Category: publishing

Foetry: Exposed In Public

“Foetry.com launched on April 1st of 2004 to expose the status quo in American poetry publication: many books published are winners of contests that are often large–scale fraud operations. Judges select their friends, students, and lovers from pools of manuscripts numbering in the hundreds or thousands, accompanied by an entry fee, usually around $20–$25. Some of the competitions are sponsored by university presses. As soon as Foetry.com was launched, the defenses began.”

The Poet Of Melbourne

“The idea of being a career poet is an odd one to most of us – writing poetry doesn’t pay, for a start – but it implies someone who is out there seeking publication and renown, and respect from one’s peers. Kris Hemensley doesn’t seek such things. And yet he’s been writing seriously and steadily for 40 years, his work is held in very high regard, and he has arguably done more for poetry than anyone else in Melbourne.”

Where Are Those Trivial Books?

“In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf wrote of the necessity of writing that covers all aspects of our lives, and of women, in particular, making the subject of what they know an honourable and serious one: ‘I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial’. Where are these books now, that hesitate at ‘no subject however trivial’? Despite the burgeoning interest in houses, gardens and cooking on television, in non-fiction and a certain kind of popular novel, in literature it seems we continue to gloss over the significance of home.”

N. Ireland Arts Mag Cut From Gov’t Grant Rolls

“Have you heard the one about the magazine that has been promoting arts and culture in Northern Ireland for more than 30 years but no longer gets a grant from the Arts Council of… er, Northern Ireland? This is not the beginning of some in-house south Belfast joke but sums up the current predicament of Fortnight magazine, the arts, culture and politics review that has been covering life in the Troubles-torn north of Ireland since the early 1970s.”

Every Life’s Worth A Story… (But Do You Have To Publish It?)

“The memoir has been on the march for more than a decade now. Readers have long since gotten used to the idea that you do not have to be a statesman or a military commander – or, like Saint-Simon or Chateaubriand, a witness to great events – to commit your life to print. But the genre has become so inclusive that it’s almost impossible to imagine which life experiences do not qualify as memoir material.”

The Stupidity Of Women’s Writing (Whatever That Is)

“There is no such thing as Women’s Writing. Just as there is no such thing as Left-Handed Writing, Red-Headed Writing, European Writing, Northern Hemisphere Writing, or Writing from the Planet Earth. All of these categories are so large as to be meaningless. Sadly, Women’s Writing is the only one of the above repeatedly used as a stick to beat women who write. Either Women’s Writing is fluffy and inconsequential, full of romps and buttocks – or Women’s Writing is coarse and aggressive and the kind of muck you’d expect from an off-duty stripper in a strop – or Women’s Writing is obsessed with plumbing and bleeding and bonding to whale music. Effectively, Women’s Writing is whatever has most annoyed any given journalist, commentator, academic, or author in the past few books by women they’ve read.”

China Bans Sexy Mao Novel

Chinese censors have banned a racy novel and pulled it from book shelves. “The novella, Serve the People – named after Mao’s most famous slogan – has been rejected for publication and a magazine that had been serialising the contents has been pulled from the shelves. Although it was written by one of China’s most distinguished authors, Yan Lianke, propaganda ministry officials were reportedly apoplectic when they first read the tale of sexual revolution inside the People’s Liberation Army.”