An impressive lineup will share their thoughts and insight into the publishing experience at this years Oolicon: Write to Publish held May 22-23 at Portland State University. Organized by Ooligan Press, the Write to Publish conference seeks to “demystify the publishing process for writers” by focusing not on “the craft of writing, but rather on the process of getting published.”
Featured at the open house event on the 23rd will be Chuck Palahniuk and Ursula K. Le Guin, as well as fellow Portland standouts Shannon Wheeler, creator of Too Much Coffee Man and Eisner Award-winning artist; Deborah Hopkinson, Oregon Book Award-winning children’s author; Virginia Euwer Wolff, National Book Award-winning YA fiction author; and Lilith Saintcrow, popular urban fantasy author.
The opening day (May 22nd) will feature workshops for writers and industry professionals. Ticket prices are $130 for writers for the full conference (this includes five workshops and the Open House on the second day) or $32 per workshop. Ticket prices are $215 for industry professionals for the full conference.
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You may recall that local indie publishing house and bookstore Reading Frenzy launched a fundraising effort back in January: together with Kickstarter, they needed to raise $12,500 to reissue Crap Hound #4 and keep the Reading Frenzy boilers chugging along.
Not only did they reach it, they blew right by it. As of right now, they’ve raised $14,492 (and there are still 4 hours left to chuck a few bucks in the pot for your very own copy of the issue.)
Congratulations, Reading Frenzy! And thanks to all and any Reading Local Portland readers who contributed to that goal. We look forward to seeing Crap Hound when it comes out.
Update-Thanks to a late surge of pledges, a new edition of Crap Hound #4 will be going to the printers!
About a month ago Karen wrote about Chloe Eudaly’s (owner of Reading Frenzy) efforts to print a revised and expanded 2nd edition of Crap Hound #4: Clowns, Devils, and Bait! Well the fundraising drive, which was conducted through Kickstarter, has received pledges from 251 263 Backers and is now 90% 93% 95% of the way towards meeting its goal of $12,500. But with only 3 days left for pledges to be made, the project is still about $1,200 $1,000 $800 $600 short of being fully funded.
So can you help push this effort over the top by pledging your support? Your pledge may inspire some of the existing backers to up their pledge just to make sure all of this effort wasn’t for naught. As Karen noted in her previous post, this isn’t solely about reprinting Crap Hound #4 either. It’s also about supporting Reading Frenzy, as Crap Hound is the store’s “bread and butter.” I just pledged $50, will you make a pledge today? Read the rest of this entry »
Portland based Bedouin Books operates by a simple yet profound publishing philosophy:
To give emerging writers legitimate, quality collections of their work in bound form as a springboard to their careers, publishing credit, as well as something they can sell.
Originally started by editor M. D’Alessandro in a cramped studio in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, Bedouin Books has lived up to its nomadic namesake as Portland is now its third home. A three year stint in Kauai was sandwiched in between. So it is only fitting that Bedouin Books’ new imprint has been named Nomads, which will focus on “emerging, non-fiction authors’ work in travel writing, memoir, essay and philosophy.”
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Congratulations to Portland’s newest publisher of the new weird and dark fantasy, Underland Press. Underland’s first published title, Last Days, was chosen Best Horror Novel of 2009 by the American Library Association. Underland’s second title, Pilo Family Circus, was also shortlisted for the prize.
Brian Evenson’s Last Days is “a down-the-rabbit-hole detective novel set in an underground religious cult,” starring Kline, a gumshoe who finds himself strong-armed into solving a murder mystery within the secret society. All that and an introduction by Peter Straub. You can download a free excerpt here.
Will Elliott’s Pilo Family Circus comes with an introduction by Katherine Dunn, and dips into the dark, chaotic world of a circus that straddles the border between hell and earth. If you’re not already afraid of clowns, you will be after reading this.
Peaches & Bats is a hand-bound poetry journal produced semiannually by Portland’s own Sam Lohmann. The latest issue includes work by Emily Kendal Frey, Sheila Murphy, Allison Cobb, Robert Kelly, and many others–all for the low, low price of five bucks. You can pick up Peaches & Bats issue 5 from the journal website or from Powell’s.
