Switchback Books

Gatewood Prize Results

2012-01-03T15:27:00.010-06:00

Switchback Books is pleased to announce the winner of the 2011 Gatewood Prize, chosen by Harryette Mullen:

Manifest by Cynthia Arrieu-King

Switchback Books will publish Manifest in February 2013.

Cynthia Arrieu-King was raised in Louisville, Kentucky. She’s been a gopher for Mr. Rogers, a hauler at a pizza sauce factory, an echocardiographer, and is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at Stockton College. Her book People are Tiny in Paintings of China was published by Octopus Books in 2010 and her collaborative chapbook with Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis By a Year Lousy with Meteors is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press in 2012. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Boston Review, Jacket, and Witness.

Thanks to all who submitted for giving us another batch of high-quality reading material and making our decisions more difficult! We'd like to bring special attention to the manuscripts our editors chose as finalists and semi-finalists.

Finalists

LEMONWORLD & Other Poems by Carina Finn

Manifest by Cynthia Arrieu-King

the shiny jars aligned by Theresa Sotto

This Body of Islands by Steffi Drewes

Surge by Colleen McCarthy

We Lack in Equipment & Control by Jennifer H. Fortin

Anti-Portrait at Flashpoint by Cori Winrock

Who are your people, Sugar?: a ritual history by Ashley David

Flashes by Jennifer Firestone

Off to the Nervous Museum by Claire Donato

Semifinalists

Bubble-Like, Drastic, and Improbably Charming by Anji Reyner

We Can’t Read This by Meg Day

an uncanny bouche of debaucheries by JJ Hastain

Candida: A Translation by Elaine Castillo

Perpetua Takes a Backseat by Catherine Cafferty

[Red Missed Aches] Love at No Tells

2011-12-30T12:35:00.002-06:00

Thanks to Lily Ladewig, Steven Karl, and Daniela Olszewska, who picked Jennifer Tamayo's Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes as one of their favorite books of 2011, making it one of the most popular picks of the year at the No Tells blog!

And thanks to Reb Livingston for compiling these lists every year, which give small press titles much-deserved attention.

Start the new year with a copy of your own!

[buy from Switchback] [buy from SPD]

Annual Belladonna* Benefit Performance and Auction

2011-11-27T11:35:00.001-06:00

Please support our friends at Belladonna* by buying a (CHEAP!) ticket to their performance & auction:

Tuesday, December 13, 2011, 6:30 pm

Hi Art!
227 West 29th Street, 4th Floor (between 7th & 8th)
New York, NY 10001

Advanced ticket sales are only $12! At the door, tickets are $20.

Are you able to contribute a little extra to our benefit? Thank you! We really appreciate it!
Friend: For $25, you'll receive admission to the benefit and acknowledgement on our website.
Super Supporter: For $50, you'll receive admission to the benefit and acknowledgement on our website, a complimentary Belladonna* book of your choice, and our undying love and gratitude!
Belladonna* Lover: For $200, you'll receive two Benefit tickets, a full limited-edition Elders Series set, 5 signed chapbooks, and a one of kind Belladonna* bag.

Are you going to be out of town, but still want to support us? We'd love it if you could purchase a ticket on behalf of a local New York poet! Please include a note when you purchase your ticket. Thank you!

The Belladonna* Benefit will showcase a performance by Anne Waldman and Ambrose Bye, live auction by renowned auctioneer Erin Ward of Star Benefit Auctionswith special assistant Amy King, and a dance performance by the A.O. Movement Collective.

The Auction and the Benefit will support Belladonna*s 2012 season of publications and events, which share a theme of caring for the material realities of poets, viewing a publishing project holistically. We're referring to 2012 as The Year of Material Lives, and we plan to host combination readings/dinners with ample time set aside to discuss the economic and social concerns of writers, artists, publishers, and other creators. Moreover, in addition to continuing our commemorative chaplet series, we hope to publish five full-length books of hybrid and experimental work in the coming year including new work by Julie Patton, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, and Tonya Foster.

At the auction, we are hoping to earn the funds to complete our budget for 2012. This year we’ve been fortunate to be the recipient of funds from both NYSCA and The O Books Fund, but we still have work to do to make our goals a reality! Part of our benefit proceeds will also support honoraria for our wonderful interns.

If you have items/art/gift certificates/experiences that you would like to donate to our auction, please email belladonnaseries@gmail.com. We'd love your support!

Some exciting auction items include:

         * A custom-made Wide Road inspired necklace by Paige Taggart!
         * A weekend at The Millay Colony
         * Tickets to the Gotham Girls roller derby
         * Helen Adam's dress
         * 1.5 hour hypnotherapy session with Kristin Prevallet
         * And many more!

PREVIEW THE AUCTION ITEMS...

Please come out to support Belladonna*!

Beer will be lovingly provided for free by Brooklyn Brewery.

Meet Emma Gatewood

2011-11-23T12:45:00.002-06:00

Curious about the the woman after whom the Gatewood Prize was named? Learn more here.

Hanna Andrews Interviewed at Papirmasse

2011-10-27T12:27:00.002-05:00

For about the past five years or more, I’ve been mostly writing about ideas of separation or loss. Not really in terms of grief, but more specifically the shifts that take place when things “come apart.” My first book, Slope Move, is a book-length poem entirely about separation–from an “other”, from the self (feeling divided, or having an alternate consciousness) and from narrative (the changes that occur in a story due to passage of time, shifts in perception, and ‘flaws’ in memory.)

Switchback Joins Bloof & Others for a Halloween Poet Parade!

2011-10-27T11:37:00.001-05:00

Sunday, October 30
6:00pm - 9:00pm
West Village, NYC

A parade of poets through the West Village, on the eve of All Hallows' Eve.

Costumed performances by...

Hanna Andrews
Shanna Compton
Marisa Crawford
Nada Gordon
Jennifer Michael Hecht (new addition!)
Becca Klaver
Jennifer L. Knox
Mark Lamoureux
Sharon Mesmer
K. Silem Mohammad
Danielle Pafunda
Jennifer Tamayo

Map with route and reading points will be available at a later date, but we will likely be hitting Washington Square Park, Jefferson Market & Library, and other public spots in the West Village. (March with us, or meet us along the way.)

Start/End stop:

THE FOUR-FACED LIAR
http://www.thefour-facedliar.com/
165 West 4th Street,
(Between 6th and 7th Avenues)
New York, NY 10014
Phone: (212) 206 8959

OPEN MIKE portion after parade finale. (Sign up at the event. Costumes encouraged!)

[RSVP on Facebook]

SB Asst. Managing Editor Colleen O'Connor Reads Nonfiction

2011-10-26T12:15:00.004-05:00

We have a fantastic group of women behind the scenes at Switchback Books, and our Assistant Managing Editor, Colleen O'Connor, is a superstar!

Colleen is reading in Chicago tomorrow afternoon, as part of the 33 Reading Series at Columbia College Chicago. We New Yorkers are jealous!

Go see Colleen along with nonfiction writer Toni Nealie and poets Leif Haven and Steve Roggenbuck.

Pafunda Reads Tamayo

2011-10-20T10:27:00.002-05:00

Danielle Pafunda reads from Jennifer Tamayo's work next week at the VIDA: Women in Literary Arts event at NYU!

[event site]

JT Takes New York

2011-10-14T13:43:00.003-05:00

Come one, come all, to one or all of Jennifer Tamayo's upcoming NYC appearances!

Poetry Project

St. Mark's Church

Monday, Oct. 17th @ 8PM

w/ Robert Fernandez

The 4th Annual Poetry Brothel Masquerade

The Back Room
102 Norfolk St, NYC-$10

Sunday, Oct. 23rd @ 9PM (til 2AM)

w/ the Poetry Whores

The Stain of Poetry Series

Goodbye Blue Monday

1087 Broadway BK

Friday, November 18th @7PM

ALSO: meaty review of [red missed aches] at HTMLGIANT

ALSO: new video at LIP SYNC

Review of Jennifer Tamayo's [Red Missed Aches] at HTMLGIANT

2011-10-10T18:39:00.001-05:00

The latest strain of Feminism, the so-called Post-Gender moment, which seems to return, ironically, to Feminism’s original rally for otherness over mere resistance, not a pushing back but moving another direction entirely, into an unnamed space, wouldn’t satisfy Tamayo’s complexity of vision which must be gendered: “(there) that instance is the motherest of mothers/ I can’t/ write experience without her.” It’s a fierce sound Tamayo uses, beyond language, certainly Anzaldúa’s la loqueria, but also doubly defined by her as “the path to knowledge.”

Read the rest of the supersmart review here. Thanks, Molly Brodak!

Buy [Red Missed Aches] from SPD here or from Switchback here.

The Olszewska Twofer

2011-08-17T16:36:00.002-05:00

Switchback is thrilled to let the world know that our longtime staff member and current board member Daniela "Deputy D" Olszewska will have her first two full-length books of poetry published in 2012!

CITIZEN J (Artifice Books)

cloudfang: : cakedirt (Horse Less Press)

She already has a zillion chaps that you can get your hands on right now. Find links to them and read more at her blog.

SPD Recommends [Red Missed Aches] by Jennifer Tamayo

2011-08-17T12:22:00.003-05:00

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Art. Memoir. In this bold and energetic debut, temporal malapropisms become purposeful play through Tamayo's poetics of code switching and homophonics. As Tamayo tackles the frustrations of the transnational immigrant experience, language "mistakes" become "missed aches" and she writes mother and mother-tongue into one as "mouth her." A red thread intrudes throughout this frenetic mixed-genre assemblage, suturing identity to the page by erasing text, embroidering images, and stitching collage together. Cathy Park Hong, 2010 Gatewood Prize judge, promises the "brash, political, and bracingly original" [RED MISSED ACHES] will "startle you awake and demand your attention."

