BURN PILE: Inspiration 2018

Quick! Before classes, or work, or tonight while the kids are asleep, or packed into any carve-it-out-and-take-a-minute time you’ve got, just go soak up inspiration from these folks.

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Last year I passed a notebook around the #WomensMarch, asking people to write why they marched. This year, I passed the notebook again. #WomensMarchNYC #WomensMarch2018 https://t.co/MgWEVMF295 pic.twitter.com/frNY2FOm68

— Corrie Hulse (@corrie_hulse) January 22, 2018

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From The New York Times, “Women’s March 2018: Thousands of Protestors Take to the Streets.”

“Desiree Joy Frias, 24, of the Bronx, and her grandmother, Daisy Vanderhorst, wore red capes and curved white hoods — the telltale outfits of the enslaved child-bearers of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which was recently adapted for television from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian science fiction novel.”

See? It’s literary news.

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In celebration of the release of The Largesse of the Sea Maiden—reviewed here, by Michael Schaub at NPR—experience “Now.” A poem about which a friend said: “Wow. He sure knows how to inhabit the ineffable.” (Sorry, but I’ve only been able to find it online as a Facebook post.) The Poetry Foundation has many more of Denis Johnson’s poems available here.

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“The Poem Climbs the Scaffold and Tells You What It Sees.” Natasha Oladukun. The Adroit Journal.

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Read in whatever order, but read Paige Lewis’s “Eager,” and this note to the poet at One Great Things.

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Oh, mortality, and all that comes before it… “Assisted Living” by M. Stone, at formercactus.com.

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FEAR NO LIT presents: Show Your Work, Episode 10: Laura Citino - "What She Does When She Gets Lonely" in podcast chit chat, and Citino’s story is right here at Split Lip.

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If you missed this one at Pithead Chapel, you have no excuse now to miss it again. “This Dog, This Shower, This Bench, This Morning” by Janet Frishberg.

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From Twitter: Taylor Johnson's "Nocturne" in Tin House

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If you lean more toward longer short fiction, Longreads has recommendations for you, in “10 Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2018”

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Back when we had a presidential president, Alexander Chee’s “21 Lies Writers Tell Themselves (And How They Can Stop Lying To Themselves And Become Awesome!)*” ran in The Awl, which, sadly, is ending its life on the Net. Go while you can.

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Was it you? “Harry Potter book known as 'Holy Grail for collectors' stolen by burglars”
Valuable edition of JK Rowling's first novel was one of only 500 printed in 1997

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This month’s issue of Brevity is (as always) filled with jaw-droppingly strong nonfiction. Some standouts to hit from here are “At My School” by Courtney Kersten, and “Turn, Bend, and Spread” by Michael Fischer. 

“The bathroom walls are a battle. Between dissent and Magic Erasers, between wrath and paint, between the kids and the janitors.

I sit on the toilet and read—about the protests back in November, about the institution protecting rapists, about Chance the Rapper, about which Instagram accounts to follow, about whether or not Jeff Sessions is Hitler-incarnate, about the taco place downtown that gives you diarrhea. Do NOT go!!! I read the messages one day and watch them morph the next; the graffiti augmented by agreement, argument, or thick lines of deletion.”

                                                                                From “At My School” by Courtney Kersten

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here is my entire “A Story Like Mine” poem from today’s #WomensMarch2018 in NYC tw: rape / assault. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/l3fji73woM

— h (@halsey) January 20, 2018

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Inspiration at work.

Later, y'all.

BURN PILE: OMG. There is SO much to share!

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Georgia Dennison!

UM MFA candidate Georgia Dennison has a new poem up at The Pacifica Review. A lament, a revelation, and a fist raised for artistic and social truths.

Mount Saint Helens—

by Georgia Dennison

This land carries, against its will, 
           the word “discovered.” 
       Truths.
           Dis/ 

               Covered.

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David Gates, UM prof, has a new story out in The New Yorker.

Click down to “Texas,” and when you’re done, read the interview that accompanies the story: “David Gates on Unsympathetic Characters.”

"After the children had left home and his wife had made her escape to Italy, Garver kept most of the house closed off, even when summer came and he no longer had to save on heat. Better the blank doors than the empty rooms—not to get sentimental at this late date. He still went to his studio every day, although the work was no good anymore, and “anymore” was putting it kindly."

Googling images for "David Gates author" reveals a man of many styles...

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Photo by Jim Whitcraft

Happy to announce that George Kalamaras, CutBank Online contributor (here!), wild-haired poet at large, beagle booster, and former Poet Laureate of Indiana (2014-2016), begins a poetic series of Long Way From, Long Time Since epistles to the likes of John Haines, Bob Arnold, Phil Woods, Richard Hugo, and more.

We kick the series off this Tuesday with a “Letter to John Haines I Neglected to Send, So I Am Finally Sending Now, Twenty Years Late.”

Here’s a sample to hold you over:

…Tender
for a forest tough, for a woodsman
who salvaged wood for his cabin

from an old bridge over Gasoline Creek,
laying trapline from Norfolk, Virginia,
to Vallejo, California, into desire

for the frozen north, for western light leaking through
cottonwoods here in Helena. All afternoon we talk
and hold Indiana and Alaska together like fraternal twins

in the liminal space of Montana.

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Allow George to introduce himself and Bootsie (among other animal presences) in an audio interview at Radio Free Albion. The interview celebrates, in part, issue 13 of Court Green, including the poem “Dream in Which Kenneth Rexroth Counts to Eight.”

…and enjoy two classics by John Haines. (Brace yourself for “The Flight.” It’s a gut punch.):

If the Owl Calls Again

The Flight

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Calling a Wolf a Wolf

Jeevika Verma chats at NPR.org with poet Kaveh Akbar about Kaveh Akbar’s chats with poets on his site, DiveDapper:

"Kaveh Akbar Is Poetry's Biggest Cheerleader"

"Not sharing your gratitude is like holding a Snickers bar in your mouth for a week. You'd just get cavities," he laughs. "This is what I want to do with DiveDapper. As far as I'm concerned, poetry is the best thing that exists in the universe."

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More from NPR, from their Songs We Love feature.

“…imagine a green-lit bar scene from a James Bond film, a symphony hall, or a vast night sky where you're watching stars collide as a story of the things we accept in spite of ourselves unfolds.”

Jorja Smith, 'Let Me Down (Feat. Stormzy)'

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http://www.femtasia.nl/work/oblige-me-acrylics-on-book-2016/

Dangerous Minds rarely lets us down when it comes to the unusual in literary, artistic, or just damned odd stuff. This feature on Femke Hiemstra unveils some surrealistic whimsey that’s a joy to step into from the mundane of normalcy. And cats, among many other critters.

 From the artist’s FAQ:

B.2 Who or what are your sources of inspiration?
“I can get inspired by anything from music lyrics, a news item or someone’s weird nickname. I also get inspiration from animal behavior, nature, old packages with hand drawn typography, tattoo’s, old encyclopedias, firework wrappers, vintage toys, comics, Japanese woodblock prints, old Little Golden Books, (tin toy) collectables and the art of Max Ernst, Hieronymus Bosch and the engravings of J.G. Posada.”

I’m setting myself a small project: taking each and every one of these inspirations, exploring the world (at, and away from the desk) for an example, and creating something, anything from them. A sentence, a story concept, a memoir vignette. And now that I’ve said it “out loud,” I have to do it, right?

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When you’re tired of being nice…

WRITERS INSULTING WRITERS

11. Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway (1972): “As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.”

(HT to Reviews Editor Molly Gray for this one.)

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My obsession of the moment: Shelly Jackson

A story at Electric Lit hooked me. Temporary art, mortal (and ineradicable) art, story as participatory performance, the wherewithal to take an idea and make it real, patience in seeing that reality emerge, and the willingness to allow serendipity and the unexpected to play a part. And wow, it’s all lovely in a way that transcends the “what it is” and gains emotional value in the simple fact that it is.

See Jackson’s images at the source on Instagram.

"The Only Good Thing About Winter Is This Story Written in Snow"

Shelley Jackson’s snow story is now in its fourth year, and its eleventh sentence

“The east coast of the U.S. recently had its first major snow of the winter, which sucks in almost every conceivable way but one. The silver lining: the continuation of author Shelley Jackson’s story written in snow, which was started back in 2014 and, four years later, is still only a few sentences long.”

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Intrigued? Me, too. Here's more:

The Skin Project
“no stain, no gain”

What is the Skin Project?
It's a 2095-word story published exclusively in tattoos, one word at a time, on the skin of volunteers. 

“Part of the idea was that it was a mortal story, that it would die as its participants died out, so that nobody would be allowed to read it except for those who were actually involved in the story, and I made a promise to make every effort to come to the funerals of my words”

Berkeley Art Museum Netart exhibition

 “Skin” an offshoot of The Skin Project

“The Skin video rearranges 191 words from the original story into a whole new story that is read aloud, collectively, by the words themselves. Originally commissioned by the Berkeley Art Museum, it was on display on their net art portal from March 1 - May 31, 2011.”

