Monday, October 17, 2011

Blue Trajectory (My Chapbook) is Now Available...

So October has been a good month, lit-wise.  I now have some really exciting news to share.  My chapbook, Blue Trajectory, is, as of today, available from Dancing Girl Press and can be purchased here.

I can't wait to see my copies.  Dancing Girl's editor, Kristy Bowen, did such a beautiful job with the cover.  I'm really proud of how it looks, and I hope anyone who checks it out will enjoy what's inside.  I think the poems sort of cohere; for the most part, they feel like they belong together.  Some of them started out as part of another chapbook project with a slightly different theme, but they ended up following a different, well, trajectory, and I'm happy with where they ended up.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Two Posts In One Week

This one is just a short note about something I was excited to learn, that a book review I wrote will be appearing in The Iowa Review's online series.  I am excited because it's a great journal and because, at the risk of sounding mercenary, as I'm not exactly flush with cash, the compensation they offer is welcome.  But I'll be even more honest and admit it's really more the idea of being compensated for a piece of literary writing than the check itself.  It just doesn't happen too often these days, and I can completely understand why.  We can't afford to pay at Melusine.  No independently funded small journals or presses can.  There was a time, oh so long ago, when all creative writers were paid for their words, and those times have been fading faster and faster.  I'm not really here to lament that fact.  As long as there are day jobs or university positions and writers' retreats/workshops/conferences or coffee shops, writers who want to write and need to write will find a way to write and earn a living as well as long as there are people who read, even if those people are solely other writers.  But the people who read do have to continue to exist, in order for the writers to continue writing.  Long may they.  We, that is.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Another Month, Another Random Update...

So now it's October.  (I always feel proud when I manage at least one blog post a month.)  In lit news, I got word yesterday that one of my poems, published in an online issue earlier this year, will be featured in The Medulla Review's second print anthology -- good times! 

Before long, I'll need to start work on Melusine's first print edition -- kind of a daunting task, I must admit, since I haven't dealt with the offline printing process since my college's lit magazine, and that was not self-funded.  But it will be kind of exciting.  I'm looking forward to starting the selections at the beginning of the year -- the fun part.  The new online issue is slated for late November, which has been the pattern for the past few years.

In more monumental lit news, I was happy to hear that Tomas Transtromer got the Nobel.  Yes, he happens to be Swedish, but he's a hugely influential poet, not just in Sweden or in Europe but the world over, and has been for some time.  And the man is 80.  Now is the time.  He fully deserved it, and I think it was a good choice.