You can buy it from SPD here or from Switchback here.

Brandi Homan & Becca Klaver: Booksluts

2011-08-02T12:17:00.021-05:00

"People go [to L.A. to follow their dreams, but it's also a place at risk of sliding into the sea."

"I'm continually fascinated by by people from bigger cities...who think that small-town Midwest, or small-town anywhere, is somehow more simplistic, naive, innocent than where they're from."

My fantastic Switchback co-founders, Brandi Homan and Becca Klaver, were interviewed by Liz Hildreth on Bookslut about their respective books, Bobcat Country and L.A. Liminal. (Note: If you haven't read these books, what are you waiting for??!) Highlights include conversation about level-7 reality, memory theatre, and love/hate relationships with location.

Read the interview here: AN INTERVIEW WITH BRANDI HOMAN & BECCA KLAVER, JULY 2011

Hooray for jennifertamayo.com!

2011-07-19T21:53:00.002-05:00

Introducing . . . JT's new website!

Bozek & Tamayo at Boston Poetry Marathon!

2011-07-15T16:13:00.004-05:00

A Boston Poetry Marathon and BBQ

A Summer Poetry Marathon

featuring 88 local and visiting poets

reading for 8 minutes apiece

Admission is free but the hat will be

be passed

Friday 7/29, 7 PM - 10 PM

Saturday 7/30, 1 PM - 10:30 PM

Sunday 7/31, 1 PM - 5 PM

OUTPOST 186

186 1/2 Hampshire St., Inman Square, Cambridge

SWITCHBACK AUTHOR READINGS!

Jennifer Tamayo ([Red Missed Aches]) is up at 7:40 on Friday

Jessica Bozek (The Bodyfeel Lexicon) reads at 3:16 on Saturday

[full schedule here]

Mónica de la Torre's "Shift"

2011-07-06T23:26:00.002-05:00

Check out videos of Mónica's "reading" of her long poem, "Shift," which will be part of a forthcoming Switchback publication.

There's not much to actually watch here, but that's part of the point!--

Check out pics from JT's launch reading

2011-06-21T14:39:00.007-05:00

for [Red Missed Aches] on Switchback's Facebook page.

And here are some videos!

First, JT reads, accompanied by a recording of JT reading:

Then, the HOOD DANCE!!!:

JT ends the reading by thanking her co-conspirator, Sean:

Carina Finn, fashion correspondent

2011-06-16T16:06:00.001-05:00

Carina has an amazing fashion-centric write-up of JT's launch party for [Red Missed Aches] up at her blog.

Photos and videos from the event coming soon!

Switchback

3 by JBoz

2011-06-15T20:28:00.004-05:00

Check out three poems by Switchback author Jessica Bozek in the last issue of Sawbuck for a while or maybe ever.

Jennifer Tamayo's [RED MISSED ACHES]: The Launch Party!

2011-06-02T19:03:00.004-05:00

Click to enlarge flyer, or see below for details!

Switchback Books

presents

Cathy Park Hong & Jennifer Tamayo

Reading & Book Launch for Jennifer Tamayo's

RED MISSED ACHES READ MISSED ACHES RED MISTAKES READ MISTAKES

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 | 6 p.m.

Pete's Candy Store | 709 Lorimer St. | Brooklyn, NY | Subway: Lorimer St. L

[Red Missed Aches] feels defiantly unfinished, adhering to a DIY feminist punk aesthetic so that it is more rough assemblage than bound book, a palimpsest that provocatively revises female sexuality and citizenship. Tamayo's debut collection is a daring and astonishing work that refuses borders.

--Cathy Park Hong, judge of Switchback Books' 2010 Gatewood Prize

A writer, artist, & performer, JENNIFER TAMAYO is slowly becoming a human being. Her manuscript, Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes, was selected by Cathy Park Hong as the 2010 winner of Switchback Books’ Gatewood Prize. [Woooo doggy!] JT’s art & writing have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in Delirious Hem, Futurepost, The New Delta Review, Contrappostos, and Jacket 2. She is the Managing Editor at Futurepoem and teaches art and poetry to students in Harlem.

CATHY PARK HONG’s first book, Translating Mo’um, was published in 2002 by Hanging Loose Press. Her second collection, Dance Dance Revolution, was chosen for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was published in 2007 by WW Norton. Hong is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems have been published in A Public Space, Poetry, Paris Review, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, Harvard Review, Boston Review, The Nation, American Letters & Commentary, and Denver Quarterly. She is an Assistant Professor at Sarah Lawrence College. Her third book, Engine Empire, will be published in 2012.

[Red Missed Aches] will be available at a special discounted price!

switchbackbooks.com/redmissedaches

Belladonna*'s Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading 6/15

2011-06-02T12:14:00.003-05:00

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

8 pm
The Poetry Project

131 E. 10th St. New York
Free Admission

From Belladonna*:

Please join us as we create a space for people to read and perform Akilah Oliver's work and work inspired by her. The reading will be in the Parish Hall, a room where she read her work, carefully listened to the work of other poets and taught workshops. The event is an opportunity for us to express our deep gratitude and pay homage to her gifts and her greatness.

With Rachel Levitsky, Eileen Myles, Patricia Spears Jones, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Tonya Foster, E. Tracy Grinnell, Tracie Morris, Charles Bernstein, Steven Taylor, Tyler Burba, Julian T. Brolaski, Rachel Zolf, Joyce LeeAnn Joseph, Laura Meyers, Stacy Szymaszek & Marcia Oliver.

Also a special tribute from a group of her former students: Stephen Motika, Lydia Cortes, Kate Jaeger, Jamila Wimberly & Mia Bruner.

Gatewood Prize Reading Period Ends Tomorrow (June 1)!

2011-05-31T20:54:00.003-05:00

Ladies of all stripes and chromosome combinations! You have through 11:59 p.m. tomorrow, June 1, to submit to the Gatewood Prize, our contest for a first or second book of poems by a woman.

Harryette Mullen is judging! The fee is only $18! The fame lasts a lifetime!

Check out previous contest-winning books in our catalog.

Official guidelines are here.

Say YES.

Congratulations to Hanna, Whitney, & Daniela!

2011-05-15T17:13:00.005-05:00

Switchback Books Founding Editor Hanna Andrews, Managing Editor Whitney Holmes, and Daniela "Deputy D" Olszewska were all finalists or semifinalists for Ahsahta's 2011 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, proving once again that we hoard brilliance.

Marisa Crawford Is a May (19) Flower But Not a Four-Faced Liar

2011-05-12T10:25:00.000-05:00

From the Facebook event page:

THE READING AT CHRYSTIE STREET PRESENTS MAY FLOWERS

Jim Cory & Marisa Crawford burst forth with many-petaled poetry, waft the delectable scents of the heartbreak of humor, the humor of heartbreak, & bespeak the splendid fecundity of verse.

Oh please just come hear two of my favorite poets read. They are amazing & wonderful & so sweet, too.

Jim Cory is a PA Arts Council and Yaddo fellow whose poems have recently appeared, or are about to, in Apiary, Burp, Fell Swoop, Fuck!, Court Green, 5 AM, Lungfull!, Skidrow Penthouse and unarmed journal. Favorite words include: pestiferous, palaver, pulchritude, and piece-of-ass. No Brainer Variations, a thoroughly obnoxious chapbook, is the winner of Rain Mountain Press’ 2010 Ron Wardell Prize and will be published by those good people shortly. He lives in Philadelphia and can be reached at coryjim at earthlink dot net.

Marisa Crawford is the author of The Haunted House from the feminist poetry press Switchback Books. Her poems have recently appeared in La Fovea and Columbia Poetry Review, and are forthcoming in Black Clock and Bone Bouquet. Marisa is an editor of Small Desk Press and a writing mentor with Girls Write Now. She lives in Brooklyn. Find her work online at marisacrawfordforever.com.

THURSDAY, MAY 19
7 PM SHARP
THE FOUR-FACED LIAR
165 WEST 4TH STREET
NEW YORK, NY

On [Red Missed Aches] and RED LETTER {X}

2011-05-09T20:29:00.001-05:00

[red missed aches] asks a question about the interplay between image and caption. and how the space between them is a holding lodge for RED LETTER {X}. as in X, XX, XXX, the eyes of the dead. the mark of the incorrect, crux & cross, etc. but red.

>> more at Jennifer Tamayo's contrappostos

Jennifer Tamayo's [Red Missed Aches] Now Available For Preorder!

2011-05-04T10:54:00.008-05:00

Jennifer Tamayo's Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes is now available for preorder on the Switchback website.

[Red Missed Aches] is a perfect-bound, double-impression color (black and red), 8.5" x 8.5" book of poems, images, and some things in between.

Switchback Books

May 15, 2011
ISBN-10: 0978617266
ISBN-13: 978-0978617264

$18.00

Visit our site to preorder the book via Paypal.

From judge Cathy Park Hong's citation:

Jennifer Tamayo's writing is cacophonous, rude, and stripped. She uses equal measures of English, Spanish, and Spanglish; she landmines her poetry with malapropisms so the music is startling and pleasingly discordant. [Red Missed Aches] feels defiantly unfinished, adhering to a DIY feminist punk aesthetic so that it is more rough assemblage than bound book, a palimpsest that provocatively revises female sexuality and citizenship. Tamayo's debut collection is a daring and astonishing work that refuses borders.