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And finally (for this particular now), an interview in videos about Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, an interactive novel in hypertext.

The Interview with Shelley Jackson about Patchwork Girl

“This interview of Shelley Jackson, conducted by Dene Grigar, took place on Friday, October 18, 2013 in the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University Vancouver as part of the Pathfinders project. The interview is divided into nine videos and provides insights into the development of the work. The commentary is written by Moulthrop.”

About Patchwork Girl:

“Perhaps the true paradigmatic work of the era, Shelley Jackson's elegantly designed, beautifully composed Patchwork Girl offers the patient reader, if there are any left in the world, just such an experience of losing oneself to a text, for as one plunges deeper and deeper into one's own personal exploration of the relations here of creator to created and of body to text, one never fails to be rewarded and so is drawn ever deeper, until clicking the mouse is as unconscious an act as turning a page, and much less constraining, more compelling.” — Robert Coover

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Awesomeness on the Web

MY LITERAL DEMONS

Magical nonfiction by Frances Chiem, courtesy of Hobartpulp.com.

“By the time we were working on the banishment spell, he had come out to me as gay and I to him as bisexual, but it was the belief in magic at such a late age that bound us together, even as we orbited in different circles at school (me with the goths, he with the cheerleaders and their boyfriends). We met weekly at the Borders a few miles from school and treated the occult section like a library, sitting on the floor and pulling books from shelves. […] At the time, Kyle and I were both active participants in our families’ churches. I was a student leader in the youth group and regular reader during Catholic mass. Maybe we wrote our own spells instead of using Wiccan ones as a way to alleviate our guilt.”

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Watching Planes Take Off in Late Evening While High on Shrooms

Fungi-enhanced consciousness in poem form by Ariel Francisco, at the Pacifica Literary Review.

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Places I Find My Daughter and Myself

Ellipsis brings us a brilliant burst of nonfiction by Stephanie Hutton.

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At the Atticus Review, get “the feeling you want,” from new fiction by Sarah Lippmann.

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This one blew the socks off my mind. Please go give “Touch Tank” a read. Devastating dystopia, condensed and strong, at Lost Balloon. Thank you Jan Stinchcomb, for this moody, unsettling story.

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Topic.com brings us A Morning Stroll...

There’s more to watch on the Near Future Mixtape page, five films in 55 minutes. “Highlights include a pointed commentary on the dark side of gentrification in London, a meditation on love and space exploration, and a look at what happens to a person after his job on Mars gets eliminated.”

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- Authors on authoring -

At LitHub: HARUKI MURAKAMI: THE MOMENT I BECAME A NOVELIST
At a baseball game in 1978, the writer who almost wasn't

How Junot Diaz Wrote a Sexist Character, but Not a Sexist Book
by Joe Fassler, writing in 2012 for The Atlantic.

"It's almost as though Yunior doesn't have the depth to contemplate a female psychology, let alone make one real for a third party. And when he does directly address the reader—like when he tells us Nilda, his brother's girlfriend, has "a chest you wouldn't believe"—he assumes we're high-fiving heterosexual males (just like he is)."

CB editor’s note (it's me, Barry, btw...): 
This one discusses Diaz with Diaz, chatting with the author about his misogynistic, womanizing Yunior character. It struck home because of a workshopped story that exploded on me. The story is about ugly people in an equally ugly situation doing ugly things to each other, the question of redeemability and the casual choice to break bad for survival’s sake. I rendered it broken and badly, when it comes to sexism. And apparently offensively. A sexist setting and sexist male characters in the fore, with the only female in a highly beaten down position... How to present this realistically without inadvertently glorifying male gaze horribleness? Diaz helps. Revisions in process.

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Final notes on an upward course:

David Byrne give us Reasons To Be Cheerful. In his words, RTBCh is such that:

“I imagine, like a lot of you who look back over the past year, it seems like the world is going to Hell. I wake up in the morning, look at the paper, and go, "Oh no!" Often I’m depressed for half the day. It doesn’t matter how you voted on Brexit, the French elections or the U.S. election—many of us of all persuasions and party affiliations feel remarkably similar.

“As a kind of remedy and possibly as a kind of therapy, I started collecting good news that reminded me, "Hey, there's actually some positive stuff going on!" Almost all of these initiatives are local, they come from cities or small regions who have taken it upon themselves to try something that might offer a better alternative than what exits. Hope is often local. Change begins in communities.”

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From Demi Adejuyigbe (@electolemon),
“David Byrne presents: mother!,” a playlist.

And, since I sometimes wrap this thing with graffiti art, especially if it’s Banksyesque, how awesome the universe is to present me/us with this from last August, in Medium.

"the year of living with banksy"

 “When I first moved to Los Angeles in July of 2013, I found a room for rent in a house on Craigslist. I soon learned the landlord, and the man I’d be living with, was none other than the famous graffiti artist and incognito street poet Banksy.”

“Wasn’t necessary to paint this on any walls, much less one outside my bathroom window.”

BURN PILE: The morning after last year edition.

17 Famous Writers' New Year's Resolutions
A Buzzfeed post from 2015 by Chloe Laversuch

Of Anaïs Nin, Laversuch reveals:

When she is sixteen years old, on December 31st 1919, Nin actually wrote her diary entry in the moments running up to the New Year:

"Many people generally spend the few hours before midnight making resolutions and promises. I promise nothing; I have such a weak character that I can’t promise to be better.”

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“'I want to be a writer,’ I said out loud, maybe for the first time.”

Missoulian Stephanie Land’s essay in The New York Review of Books, Portrait of the Artist as a Single Mom, gets into the heart of social issues, single momness, school and writing when everything in life says you shouldn’t, or can’t.

If you don’t trust my recommendation, perhaps you’ll take Neil Gaiman’s word for it.

Nobody wanted to hire someone who needed to work during daycare hours—not even the coffee shops I applied to, thinking I’d get at least an afternoon shift with my ten years’ experience. When I said the hours I could work were limited, their eyes lowered. That was the end of the interview. Going back to school, to get some kind of degree beyond high school, turned into my only option. I could take classes online at first, doing homework late into the night after Mia went to bed. Slowly, I chipped away at the list of required core credits while working a day job as a maid.

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 “The older we get, the more culturally invisible we become, as writers, as people. But you have your words.”

Ask Roxane: Is It Too Late to Follow My Dreams?

Roxane Gay in The New York Times DEC. 30, 2017

What I wish I could have told myself when I was hopeless about my writing prospects is that I should have defined artistic success in ways that weren’t shaped by forces beyond my control. Sometimes, success is getting a handful of words you don’t totally hate on the page. Sometimes success is working a full-time job to support your family and raising your kids and finding a way, over several years, to write and finish a novel. Sometimes it’s selling a book to a small press for 25 copies of your book and a vague promise of royalties you may never see. And sometimes, if you are very lucky, artistic success is marked by the glittery things so many of us yearn for — the big money deals, the critical accolades, the multicity book tours, the movie options.

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In Angels Flight • literary west:

DEAR SUGAR, Resistance Edition: The Power of ‘Me Too’
by Cheryl Strayed

Dear Sugar,

How do writers have an impact on the world around them? Can literature be political without being partisan or ideological?

Signed,

Writer in Las Vegas

Sug's response, in part:

I don’t know why we chose a misogynistic, racist, scam artist demagogue who also happens to be an internet troll to lead our nation, Writer in Las Vegas. But I do know we have seen the likes of him before and we will see the likes of him again. I do know he has a story. I know he has wounds and fears and memories and desires. I know the face he presents to the world is connected to his innermost humanity, as mine does, and yours does too.

[ … ]

And most importantly, I know art will exist beyond him and us. Literature, unlike elections, is a long game. Nobody wins or loses in a day.

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21 Literary Quotes on Beginnings, Middles, and Endings, from Amanda Patterson at Writers Write.

My favorite of those listed is number 3:

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”
                                                                   Gilda Radner

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Notes from Molly Gray, CutBank’s Reviews Editor extraordinaire:

• Emily Wilson just came out with a SUPER interesting translation of The Odyssey. She's the first woman to have published a translation. She wrote a piece on LitHub about its construction. Rumor has it that Wilson faced much backlash and ostracism from her colleagues when they found out she was working on her translation. More power to her. 
   
• Khaty Xiong (UM Poetry MFA alumna) got plugged in Buzzfeed for "Six Hmong Poets You Need to Read Right Now." She's a 2017 MacDowell Colony Fellow and is there in the woods right now. Learn more about Khaty and her work at https://khatyxiong.com/.
   
• This article from The Atlantic on museums and dealing with natural disasters. 

“’For people going back in their own homes after disasters, they’re looking for those irreplaceable items that stand for their personal and their family’s identities, their memories, their hope for recovery in the future. Scale that up to whole communities and countries.’”

Have a review to pitch? Contact Molly at mailto:cutbank.reviews@gmail.com.

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A sampling of online awesomeness to kick off 2018.
Click them, please and thank you. You’ll be happier for it.