But what will that five bucks get you? Good question. We took a look at some of what you’ll find in the latest issue.
Click through to read more about the latest issue of Peaches & Bats.
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Every Saturday we will bring you links to articles from around the web featuring members of Portland’s lit community. Please feel free to pass along any you come across as well, by emailing us at portland@readinglocal.com, and we will include them in next weeks edition of Short Stories.
Wend, the Portland based adventure magazine, is featured in a Folio article on niche publications:
Wilson says Wend is having a lot of success getting registrations and driving participation with online and newsletter-driven contests.
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Earlier today Literary Arts announced the recipients of the 2009 Oregon Literary Fellowships, as well as the endowment of a new fellowship to serve the Oregon poetry community.
Out of 300 applicants, the fellowships and accompanying $2500 grant were awarded to:
Poetry
Jae Choi, The C Hamilton Bailey Fellowship
Fiction
Emily Chenoweth of Portland
Margaret Malone of Portland, Friends of the Lake Oswego Library William Stafford Fellowship
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Earlier this month while we were all distracted by Holiday sales and flashing lights, Portland publisher Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts started a blog. You should go check it out, and then add it to your reader. Oh, and they are also on Twitter and Facebook too.
This recap is authored by contributor Karen Munro. The Head of the UO Portland Library and a recipient of an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, Karen discusses books, reading, and writing on her wonderful blog Munrovian.
If you missed Sunday’s inaugural Publication Fair at the Ace Cleaners, I’m sorry to say I can’t really recap it for you. Put me in a room with that much printed matter and I’m just agog. But here are a few things worth checking out while you mark your calendar for next year’s fair…
- Add Tiger Food Press’s blog to your RSS reader, and delight in their beautiful letterpress work. I’m a big fan of their small-dog cards, as well as the broadside of what looks like a ‘67 Impala poised to cruise into the sunset, alongside this text: “‘She takes it slow,’ she purred to the skinny gas station attendant. She saw his knees buckle just a little.” Bitchin’.
- Octopus Books (also the home of Octopus Magazine) creates gorgeous poetry books and chapbooks. You can subscribe to everything they produce in a year…intelligent, ink-oriented, and arranged cleverly around ideas of eight. You might also want to submit your full-length poetry MS to them next April.
- You probably already know about Plazm Magazine, but did you know they’re the geniuses behind the New Oregon Interview Series? I didn’t. But I’m definitely heading to their next panel sessions. On January 27 they’ll be talking fashion, and the February bill lists Randy Gragg, Brad Cloepfil, and Mayor Sam Adams for a conversation about urban planning. Yowza.
- If you’re in more of a stay-at-home mood, you may be intrigued by artist Zach Rose’s home lending library, where you can borrow some of his favorite books over email and the post. Zach’s brother Josh just started library school, and this is a collaborative venture incorporating the best of the traditional lending library and the wide-open plains of the Internet.
- Container Corps, which just opened a new storefront on Killingsworth at Montana, has beautiful, sturdy handcrafted xylobooks for sale. What’s a xylobook? It’s “durable information storage,” according to their website. And it’s good-lookin’.
- And of course, Matthew Stadler and Patricia No’s Publication Studio offered a wide array of manila-bound books printed on Stadler’s print-on-demand machine. Great books by Sarah Meadows, Matt Briggs, Stacey Levine, and a slew of others. The Publication Studio blog also has great pictures of the fair, where you can actually see the books leaving the shelves.
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Nickey Robare directed this entertaining documentary on Portland’s beacon for literary Do-It-Yourselfer’s, the IPRC. Want to keep up with what’s happening at the IPRC? Check out their blog.
The December 31st deadline for the 3rd Annual Burnside Review Fiction Chapbook Competition is fast approaching, but there is still time to get your entries in. Besides sometimes the best writing comes out when you are under the gun and forced to focus (as my writing clearly indicates I am neither under the gun or forced to focus…). Here is what you will need to submit:
—Up to 10,000 words of fiction. This can be one longer story or multiple shorter pieces. The writer’s name should appear nowhere on the manuscript.
—2 cover sheets, one with the title of the manuscript, your name, telephone number, and address. The second cover sheet should list only the title of the manuscript.
—A page acknowledging previously published work.
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