Submit to The Woodshop! Along with submissions for our print journal, CutBank wants contributions for a few new online features. One, The Woodshop, is a collection of Q&As about writers' workspaces and habits. Want to get a notion of what we're interested in? Read the submission guidelines, then spend some time with Maria Popova's excellent Brain Pickings site, where she recently reviewed the routines of famous writers. James Joyce, for instance, "wrote lying on his stomach in bed, with a large blue pencil, clad in a white coat," and Truman Capote "never left more than three cigarette butts in his ashtray."
Didn't know about Brain Pickings? Popova is a superb, intellectually curious curator whose site deserves steady attention. She recently posted a series of hand- and typewritten catalog cards from the Library of Congress, including a great Emerson card: "The cards are a reminder that a book is a node in a complex human network of authors, readers, and librarians, connecting countless eras, geographies, and sensibilities by the inextricable common thread that is the joy of reading."
McSweeney's Internet Tendency has unveiled a few posts by winners of its 2013 column contest. A recent favorite for those of us in grizzly country? "Hungover Bear & Friends," in which the ursine protagonist ponders gender expectations and the quality of his sex life alongside forest companions like Entitled Fox and Self-Righteous Hawk.
Speaking of McSweeney's... In August, New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan shed light on who gets to "Snow Fall"—in reference to a digital storytelling project that nabbed the Times a Pulitzer last year. This week, the Times gave a modest "snow fall"-esque treatment—more of a dusting, really—to an excerpt from Dave Eggers' forthcoming novel, The Circle. Those who read "Snow Fall" or "The Jockey" will recognize the parallax scrolling, used with great restraint in Eggers' case. And Christoph Niemann's illustrations lend a nice, Keith Haring-type touch.