Jody Kennedy, a CutBank Online contributor, has a new piece up at Diagram. I love this one, and can’t decide whether it affects me more like tendrils of strong smoke in the nervous system, or with the tingling combination of pain and relief that comes when your fingers warm slowly from the cold. Check it out.

 NARCISSUS REDUX by Jody Kennedy. (Read Jody’s other contributions to the blog here.)

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Necessary -- poetry By Jasmine Cui at Cotton Xenomorph

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Alive in a Glass House -- fiction from Gillian Walker at .JELLYFISHREVIEW.

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A nominee for Best Small Fictions from formercactus:

“GIRL IN PIECES” by Cathy Ulrich

She is more robot than person when she comes back to school. Glares at the freshmen who get too close. They scatter, like maybe lasers will come out of her eyes. We all hope lasers will come out of her eyes, but they never do.

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And some you may not have heard of. Now you have no excuse to miss out.

Longreads Best of 2017: Under-Recognized Stories

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From the days before Bono decided “girly” was a thing, or a problem, or up to him to decide...

https://twitter.com/ItsDanSheehan/status/947947776742248448

Happy new year to you and yours from all of us at CutBank.
May your happiness and creativity continue to grow through all the years to come.

BURN PILE: Let's go to the movies... Digital Stories & Human Hearts

This frosty loveseat at the bus stop across from the UM campus wasn't very inviting, but it brought to mind Sofas, a digital story that touched me (and, according to YouTube, about 10,250+ others). Sofas is a brilliant example of digital storytelling--sincere, simple, and honest, a result of the work going on at StoryCenter. Their motto is "Listen Deeply, Tell Stories," and both are skills we're in heavy need of today. In homage to Sofas, I've pulled a selection of digi-tales for you to enjoy, laugh with, and cry over. These are personal testaments to the myriad ways our lives weave into a human whole, despite differences we impose, fabricate, and perpetrate. Remember in this holiday season that the only wars we wage are those we create, that hatred and othering only isolates yourself, and that to fight the good fight is to fight for the good of all. 

"WHEN WE LISTEN DEEPLY, AND TELL STORIES,
WE BUILD A JUST AND HEALTHY WORLD."
~ Story Center ~

Sofas - by Wayne Richard

A story about a young man, home, homelessness, and sofas.

Listening ... and Telling - by Elizabeth Ross

A story about persecution, multigenerational abuse, and the sanctuary of artistic practice.

Content Advisory: This story addresses child sexual abuse, rape, and homicide. 

Content of Character - by Bess Turner

A story about becoming an activist, racial inequality, and, ultimately, some justice.

This Is My Home - by Bill Tall Bull

A story about grandparents, the Sand Creek Massacre, the Cheyenne people, and one man's healing process through the Healing Run.

The Gift of Nonviolence - by Leroy Moore

A father, a son, a beating, an activist, and dead weight.

Content Advisory: This story addresses the topic of child abuse. 

The 8th Step - by Ed Popovitz

A story about a man, a dog, and getting clean.

Rites of Passage - by Nikiko Masumoto

A story about comparing one's educational experiences with those of her grandmother who graduated from high school at a concentration camp for US citizens of Japanese descent during WWII.

Wrecking/Renewal - by Ray Baylor

A story about hope in the wake of urban "renewal" and the loss of family homes and established neighborhood communities.

Unmapped roads - by Heather Browne

A story about a mom, a son, a divorce, and a road trip.

What Remains - by Sara Prahl

A story about a picture, a woman, degenerative MS, and what remains.

My Write to Draw - by Max Bessesen

A story about a cartoon named Billy, sharing creativity, and becoming a writer.

The Mayor of Mooresville by David Queen, UM MFAer, way-cool human, and awesome storyteller.

What happens when a man builds his own town from the ground up?

And, as a reminder that sometimes trash, tape, and an engaged imagination are all you need for a revolution, Austin Kleon nails it again:

Afternoon collage pic.twitter.com/a1rUJgAQzF

— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) December 23, 2017

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http://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/samusocial_asphaltisation_3

Hint, hint: http://nationalhomeless.org/ 
"The National Coalition for the Homeless is a national network of people who are currently experiencing or who have experienced homelessness, activists and advocates, community-based and faith-based service providers, and others committed to a single mission: To prevent and end homelessness while ensuring the immediate needs of those experiencing homelessness are met and their civil rights protected."

BURN PILE: TransgenderFetusScience-basedVulnerableEntitlementEvidence-basedDiversity

I’m just gonna leave this here. Right at the top.

Report: Trump Bans ‘Transgender,’ ‘Fetus,’ ‘Science-Based’ From CDC Documents

By Mary Papenfuss and Anna Almendrala

“We cannot replace truth with bias,” a bioethicist says.

In an astonishing order, the Trump administration has banned the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using seven words — including “fetus,” “transgender,” “diversity” and “science-based” — in any documents used to prepare the agency’s budget, The Washington Post has reported. […] Instead of the words “science-based” or “evidence-based,” analysts were told they could use instead: The “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the newspaper reported.

"The Post’s source could not recall a previous time in any other administration when words were forbidden.”

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Some awesomeness to counter the awful:

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Why I Write, Katie Kennedy
December 15, 2017
By Kathleen Kennedy at Women Writers, Women’s Books

“I write because I want to make things better, and stories teach us what to do when you discover the ring is evil, or just where papa’s going with that axe.”

About Women Writers, Women’s Books:
We are an online literary magazine by and about contemporary women writers from around the world. Women Writers, Women’s Books was launched in 2011 to be another platform for contemporary women writers and authors around the world writing in English.

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At formercactus --prickly writing for keen minds:

“Re: Our Apocalypse Plans” — Amy Kinsman

“The cats have gone who knows where, but dogs traded in their common sense for loyalty a thousand years ago and, lately, they’ve been howling at their moon goddess for intervention on our behalf.”

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From January 29, 2017, at the Jellyfish Review:
My Body Feels Full of Stars by Lydia Copeland Gwyn

“Mom is in the bathroom with a miscarriage. She lets me hold her hand on the toilet and tells me about the baby coming out of her the same way she told me about menstruation last week when I learned she was pregnant. This time we’re crying. Her hand covering mine is like the wet place in a layer of leaves.”

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What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About
At Longreads, Michele Filgate reflects on her teen years with an abusive stepfather and a mother whose silence protected him.

"While I write, my stepfather sits at his desk that’s right outside my bedroom. He’s working on his laptop, but every time his chair squeaks or he makes any kind of movement, fear rises up from my stomach to the back of my throat. "

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Our Reaction to “Cat Person” Shows That We Are Failing as Readers
When we look to our texts to teach us not how to think, but what to think, we suffer for it
by Larissa Pham

“Cat Person” seems to have transcended its form as a short story — or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the discourse around it reflects how the distinction between fiction and nonfiction has collapsed in recent years. In short, we are failing as readers.
[...]
When we cannot even understand that a short story is fiction, and that a writer has carefully chosen how to construct her world, with its own architecture and a universe separate from our own, we flatten it completely, and we also flatten our own ability to think critically."

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“If you have ever had a problem grasping the importance of diversity in tech and its impact on society, watch this video” ----------------->

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It’s Kristen Arnett’s birthday!
Go say hi: @Kristen_Arnett

Then read an interview with Kristen at Full Stop, and celebrate by buying her latest for yourself and all your friends. It’s at Split Lip Press!

Kristen says:

"I think I’ve gotten better at procrastinating thanks to Twitter! Maybe a little better at joking around. I’m not sure if it’s made me a better writer, but it’s put me in touch with people who are GREAT writers, so I’ve gotten better by reading their work."

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While you’re in the gifting mood…

You Can’t Wrap a Five-Figure Deal: Gifts for Writers
by Allison K. Williams at Brevity’s Blog

"Stocking-stuffer: See what books you’ve bought in the past six months but haven’t reviewed yet. Spread some goodwill around by writing some quick thoughts and clicking four or five stars. Especially if the writer is at less than 50 reviews: crossing that threshold really helps their visibility online. Copy-paste Amazon reviews to Goodreads, because every little bit helps."

But don’t be stealing your Xmas books this year:

Indie Bookstores Tell Us About Their Most Stolen Books
Which volumes walk out the door most often, and why?

Book People, in Austin, Texas, says:

“We lose a lot of manga, but certainly odd is that we lose ethics books from our philosophy section.” — Steve Bercu, Owner”

BURN PILE: Cat People. Sex, badly written, and goodly. Lydia's cowboy on film.

Cat Person

By Kristen Roupenian

This short story in The New Yorker gets the top of the page to itself. The tweets I quote below read like comments in a highly caffeinated MFA workshop:

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• I like The New Yorker short story everyone is talking about, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I like it. What’s with all of the haters?

• Gonna catch heat for this opinion but I solidly don't care: relatable as it is, "Cat Person" is a plodding & poorly-written story until the last few lines. But even that ending fell flat for me bc the language & characters are so devoid of nuance.

• This is the realest shit I ever read.