Bozek, Crawford, Tamayo, Lemke now at SEAM RIPPER!

2011-04-25T14:00:00.010-05:00

You can find texts & images by Switchback authors Jessica Bozek, Marisa Crawford, and Jennifer Tamayo up at SEAM RIPPER: Women on Textual and Sartorial Style at Delirious Hem, as well as a poems and images by Assistant Editor Dolly Lemke!

Mónica de la Torre in "It's For You: An Interdisciplinary Festival of Collaborative Firsts"

2011-04-22T13:23:00.001-05:00

I T ‘ S F O R Y O U

An Interdisciplinary Festival of Collaborative Firsts

A month of Sundays at the Zinc Bar curated by Ugly Duckling Presse authors Rob Fitterman & Jen Bervin

Sun Apr 24, 5:30 PM

Monica de la Torre, Richard Maxwell, Andrew Lampert & Lisa Sanditz

at Zinc Bar, 82 W. 3rd St. (btwn Thompson and Sullivan), New York, NY

Mónica de la Torre is the author of two poetry books published in the US, Talk Shows (Switchback, 2007) and Public Domain (Roof Books, 2008), and two poetry books published in Mexico City, Acúfenos (Taller Ditoria, 2006) andSociedad Anónima (UNAM/Bonobos, 2010). She is translator of a volume of selected poems by the Mexican poet Gerardo Deniz (Lost Roads, 2000) and co-editor of two anthologies: Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon Press, 2002), and the anthology of post-Latino poetryMalditos latinos, malditos sudacas: Poesía hispanoamericana Made in USA (El billar de Lucrecia, 2009). Collaborative projects include the bookAppendices, Illustrations and Notes, co-written with Terence Gower; The Collective Task, a book by artists and poets published in 2010; and Taller de Mecanografía, forthcoming in Mexico in fall 2011. She is a 2009 NYFA fellow in poetry and senior editor at BOMB Magazine.

Richard Maxwell is a playwright and director living in NYC. He is the artistic director of New York City Players. A volume of his plays, Plays 1996-2000: Richard Maxwell, has been published by Theatre Communications Group. In 2011 he will premier his latest work Neutral Hero at Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels.

Andrew Lampert: Born in the mid-70s in the Midwest, Andrew Lampert produces films, videos and live performances that often bear no resemblance to one another. Over the last decade his works have been widely exhibited at festivals (NY Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Kill Your Timid Notion), in cinemas (BFI, Light Industry), in galleries (Mitchell Algus Gallery, NYC and Associates, London), performance venues (The Kitchen, NYC and The Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow), museums (The Getty Museum, Los Angeles and The Whitney Museum of American Art) and elsewhere. Lampert lives in Brooklyn, works as Archivist at Anthology Film Archives and is soon starting production on a 16mm feature film about technophobes.

Lisa Sanditz is a visual artist whose paintings, lately and often, expressively depict industrial landscapes in China and North America. For more, see www.lisasanditz.com.

Google map / directions

Caroline Whitbeck Reads in Brooklyn This Friday!

2011-04-19T15:43:00.003-05:00

Caroline Whitbeck, Ryan Daley, and Michael Stewart

Friday, April 22 · 7:30pm - 8:30pm

Unnameable Books
600 Vanderbilt Ave
Brooklyn, NY

Check out Caroline's Our Classical Heritage: A Homing Device (Switchback, 2007).

Kathleen Rooney Wants YOU To Enter the Gatewood Prize

2011-04-13T12:49:00.002-05:00

And so do we. Check out former Gatewood winner Kathleen's post on mission-based presses, feminism, and boys' clubs over at Harriet!

At a price like $18 (or $25 if you want a book, too), and with a judge like Harryette Mullen, who could resist?

Full guidelines here.

Submit via our Submishmash page.

Switchback Books Announces the 2011 Gatewood Prize

2011-04-01T12:50:00.009-05:00

The Gatewood Prize is Switchback Books' annual competition for a first or second full-length (48-80 pp.) collection of poems by a woman writing in the English language. It is named after Emma Gatewood, the first woman to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.

2011 JUDGE: Harryette Mullen

READING PERIOD: April 1-June 1, 2011

HARRYETTE MULLEN's most recent books are Recyclopedia (Graywolf Press, 2006) and Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California Press, 2002), a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Mullen was the 2009 recipient of the Academy of American Poets' Fellowship Award. She teaches African American literature and creative writing in the English Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Please visit our website for more information and guidelines.

Download our contest flyer [PDF].

Please re-post and spread the word!

Thank you!

Hanna Andrews & Becca Klaver, Editors
Whitney Holmes, Managing Editor
Dolly Lemke, Assistant Editor

Check out The Dollhouse

2011-03-31T22:40:00.002-05:00

It's a Chicago reading series hosted by Dolly Lemke.

It's a poetry party!!!

SEAM RIPPER: Call For Work

2011-03-29T00:24:00.001-05:00

SEAM RIPPER: Women on Textual & Sartorial Style

Emily Dickinson’s dress.

(Photo: Jerome Liebling, Mt. Holyoke Art Museum.)

This Delirious Hem feature calls for women poets and writers to submit texts and images that examine the relationship between writing and fashion in their lives. Please submit:

1. A brief text that comments on, enacts, or somehow examines the relationship between your clothing and fashion accessories, and your writing and writing accessories.

2. Images (1-5) that display this connection.

We imagine that these texts and images will take all sorts of forms, from poems to prose sketches to photo shoots to close-ups of fabrics and textures. You may choose to include your body in your images, or not. You should interpret these guidelines as loosely as they are intended; if you have questions about a particular idea, feel free to email the curators at the email addresses listed below.

Submit to curators Kate Durbin and Becca Klaver (kate_durbin at yahoo dot com, beccavista at yahoo dot com) by April 15, 2011. Please include a short bio.

Delirious Hem:

http://delirioushem.blogspot.com

Kate Durbin and Becca Klaver talk about poetry and fashion:
http://www.h-ngm-n.com/h_ngm_n-11/becca-klaver-on-kate-durbin.html

Please forward and re-post!

Boston Review on the Gurlesque

2011-03-28T13:00:00.003-05:00

"Hello Kitty" by B.K. Fischer

Journal looking for work by women...

2011-03-25T13:34:00.004-05:00

Hi all,

Country Music, a new online journal, is looking for work by women.

Issue one featured the lovely Amber Nelson and Lucy Biederman!

Journal for Underrepresented, Minority Experiences

2011-03-23T10:18:00.003-05:00

Apparently, I reeeeeeally want you to submit your work. You know, to places.

About Saltwater Quarterly

Saltwater Quarterly is a literary journal devoted to publishing works of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction that exemplify the craft of writing while remaining free of oppressive language or themes. Underrepresented authors, specifically members of oppressed communities, are highly encouraged to submit. Please review the Submission Guidelines page for details about how to submit your work.

Saltwater Quarterly is a literary journal devoted to publishing work that represents or echoes minority experience. We are looking for work that:

* Shines a light on underrepresented communities;
* Exemplifies craft and technique and uses both successfully;
* Subverts or revises traditional forms to illustrate the experience of underrepresented communities;
* Surprises and moves the reader.

Submit to a new Colorado journal!

2011-03-22T10:42:00.002-05:00

News from the Wild West:

Submit for our first issue!

Spittoon is an independent contemporary literary zine dedicated to the publication of quality contemporary poetry and fiction. This publication will publish work by poets and writers, both well known and up-and-coming. Our only goal is to feature excellent work, so there are no form or content restrictions; however, we will never publish "cookie cutter" writers (you know who you are). We want original work that affects the reader in a physical and emotional way. To us, the form is as important as the content and they should both work together to develop the intended effect.

Guidelines:

Spittoon accepts submissions year-round. Response times will vary, but they are generally between 3 to 5 months.

* No previously published work.
* Simultaneous submissions okay.
* Do not submit to Spittoon more than once at a time; please wait for response before submitting again.
* No photographs or clip art should be in any of the files; we should only see words on the page, unless the visuals are actually part of the piece and used to help the piece achieve its intended effect.
* Upon publication, Spittoon claims First Rights; after publication, all rights revert to the author, with the understanding that Spittoon will receive credit if the piece is published elsewhere.
* Please read our mission to better understand the kind of work we want before submitting.
* Include a short bio / cover letter.
* Any submission that does not follow the guidelines will be deleted.

Poetry

Submit up to 5 poems at a time. No length requirement. All should be saved in a single .pdf, .doc, or .rtf document, with author's identifying information at the top of the first page. For poems that are more than one page, indicate page number with last name and poem title at the top of each page.

To submit via postal (snail) mail, include a cover letter with bio and an SASE. Send to:

Spittoon
Poetry Editor
725 S. Taft Hill Rd.
Fort Collins, CO 80521

Fiction

Submit a single piece (up to 5,000 words) or up to three short-shorts. All should be saved in a single .pdf, .doc, or .rtf document, with author's identifying information at the top left of first page, and author last name with title and page number at the top of each additional page.All text should be double-spaced in size 12 font.

To submit via postal (snail) mail, include a cover letter with bio and an SASE. Send to:

Spittoon
Fiction Editor
725 S. Taft Hill Rd.
Fort Collins, CO 80521

For more information or to contact the editor, email spittoonmag@gmail.com or visit www.spittoonmag.com

Arielle Greenberg & Rachel Zucker read from HOME/BIRTH in NYC this week!

