another crop is just around the corner, not to mention our Blue issue (32.1), which is out and making a ruckus. We are very excited about this issue!

In round 3 of our contributor interview series we spoke with Curtis Bauer, a poet whose "Colony Collapse Disorder" appeared in our latest issue. Curtis' poems and translations have been published and are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, Fulcrum, and Barrow Street, among others. He won the John Ciardi Poetry Prize for his poetry collection, Fence Line, and has been a finalist for the New Letters Poetry Prize, The Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, and the Glimmer Train Poetry Open. He is the publisher and editor of Q Ave Press Chapbooks and teaches creative writing and translation at Texas Tech University.

What are you reading right now?
A few weeks ago a friend sent me a little gem of a book called The Proust Project. I’ve been reading through that, considering the passages from Proust’s work and what the essayists have to say about those passages. Reading Proust makes one reflect on the past, consider how the present is woven with threads of lived and imagined experiences.... It makes me want to go back and read Swann’s Way again, and The Guermantes Way, just a few pages, but I know “just a few pages” is impossible with Proust. I’ve worked my way through Camille Dungy’s amazing anthology, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry; I’m teaching it in the fall, but I would recommend this book to everyone; I love the introduction, the section essays, the poems, and how she’s organized the book. Though it’s a short book and I started it earlier this spring, I’m still reading Fermat’s Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem, by Amir Aczel; my Dean at Texas Tech recommended it to me: he’s a mathematician and reads poetry, so I thought it’s the least I could do...read a little about math. And I’ve borrowed a few books from my father’s shelves recently: Lucian Freud: Some Thoughts on Painting; The Microscripts, by Robert Walser; Sorgegondolen, by Tomas Tranströmer; and Charles Wright’s Scar Tissue.


What else have you been reading this summer?
This summer I’ve been reading a mix of books in English and Spanish, many of them translations from other languages. When I was in Spain I read the Bernofsky translation of Robert Walser’s The Tanners, with a spectacular introduction by W.G. Sebald which is almost as good as the book, and I dabbled in Speaking to the Rose (also Walser). I like this last book for its brief essay-like pieces; they’re good lessons in observation, especially when living in another country. I’ve dabbled a bit in the novel/memoir Bilbao—New York—Bilbao by the Basque author Kirmen Uribe, but I’ve set it aside for later. I picked up a book of collage poetry by Herta Muller called Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen, translated into Spanish; it’s a sort of art book and poetry book in one...fascinating. I’ve been flipping through a new translation (into Spanish) of the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer called El cielo a medio hacer (translated by Roberto Mascaró with an excellent prologue by the Spanish poet, Carlos Pardo).

While I’m thinking of Spanish poets, I’ll mention a great...no, a spectacular anthology of young Spanish poets called La inteligencia y el hacha, compiled by Luis Antonio de Villena. That collection set me onto the work of Luis Muñoz, Carlos Pardo, Elena Medel, Julita Valero, Jorge Gimeno, Lorenzo Plana, Juan Andrés García Román, Andrés Navarro, Mariano Peyrou, Antonio Lucas...and many more. Of course I’m also reading the new selected poetry of Juan Antonio González Iglesias, since I’m translating it into English, as well as the book Leve Sangre by the Mexican poet Jeannette Clariond.

Strangest book/article/thing you've ever read?
One of the strangest articles I’ve ever read is one that I had to cut out and carry in my wallet—this was more than a decade ago, and since then I’ve lost the article...along with a few wallets. Not only was I certain no one would believe me if I were to recount the story, but I was also fascinated by the fact that a newspaper would publish such an article, that it was considered “newsworthy.” I was living in northern Spain at the time, and reading a range of papers every week. One day I came across an article in El Diario Vasco about a Columbian child (perhaps 3 years old) with a man-sized penis. The report was so dry I thought it was either a joke or that I wasn’t understanding it correctly. I read it again and again, and I understood everything perfectly. The oddest thing was the last sentence, which went something like this: “The boy’s parents also report that he’s been shaving for more than a year.” Poor kid.