• I actually think that New Yorker piece about the cat person guy is awful but not just in the way you guys are saying it is

• everyone is geeking over that "Cat Person" story in the New Yorker but are we just ignoring that the author literally wrote the words “small log of his erection” to describe a boner

• Here is MY so I read "Cat Person" tweet and really, what I want to say is, y'all – it is actually the first piece of fiction in the New Yorker I have *ever* read.

• This. Is the best. Story. I have. EVER. Fucking read. In. The New Yorker.

• I have not read the New Yorker "Cat Person" story yet.

• The "Cat Person" story in The New Yorker is well-written, relatable, and feels brutally honest (despite being a fictional tale). That said, it's also deeply uncomfortable and I *personally* don't understand the point of it. Would be open to discussing (if anyone in my feed cares)

• it's 4am and i'm drunk and i just read that fucking cat person story by the new yorker and i have more words to say about it but for now all i can is that i hate it and people's responses to it are fucking awful and i hate it

* * *

Bad sex, cont.

Have We Gotten Better at Writing About Sex?
This year’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award winner isn’t as cringeworthy as previous years

By Natalee Cruz

“Bad sex is starting to be not that bad, per se. There’s no discussion of any kind of the cringe-worthy metaphors to sex you hear from that guy in your MFA.”

The Bad Sex Award Inspired Me to Work Harder at Writing Good Sex
By Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

“You might argue that shaming authors who embark upon the tricky business of writing about sex is mean and unfair, and will discourage aspiring novelists from going near the subject, despite it being a significant part of experience. Furthermore, is it not snobbish and prudish and, well, awfully English? You can’t imagine the French getting worked up over some writer overusing the word ‘moist’.”

* * *

What We Do for Work
By Caitlyn GD

“We didn’t come here to argue so we just do as told, knee-highs to the kitchen floor.”

and...

Smoke and Mirrors: An Interview with Caitlyn GD

“This story is meant to tell an aspect of sex work that is specific to a certain degree of autonomy and privilege that doesn’t encompass every sex worker’s experience. I decided that there were going to be pieces of them and their lives that were unanswered and contradictory and that allowing that was more of a service to them.”

and...

GOODBYE MARY, GOODBYE JANE
By Meghan Phillips

“The costume is Little Bo Peep from last spring’s production of Shrek: The Musical, but everyone at the party thinks I’m Mary, like Mary had a Little Lamb. With mint jelly, one of the brothers says, and I look up from my red cup because the only other person I’ve ever heard make that dumb joke is my dad, and this guy’s certainly not my father.”

* * *

Reality check:

Enough: America’s Wholly Visible Underbelly
By The Rumpus, November 28th, 2017

Collegial Indecency: Sexual Assault in the Ivory Tower
by Ada Cheng

“I should have screamed and yelled, pushed him away, or kicked him, but I didn’t. I did say no. Over and over again. Politely and respectfully.”

ENOUGH is a Rumpus series devoted to creating a dedicated space for essays, poetry, fiction, comics, and artwork by women and non-binary people that engage with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence. The series will run every Tuesday afternoon. Each week we will highlight different voices and stories.

* * *

From pw.org:

“A few years ago I used to tell myself I wanted to marry a cowboy.” In this short film produced by Park Pictures, director Alison Maclean adapts Lydia Davis’s short story about an English professor who fantasizes about a life of adventure. 'The Professor' is included in Davis’s collection The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009)."

BURN PILE: Lists and pillow books. Judgment. Monsters.

Lists:

I live by lists.

• To-do.
• To-think-about.
• What-if?
• Inventories of written stuff on the hard drive, manila folders boxed in the closet. Junk. Fragments. Revisable or revisitable.
• AA’s moral inventory is a list.
• So is confession.
• How do I love thee? Let me make a list.
• This thing, this Burn Pile, is a list. They all are, in one way or another. Lists of lists.
• A list of destinations.
• Or, no… A list of starting points.

* * *

Poets & Writers creative nonfiction prompt references a list.

"In The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, translated and edited by Ivan Morris, the eleventh-century Japanese poet and courtier created a series of lists based on her daily life. Her topics included "Hateful Things" ("A carriage passes by with a nasty, creaking noise"), "Elegant Things" ("A pretty child eating strawberries"), "Things That Have Lost Their Power" ("A large tree that has been blown down in a gale and lies on its side with its roots in the air"), and "Things That Should Be Large" ("Men's eyes"), among others. The list form allowed her to celebrate, or denigrate, details that may have otherwise been passed by unnoticed. This week, take ten minutes to invent and populate a list of your own: the more specific, the better. Make more lists with each day if the spirit strikes you."

• Meredith Mckinney on Sei Shonagon’s Masterpiece:

"The sounds roll off the tongue like poetry, with the same resonance and authority that transcends mere meaning. They are accompanied by a little swarm of facts worn almost meaningless by repetition and familiarity."

• Read more of The Pillow Book in .pdf form here.

* * *

The New Yorker rolls out in its “Sunday Reading” an archival list of political humor coverage.

Hive Mind
The stinging comedy of Samantha Bee’s “Full Frontal.”
By Emily Nussbaum

Expletives Not Deleted
The profane satire of Armando Iannucci’s “Veep.”
By Ian Parker

Hasan Minhaj’s “New Brown America”
By Doreen St. Félix

Vive John Oliver
By Sarah Larson

The Goat Boy Rises
By John Lahr

Small Wonders
Comedy, off the radar.
By Emily Nussbaum

…which uses up my allotment of free articles for the month, and it’s only the 3rd!

To do:
       ~ re-up my New Yorker subscription…

* * *

On most folks’ list of fears is public speaking, but it’s a matter (sometimes) of what you’re speaking about. Hera Lindsay Bird says she gets “more embarrassed reading a really sincere love poem out in front of hundreds of people than I would one about a blowjob.”

Hera Lindsay Bird: poet of exploding helicopters and dick jokes
In which “the New Zealand poet explains the 90s sitcom references and unembarrassed passions that have gone into her eponymous debut.”

* * *

Are you reading this from behind bars? Or do you anticipate doing some writing in that circumstance? Enjoy the Winning Manuscripts of PEN America’s 2017 Prison Writing Contest, “one of the few outlets of free expression for the country’s incarcerated population.”

Centering the Voices of Incarcerated People: Emile DeWeaver, cofounder of Prison Renaissance, writes about the influence of James Forman, Jr’s book, Locking Up Our Own (one of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2017) has had on his work. This essay originally appeared in Colorlines.

* * *

“Talk to anyone who worked in book publishing this year and no matter how chipper the conversation may begin, once you’re a few drinks in the talk will turn gloomy.” The Year in Best-Sellers examines the titles of 2017, what sales and popularity actually mean to readers, and tells us about them.

* * *

And yeah, one list just keeps growing.

All The Actually Decent Men in Fiction We Could Think Of
Hunting for a few good men? It’s harder than you think, but [Electric Lit] found 16.

As to (some of) the rest, What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?
By Claire Dederer in the Paris Review.

* * *

To do:

•  “I know a publishing house that would glut your ledgers with more gold than you could shake out of a dwarf, if your manuscript arrived wrapped in my endorsement.” Boneset, By Lucia Iglesias

• Natural’s Not in It
  The unlimited discipline of a self-made genius
  David Velasco loves that Kathy Acker “had to switch to eWorld after AOL expelled her for using profanities in a chat room.”
   
• And, The Births and Deaths of Kathy Acker
  How a Literary Icon Remixed Identity Again and Again
  By Douglas A. Martin
   
• I, The Jury
  Nonfiction by Isreala Margalit

"I savor the opportunity to discover new talent, but I don’t relish playing God in other people’s lives. Most of all, I dread the chats with the losers. They say they want the truth no matter how painful—'Tell me why I was eliminated and how I can improve' —but what they really want is validation, something to assure them their talent has been recognized."

• Lonely Things—A Series
  Jill Talbot

A symphony conductor's extended bow,
a stranger's arm out a car window giving the go around signal,
mail addressed to the previous tenant.

* * *

BURN PILE: Casseroles and Fake Pies

There is no recipe this week, only a quick-loading casserole of leftovers I’ve accumulated during the Thanksgiving break, all wonderful in and of themselves.

Since you may still be in a digestive stupor, enjoy The History Behind 5 Thanksgiving Traditions Americans Love, then go for it in the links below. Here you are:

* * *

From BuzzFeed’s "Dark Times" series, here’s new short fiction by Manuel Gonzales: Blondie.

“My wife’s friend Becky sold them the house, and she’s the one who told us they were neo-Nazis.”

* * *

Thanksgiving for Native Americans: Four Voices on a Complicated Holiday, by Julie Turkewitz, in The New York Times.

Sherman Alexie: “I guess it’s trash talking: ‘Look, you tried to kill us all, and you couldn’t.’ We’re still here, waving the turkey leg in the face of evil.”

* * *

From drDOCTOR, Sarah Lippmann on painter Jessica Zemsky, fairy tales, and the uncomplicated beauty of devoting life to love. (At drdoctordrdoctor.com, a domain name you can’t help but love.)

