North American Review Submission Manager The North American Review is the oldest literary magazine in America (founded in 1815) and one of the most respected. We are interested in high-quality poetry, fiction, and nonfiction on any subject; however, we are especially interested in work that addresses contemporary North American concerns and issues, particularly with the environment, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and class. We like stories that start quickly and have a strong narrative arc. Poems that are passionate about subject, language, and image are welcome, whether they are traditional or experimental, whether in formal or free verse (closed or open form). Nonfiction should combine art and fact with the finest writing. We read poetry, fiction, and nonfiction year-round. Please submit no more than five poems, one short story, two short-short stories, or one essay (no more than 30 pages typically). The status of your submission can be checked by logging back into the submission system.
Mark and Delia Owens, poachers, Zambia shooting In the early nineteen-seventies, Mark and Delia Owens, two graduate students in biology at the University of Georgia, were seized by the idea of resettling in remotest Africa. They organized an auction, sold their possessions, and used the modest proceeds to buy camping equipment and a pair of one-way air tickets to Johannesburg. When they arrived, in January, 1974, Delia, the daughter of a Georgia trucking executive, was twenty-four years old. Mark, who grew up on a farm west of Toledo, Ohio, was twenty-nine, the divorced father of a four-year-old boy named Christopher. Mark and Delia had scoured the map of Africa, searching for a site so isolated that its wildlife would have no knowledge, and no fear, of humans. In their book “Cry of the Kalahari,” which was published in 1984, the Owenses described their dreadful living conditions: “We rationed ourselves to seven gallons of water each per week, for bathing, cooking, and drinking.
Profiles: The Misfit The moving images on the camera monitor offered, I thought, a plausible depiction of one of the drawbacks of life in the Old West—an invasive urological procedure conducted without benefit of anesthesia. “A situation involving significant unpleasantness” was how David Milch, the creator of “Deadwood,” had described the scene being filmed on a soundstage at Melody Ranch Studios, in Santa Clarita, thirty miles northwest of Los Angeles. One of Milch’s inventions, Al Swearengen—or, rather, Milch’s conception of the real Al Swearengen, owner of the Gem Saloon, a tavern and bordello in the town of Deadwood, just outside the Dakota Territory, circa 1877—was about to have a metal probe called a Van Buren’s sound inserted into his urethra by Doc Cochran, a tormented physician on the verge of a breakdown. “You know, that one seemed to sail pretty goddam good,” Dourif said. “Go get ’em,” Milch said. “It isn’t just about witnessing a woman suffering,” he said. “When did you write this scene?”
Everything in Writing and Life is Fiction I don’t know how to write. Which is unfortunate, as I do it for a living. Mind you, I don’t know how to live either. I’ve written six books now, but instead of making it easier, it has complicated matters to the point of absurdity. Something, obviously, is going on. I do no research. And I mean that—everything is fiction. So I love hearing from people who have no time for fiction. Related: Read Keith Ridgway’s interview with Cressida Leyshon about his short story “Goo Book,” which appeared in the April 11, 2011, issue of the magazine. Illustration by Richard McGuire.
21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (Updated 2012) It's easy to build a blog, but hard to build a successful blog with significant traffic. Over the years, we've grown the Moz blog to nearly a million visits each month and helped lots of other blogs, too. I launched a personal blog late last year and was amazed to see how quickly it gained thousands of visits to each post. NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I wrote on the same topic in 2007. #1 - Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share When strategizing about who you're writing for, consider that audience's ability to help spread the word. If you can identify groups that have high concentrations of the blue and orange circles in the diagram above, you dramatically improve the chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers. #2 - Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers Thankfully, you don't need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. sources: Comscore + Google
20 Great Places to Publish Personal Essays « Writerland I frequently receive e-mails from people looking for places to publish their personal essays. Fiction and nonfiction writers alike all have a great story about the time Aunt Harriet came for dinner and left on the back of a horse, or the time the cat disappeared and returned six years later, or the time they had an epiphany about the meaning of life while walking through the woods at dusk. But where can you submit that funny, poignant, life-changing essay that’s gathering virtual dust in a folder on your computer? Who will publish it? And who will pay? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 7×7—Another West Coast publication, 7×7 has an Urban Ledger column for which readers can pitch their personal essays. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. In addition to those listed above, there is a plethora of other literary journals that publish personal essays. Do you have any publications to add to the list, or details/tips about any of those listed above? Be Sociable, Share!