2011-03-21T21:33:00.001-05:00

Please join us to celebrate the publication of Home/Birth: a poemic

Wednesday, March 23rd, 7-8 pm @ Book Culture

536 West 112th Street (Between Broadway and Amsterdam)

There will be a short reading, Q & A, books to buy and have signed, and wine and cookies.

—Hope to see you there, Rachel and Arielle

“Home/Birth: A Poemic is an empowering, honest, generous, painful must-read for mothers-to-be and those who love them.” —Ricki Lake & Abby Epstein(producers of The Business of Being Born & authors of Your Best Birth)

“Years ago I gave birth to three children in a hospital, each one spilling forth in a genre unlike the one before. Natural, epidural, endless. This book would have been of great interest to me then. Now it is here in time for my daughters, not just the ones who are poets or prose writers, but the daughters who are students and workers and mothers to be. These daughters live in great peril and fight their way through to the consolation of a home that is safe. Home/Birth represents that consolation, and the bravery required to secure it.” —Fanny Howe, poet

“Greenberg and Zucker have written an intimate, raw, beautiful book. Home/Birth lets you in on a conversation, a most important conversation, between friends, between women, between a woman and herself. It feels like the ancestor midwives are listening in, too, chiming in with reassurance, stories, outrage, wisdom. In a culture that so often silences this conversation with fear and shame and smiles and nods, Greenberg and Zucker sustain it through the interruptions and soundbites, including them in the discourse but never letting them shut it down. Like birth itself, this conversation is not linear or predictable; it is messy and real and powerful, and a gift to be privy to. ‘We haven’t even begun to talk about…’ is one of the book’s refrains, but there’s so very much here.” — Jennifer Block, journalist, author of Pushed

Marisa Crawford Reads at EARSHOT 3/25!

2011-03-18T19:54:00.000-05:00

EARSHOT!

Join us at Rose Live Music in Williamsburg, Brooklyn!

Friday, March 25, 7:30 PM
@ Rose Live Music
Admission: $5 + FREE DRINK!

Guest Host: Gregory Crosby

MARISA CRAWFORD (The Haunted House)
LELAND PITTS-GONZALEZ
Julie Buntin (New York University)
Kat Laskowski (Columbia University)
Frances Gonzalez (The New School)

ROSE LIVE MUSIC is located at 345 Grand Street in Brooklyn, between Havemeyer and Marcy. Visit their website for directions: http://roselivemusic.com/.

EARSHOT is a bi-monthly reading series, dedicated to featuring new and emerging literary talent in the NYC area. Visit http://www.earshotnyc.com/ for more information or e-mail Nicole Steinberg at earshotnyc at gmail dot com.

Dolly Lemke at Devil's Lake

2011-03-16T17:16:00.004-05:00

Man, it's been a busy day today!

Read Dolly's "Girl Cento" here.

And consider submitting here!

Jessica Bozek's Nordic Winter Mix Tape

2011-03-16T17:02:00.003-05:00

Methinks we love anything that Jessica Bozek touches.

Ch-ch-check it out over at the Artifice blog.

Sandy Longhorn on Brandi Homan's Bobcat Country

2011-03-16T12:37:00.007-05:00

the book provides a raw, funny, poignant, and sometimes difficult look at a working-class coming of age in a small Iowa town in the 80s. These are amazing poems in a voice as different from mine as I can imagine, no soft lyricism here. I am in awe of Homan's ability to paint that working-class life in such bright and unflinching tones.

[read the rest]

If You Borrow This Book You Have to Return It

2011-03-16T12:21:00.002-05:00

Visit We Who Are About to Die to hear Becca Klaver espouse the virtues of her Dream Dictionary!

Augury Books Editors' Prize in Poetry

2011-03-15T12:16:00.000-05:00

-Reading period: March 15-May 15, 2011.
-The winner will receive a $1,000 honorarium and publication with Augury Books as well as 10 complimentary copies of the book.
-Submit up 40-75 pages of poetry and an acknowledgments page. Please do not include a bio.
-Entry Fee: $20
-Accepting submissions online through Submishmash at http://augurybooks.submishmash.com/Submit.

Read full guidelines at augurybooks.com.

Submit to Cant!

2011-03-15T10:54:00.003-05:00

In light of our ongoing Numbers Trouble and the recent Count, we know you all are busting out your best work to submit. Please consider submitting work to the fellas over at Cant! Submission details below.

Cant, published bi-annually in Winter and Summer, is looking for poetry and poetry book reviews. Past issues have included the work of Eric Baus, John Gallaher, Noah Eli Gordon, Dorothea Lasky, Lisa Samuels, and Laura Solomon, among others. Cant is 40-52 pages, 4 ½ x 11, saddle stitched, with card stock cover. We accept poetry and poetry book review submissions year round. Only accepts submissions via e-mail at cantjournal@gmail.com. Include contact information with submission (i.e., name, address, and phone number). Simultaneous submissions okay. No previous published poems. Accepts 5-7 poems per submission (wait until you hear back on one before submitting again). Responds in 3-6 months. Time between acceptance and publication is approximately 6-12 months.

Chicago Tribune Features Switchback

2011-03-14T13:38:00.001-05:00

Chicago Tribune: What do you wish more people knew about your press?

Brandi Homan: How truly talented and brilliant our authors are, every single one of them! And that reading poetry is fun, not scary.

Check out the rest!

Swan Songs: A Photo-ish Essay

2011-03-09T21:45:00.033-06:00

Hi everyone,

It's been an interesting month or so over here at Team Switchback!

First, we had a stellar trip to D.C. for the AWP conference, where we—among other things—had a fantastic off-site reading with some of our besties: Horse Less Press and Coconut Books.

Jennifer Tamayo was one of the Switchback readers:

This is what Jennifer's book will be like:

Next, we reached our FIVE-YEAR anniversary... Five. Years.

This is what five years is like:

This is also what five years is like:

And now, on a slightly differently note, I'd like to announce my resignation from my position as Editor-in-Chief.

It looks like this:

But really it's more like this:

And this:

And, finally, this:

My resignation comes only from my own desire to focus on other endeavors. I am forever, forever grateful for every experience I have had working with these talented, exceptional women. Possibly the best women!!!

Together, we look like this:

And do not worry ~ these very same women will continue to publish and promote poetry in the way only they can. I'm also sticking around as a member of the Board, to try and develop it into a resource that will keep Switchback going for years to come.

Much love,
Brandi

The F-Word, a discussion

2011-03-07T13:56:00.002-06:00

Over at The Guardian.

Sez Annie Lennox:

"For me the anomaly is that the western countries are so resourced. I can identify with a woman losing a child. This happened to me, I lost a baby. But I'm living in a place where I can get medical treatment. A woman in Rwanda or Uganda or Bangladesh will deliver a baby on the floor and probably it won't survive and there's a good chance the mother won't either. Being conscious of this vast disparity between our experiences, I'm appalled the word feminism has been denigrated to a place of almost ridicule and I very passionately believe the word needs to be revalued and reintroduced with power and understanding that this is a global picture. It isn't about us and them."

Jennifer Tamayo Video

2011-03-06T13:21:00.003-06:00

Watch Jennifer Tamayo read a poem from her forthcoming Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes:

This clip is from the Small Desk Press & Switchback Books reading at Bookthugnation, Brooklyn, NY, on February 9, 2011.

The Robin Becker Chapbook Prize

2011-02-25T10:46:00.002-06:00

On March 1st, Seven Kitchens Press will begin accepting submissions for the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize, a competition for for an original, unpublished poetry manuscript in English by a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered or Queer writer. For official guidelines visit http://sevenkitchenspress.wordpress.com/series-guidelines/guidelines-the-robin-becker-chapbook-prize/

Hanna Andrews Is a Natural Wonder

2011-02-24T10:05:00.001-06:00

(like we didn't know that already):

"…how I love your legs! But how I love my own, too!,
& my good drugs!, & my fool heart!"

Responses to VIDA's The Count 2010

2011-02-22T15:40:00.002-06:00

Lovely art by Jim Behrle!

Here's a list of responses to VIDA's The Count 2010, however direct or indirect they may be. The dialogue has been exciting!

* Eileen Myles on Being Female
* Katha Pollitt wants more women editors
* Patricia Cohen at The New York Times
* Ruth Franklin at The New Republic
* Annie Finch on how to publish women writers
* Lidia Yuknavitch writes About a Boob
* Bitch Magazine
* Poetry Foundation
* Stephen Elliott at The Rumpus
* Meghan O'Rourke at Slate
* DoubleX at Slate
* Jezebel
* Beyond the Margins
* Jim Behrle at The Hairpin
* Daniel D. Pritchard's Letter to the Times Literary Supplement
* Jim Behrle at AMERICAN POETRY DOT BIZ
* Graywolf responds to Jim Behrle
* Bob Hoover at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
* Roxane Gay at HTMLGIANT
* Jessa Crispin for Need to Know at PBS
* Ms. Magazine
* bookslut.com/blog
* Tin House
* Laura Miller at Salon
* Utne Reader
* Guardian
* Olivia Tejada
* Richard Jeffrey Newman

I'm sure we're missing some, so if you'd like to tell us where they are, have at it.

And also-also, there's this! By Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young, Editors:

A Megaphone: Some Enactments, Some Numbers, and Some Essays about the Continued Usefulness of Crotchless-pants-and-a-machine-gun Feminism

ENJOY!!

Ad Board Member Simone Muench

2011-02-17T13:13:00.003-06:00

Has poems up over at Switchback friend Christine Kanownik's Augury Books:

http://augurybooks.com/2011/02/17/3-12-by-simone-muench/

Being Female

2011-02-14T16:50:00.004-06:00

BLESS YOU, EILEEN MYLES, for the below, and BLESS YOU, CAROL GUESS, for sending it our way...