Life is Good: I Recommend It, by Sara Lippmann

I do not come from artists. What I come from is a line of almosts, of not-quites. On my mother’s side, my grandmother was a would-be actor, whose dreams went unfulfilled. Self doubt, fear of failure: these traits I know well. She became a teacher instead. My great-grandfather, too, itched with creative impulses. Or so the story goes. He wrote, he drew. But one must provide a roof. He chose dentistry, and not for his love of teeth.

* * *

Writers and writing, always, always:

• Annie Proulx Gave One of the Best National Book Award Speeches in Recent Memory
  by Boris Kachka

From the transcript:

We don’t live in the best of all possible worlds. This is a Kafkaesque time. The television sparkles with images of despicable political louts and sexual harassment reports. We cannot look away from the pictures of furious elements, hurricanes and fires, from the repetitive crowd murders by gunmen burning with rage. We are made more anxious by flickering threats of nuclear war. We observe social media’s manipulation of a credulous population, a population dividing into bitter tribal cultures.

• How Long Is Writing Supposed to Take? by Jennifer Baker, at Electric Lit, and also, in Not a Real Writer: How Self-Doubt Holds Me Back, Lindsay Merbaum writes of how:

Over time, my self-doubt has morphed into a kind of self-pity. I’ve watched people who were next to me at the starting line cross over into Multiple-Books-Published and Award-Winning territory while I lag behind, sweating and panting. When they are nice people, I am truly happy for them. When they are not, I hate their guts.

• Cormac McCarthy Explains the Unconscious, by Nick Romeo. Okay. Why not?
• Kathy Acker’s dream maps… at Literary Hub
• The Picture in Her Mind. Paul Gleason revisits Joan Didion in Criticism.
• Read to Write Stories gives us an awesome interview with Julie Berwald, author of Spineless. (See the Burn Pile of a couple weeks back for your Œ=~~ references.)
• In podcast 005: Austin Kleon – Pencil vs Computer at www.hurryslowly.co, Jocelyn K. Glei chats “with artist and writer Austin Kleon — best known for his book Steal Like an Artist — about the benefits of using analog tools in a digital world.”

* * *

The Cathy Ulrich Rocks section.

• These Clouds Are Not the Same Clouds; This Sky Is Not the Same Sky
• This Place Will Never Keep You
• Girls’ Night In
• All the Love Songs Are Really About Broken Hearts

* * *

More from Electric Lit. Kelly Luce (@lucekel) tweeted:

I love all the pieces I edit for @ElectricLit equally but I must say, I love this one the equalest.

This Kelly praise is for A Deep Dive into Uranus Jokes: Exploring the 19th-century roots of a low humor staple by Albert Stern.

* * *

The Because If You Don’t, You’ll Regret It section:

• Buddy Wakefield - The Gift of My Hate (from Howl, a spoken word event, July 13, 2016)
• PS: Convenience Stores

* * *

For dessert, Sarah Bakes a Fake Pie, then the facts get checked. Your Post-T-Day reality from D.C.

 * * *

Skeleturkey image via I, Toony [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Nobody likes me!

BURN PILE: Warning! Graphic Content Ahead!

Graphic novels have "achieved something comparable to the complexity and density that can be achieved in a novel while transcending the novel format’s limitations with artwork that is an integral part of the medium rather than merely being illustrative of the plot." Britannica.com

In the distant past, comics were inextricably lodged in my head as either superhero venues, or for saccharine characters like Archie, or Disney cartoons' cash-machine merch-able stories. Later, underground works like the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, or R. Crumb’s "Keep on Truckin’" vibe provided super anti-heroes, along with horror, like Creepy, Eerie, and so on. It’s certainly not news that this is an incorrect outlook, and limited to the world contained in a 1970s drugstore rack, beside Harlequin romances and pulp novels. I learned better of the genre late in the game, probably with the realization that many of the movies I'd enjoyed were based on graphic novels, and owed much of their appeal not only to the story, but to the look of the original art, as well. (The Road to Perdition comes to mind, and Ghost World.)

The release of my friend Deb Olin Unferth and Elizabeth Haidle’s I, Parrot reminds me of all the rich worlds that have found expression both visually and verbally since those days. So, I’ve rounded up some standouts, some lists, and even some argument against graphic novels being taught as serious literature.

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RUMPUS EXCLUSIVE: An Excerpt from I, Parrot, by Deb Olin Unferth and Elizabeth Haidle. 

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Malvern Books hosted Deb Olin Unferth and illustrator Elizabeth Haidle as they discuss their new graphic novel, I, PARROT, with Mary Helen Specht, author of MIGRATORY ANIMALS. 

"Unferth (Wait Till You See Me Dance, 2017, etc.) has written a heart-wrenching, occasionally unbelievable tale of family and feathers. The illustrations, by Haidle (Mind Afire, 2013), are beautiful. They are understated and playful without sacrificing texture or creativity." Kirkus Reviews 

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Imagine Wanting Only This

By KRISTEN RADTKE

“Remarkable. . . . a breathtaking mix of prose and illustration. . . . Radtke is able to create beautiful if odious universes out of the potential of ruin, finding infinitesimal shades of nuance within a soft, greyscale palette. . . . Stunning.”
—The Atlantic, qtd. on http://kristenradtke.com/

Read a chapter here at HuffPost.

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Check out The Guardian's Graphic novel special: Celebrating the booming art form and marking 10 years of the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story prize.

~ From Zadie Smith to Ethan Hawke: why we love graphic novels
Famous fans tell us how they got hooked and name their all-time favourites
by Zadie Smith, Ethan Hawke, Sam Bain, Amanda Palmer, Nick Hornby

~ Related, from the Guardian, on graphic short stories:

~ Tor Freeman has been named winner in the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story prize 2017. This is her entry: If You’re So Wise, How Come You’re Dead?

~ 'I was in shock!': On the 10th anniversary of the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story prize, we [The Guardian!] talk to previous prizewinners from Isabel Greenberg to Julian Hanshaw, and to 2017’s star, Tor Freeman.

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A List of Lists!

11 Can’t-Miss Literary Graphic Novel Adaptations
By Cassandra Neace, June 19, 2017

The 10 best graphic novels of 2017
By Michael Cavna Nov 15, 2017

Comics Cross Over at Library Journal | Genre Spotlight: Graphic Novels
By Douglas Rednour, June 13, 2017

13 "Literary" Comic Books and Graphic Novels for Book Nerds
By Crystal Paul.  Feb 22, 2016

Older lists:

10 Graphic Novels for the Literary Minded
By Kelly Thompson February 27, 2012

Drawn Out: The 50 Best Non-Superhero Graphic Novels
Rolling Stone, May 5, 2014

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On the other hand...

Graphic Novels Are Trending in English Departments, and That’s a Problem
MAY 15, 2017 Shannon Watkins for The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

"One reason is that the majority of graphic novels tend to advance political agendas. The graphic novels found on course syllabi and on reading lists often deal with controversial political issues such as social justice, immigration, gay rights, etc. …

"Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with reading about these topics or with discussing them. But what is particularly concerning about assigning these politically charged books is that it seems to be part of a larger push to rid the university of its traditional focus, and to push a social justice agenda."

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BURN PILE: Ephemera. Self-doubt & Jellies. Ink artfully spattered. And gourds.

Juli Berwald: Looking at Life Through The Two Dozen Eyes of a Jellyfish
"They sense their world with not just one but with many, many faces"

“Sometimes during the day, while the kids were at school and I was supposed to be working, I sat watching the pulsing, the resting, the floating. What was life like for a jellyfish? What did they feel? Could they hear the sounds in the house? Did they taste the water? Did the jellyfish know I was watching them?
From Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone, by Juli Berwald.”

Œ=~~

David Queen is a Truman Capote Fellow at the University of Montana. His story, "House Call," is in the latest issue of Whiskey Island (Issue #69), and another called "Dry" is forthcoming in Jellyfish Review. David also published a review of Mary Miller's new collection Always Happy Hour in Fiction Southeast.

Œ=~~

Narrative Magazine’s Poetry Contest Winners are online:

• The Food Chain by Raven Leilani
• Free Huey P. Newton with Every Purchase and Other Poems by Troy Jollimore
• Watching the Foxes by Milo Gallagher

Œ=~~

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Aya Satoh

CutBank Poetry Editor Aya Satoh is interviewed by Rachel Mindell (MFA 2015) of Submittable about her experience at Thinking Its Presence, “a conference focused on explorations of race, creative writing, and art,” in An Encounter with the Ephemeral Archive: Thinking Its Presence 2017

Œ=~~

Alicia Mountain’s (MFA 2015) poem, “Inescapable Luck,” is in The Southampton Review. 

Œ=~~

At Poets.org, a celebration of “Native American Heritage Month, a time for us to honor the history, culture, and traditions of Native Americans past and present.” Featured poems from Alexie to Zepeda, and several essays, as well.

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What Flannery O'Connor's College Journal Reveals by Karen Swallow Prior.
“The brief diary shows an aspiring writer struggling to overcome doubt and anxiety.”