John Steinbeck's bitter fruit I read The Grapes of Wrath in that fierce span of adolescence when reading was a frenzy. I was all but drowned in the pity and anger John Steinbeck evoked for these people, fleeing Oklahoma to seek work but finding nothing save cruelty, violence, the enmity of immoral banks and businesses, and the neglect by the state of its own people in the Land of the Free. The novel was published in 1939 and delivered a shock to the English reading world. But for years I did not read him. Earlier this year, when asked to make a film about Steinbeck for the BBC, I went back with apprehension. The peaks of one's adolescent reading can prove troughs in late middle age. We started filming with a small crew in Oklahoma, near the spot where the novel begins. In Steinbeck's day, this was part of the American dust bowl. In the novel, the Joad family are driven off their farm by the banks. What happened to the Joad family was an attempt to keep them and everybody like them out of California.
A Little Ode to the Little Magazines and their Very Big Work | TMR Blog (*today’s post comes to us via the wonderful Latanya McQueen.) I remember how in college, before there were resources like Newpages or Duotrope, to find out about literary journals one had to either order them or go to the bookstore and look at them. Weekends during my senior year my best friend and I would frequent all the independent bookstores that we could find. I was twenty-one and had never even heard of Tin House before. Wondering what to make of a Tin House Conjunction I still have many of the issues from that time in my life despite my transient existence over the years, having kept them all for nostalgia’s sake. And yet, by the end of it, he says how his life got better “save some scars.” In that same issue is a story by Justin Torres. The brothers revelry is interrupted when their mother, tired from always working graveyard shifts, comes into the kitchen. I don’t know why I remember these two stories more than the others. And I suspect if you’re reading this, you have too.
How to build your own app for free | Mobile Ever want to build an app for yourself? It's actually not hard. There are a number of companies that offer the ability to create your own app for a minimal fee, which is great for small businesses looking to stay relevant in this increasingly mobile world. Or if you just have a lot of time on your hands. Take Conduit. The company made its money creating branded toolbars found on your browser. "We're trying to give companies a tool to really go mobile," said Ori Lavie, vice president of product strategy at Conduit Mobile. I've tried the service, and it's pretty simple to use. For the purposes of testing, I decided to build a mobile application out of my personal Tumblr blog, Annoying PR. To add content to the app, I typed in the address for my blog, which drew in the feed. In terms of the look, I was able to change up the color scheme. There's also an option to run mobile ads on the app, in which Conduit and the customer would split any potential revenue.
Get Paid $50 to Write a Guest Post There’s been plenty written on the web, including this blog, about websites like Associated Content and Demand Media. The problem with these sites is that they use a revenue sharing model which means most people will never earn more than a buck or two for their article. We know your time is more valuable than that, so we’ve put together a list of blogs that will pay you $50 or more for every article that you write for them. Guest blogging is pretty easy and most articles only need to be between 500-600 words. However, most bloggers have high standards, so you’ll want to make sure you’re producing your best work to increase the chances that your post will be published. On to the list…. 1. This site was founded by Heather Wheeler and Joanie Demer, who have both featured on TLC’s Extreme Couponing. 2. This website is all about building online businesses. 3. Writers Weekly was established in 1997 and it is a freelance writing ezine and hub for all things writing. 4. 5. Another writing blog.
Carol Ann Duffy: 'Poems are a form of texting' Hardly a week goes by without a warning about how educationally detrimental it is for children to spend hours of every day screen-gazing and message-sending. But now there's a note of dissent – from the poet laureate, no less, who says she believes texting is an ideal springboard to good poetry-writing. "The poem is a form of texting ... it's the original text," says Carol Ann Duffy. Duffy, who became Britain's first female poet laureate in 2009, is passionate about the teaching of poetry in school. So, if texting is preparing children for a lifetime of poetry, are today's youngsters better at poetry than children in the past? Duffy says she owes her career as a poet to her exposure to poetry at school in the 1960s and early 70s, when she was growing up – and that's why she's determined to do all she can to further strengthen its place in the curriculum. Duffy says when she realised how much she loved poetry, she started to keep a notebook with her favourite poems in it.
Jorie Graham wins Forward Prize Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham has become the first American woman ever to win one of the U.K.’s most prestigious poetry accolades, the Forward Prize for best collection. She will receive an award of 10,000 pounds. Graham is the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in the English Department at Harvard. The Forward judges expressed their hope that Graham’s win for her 12th collection, “Place,” would find her “startling, powerful” poetry a wider readership in the U.K. The judges, headed by the poet Leonie Rushforth, called Graham’s collection “powerful, never predictable” and “a joy” to read, showing off her “huge confidence” and original use of form. “The energy, intelligence, and breadth of the poems … reflect a heightened perception and a philosophical exploration of the discomfort of living,” said Rushforth and her fellow judges, a panel of the poets Ian McMillan and Alice Oswald and the literary critics Emma Hogan and Megan Walsh.