Eileen Myles on Being Female over at The Awl:

"Interestingly the poetry world is getting celebrated for its VIDA showing of nearly equal gender parity in reviewing etc. The problem there though is that the majority of the poets writing are female. It’s true. That’s who takes workshops, that’s who gets MFAs, you can easily get some numbers there and frankly in the poetry scene the women are the ones who are generally doing the most exciting work. Why? Because the female reality is still largely unknown. And language is the thrill that holds the unknown in its vague and shifting ways. That’s writing. But despite the fact that there are more females in the poetry world, more females writing their accounts somehow only a fraction of them are able to bob to top of the heap. So the poetry world is in effect performing a kind of affirmative action for men by giving their work a big push ahead, celebrating men’s books at a much higher ratio to the amount and quality of work actually being produced. And I’m not entertaining for a moment that this is because male work is better. I’m female and I don’t so much think female work is better. Female reality is not better. But female reality has consumed male reality abundantly—we have to in order just to survive so female reality always contains male and female. That seems interesting as hell so at the very least I think it’s a lot more interesting than a monotonous male reality."

Patty Seyburn at Poetry Daily

2011-02-13T11:46:00.003-06:00

Check out Switchback advisory board member Seyburn's poem "What I Disliked about the Pleistocene Era" at Poetry Daily!

Switchback Books at Ms. Magazine

2011-02-09T18:41:00.003-06:00

Switchback Books gets a shout out from Paula Kamen in A (Very Incomplete) Feminist Poetry Syllabus for 2011 at the Ms. Magazine blog. Check it out!

Small Desk Press & Switchback Books Reading!

2011-02-09T11:14:00.000-06:00

Wednesday, February 9th

8:00 p.m.

bookthugnation

100 N 3rd St (b/w Berry and Wythe)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY

Featuring:
Becca Klaver
Jennifer Tamayo
Marisa Crawford
Matt L. Rohrer
Sarah Fran Wisby
Lizzy Acker

Sarah Carson's Twenty-Two Now Available For Pre-Order!

2011-02-08T20:28:00.004-06:00

Finishing Line Press announces the publication of
Twenty-Two, a chapbook of poems by Sarah Carson

A keen observer of the small but significant things around our world and in our own lives, poet Sarah Carson has just had her second chapbook collection of poetry published, this time by Finishing Line Press.

Becca Klaver (LA Liminal--Kore Press) says of Twenty-Two: “Sarah Carson pokes fun at the rhetoric of medical surveys, manual labor instructional guides, and employee rules and regulations as a way of saying goodbye to the standardized certainty found in documents that ‘train’ a working-class, female self. ‘I don’t understand the question,’ Carson’s speaker dryly admits; in Twenty-Two, another self finds a new language, and her starkly funny confessions revise the terms, rewrite the surveys, and lay out a new set of rules.”

This small collection of poetry follows her recently-released chapbook Before OnStar (Etched Press, 2010), further delving into the issues facing the working class.

Says Brandi Homan (Hard Reds & Bobcat Country—Shearsman Books), “Sarah Carson’s Twenty-Two grapples with class and gender issues as if at the end of a kaleidoscope, the rough edges of bitter rocks/words/events tumbling against one another to create a landscape that’ s familiar yet not quite. In plainspoken language that nonetheless burns like a welding torch, Carson illuminates the ridiculous hoops we navigate as we attempt to negotiate the confluence of our working and personal lives.”

Sarah Carson was born and raised in Flint, Michigan but now lives in Chicago where she serves as an associate editor at RHINO and as the Communications Specialist at Switchback Books. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Diagram, Epiphany, Limestone, Poet Lore, Strange Machine, and Slipstream, among others.

Finishing Line Press is a poetry publisher based in Georgetown, Kentucky. In addition to the Chapbook Series, it publishes the New Women’s Voices Series and sponsors the Finishing Line Press Open Chapbook Competition.

Publication Date: May 27, 2011

Now Available for Pre-Order!

To order online, go to http://www.finishinglinepress.com

Or, you may order directly from the publisher, $12.00, check or money order to:

Finishing Line Books
PO Box 1626
Georgetown, KY 40324
finishingbooks@aol.com
859-514-8360

Becca Klaver on We Who Are about to Die

2011-02-07T17:48:00.002-06:00

"Debunked fables, Santa Ana winds, crossfires, underworlds, beer, self-implication, spectacle, quitting smoking, dreams are poems, Manifest Destiny, superimposition, Southern California Gothic, American Beauty, Arrested Development, down-home midwestern elitism, playing with shards/matches, tropicalia-loves-melancholia, why can’t we all just live in one big house together."

Switchback founding editor Becca Klaver talks about publishing her first book and why the world needs poetry in We Who Are Now Published Authors.

Compton & Hildreth on Tamayo

2011-02-06T13:31:00.008-06:00

Stunning poetic moment of the evening (among, admittedly, several): Jennifer Tamayo, whose debut book is soon forthcoming from Switchback Books.

--Shanna Compton at AWP DC!

Jennifer Tamayo rocked the Madam's Organ stage at the Switchback / Coconut / horse less reading, bringing everyone to laughter and tears, and Liz Hildreth does an amazing job of explaining why [Red Missed Aches] -- available in a few weeks! -- is so fantastic, over at her The Effect of Small Animals blog:

Reading this manuscript really is so similar to watching and listening to someone learn a language. It’s fascinating and thrilling and unnerving and extremely irritating. You really want to get in there and fix things, correct it, help it. You want to figure out: What EXACTLY does this poetry mouth know? What exactly does it know it knows? But it doesn’t want your help. Does it even know the word “help” or “fix” yet? It has to, right? It just used the word "clitoris" and drew a picture of it.

Becca Klaver over at Book Notes!

2011-01-27T12:40:00.003-06:00

We are LARGE fans of Largehearted Boy, so we are proud to announce Becca Klaver's Book Notes for LA Liminal are up over there today!

Switchback Books reading at AWP

2011-01-24T23:40:00.010-06:00

With the lovely Coconut Books and Horse Less Press! On the heated rooftop! Plus, come early and catch the Lame House/Binge Press reading at 6:00!

Friday, February 4
7:00pm - 9:30pm

Madam's Organ
madamsorgan.com
2461 18th Street, NW
Washington, DC

- Becca Klaver
- Brian Foley
- Bruce Covey
- Cathy Park Hong
- Christopher Salerno
- Claire Becker
- Daniela Olszewska
- Gina Myers
- Jennifer Tamayo
- Jen Tynes
- Marisa Crawford
- Natalie Lyalin

For more information, visit the Facebook Event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/create.php?eid=119112604822644.

Marisa Crawford reviewed at The Rumpus!

2011-01-21T10:47:00.002-06:00

What a lovely review of Marisa Crawford's The Haunted House over at The Rumpus!

Some highlights:

The poems read like they were scribbled in a notebook, in class, right before the bell rings. They come in thick stream-of-consciousness paragraphs, numbered lists, and long-lined odes that almost trip over their own gushing. The key here, though, is the almost; you can follow Crawford’s rambling thoughts as far as they go—almost too far!—but they always stop right where they need to.

There have always been teenage girls battling Sharptooths in one way or another, and always will be: “Your frills are / made of bone and we were born that way.”

It’s a perfectly ironic scenario: crushed by the expectations, or crushed again by the attempt to defy them? Either way, you’re crushed.

Thanks much to Maree Hamilton and the Editors!

Brochure + AWP

2011-01-14T15:30:00.006-06:00

In case you aren't going to make it out to D.C. to see us at AWP in February, we'd like to show you our pretty new brochure.

It's so pretty, in fact, that we'd like to recommend our designer, Tammy Hocking of Catnip Design, for any upcoming design projects you may have! She was a joy to work with, and we can be a bit demanding. Hope you enjoy!

Arielle Greenberg @ Rabbit Light Movies

2010-12-30T11:35:00.002-06:00

Switchback Books Advisory Board member Greenberg reads a new poem for Joshua Marie Wilkinson's Rabbit Light Movies.

Two poems by Sarah Carson

2010-12-28T11:37:00.003-06:00

Switchback's Communications Specialist Sarah Carson has two poems up in the new Arsenic Lobster.

Sarah, I just don't know how to thank you enough for your work. I absolutely love it.

xo,
B

Marisa Crawford FOREVER.

2010-12-28T10:17:00.004-06:00

Please check out Switchback poet Marisa Crawford's lovely new website, MarisaCrawfordForever.com! It will make you happy, swears. Gorgey!

Elizabeth Hildreth selects 2010 Best Of

2010-12-28T10:09:00.004-06:00

...over at No Tells! Check it. We heart you, No Tells!

Happy Holidays from Switchback Books!

2010-12-22T11:02:00.012-06:00

Dear Friends of Switchback,

As the year winds down and the holidays are here, we're reminded of how important the support of people like you means to an organization like ours.

We have had a big year, including the production of The Haunted House by the fabulous Marisa Crawford and the selection of the 2010 Gatewood Prize winner—Jennifer Tamayo's [Red Missed Aches]—by judge Cathy Park Hong. We have also had several fundraisers that allow us to keep publishing poetry by women thanks to the generosity of friends like you! We could not keep going without your support, and we are eternally grateful.

We hope you come see us at AWP in D.C. February 2-5 and help us celebrate our 5-year anniversary! More details to come soon.

Until then, we're wishing you and yours a happy holiday season.

