Reading in Olympia

Lohmann Poetry Prize Reading

Three winners have been announced for the 7th annual Jeanne Lohmann Poetry prize sponsored and judged by Jeanne’s poetry friends in California, and facilitated by OPN. The winners (with their hometowns and poems) are Brian Desmond (University Place, Bicycles), Trina Burke (Seattle, Confinement in a Strange Hour), and Casey Fuller (Olympia, Why Are You People So Nice?). Also, contest sponsor Valerie Berry, will be in town "to say a word or two about each winning poem..., what caught the eye/ear/imagination." Jeanne Lohmann is scheduled to read as well. June 16, 2010, 6:30 PM at Traditions Fair Trade Cafe & World Folk Art, Olympia WA

Fiction and Nonfiction

A friend of mine reports that her university paid Junot Diaz a fat sum to cruise up, read, curse like a madman, eat lunch, reap the worship, and split.

Can we say, dream job?

I would like to be Junot Diaz. His website opens to a simple flash of words — The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — and a quote from Michiko Kakutani proclaiming him one of “contemporary fiction’s most distinctive and irresistible new voices.”

A member of my Nola writers group forwarded this 2008 Boston Review fiction contest winner as the lagniappe, a published story we read each week in addition to our own work. While Diaz is the fiction editor of BR, Chris Abani judged the contest.

I had two long paragraphs that I wrote but I'm not even going to post. Just go read the story, and then, read the comments after the story.

P & W's take on Cider House vs. Stacey Lynn Brown

I post this link not because I have an opinion either way regarding who is right in this situation but rather because it is an interesting (and somewhat rare) look inside the poetry publishing world. To be quite honest, when I came out of my MA program in English, I still had no idea how contemporary poetry gets published. After my MFA program, I had a slightly less nebulous idea, but no real details. I knew that there were contests and reading fees. I knew that some contests were more prestigious than others. I asked around and found some poets to be unexpectedly tight-lipped about the process. Luckily I have met a few poets who have been forthcoming, even generous, with such information. From them I've learned that the poetry world is just as small as we think it is and because of this it is possible to develop personal relationships with presses. There are even presses that have open reading periods with no fees or that accept queries as prose publishers do.

And I've learned a lot from Stacey Lynn Brown's blog and the ensuing firestorm in the blogosphere about the other alternatives that exist for poets who would like to publish. So, regardless of who is right or wrong, I applaud Ms. Brown for posting her story and kickstarting what continues to be an educational and vital discussion.