Anything else you would recommend for our readers?
Books small enough you can carry them in your pocket:
Intimate Strangers by Breyten Breytenbach
A Giacometti Portrait by James Lord
The Shape of a Pocket by John Berger
Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec
Speaking to the Rose by Robert Walser
Oases: Poems and Prose by Alastair Reid
D’Apres Tout: Poems by Jean Follain (translated by heather McHugh)
The Path: A One Mile Walk Through the Universe by Chet Raymo
American Sonnets by Gerald Stern
Eros es más by Juan Antonio González Iglesias ("Eros Is More" in English)

-N

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

From the Blue - Contributors Read & Recommend #2

Round 2 of our contributor interview series finds us talking with Oliver de la Paz, whose poem "My Truant Words Have Got Me All Messed Up—A Blues" is part of the Blue Feature in our latest (32.1) issue! Oliver is the author of three books of poetry: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, and, most recently, Requiem for the Orchard. He is the co-chair of the Kundiman.org advisory board and teaches literature and creative writing at Western Washington University.

I'm really jazzed to see the short story collections he mentions below, because these are all works I've read in the past year, loved, and would absolutely recommend. Now, without further ado!

What are you reading right now?
Right now I'm juggling several short story collections: Anthony Doerr's Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, Annie Proulx's Close Range. Summer's the only time I have prolonged stretches where I can read an involved narrative, only these days now that I've got two kids, I can only devote enough time to read a short story.

What is the best thing you've read all summer?
It has to be a tie between Anthony Doerr's "Memory Wall," and "The Hunter's Wife." These are longer stories out of two different collections and they both have strong elements of speculation. "Memory Wall" takes place in the future while "The Hunter's Wife" has to do with an empath.

What book started it all for you?
For poetry it was, strangely, Robert Penn Warren's Collected Poems. When my parents first moved to the United States, they purchased a subscription to Readers' Digest, thinking such reading would assist them in their transition to a new country. Part of the deal for the Readers' Digest membership was they could select books from the Readers' Digest library. The Collected Poems was one of the selections, so they chose it. I "discovered" poetry by stumbling upon this book in my parents disheveled library. I, of course, didn't understand Penn Warren's work at the time (I was really young), but I experimented with writing poetic lines.

Anything else you would recommend for our readers?
I'll give you a list of "hybrid" books--ignore the numbers, they're in really no order. I've been teaching a prose poem class as a mixed genre class over here at Western Washington, so I like to recommend my students books that have trouble fitting into genre categories:
1. Carol Guess's Tinderbox Lawn
2. James Galvin's The Meadow
3. Jenny Boully's The Body: An Essay
4. Kazim Ali's Bright Felon

Stay tuned for Curtis Bauer on Friday!

Monday, August 9, 2010

1/2 K Prize Winner 2010

We are taking a momentary pause for our reading recommendation series to Congratulate and Thank winner and all the participants of our 2010 1/2 K Prize! The 1/2 K prize is one of my favorites to read for. With the only rules being: no more than 500 words and no line breaks, we never know what we are going to get, but we are always blown away by the variety and awesomeness of all our submissions.

This year we are pleased to say
Congratulations Stripped - Myspace Glitters

to Paul Griner of Louisville, KY for his piece, “You’re Going to Miss Me When I’m Gone.” Alberto Rios, our esteemed final judge selected this piece as our winner and said, "With its deceptively simple voice, “You’re Going to Miss Me When I’m Gone” reminds us of something liminal but true—that the world is at work as much as we are, vibrant with intent and purpose and potential. In this piece, a knife is a knife—and not simply a word. Metaphoric as much as literal, quick as the slice of that knife, in these few moments we enter our own world through another doorway."

Congratulations also to our Runner-Up, Megan Baxter of Hanover, NH, for her piece “Dear Billy the Kid.”


Thank You Glitters - Myspace Glitters

to all of the writers who submitted to this summer's contest and made it such a success and a joy to read for!

I'm feeling as glittery as the images on this post! Thank you all for submitting to and supporting the work at Indiana Review! We are now looking forward to our fiction prize.