Much love,

Brandi Homan, Becca Klaver, Hanna Andrews, and Whitney Holmes
Editors, Switchback Books

LA Liminal best of 2010!

2010-12-17T15:45:00.004-06:00

As selected by Daniela Olszewska over at No Tells!

I'm thoroughly enjoying the No Tells best of lists, btw... Reminds me I need to get out and get Post-Moxie by Julia Story, Come On All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder, and The Morning News Is Exciting by Don Mee Choi... So many books, so little time...

Vote for Simone Muench's Orange Crush!

2010-12-11T17:43:00.008-06:00

The nominees are in, and Switchback Books Advisory Board member Simone Muench's Orange Crush is up for best poetry book of 2010! Vote for it here or by using the widget below:

2010 Goodreads Choice Awards Official Nominee: Best Poetry

Vote for this book!

Pop-Up Bookshop This Sunday!

2010-12-09T11:00:00.003-06:00

Chicago hosts a one-day-only pop-up bookshop featuring the best of the Midwest’s independent presses, bookstores, and magazines. They’ll be plenty of book shopping (just in time for the holidays) as well as sporadic performances, all at the Green Lantern Gallery, originally meant to be the home for the new bookstore The Paper Cave. Instead, we’ve condensed the bookstore into a one-day booktravaganza. This will be your first and last chance to shop Chicago’s curatorial pop-up bookshop. In honor of the venture there will be a ribbon un-cutting, and Artifice Magazine’s papier-mâché cave, which the curious can crawl inside to hear some of the best in Chicago readings.

Switchback Books joins presenters Featherproof Books, Green Lantern Press, Artifice Magazine and Knee-Jerk Magazine and participants Quimbys, Hobart, Poetry, The Book Cellar, Another Chicago Magazine, Rose Metal Press, THE2NDHAND, Dzanc, Make Magazine, The Show ‘n Tell Show, Other Voices Books, The Encyclopedia Show, Sara Ranchouse Publishing, Vouched Books, The Paper Cave, PANK Magazine, Golden Age, and Stop Smiling Books.

December 12th, 10am to 10pm

The Green Lantern Gallery/The Paper Cave

2542 W. Chicago Ave., Storefront

*****

The Indie Lit Roadshow is a cross-country celebration of the best in independent literature. It represents a coming-together of some of the most innovative book lovers around: independent bookstores, presses, journals, magazines, reading series and pop-up bookshops. It’s a weekend full of events, each rooted in the home-grown literary scenes blossoming in the following cities:

Austin, TX (N.A.R.W.A.L.L.)
Baltimore, MA (Monumental ...Genius)
Baton Rouge, LA (River Writers)
Brooklyn, NY (Gigantic)
Brooklyn, NY (Birdsong)
Chicago, IL (Featherproof, Green Lantern, Artifice, Knee-Jerk)
Lawrence, KS (Beecher’s Magazine)
Hadley, MA (Flying Object)
Portland, OR (Redefine Magazine)
Seattle, WA (Pilot Books)

So join us for a weekend of nonstop parties, performances, and pop-up book shops from coast to coast!

More info at: http://www.indielitshow.com/.

A selection of Participants: Pilot Books, N.A.R.W.A.L.L., Ampersand, Monumental Genius, River Writers, Birdsong, Featherproof, Green Lantern, Artifice, Knee-Jerk, Beecher’s Magazine, Gigantic, Bouwerie, Flying Object, Redefine Magazine, Paul Legault, Margo Greenfield, John Haskell, Melissa Broder, Quimbys, Hobart, Poetry, The Book Cellar, Another Chicago Magazine, Rose Metal Press, THE2NDHAND, Dzanc, Publishing Genius, Shattered Wig Review, The Monumental Reading Series, Normals Books & Records, the WORMS reading series, Stephanie Barber, Laura van den Berg, Dina Kelberman, Michael Kimball, Justin Sirois, John Dermot Woods, Make Magazine, The Show ‘n Tell Show, Other Voices Books, The Encyclopedia Show, Sara Ranchouse Publishing, Vouched Books, Switchback Books, The Paper Cave, PANK Magazine, Golden Age, Domy, and Stop Smiling Books.

Liz Hildreth interviews Reb Livingston

2010-12-09T09:48:00.002-06:00

Check out Liz Hildreth's interview with Reb Livingston about her book God Damsel.

http://www.bookslut.com/features/2010_12_016937.php

The Femme Outre & Other Real Fakers:

2010-12-07T10:27:00.002-06:00

Going Gaga for Artifice and Femininity in the 21st Century

by Becca Klaver is up today over at Gaga Stimata!

"So you see, I recognize you, Gaga. People like us – artists, poets, singers, dancers, fashionistas – need, or once needed, to perform, bedeck, exhibit our identities as others, little monsters, queers, aliens, artists. It happens in every town. And in every town, now, people know who you are. And so they know who we are: you made us all famous."

Delirious Hem Advent Calendar!

2010-12-06T11:33:00.003-06:00

Poetry pleasures for the month of December curated by Switchback Ex-Pat Daniela Olszewska over at Delirious Hem... Loves it.

Bestest

2010-12-03T11:35:00.004-06:00

Brandi Homan's Bobcat Country hits the best of 2010 lists over at No Tells!

Mónica de la Torre at CalArts Thursday and Friday!

2010-12-01T20:19:00.003-06:00

MFA Writing Visiting Artist Series: Readings by Mónica de la Torre and Danielle Dutton
Thursday, December 2, 2010 - 7:00pm
CalArts, Butler Building #4

CRITICAL STUDIES: Mónica de la Torre’s Public Domain arrives from Mexico with the ambition to be a personal anthology. Its constantly shifting formats that remind one that experimentation is driven by glee at noticing how malleable the world can be. In one piece she writes a series of letters addressed by an orphan to her biological mother, Mónica de la Torre, who might be a transsexual model, a scientist who studies “the properties of fried and baked tortilla chips,” or the member of a high school varsity team. Get the picture!

MFA Writing Visiting Artist Series - Contemporary Publishing: Avenues and Intersections
Friday, December 3, 2010 - 2:00pm
CalArts, Library

Join BOMB Magazine Senior Editor Mónica de la Torre, Dorothy Press editor and publisher Danielle Dutton, Martin Riker, Associate Director for Dalkey Archive, and founder/publisher of L.A.-based Siglio Press, Lisa Pearson, in an open discussion about their respective roles, vision, aesthetics and sense of the state and future of print publications.

Becca Klaver in Cambridge!

2010-11-29T17:17:00.001-06:00

SMALL ANIMAL PROJECT
hosted by Jessica Bozek

Claire Hero, Becca Klaver, and Julia Story will read at Outpost 186 (Cambridge, MA) on Wednesday, 12/15. 8 p.m. Small donation suggested.

Bios, photos, deets!

Lily Ladewig Reviews Marisa Crawford's The Haunted House in NOÖ Journal

2010-11-20T17:36:00.005-06:00

Feminist theory, Madonna lyrics, early sexual encounters, visits to Emily Dickinson’s grave, flashes of snow and glitter are intercut by riddles with missing punch lines that hover in the page’s white space like ghosts. [read the rest]

Buy The Haunted House today!

A New Book by Simone Muench!

2010-11-14T17:36:00.001-06:00

Disappearing Address is out. It is available at Amazon.com

Read what people have to say about it below.
Cover Art: Kim Ambriz
Introduction: Kevin Killian

As darkly luxurious and ferociously driven as either Jenks or Muench is singly, this hydra-headed address is passion squared, an uncanny vesper "scribbled to the abyss” intoned in a duet so tuned as to create a third even more intense, even more longing, even smarter, even sadder, even scarier voice. Though the Gothic cast — Morrissey, Michael Myers, a vampire, a deer on the North Dakota highway that appears like a recurring nightmare “jut-rotted…luring us to the wilderness,” — is glared at with fierce knowing (parlor games put the fun back in funeral here), the attention is sharp, without camp, and soul-piercing.
—Robyn Schiff

“Dear Leatherface,” “Dear Danger,” “Dear Film Noir,” “Dear Chanteuse of the Abattoir for Young Girls” — if you loved Simone Muench’s Orange Crush as much as I did, you’ll recognize in these titles from Disappearing Address the return of her great animating idea: femininity excited by danger. Muench collaborates with Philip Jenks here to return to the theme in a series of letters to villains from horror films, to abstractions, to icons of pop culture like Morrissey or the high school dance. The exploded syntax of the letters makes for a kaleidoscope of the sublime and the mundane — Coca-Cola, Pop Rocks, and the Day of Judgment jostle one another in a kind of phantasmagoria. There’s wit here — “Dear Nothing” begins “why’d you have to cut out & make everything come back,” “Dear Obtuse” begins “Be straight with me” — but the best of the poems revel in novel images and a diction for which the only possible term is “hothouse gorgeous.”
—Robert Archambeau

This collaboration feels entirely seamless, as though it were not a collaboration at all but the work of a single, virtuoso poet with a very broad range of imagery and a finely tuned sense of how diction can coalesce varied materials. There is some of the surreal bounce we expect of collaboration but very little in the way of bi-polar diffusion or poetic ju-jitzu contending egos can produce. This is wonderfully contemplative work, and though it's hard to tell when Muench might begin or Jenks end, there is throughout, but particularly in the sequence addressed as letters to poets, a broadened set of concerns about poetry, especially, that these two poets seem to have negotiated in the act of joint (or should I say, mutual) composition. A genuinely wonderful collection.
—Michael Anania

Two poets not only challenge each other to write a poem, but challenge each other for the voice of the poem as well as its place and possession – speech and location being the double meanings of address. This vibrant, loving book opens with “Dear Dear,” an introductory address to each voice acknowledging the presence of the other in the poem and, through the collaboration, the action of each in the other’s processes and practice. The book then proceeds in a collection of epistles through numbered sections called “Rooms,” in which the poets confront or accommodate their co-existence.