“…eight years after her death, The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor would be honored with the National Book Award for Fiction. But the young woman of 18 writing in the journal knows none of this. What she knows is that she wants to succeed as an artist, but she is filled with self-doubt…”

Œ=~~

“On Not Writing” by Alison K Williams

“This is checking my tool box and wondering where the secret tool that makes it easy is. This is suspecting everyone else has the secret tool and they’re all only pretending it’s hard so I don’t feel bad.

This is ridiculous envy.”

Œ=~~

"Two months after the publication of my suicide essay, I woke up one morning and knew I was going to kill myself that day."
“Reading ‘Girl, Interrupted’ in the Psych Ward” by Anne Thériault at Electric Lit.

Œ=~~

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Some Cheer and Reality Checks for the Coming Holiday!

“What to Read when You Want to Feel Grateful”
The Rumpus shares a selection of books “that have taught us, inspired us, woke us up, offered us hope, [given] us a glimpse at our possible futures, and so much more.”

Œ=~~

Native American Girls Describe the REAL History Behind Thanksgiving | Teen Vogue

Featuring: Laurel Cotton, Duannette Reyome, Evannah Moniz-Reyome, Kiera Thompson, Wacantkiya Mani Win Eagle, and Wanbli Waunsila Win Eagle.

Œ=~~

In the Guardian: “Is it too late to save the world? Jonathan Franzen reflects on the role of the writer in times of crisis.”

"I’m not on social media, but my friends reported that I was being called all sorts of names, including 'birdbrain' and 'climate-change denier'. Tweet-sized snippets of my essay, retweeted out of context, made it sound as if I’d proposed that we abandon the effort to reduce carbon emissions, which was the position of the Republican party, which, by the polarising logic of online discourse, made me a climate-change denier. In fact, I’m such a climate-science accepter that I don’t even bother having hope for the ice caps. "

Œ=~~

"It’s the most wonderful time of year again: pre-Thanksgiving! Here at Manger, we’ve been wracking our brains for weeks to give you new content about a holiday that’s had the same menu for three centuries and change." 
WE HOPE YOU ENJOY YET ANOTHER THANKSGIVING ISSUE OF OUR FOOD MAGAZINE! by Krithika Varagur

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And for no good reason at all, Ralph Steadman. “Don’t be sniffy about people who dip pens…”

And here's your Pre-Thanksgiving Easter egg...

PS: Special thanks and HT to Hamish Rickett for this week's jellyfish preoccupation.

BURN PILE: Even from a Dumpster fire, embers will rise.

This week, a small offering of embers to chase:

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• As Austin Kleon’s Twitter bio states: “Newsletters are the new Twitter.” Go sign up for his weekly dose of coolness at https://austinkleon.com/newsletter/

Image via Austin Kleon's tweet.

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• Hear 4+ Hours of Jazz Noir: A Soundtrack for Strolling Under Street Lights on Foggy Nights

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• Visit http://www.narrativemagazine.com/ -- yeah, right now's fine.

From their About page:

Narrative is dedicated to advancing literature in the digital age by supporting the finest writing talent and encouraging reading, as the gateway to understanding, across generations, in schools, and around the globe. Our digital library of new literature by celebrated authors and by the best new and emerging writers is available for free.

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• Not the least bit new, but Annie Dillard is hard to beat. Go listen to her on NPR.

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• A fascinating leftover from last week's Halloween Burn Pile, "Tuesday's Child" by Micah Nathan at the Paris Review blog.

“In early fall of 1989 my friends Craig, Mick, and I tried to summon a demon—Astaroth, the crowned prince of Hell, if I’m remembering right—to the driveway of Craig’s suburban home.”

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• And, in closing, an opposing view from the heart of Julien Baker.

“She closes out the song by singing the word 'rejoice' again and again, right up against the crack in her register, whipping up the crowd into a tent revival of the heart.”

From "Julien Baker Believes in God" by Rachel Syme in The New Yorker. And in the same venue, Jia Tolentino takes a more recent listen in "The Raw Devotion of Julien Baker."

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BURN PILE: The "What have you done to its eyes?" Edition

Halloween is a mere 3 sleepless nights away, and this weekend it may as well be here, upon us, within us, overtaking us, swallowing our souls whole... Welcome to the Burn Pile's collection of spooky fun and not-so-cheery glimpses of our inevitable doom.

Art by Josh Cooley, from The Chive, "Movie scenes get turned into an R-rated children’s book"

So what's at the core of our attraction to the frightening, anyway? Why do we need to jump out of our skins now and then? Why do we crave it?  “A Fondness for Fear: Why Do We Like To Be Scared?” offers insights into fright nights, when "our thoughts can just take a break and we can enjoy being fully in our bodies, feeling primal and animal. When you’re on a rollercoaster or in a haunted house you’re not thinking about your bills, your classes, your relationships or your future…"

“13 Scary Short Stories You Can Read Online to Get in the Halloween Spirit”
Kristian Wilson warns that "if you came to this list looking for your standard collection of ghost stories, you might be disappointed. I have chosen stories that run the gamut from science fiction to fantasy, and everything in-between, because any story can be spooky if you try hard enough. This list includes webcomics, creepypasta, and classic stories from your favorite, spooktacular writers, including Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes), Joyce Carol Oates (The Accursed), and Karen Russell (Swamplandia!). Some of the stories have their moments of humor, while others are just downright unsettling."

From Kristian's list come two for your immediate consumption:

          “How to Get Back to the Forest” by Sofia Samatar.

"And bugs—the idea of a bug planted under your skin, to track you or feed you drugs—that’s another dumb story.
Except it’s not, because I saw one."

           "The Bongcheon-Dong Ghost" by Studio Horang

An animated webcomic with the warning that “reader discretion is advised for pregnant women, the elderly, and those suffering from serious medical conditions.”

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Here's a perennial frightener, the Reddit thread that never fails to bug me out. See what you think of these tales of high weirdness in the woods: I'm a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service, I have some stories to tell.

"When we found her, she was curled up under a large rotted log. She was missing her shoes and pack, and she was clearly in shock. She didn't have any injuries, and we were able to get her to walk with us back to base ops. Along the way, she kept looking behind us and asking us why 'that big man with black eyes' was following us."

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“Why I Decided to Become a Witch”
“I didn’t always identify as witch; I used to be pastry chef.” These everyday women spill why they identify as witches, what that entails, and what their witchcraft means to them.

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“I really liked Practical Magic, too, but…”
"So... You worship Satan?"
"What? Next you're going to tell me you're a lesbian, too?"
YouTuber cutewitch772 shares choice unsolicited opinions in “SHIT PEOPLE SAY TO: Pagans, Neopagans, Wiccans, Witches, etc.”

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PJ Harvey “The Devil”

     As soon as I'm left alone
     The Devil wanders into my soul

2007 - White Chalk

William Peter Blatty, author and producer of The Exorcist, on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

If you’re short on time and need some instant fight or flight hormones, drop in at the 10:49 marker and listen to the audio recording Blatty brought along of an IRL exorcism in progress.

Black Sabbath's original video performance of the song "Black Sabbath" www.BlackSabbath.com

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Finished the new season of Stranger Things already? Here are more prime watchables from Netflix: 11 Great Underseen Horror Movies on Netflix "The streaming service has well-trod classics like The Shining and A Nightmare on Elm Street. But how about these lesser-known frightening films?" by SCOTT TOBIAS

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And now for something really scary from the “This is no dream. This is really happening!” files:
“Full Frontal's (Hot As) Hell House | October 25, 2017”

Don’t worry. “You will not float away.”

If you've had enough of evil creeps creeping, or maybe just need to feel better about yourself, your Halloween party hangover, and the universe as a whole, have a serious virtual soul cleansing and envastment. Enjoy the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram right here at your desk or on your phone.

Click here for a secret Halloween treat!

BURN PILE: “I’ve got good news! That gum you like is going to come back in style.”

Dorothy Bendel looks behind the curtains in the red room to ask What ‘Twin Peaks’ Can Teach Us About Writing—And Experiencing—Trauma.

“‘Twin Peaks’ storytelling shares similarities with “hermit crab” essays, braided essays, and other experimental forms that provide structures we can upend.”

Lesson "How to speak in the Red Room" by Michael J. Anderson Easter Egg from the Twin Peaks DVD

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Serious fun and games at Playtime.pem.org: Turnabout: A Story Game by J. Robert Lennon

You stare at the folded paper in your hands,

knowing you shouldn't open it, but also knowing that you must.

 “J. Robert Lennon presents us with an engaging maze of story—move left, right, up, down, and find a new twist with each read.”

And look!

J. Robert Lennon has visited the Burn Pile before, with "Hibachi" by J. Robert Lennon - A Single Sentence Animation from Electric Literature.

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Joanna Walsh Is Setting Language on Fire: Tobias Carroll and Joanna Walsh at Electric Lit.

“I’m a writer because I know that language is a borrowed or stolen, imperfect and communal attempt to create meaning. It’s best not to take it too seriously, but it’s also good to take that unseriousness as seriously as possible.”

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All Accounts and Mixture contributor, Brian Czyzyk, stands “In Defense of Beige” at Gulf Stream. My choice for Most Surprising Defense? “Color of Patti Smith’s tongue.”