--AKS

Friday, August 6, 2010

From the Blue - What Our Contributors Read & Recommend #1

It's balmy and beautiful here in Bloomington, IN and the Indiana Review staff is excited about the recent arrival of our Blue issue (32.1). For me, summer is a time for reading (well, when isn't?) and looking forward to new works coming out in the fall. In fact, I've always got my eyes peeled for book recommendations, which I also love to give! So, to celebrate the new issue and the wonderful writers it lovingly contains (as well as satisfy our literary nosiness), we thought it would be fun to ask our contributors a few questions about what they are reading, what they've loved, and what they are looking forward to in the next few months.

Our first contributor "interview" is with Elizabeth Wilcox, whose piece "Holding up traffic as if to say" appears in our latest issue. Elizabeth lives in Los Angeles, where she is an assistant lecturer at the University of Southern California. She is working towards a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing.

What are you reading right now?
The White Album, by Joan Didion. I can't get enough of Didion, especially her essays. I think it must be extremely annoying for my friends, because I'm forever interrupting stories and conversations with, "Oh, that reminds me of this great Didion essay ..."

"Classic" you've been meaning to read?
Believe it or not, I still haven't ever read Keats. I mean, I know the Grecian urn one, and the one where he pops the grapes on the roof of his mouth and it tastes like joy (is that right?), but that's the best I can do. It's shameful, really. Luckily, I've invented a project for myself this fall that's going to require me to be familiar with his works, so I should be able to wipe this blot off my poetic conscience soon.

What book started it all for you?
This is a tough question because it presupposes that I know when "it" all started. I didn't admit to myself that I was/wanted to be a "poet" (a title I'm still not sure of) until about five years ago. So the book of poetry that really made me sit up and say "Yes, I want to do this," would probably be Moy Sand and Gravel, by Paul Muldoon. My copy of it is full of underlines, of arrows and circles and exclamation marks. I am in love with the way that Muldoon is in love with words, the way he can be playful and silly and deadly serious all in one line. The way he's not afraid of rhyme, or of long lines, or of a moment in a poem that someone in a workshop would likely cross out.

But if you want to go back to the beginning, WAY back, you'd find yourself next to my crib where my grandfather was giving my parents a Complete Works of Shakespeare as my 1st birthday present. My parents thought he was crazy. They put it in a closet. Other people gave me stuffed clown toys, which seemed much more appropriate. But that Complete Works stayed with me, and I finally got it out and started thumbing through it in 5th grade, and I haven't been able to break the spell since. The clown toys, though, are long gone (thank god).


Next week we will have interviews with Oliver de la Paz and Curtis Bauer. Stay tuned!

-N

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Good reads

I found this ingenious bookshelf on Lifehacker. I've always been frightened of the stepladders often found in used bookstores and gargantuan private libraries, so this is excellent.

August means packing and moving for many here, so storage solutions have been on my mind -- and summer cleaning. Especially as most writers and vehement readers maintain a ferocious hoard of books. I moved here without lugging too many of my books with me, and yet I've found that I've had to call back home and have my parents ship more of my books to me just so I can find certain passages, paragraphs that still leave me stricken. And I've also been using BookMooch, which is a nifty indirect book-trading tool. My end result: lots of books, at least half of which I haven't finished. Sort of like transferring hundreds of songs to your MP3 player and skipping most of them.

So when do you think, I've got too much to read? Dear readers, do any of you have a specific solution, a ground rule? "One in, one out"? I've a friend who insists that audiobooks are the way to go, but that doesn't work for me.

And that said, what have you finished reading so far?

Lastly, the fiction submissions are pouring in! It's astounding.

-D

Monday, August 2, 2010

One Door Closes, Another Opens

Check out Armando Mariño featured in 32.1
at http://www.armandomarino.com/
The Closing Door: Congratulations, to our fourth and final winner of the Blue Trivia Contest, who answered quickly and correctly  Q#4: "Blue Bloods." That brings an end to our summer trivia contest! It was a lot of fun! Thanks to all the participants who emailed us. Though the contest has ended, its not too late to order a copy of the Blue Issue

The Opening Door: Fiction Submissions have Opened! Hurray! Hoorah! It's been a long time since we closed them, but we are now ready to receive new fiction work! Send your stories our way. Here is the complete guidelines and here is a link to our submission manager