Collaboration is only one of the issues challenging the poets. Ronald Johnson’s epigram on the opening fly pages to “invite the eye/ invade the ear” sets the objective of an inextricable bond between eye and ear. The poets persuade each other whether the poem is going to be for the eyes, a descriptive narrative, or is the poem to be a performed event of itself, or will it have both? The collaboration’s passage through seduction, co-existence, stand-off and outright hostility is echoed in poems about relationships, poems of loss, institutionalization, and some wonderfully fun bitchiness. This makes an exciting poetry of wild and rapid changes for the reader.

The only poem without an addressee is “Haptics, Not Optics.” This is the best statement of both their arguments in one poem, and both artists perform his and her case slyly, beautifully as one. A moment that, for all its sadness, foreshadows the conciliatory calling of the names that ends the work and the address, “I”, reveals its fragments answering to the name.
—Ed Roberson

Book Information:
· Paperback: 82 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-024-8

The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project

2010-11-11T16:51:00.002-06:00

aims to be "the largest database of women poets in the world" and "a meeting place for poets, scholars, and students of poetry to see the global relationships among women poets across time, space, and national barriers."

Getting To Know Kathleen Rooney

2010-11-06T13:34:00.007-05:00

Among our fave responses to Kathleen's teen-zine-style interview at We Who Are About To Die:

If I had to spend $10 at my favorite fast food joint, I’d order: All the employees to lie on the floor while I cleaned out the register.

If you could interview any celeb whom would it be and why? Gwyneth Paltrow because she once said “I’m really fucking good at my job, and people who are interesting and good know that,” and I’d want to get her to say more stuff like that.

If you could be granted 3 wishes, they’d be: First—duh!—I’d wish for infinite wishes. Then: look out!

LA or New York: Chicago

Order Kathleen's book, Oneiromance (an epithalamion) from Switchback (or SPD, or Powell's, or wherever ya like) today!

Newest Switchback author Jennifer Tamayo on Marcella Durand's Traffic & Weather

2010-11-06T12:55:00.006-05:00

We're hard at work on Jennifer Tamayo's Gatewood Prize-winning first book and could not be more excited about the project!!

Last month, Jennifer's response to Marcella Durand's book Traffic & Weather was featured on Futurepoem's blog Futurepost, which presents responses and commentary about Futurepoem books by noted members of the literary community. Read Jennifer's response here!

T-sky Call for MS reminder!

2010-10-28T15:09:00.002-05:00

From our poetry-press love, Tarpaulin Sky:

Readers, writers, and friends,

Just a short email to remind everyone that the deadline for our full-length manuscript reading period is 31 October. New this year is the ability to send your manuscript via email as well as by USPS. We'll paste guidelines below; they are also available online here.

As always, you can keep on top of TSky Press's doings via the TSky News & Notes blog and the TSky Events blog, as well as via Facebook and Twitter.

ALL SUBMISSIONS (SNAIL MAIL AND EMAIL)

Manuscripts should be emailed or postmarked between October 1 and October 31, 2010. There is no need to query first; simply send the manuscript according to the guidelines below.

Send one copy of your manuscript along with two copies of the title page. (Note: the reading process is not "blind"--we ask for two title pages so that we may keep one with the manuscript, and the other for reference/notes, etc.) Be sure that your title pages include your name, address, telephone number, and email address. Cover letters are read with interest. We like to know who your are, what you're up to, and where we can read more of your work.

Multiple submissions are OK. We also accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you let us know immediately if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere. Individual pieces from the manuscript may have been previously published in chapbooks, magazines, and anthologies, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished. Manuscripts will not be returned; please do not send us your only copy.

Though we never charge reading fees for work submitted to our magazine, we do charge a fee for the submission of book manuscripts. Writers who have not been published in our magazine should include a $20 payment to the press, which--if it needs to be said--is applied to the cost of producing our books. Your entry fee also entitles you to choose any TSky Press trade paperback that we've published (sorry, no chapbooks); just let us know which title you'd like, and enclose with your manuscript submission (or mail separately) a 6.5" x 9.5" or larger, self-addressed, stamped envelope with $2.64 in postage. We will ship the books separately from your notification SASE. [Past contributors to Tarpaulin Sky can submit their manuscript for the "fee" of buying a book from our online catalog during the month of October.]

If you are not familiar with our press and the type of books that we publish, we encourage you to explore our publications before submitting.

SENDING MANUSCRIPTS VIA SNAIL MAIL

Please mail your manuscript to Open Reading Period, Tarpaulin Sky Press, PO Box 189, Grafton, VT 05146. Please include payment in the form of a check or money order made payable to Tarpaulin Sky Press. For notification of decisions, include a business-size SASE. If you would like to receive acknowledgment of the receipt of your manuscript, please include a stamped, self-addressed postcard. Notification of decisions will be made in February 2011. Publication of accepted manuscripts will be in 2012.

SENDING MANUSCRIPTS VIA EMAIL

Please email your cover letter and manuscript as a PDF or a Word document to manuscripts2010@tarpaulinsky.com Please use the following format for the subject line of your email: Firstname Lastname, Manuscript Submission, "Title of Manuscript". Please send payment via PayPal . (Past contributors to our magazine, here.) Emailed submissions will receive an auto-reply letting you know that we received your work. Notification of decisions will be made via email in February 2011. Publication of accepted manuscripts will be in 2012.

We look forward to reading your work!

Cheers,

Christian & Co.
Tarpaulin Sky Press

Becca Klaver interviews Kate Durbin

2010-10-26T15:13:00.004-05:00

Becca Klaver on Kate Durbin over at H_NGM_N!

A brief highlight:

"Girls who’d ignore you in front of some guy they liked, for example, or talk shit about you behind your back to other girls because they were jealous. Girls who were incredibly smart and yet would make fun of you for something stupid, like your period stained underwear. Certain feminists have talked about how the effects of the patriarchy are what have turned women against each other, and okay, that’s true. Except that when you leave your friend in a compromising position at a party, or when your friend leaves you, you know that you made a choice. It may have been two lousy options you were choosing between, but you still chose. And so to blame the patriarchy entirely is to give it too much power, I think. In my fairy tales I let the bitches be bitches. I wanted to reveal the complexity of these issues that I think are, at times, too simplified in [Angela] Carter’s tales. In many ways my tales are a response to hers. They are also an homage to Sylvia Plath. Plath always let the bitches be bitches."

New journal looking for work by women of color

2010-10-19T16:06:00.004-05:00

"aaduna seeks to broaden the current online paradigms associated with publishing works by emerging writers and artists especially for people of color. From a multicultural viewpoint, aaduna comprehends the fact that while cultures and ethnicities tend to exist separate from each other, that development is a political, social, and contrived construct. Therefore, aaduna seeks to erase such artificial distinctions, and welcomes submissions from emerging writers and visual artists whose work goes beyond expectations based solely on physicality or cultural characteristics. While aaduna is primarily interested in providing a viable publishing platform for people of color, the world is huge, and there is a widening audience for other artists whose creativity reflects voices that are divergent; voices that are powerful, and voices committed to change."

Caroline Noble Whitbeck in the new Elimae

2010-10-14T12:40:00.005-05:00

Switchback poet Caroline Noble Whitbeck has work from a new project, 101 End-Time Recipes, up in the October issue of Elimae. She advises:

"Start with the simple cuts: the soft-cup /
bra atop the chainlink, snags"

There are no ponies here...

2010-10-12T10:21:00.004-05:00

...but we've got a slew of poems up over at HORSE LESS REVIEW #8!

Check out work by Switchbackers Jessica Bozek, Becca Klaver, and Dolly Lemke, plus our fellow Columbia College Chicago Poetry MFA compatriots Tyler Flynn Dorholt and Russell Jaffe.

The issue also includes other people Switchback hearts eternally, including Danielle Pafunda, Juliet Cook, Kate Durbin, and Samuel Day Wharton.

Congrats everyone!

Mónica de la Torre at NYU This Thursday 10/14!

2010-10-11T21:41:00.003-05:00

The New Salon: Poets in Conversation
Mónica de la Torre (with Robert N. Casper)

Thursday, October 14th, 7:00 p.m.

Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House

58 West 10th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues

New York, NY

Translator and poet Mónica de la Torre’s second and most recent book of poems is “Public Domain” (Roof Books, 2008). In conversation with Robert N. Casper; co-sponsored with the Poetry Society of America.

Elizabeth Hildreth interviews Kate Durbin

2010-10-07T17:21:00.002-05:00

Getting all Bookslutty on us again:

"Each woman is performing her identity for the ravenous audience, and a huge part of the performance of identity is the costumes we don and discard. Fashion is seen culturally as the most ubiquitous and feminine and therefore the lowest of the arts, the most shallow and market-driven. Teenage girls are obsessed with fashion, as are drag queens. Serious people, 'authentic' people, do not care about fashion."