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Samantha Grad talks with Emily Elizabeth Thomas about the power in “intelligence and grit” at Amadeus: “Lola: Girl Got a Gun”: Director Emily Elizabeth Thomas on Female-Focused Storytelling “…when I was a kid growing up in Texas, I wanted a gun. I wanted it to be bubble gum pink, with roses painted on the side. I think I thought it would give me power that I didn’t have, and I didn’t yet know the trauma that guns cause.”

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At Commonplace: Conversations with Poets (and Other People), “Rachel Zucker speaks with Erika L. Sánchez about her first book of poems, her first YA novel (currently shortlisted for the National Book Award), her experience as a sex advice columnist, how her manuscript became a book, writing unlikeable characters, shame, obsessions, sex, making things up in poems and prose, authenticity, feminism, Buddhism, and DACA.”

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If you’re not acquainted with Owen Egerton, stop by the monkey cage for a visit. “Unspeakable” at the PowellsBooks.blog:

“If we could just say what it is to be alive, if we could communicate directly the cosmos of experience inside each of us, we wouldn’t be driven to color canvas, pen operas, or spend years of our brief lives typing out fictions; or stand at the bars of a cage dancing and screaming.

We are pulsing with hunger and starlight and we don’t have the words to say it. But we do have stories.”

Thank you, Owen, for this week’s mic drop.

BURN PILE: Use Your Words

   Art as activism.
        Art as reportage.
             Art as truth-telling.

“Literature is a place where we can construct new realities together, but unless the literature available to us is representative, those new realities threaten to reconstruct the prejudice and discrimination of the world we live in.”
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, in ART AS ACTIVISM: AN EVENING WITH AI WEIWEI, from PEN America: Protecting Artists is More Important than Ever

PEN America's Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) "is an interactive hub that gathers, shares, and coordinates the many resources, services, and forms of assistance available to artists at risk. ARC aims to strengthen connections between threatened artists and the organizations that support them, and in doing so, hopes to aid all artists, regardless of discipline, public platform, or nationality in the fight for free expression."

Rokudenashiko, Ali Asgar, and Mohsen Namjoo. These are three artists, with three different disciplines, from three different countries, but all are in danger for their work. Read more about courageous artists like these and how the Artist at Risk Connection seeks to support them: artistsatriskconnection.org.

Language has seen a strong week, speaking in many forms, truth being its strength, especially when provoked. Here are a handful of memorable moments:

"Us Girls" -- Fiction from Amy Silverberg and (b)OINK

More from (b)OINK, poetry by Austin Beaton. "Resilience"

Lauren Duca at Teen Vogue: "Harvey Weinstein is More Proof That We Can Take Down the Patriarchy With Storytelling"

Deceptively small; subtle then slashing. Kathy Fish's new flash that has stormed the Internet: "COLLECTIVE NOUNS FOR HUMANS IN THE WILD"

The Mask You Live In follows boys and young men as they struggle to stay true to themselves while negotiating America’s narrow definition of masculinity.

"What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About" -- Lidia Yuknavitch tweets: "BOOM :: Michele Filgate opens it UP :: having come from a home where a mother did not stop a father, i can relate..."

"Untangling Gun Violence from Mental Illness." "The news often portrays people with psychiatric disorders as a danger to others, when suicide is the much greater risk." A currently relevant article from Julie Beck. July 2016 in The Atlantic. 

"Open Carry" by Rebecca Starks.
"It rains four inches a year in Las Vegas.
What if this isn’t the time to talk about umbrellas?"
Listen: https://www.rattle.com/audio/StarksOpen.mp3

So many more issues, so many more links for this list. Pin your finds or your creations here, too, in the comments. Share these voices. Get loud.

There is good news on the horizon, in small ways. There is this to look forward to:

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Witness a portrait of one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. Joan Didion: The Center Will Now Hold, only on Netflix October 27.

BURN PILE: Author Interviews Wonderland Edition

When the words come hard and you need a minute of procrastinatory inspiration, interviews with authors you love (or don’t know you love, yet) are a route of re-entry to your own work. Reading or watching or listening about writing feels like something constructive while you’re behaving less like a creator, and more like a nonproductive lump, staring slack-eyed at the computer. And for avid readers, interviews offer a look into an author’s head, a “Behind the Music” for wordmongers. The humans creating your favorite books are (you hope!) as fascinating as the books themselves, and the interviews, like literary works, are timeless.

The Paris Review is my top-of-the-heap inspiration source, for their series of author interviews dating back to the ‘50s. (The price of a subscription allows access to the periodical’s entire online archive. Seriously. Everything.)

Sheila Heti discusses her first book, "The Middle Stories." Part of "The Paris Review"'s "My First Time" video interview series. Subscribe on YouTube: http://bit.ly/1c7dpzW Watch more videos at: http://www.theparisreview.org/myfirst... ----------------------------------------­----------------------- Twitter: https://twitter.com/parisreview Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parisreview Google+: https://plus.google.com/1053743443162... This series is made by the filmmakers Tom Bean, Casey Brooks, and Luke Poling.

There's a video series, too, on authors’ “My First Time.” Sheila Heti speaks here about her first story collection, The Middle Stories.  Subscribe for free to the video series.

Here’s the playlist so far:
My First Time Video Series.

Through a stroke of required-reading luck, I’ve been enjoying the work of Cate Kennedy this week. Along with her stories, the Net is graced with Cate’s interviews, both text-based and on video. Indulge yourself:

“Unbraiding the Short Story with Cate Kennedy,” at World Literature Today: “If I had to sum up in one word what ‘the human condition’ is, I’d say that word is ‘ouch.’ … Human fallibility seems to be a preoccupation I return to over and over again. What people do when they’re behind the eight ball or floundering with a hit that’s come out of left field. Not so much what they think or say: what they actually do.”

In a Griffith Review piece, Cate reveals: “…one of the powerful things about writing from ordinary life is the elements you select from it are immediately recognisable to people. So you can hide things in plain sight, in a way, or subvert expectation.” (Here’s the story referenced in the interview, “A Glimpse of Paradise.”)

Last in this Cate Kennedy-obsessed list (there are many more online), an in-depth live video interview: “At this Sydney Writer’ Festival session, award-winning writer Cate Kennedy speaks to publisher Hilary McPhee about her highly regarded debut novel, The World Beneath.” Go watch it here.

Google any author, and you’ll find a wide-ranging selection of windows into nuns or other inhabitants of their head. And as long as I’m in this video rabbit hole, join me. Here’s the entrance to burrow into another favorite brain: search for George Saunders interview on Youtube…

Look! It's George Saunders and Stephen Colbert, “George Saunders has a Nun in His Head.”

George Saunders tells Stephen about his writing process, the nun in his head and sings a song about winning (sort of).

Dig into the craft-mind of Missoula author, Melissa Stephenson, in Michael Noll’s interview series “Read to Write Stories.” Michael’s blog (with a book coming soon) “features weekly writing exercises based on a story, novel excerpt, or essay that has been published or made available online.” The list of authors Noll interviews is a mile-long scroll of goodness. Have a look here.

Prefer to simply listen? Start with Sarah Vap and Rachel Zucker, at Zucker’s Commonplace: Conversations with Poets (and Other People).

Not to be left out, CutBank interview excitement is on the horizon, too!
We’ve got our own interview feature coming early next week, as Jason Bacaj brings us a conversation with William Finnegan. Finnegan is a UM alumnus, New Yorker staff writer, and winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for his memoir, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. And of course, you can find videos to get you warmed up for Jason’s interview. If you're in Missoula, Finnegan will be giving at craft lecture October 13. See the Facebook event listing for details.

Okay, one more from Cate Kennedy, at WritingtheWild.net: On the act of writing the early drafts, getting the first rush on paper vs ‘crafting’ later on: “Getting into a ‘generative’ state of mind, though, is harder – it’s a brainwave state, pretty much, rather than a learned expertise – like daydreaming. The less analysis and second-guessing involved in this state, the better.”

Director/editor - Ed Dougherty DP - Jeff Schneider Animation - Luis Romo Colorist - Persephanie Engel

To wrap this Burn Pile up tight, enjoy A Giant Dog falling into another kind of rabbit hole… Here’s “Roller Coaster,” from their fourth album, Toy. Something of a visual interview with a twist: AGD’s Sabrina Ellis and Andrew Cashen adventure through a day in Disneyland, while, ahem, in a mindspace reminiscent of (Go Ask) Alice … in Wonderland? Read the article here, or click play on the wide-eyed video trip.

Thanks for the reminder, Karma.

BURN PILE: ~ Arting about art ~

Writing about writing, painting about words, seeing things others don’t hear, and more songs about buildings and food.

One of our great privileges here at CutBank is to publish the All Accounts and Mixture feature. The works are as varied as their authors. Poems. Stories. Essays. Indefinables. All of them stunning and strong.

The blend of music and memory in “Conversations with Paul,” by David Meischen, inspired a leap into a note-taking, brainstorming rabbit hole which swallowed me in tangents, twisted connections, trainwrecks of thought, and unrelated wonderings over what’s so enchanting about art that includes other art, or is about art, or is experimental in overlapping genres and mediums. What qualifies as “experimental,” anyway? “Conversations” isn’t a piece directly about music, yet Meischen weaves the Beatles throughout the narrative, and this twining of mediums led to another All Accounts contributor, Crystal Hartman and her piece, “Visual Response to Federico García Lorca,” featured on the blog back in July of 2014.

Here’s Sir Paul, covering his old band’s stuff: Paul McCartney - Abbey Road Medley (Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End) - Live In Tokyo 2013

Another side tunnel in the rabbit hole leads to written art about the visual, including a visit with poet Lisa Beech Hartz in the Mud Season Review and Rust + Moth, a dip into ancient Listlandia for Ten of the best: examples of ekphrasis, followed inexplicably (like most synaptic paths of association) by a brief foray into synesthesia, and the paintings it inspired in Melissa McCracken, and finally down to the sidewalk with one more poem about painting at the Street Lit blog: “You Paint Loud.”

Today (Sept 29/17) at a Montana Book Festival panel on the inner workings of lit journals — a panel moderated masterfully by CutBank’s own Editor-in-Chief, the wisely-nodding Bryn Agnew — experimental work got a mention, and the role of online journals in providing space for that experimentation (when it works!). Sundog Lit in particular meets that need. (They announced their Best of the Net nominees today.) Also discussed was the Oxford American’s successful melding of music and literature, which, in a flash of unfocused clicking, led to Björk, as experimental as ever in the Guardian’s Track of the Week: The Gate, “perhaps the Björkiest thing that’s ever Björked.”

And in the end? More Songs About Buildings and Food.

The answer is “Yes.”

BURN PILE: Burnt Books

"Jorge Luis Borges noted that ‘of all man’s instruments the most wondrous is, without any doubt, the book ... it is the extension of memory and imagination’. The key word here is ‘memory’. Books form the collective memory that any conqueror, dictator or fanatic seeks to destroy."
Kenneth Baker, "Burning Books"

As if meant to counterbalance the forces of the universe, the Montana Book Festival (Sept 27-Oct 1) shares the calendar with Banned Books Week. You owe it to humanity to join us in Missoula to celebrate all things lit (and pie and whiskey, and such).

There will be no burnings (and no bannings) of books or other goodness, although you might just get a little lit yourself. The full festival schedule is right here, and while you're running around Missoula, be a good citizen and visit the festival's sponsors.

The Burning of Books or St Dominic de Guzman and the Albigensians, By Pedro Berruguete, 15th century

The American Library Association takes on the hefty mission of providing "leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.” (Emphasis is emphatically ours...) Part of their chores involve dealing with challenges lain on the table by folks who wish the world conformed more tightly to their own views. Here's the top 10 from last year. You might detect a theme running through these challenges... Hmm...

At BannedBooksWeek.org, you can dig into 10 Deliciously Dangerous Poetry Books, an examination of Banned Books that Shaped America (I'm thrilled that Where the Wild Things Are made this list!), and although the map is a tad outdated, Mapping Censorship is an interesting view of what and where in the efforts to shut down access to "questionable" literature. Missoula apparently had issues with Jon Jackson's Dead Folks and J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. 

Signature-Reads.com gives Tom Blunt, offering up 16 Quotes from Great Authors for Banned Books Week. Among these is the closer for this week's Burnpile, from Henry Louis Gates Jr., “2 Live Crew, Decoded,” 1990:

“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”

The comments are wide open. If you've got thoughts, let's see 'em.

Be kind, be generous with your art and your heart, and Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum.

BURN PILE: The season is upon us —

…for submissions!

Submissions for the CutBank print edition are now open. Our print journal is accepting submissions of fiction or creative nonfiction up to 8,500 words, and poetry up to 5 poems per submission. Electronic only, please. There is no fee, and full guidelines are right here: http://www.cutbankonline.org/print-edition/

The CutBank Big Sky, Small Prose: Flash Contest is still open, but shuts down entries tomorrow, September 16. There’s a $500 first place prize, with publication in CutBank 88. Two runners-up will be awarded $50 and publication in CutBank 88.  All other submissions will be considered with submissions for the CutBank print edition. Send us 750 words or fewer. Lyric essays, prose poems, short essays, vignettes - send us your best, most dazzling short form prose. Hurry!  Entry fee is only $7.00. Submit here: https://cutbank.submittable.com/submit

David Byron Queen, in the fiction track at UM’s MFA program, has a fabulously unsettling flash piece up in the latest issue of (b)OINK: "Bonesetters." And Renée Branum (UM MFA 2017), is the Nonfiction Winner of Aquifer, the Florida Review Online’s 2017 Editor’s Award, with her essay, “Bolt.”  

The Cassini spacecraft made the ultimate sacrifice, and is now mind-and-body melded with Saturn. Its life ended in a fiery, “do no harm” way, to ensure our horrible terrestrial microbes wouldn’t rub off should Cassini bump into Titan or Enceladus, two of Saturn’s SIXTY-TWO moons. Coverage here, at WAPO.

Elsewhere in the sky, we’ve had atmospheric issues nationwide (that’s an understatement), yet some beauty may still come of it. The Northwest may be seeing its season of flames and haze end soon, and yet, words remain, some of them gorgeous in their ominous tone. Or just plain gorgeous. The Seattle Times turned to artists and writers to turn smoke into art.

In the random notes file, we’ve got wonders from all around:

• Signature raves: “Celeste Ng Stuns Again in New Novel, Little Fires Everywhere”
   
• On BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog, indulge your digital self: “Click, Scroll, Select, and Drive: Navigating the Digital Essay.” Sarah Minor and Eric LeMay discuss whether essayists are “interested in preserving the essay as a genre that values so much of what our digital spaces don’t.” This may help you form an opinion: “Essays on the Essay and Other Essays” by Eric LeMay.
   
• “Ahead of 2017’s National short story prize, Jon McGregor reluctantly chooses ‘swoony’ work from recent years showing some of the ways to write them well,” in a Guardian listicle that must’ve been a tough one to narrow down: “Top 10 contemporary short stories.”
   
• Add this Lit Hub list to this list, too: “THE CLASSES 25 FAMOUS WRITERS TEACH: They're Not Always What You'd Expect”

Until next time, here’s Elvis Costello, and his pitch to “write every day” … sort of. 
:-)

BURN PILE: Once upon a time, a (hu)man walks into a bar…

…or hunkers down by the campfire with a story of the big one that got away, or gives in when the kids demand before bed: “Tell us again about that time when…”

How would we know who we are, if not for our stories? When we share them, we reveal the book inside the cover, the person inside the persona we either design for the judging eyes of others, or an identity imposed upon us by circumstance. “Listen,” we say. “Let me tell you who I really am.” Detroit, whose cover blurbs might point to tales of “abandoned auto factories and urban desolation,” has taken steps to present a fresh narrative. Edward Helmore writes in The Guardian of how, “irritated by the relentless focus on ruin porn, or pre-emptive stories about the city’s tech resurgence, Aaron Foley will attempt to offer a more nuanced portrait” of the city and its people, in “Detroit redefined: city hires America's first official 'chief storyteller'”  

Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, tells us stories about stories and the science behind them in a fascinating (and entertaining) Ted talk. “Every day in our lives we are trying to impose the order of story structure on the chaos of existence.” Telling stories to ourselves, and constructing narratives to inhabit is a survival skill, a winnowing of information overload. But other questions bubble up: Why do “we care so much, especially about fiction? About the fake struggles of fake people. Why is that interesting to us?” Have a look: https://youtu.be/Vhd0XdedLpY

The “chaos of existence” leaves most of us little time for stories, other than trying to predict the path of our days, or to look back and try to shoehorn those days into our chosen narratives. There’s always time for flash, though! The New Yorker discovered flash fiction recently. “Smithereens,” by Aleksandar Hemon, 741 words that revel in the “endless joy of converting something into nothing.”  Visit the entire collection: Flash Fiction: A summer of very short stories, for 10 of the New Yorker's favorites.

(b)OINK presents its 2017 flash contest winners, pieces small and brilliant and distilled.    
The winners were chosen by Kathy Fish, who you can get to know better in an interview at The Other Stories, in which she discusses the evolution of “Sway.”

CutBank’s Big Sky, Small Prose flash contest is open for submissions, but not for long! Entries are welcome until September 16. This year's contest will be judged by Zach VandeZande, an Assistant Professor at Central Washington University, who will choose examples of the most “interesting, compelling fiction and nonfiction prose in 750 words or fewer.” Pare and polish and submit your finest. There’s a $500 first place prize, with publication in CutBank 88, and two runners-up will be awarded $50 each along with publication. All submissions will be considered for the print edition of CutBank Literary Magazine. Guidelines are here, or head straight to Submittable to enter your work!

Take Note! Cutbank’s general submission season opens soon, September 15 - February 1, and we’re always open for your contributions to the blog! Submission guidelines at CutBank Online.