Marisa Crawford Upcoming Readings

2010-10-06T18:24:00.003-05:00

San Francisco State University Poetry Center

HUM 512

Thursday, October 7th, 2010, 4:30pm

Marisa Crawford & Lizzy Acker

Lizzy Acker grew up in Oregon but she now lives in San Francisco where she collects bacon grease for hypothetical soap making projects, surfs, makes books and blogs at lizzyacker.com. She is the former co-curator of the Funny/Sexy/Sad reading series and she received her MFA from San Francisco State University. Her first book, Monster Party, a collection of stories about boys, aliens and violence, is forthcoming from Small Desk Press in 2010. For of taste of Monster Party, scroll down athttp://bangoutsf.com/volume-viii-heat/video-library-for-volume-viii-heat

Marisa Crawford is the author of The Haunted House from the feminist poetry press Switchback Books. She grew up on the East Coast, received an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and recently moved to Brooklyn after five years in San Francisco. She is an editor at Small Desk Press, and her writing has recently appeared in Shampoo and Action, Yes, and on the fashion blog Ironing Board Collective.

Feminine Wiles: A LitQuake Event

Thursday, October 7th, 2010, 7pm

Elif Batuman

Marisa Crawford

Katie Crouch

Thaisa Frank

Joyce Maynard

Kaya Oakes

Shawna Yang Ryan

Noe Valley Recreational Center, 295 Day St., San Francisco

!Women Art Revolution: A Formerly Secret History

2010-10-06T12:37:00.004-05:00

Seems like other disciplines continue to ask the same kinds of questions we've been asking privately and VIDA's been asking publicly.

See the Venus article here.
Read more about the documentary here.
Join the conversation/community here.

VIDA on The Count and Gender in Publishing

2010-10-05T13:43:00.003-05:00

Hopefully by now you're aware of the important conversations going on over at the VIDA site, but if you're not, here are two to get you started.

What We Talk About When We Talk About 'The Count'

"The issue is, frankly, that publishing, reviews of one’s work, as well as awards, all help to further a writer’s “career.” This means, simply, that one is granted, via such recognition, the following: JOBS (more money + health insurance = greater health = more time to write); GRANTS (more time to write); RESIDENCIES (more time to write); MONEY (more time to write) . . . in other words, all these things clearly provide a means by which an author can focus more on his or her craft and thereby more fully recognize / realize / accomplish his or her vision. This is why I believe the numbers are important. It’s not that they impact / influence one’s ability to write, but rather that they determine who gets TIME to write."--Cate Marvin

'On Gender and Publishing': A Panel Moderated by Carmen Giménez Smith (featuring Tracy Bowling, Jane Ciabratti, Danielle Dutton, *Becca Klaver*, Elizabeth McCracken, Don Share, Stephanie G’Schwind, and Maria Melendez)

ENJOY!

Kathleen Rooney interview at Linebreak

2010-09-29T10:14:00.002-05:00

Switchback poet Kathleen Rooney talks over at Linebreak about the romantic Weldon Kees.

Elizabeth Hildreth + Lippman + Lasky + Sweeney get Bookslutty

2010-09-27T22:33:00.008-05:00

Switchback's very own Elizabeth Hildreth has two interviews and a review up in the 100th issue (!!) of Bookslut this month:

An Interview with Matthew Lippman
"I have always believed that my poems were little TV commercials, ultimately. I think that is what I aspire to because I want them to be accessible to everyone. It would be fantastic if poems could take the place of television. It would be fantastic if the experience of watching TV and reading a poem was similar. In a way, it is."

An Interview with Dorothea Lasky
"Life is always awkward. I would never value a momentary unawkwardness for the sake of a poem. Because I think I think there is a power in it. And a poem is a place in life where any person can be powerful, so why not?"

A Review of The Lost Notebooks of Juan Sweeney de las Minas de Cobre by Chad Sweeney
"Maybe it’s true that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Unless you happen to be reading The Lost Notebooks of Juan Sweeney de las Minas de Cobre (Forklift, Ink., 2010). In which case, you can."

Congratulations, Liz, and keep up the interesting work!

Simone Muench in The Believer

2010-09-27T13:07:00.003-05:00

Many congrats to Switchback Advisory Board member Simone Muench for making the cover of the September issue (Issue 74) of The Believer! Daniel Handler interviews Simone on her ardent love of horror movies:

"[Horror] provides a transgressive space for women—we get so caught off guard by horror's frequent showcase of tits and ass, where there exists run-of-the-mill misogyny—what I refer to as Hustler Horror—that we often miss the ways in which horror films create a space for women to have agency."

Also of note: The issue features a poem by the wonderful Yusef Komunyakaa and a review of Anne Carson's new Nox.

**Featured on the cover with Simone are Wallace Shawn, Weird Al Yankovic, and Robin Nagle. RAD. **

Switchback Salon & Fundraiser Saturday 10/2!

2010-09-23T12:50:00.001-05:00

SWITCHBACK BOOKS PRESENTS

A Salon & Fundraiser

with readings and talks by

Arielle Greenberg on the Gurlesque and Rock Music

Becca Klaver on Songs for Girls in their 20s

Dolly Lemke on Best American Honesty

Sarah Carson on Awful Country Western Music

Music, literature, talks, and snacks.

Midwestern microbrews from Saugatuck Brewing Co.

PLUS: An 18-liter bottle of wine!

Saturday, October 2, 2010

4745 N. Beacon St. #3S

Chicago, IL

Doors at 7:00 p.m.

Salon at 8:00 p.m.

$10 donation at the door for a Switchback book

$20 donation at the door for a book and all-you-can-drink

All proceeds support Switchback Books' mission to publish and promote women's poetry. Switchback Books is a 501c3 nonprofit small publisher of contemporary women's poetry.

Silver Tongue + The Encyclopedia Show

2010-09-23T09:17:00.003-05:00

Should you need a poetry fix before our salon on October 2nd, our friends at the Silver Tongue are holding a reading next week in conjunction with the Encyclopedia Show.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA SHOW <3>
Date: Wednesday, September 29th
Time: 7:00pm
Location: The Conaway Center, 1104 S Wabash Ave
Contact: Devan Perine

dmarieperine@gmail.com

More Info: Free and open to the public!

www.facebook.com/silvertonguecolumbia
silvertonguecolumbia.com
www.encyclopediashow.com

On September 29^th Silver Tongue, Columbia College Chicago's student-run reading series, is excited to bring The Encyclopedia Show to a college campus for the first time ever. The Encyclopedia Show, created by Robbie Q. Telfer (author of Spiking the Sucker Punch) and Shanny Jean Maney (author of Our Brave Faces Were Just Smiles), is a live variety extravaganza that asks participants to perform pieces about an encyclopedia topic. On September 29^th at 7:00pm, Columbia faculty and students will define BEARS in hilarious and raucous fashion, using poetry, film, music, and more. The event is located at The Conaway Center (1104 S Wabash Ave) and is free and open to the public.

Columbia faculty readers include Dan Sinker, Erin Teegarden, Dave Snyder, Brendan Riley, K. Bradford and Chris Bower along side featured students Ian “Dick” Jones, Abby Scheaffer, Stephanie Lane Sutton, Daniel Shapiro, Sabrina Dropkick, Patience Rowe, Nick Narbutas, and Zach Green.

The Encyclopedia Show showcases visual art, comedy, music and spoken word on a wide variety of subjects related to a chosen topic. Each month a new topic is picked from the encyclopedia and assignments are sent to a diverse group of writers, artists, poets and performers.

Past contributors have included Bill Ayers, Marc Smith, Paul Sereno, Anis Mojgani, Idris Goodwin, Lisa Buscani, Cameron McGill, Cin Salach, Roger Bonair-Agard and Derrick Brown. Past Silver Tongue readers include Kevin Coval, Lindsay Hunter, Chris Bower, Neal Pollack, Todd Zuniga’s Literary Death Match, among others.

Silver Tongue is Columbia College’s monthly reading series that showcases student work alongside established writers from Chicago and beyond. The themed readings guarantee quirky additions, stories, poetry and other work with host, fiction writer, Mason Johnson.

Columbia College Chicago is the largest private arts and media institution in the nation with over 12,000 students and 120 academic programs. The college produces over 850 events a year through its diverse student body and arts and media departments.

To learn more about the Encyclopedia Show, check out www.encyclopediashow.com

To learn more about Silver Tongue, check out www.silvertonguecolumbia.com

Check out this excerpt from Jennifer Tamayo's the hanging cloud of read mistakes

2010-09-17T10:42:00.004-05:00

Action, Yes recently published a selection from Jennifer Tamayo's 2010 Gatewood Prize-winning manuscript! Check it out in all its glory here.

2010 Gatewood Prize Winner

2010-09-15T17:44:00.006-05:00

Switchback Books is pleased to announce the winner of the 2010 Gatewood Prize, chosen by Cathy Park Hong:

***Jennifer Tamayo's the hanging cloud of read mistakes***

Welcome, JT, to the Switchback family!

Thanks to everyone who submitted for making this year's decision especially challenging and for giving us all this fabulous reading material to feed on these past few months. We received a record number of manuscripts this year and were absolutely knocked over by the number of high-quality and distinctive manuscripts submitted. We'd like to bring special attention to the strong work of our finalists and semifinalists.

Finalists

Ascensionist by Cynthia Arrieu-King

Black Peculiar by Khadijah Queen

Corsica Inside the Daughterhouse by Paige Taggart

The Hanging Cloud of Read Mistakes by Jennifer Tamayo

Host by Julia Cohen

Off to the Nervous Museum by Claire Donato

Poems Unappearing by Elaine Bleakney

someday they would grow as dragons by Kristin Hatch

the sun a blazing zero by Shira Dentz

whelm by dawn lonsinger

Semifinalists

Detailing Trauma by Arianne Zwartjes

The June Cuckold and Other Tragedies by Catherine Theis

Kala Pani by Monica Mody